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From Stephen Elliott
“Whereas in the past, most trans books were non-fiction, either how-to or memoir books, we’re starting to see novels and short fiction coming from trans authors in North America,” explains Leger. “It’s a great time to be a trans person who loves books!”
Next covers the surge in literature by transgender writers and the places that publish them.
DC Comics’ “New 52″ gambit, in which they scrapped all their series’ storylines and replaced them with new ones, did away with many of the characters that kept the DC Universe diverse in terms of race, gender, and sexuality.
But the good news is that the company has introduced a new character, Alysia Yeoh, “who is not only a strong and interesting character, but is also bisexual, Asian-American, and as of now, openly transgender.”
Check out this Autostraddle post for more details.
...moreHere’s a BuzzFeed list that’s definitely worth reading: 100 Amazing Trans Americans You Should Know.
They’re artists, educators, activists, and more, and they’re doing great work all over the country.
Click through to read stories of where they’ve come from and where they’re heading.
...moreFor decades now, sympathetic portrayals of trans people in the media have usually made use of the same phrase: “a man trapped in a woman’s body” (or vice versa).
Though it may help some cis people start to understand the basic concept of trans-ness, it’s not always very accurate.
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“You know, it’s the first question when someone’s having a baby: is it a boy or a girl? It’s very primitive.”
...more“If this was a blog post I wouldn’t have read it; if this was a video I wouldn’t have watched the whole thing, but because this was a game I played it until the end.”
That’s one commenter’s response to dys4ia, an autobiographical Flash game about transitioning to a new gender by Anna Anthropy.
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I used to believe that collapsing the Venn diagram-space between the public and private self was the best way to ensure authenticity.
...moreFeminist theorist Judith Butler criticizes gender as something culturally constructed while “sex is just as culturally constructed as gender.” According to Butler, the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.
In Anne G. Sabo’s essay, “When My Husband Came Out as a Woman,” Sabo reveals the struggles and mixed emotions she experiences as her husband makes the transition to become her soon-to-be wife.
...moreLana Wachowski, director of The Matrix trilogy and the new film Cloud Atlas, received the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award in San Francisco this past weekend.
Don’t miss Wachowski’s speech, in which she discusses the isolation and trauma of her youth and her experiences as a transgender woman.
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“It” is the overlap between homeless and trans. Oh, did you have a body? When you’re trans and homeless, this is really what the “for customers only” restrooms sign say, below their cheerily simplified depictions of “men” and “women”. Did you have a body? Did you think you could eat, shit, live?
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If masculinity could be defined by a quick Google search or a drive down a billboard-studded highway, then a “real man” is a paradox, captured crudely at the uneasy intersections of faith, love, public service announcements, politics, and advertising.
...moreAt The Boston Phoenix, Rumpus contributor Thomas Page McBee writes about undergoing his own transition while making sense of the many public stories of transgender people that also occurred throughout the past year.
“Going on hormones was scary. I was afraid of being alone, misunderstood, alien.
...more“Recent research and reports on violence against transgender women have found that, in 2010, 44 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and HIV-affected hate-crime murder victims were trans women. In 2009, trans women accounted for 50 percent of LGBTQH hate-crime murder victims.”
Mother Jones reports on the case of CeCe McDonald.
...moreTom Gabel of the band Against Me! opens up about plans to begin living as a woman. Gabel will being transitioning soon and intends to take the name Laura Jane Grace.
“I’m going to have embarrassing moments… and that won’t be fun.
...more“. . .there has been widescale attacks on social movements over the last thirty or forty years in response to the very meaningful social movements in the sixties and seventies that had very transformative demands, that were seeking a redistribution of wealth and of life chances in really significant ways.
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A review of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore