‘Overawed by the marvel’ of trans 7-min ⏰⏰
A new miniprayerbook
When we sanctify something, it changes. I think Heschel would understand and would like to continue to live and change and cast and reflect light.
Is it about time, bodies, or both? 7-min ⏰⏰
‘Trans Talmud’ by Max K. Strassfeld
Is this a question about time —what we think we know about the past and future? Or is it about bodies —how we sexually classify them? Or both?
Transgender people have always existed (DD)
Trans people have always existed & did not sneak in through the back door (DD)
It is known: ‘Trans people simply exist’ (DD)
Trans people have trans community even if Rich Lowry says we don’t (DD)
The world needs more transsexuals (DD)
Did lady pirates button their shirts? 3-min ⏰
Yes. Art you may have seen to the contrary wasn’t realistic.
Just because you’ve seen a naked image of a trans person doesn’t mean trans people walk around naked. Pirates too were motivated to button their shirts.
Trans kids are found in history, too 5-min ⏰
[Re: Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson]
Adults should acknowledge that “trans childhood is a happy and desired form .” It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s “richly, beautifully historical.”
Pauli Murray (1910–1985) (Goodreads)
A surgeon for WWI and WWII vets also helped a trans man 4-min ⏰
[Re: The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris]
Harold Gillies “never shied away from a surgical challenge ,” Fitzharris writes. Gillies agreed to perform phalloplasty for a trans man in the late 1940s.
Little-known transgender memoir: ‘Reborn’ (1955) 15-min ⏰⏰⏰
[Re: Reborn: A Factual Life Story of a Transition From Male to Female by Tamara Reese]
After her 1954 transition, Tamara says she’s ‘serving society in a useful and worthwhile manner’ and is ‘one of the happiest persons alive today.”
The definition of possibility was inadequate 12-min ⏰⏰⏰
[Re: Conundrum, a memoir by Jan Morris]
Being a woman “is a passionate, lifelong, ineradicable conviction” that “has never seemed ignoble or even unnatural to me,” Jan Morris wrote.
‘The story of my untangling’ through gender transition 4-min ⏰
‘Pageboy’ by Elliot Page
Page realized he was trans when he was about 30. He says it ‘seems like more people step forward to defend being unkind than…to support trans people.’
Butler on ‘Imagining Alternate Futures’ 5-min ⏰
Judith Butler’s 2021 interview in The Guardian
So-called gender-criticalism is ‘a regressive and spurious form of biological essentialism,’ Butler says. This interview is one I keep coming back to.
Trans and nonbinary kids talk about identity with Daniel Radcliffe 2-min ⏰
Sharing Space is a video series with the Trevor Project
Each of us has allyship and activism that we can do because of who we are. There’s something each of us can do especially well to make a real difference.
The ‘undecidability’ of life 6-min ⏰⏰
Freedom and despair in Will Eaves’ ‘Murmur’
The novelist directs our moral scrutiny not at the innocent man but at the state that victimizes him. The state destroys him, politically and existentially.
A gay self-discovery: Body, desire, but no ‘essence of me’ 9-min ⏰⏰
‘The Flower From a Poisoned Seed’ by Jonathan C. David
The more we want something, the harder we pursue it, and it feels like the reason we’re here. But if we ever reached it, what would be the point of life?
My two favorite tweets from year-end 2021 4-min ⏰
The grace of shared joy and success
Seeing your own place change in the rankings often implies there is a rising star in your network. Their success doesn’t step on yours. Share their joy.
Making an effort toward equal parenting 3-min ⏰
Written by a gay man, ‘The Equal Parent’ is about gender-inclusive parenting attitudes
Both are active parents. The nursery has both of their phone numbers, and ‘if they cannot get hold of the dad they called first, they try the other one.’
Darned if I can tell you how magic works 3-min ⏰
But this award-winning novel can [Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton]
How do we create our realities? How are you magic? If you haven’t yet read trans literature, I am giving you sage advice: Trans people’s books are magic.
New dogs, now, in my own poems 5-min ⏰⏰
Rereading ‘Mars and Her Children’ by Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy’s poems in ‘Mars and Her Children’, I decided early on, are what I want to sound like when I wrote a poem. I’ve found my voice.
2022 U.S. Trans Survey
90,000 trans people in a 2022 survey (DD)
Readathon (On Medium)
- March 20-27, 2023 Trans Rights Readathon 4-min ⏰
- Hall of Waters by Camellia-Berry Grass 4-min ⏰
- Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco by K. Iver 4-min ⏰
- This Kid Can Fly by Aaron Rose Philip 3-min ⏰
- A + E by Ryszard Merey 4-min ⏰
Fundraising 2023
Colombia: 40 Years of LGBTQ Pride 2-min ⏰
Fundraising for a trans community organizing space in Bogotá
Besides seeking a comprehensive trans law, La Red Comunitaria Trans plans to build a trans house for organizing and support. Fundraising goal: US $100,000.
More LGBTQ articles
- Jon Stewart talks to the Arkansas attorney general (2022) (DD)
- Affirmations from the book ‘Surviving Transphobia’ (DD)
- No corporate pride, thanks (DD)
- Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution by Linda R. Hirshman (GR)
- A positive story about a trans person in U.S. government (DD)
- Please Miss by Grace Lavery (GR)
- Macumba Sexual (1983 film) (DD)
- Nightmare on Elm Street (1984 film) (DD)
- Chelsea Manning’s gender awakening in her memoir ‘README.txt’ (DD)
- Books that influenced Chelsea Manning (DD)
- The Long Hallway by Richard Scott Larson (2024) (Medium)
- Global Early Modern Trans Studies: Symposium at Folger (DD)
- In Hebrew, movement toward gender-neutral language (DD)
- Rubin and Echols book recs, found in Stryker (DD)
- Read trans authors (DD)
- Trans people in MA need emergency financial assistance (DD)
- Shaneel Lal’s Fight Against Conversion Therapy (Gender Identity Today)
In 2022, powered by young activist Shaneel Lal, Aotearoa New Zealand banned conversion therapy. ‘Stop congratulating me for being brave,’ Lal says. Instead, ‘annihilate the systems that force me to be brave.’ - Geena Rocero’s TED Talk Reveal (Gender Identity Today)
‘Our spirits will always expand to fill whatever space we are given,’ she says. She found her own face in the mirror, her own presence, emerging from nothingness. - Petrang Kabayo: A queer horse goddess classic film, free on YouTube (DD)
Tucker Lieberman 