Riki Wilchins

An Instant Primer

Queer Theory, Gender Theory

In the early 1990s, no one talked about transgender people, and no one knew one. We were not on TV or in movies. What formed the visible part of the transcommunity – overwhelmingly white, urban, and middle class – was also overwhelmingly focused on conferences, surgery or hormones and cisgender acceptance. This was still a determinedly non-political population, often in defensive crouch because it was also constantly under attack by the media, police, local legislatures, feminists and even LGB-but-never-T advocates. We were a group that still thought of ourselves as a collection of separate individuals, not a movement. What made political consciousness so difficult was that there was no “transgender section” of town, where we saw each other regularly. And mainstream society mostly ignored us. And when it didn’t, it usually made clear it despised us. We were freaks. We were gendertrash. We lived in a transient and indoor community that knew itself only a few days at a time during conferences at hotels out on the interstate. But all that was about to change. Even when politics are avoided, bringing despised and marginalized people together is itself a political act. Without realizing or intending it, the community was reaching critical mass. Even in those pre-Internet, pre-cellphone days, enough transpeople were running into one another often enough to begin realizing we could be a force, that we didn’t really need cisgender acceptance. What we needed was our civil rights. This is the inside story of how in just a few years, a handful of trans activists would come together in the face of enormous difficulties and opposition to launch from the very margins of society what would grow into the modern political movement for gender rights.

How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress… and Won!

TRANS/gressive

Joan Nestle

Clare Howell

When Genderqueer was first published in 2002, it was groundbreaking, even inventing a new word for those whose voices had been hidden behind the walls of the gender binary. Now-finally!-it's republished, and those voices are still fresh and compelling in a volume that can take its place as one of the field's early and most original "classics."Michael Kimmel SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies Stony Brook University (retired) Perhaps more than any other issue, gender identity has galvanized the queer community in recent years. The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, first published nearly two decades ago, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide the groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. Joan Nestle is the cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York and the writer and editor of six books including the groundbreaking Women on Women series. Riki Wilchins is the executive director of GenderPAC, the national gender advocacy group, and the cofounder of the Gender Identity Project of New York City's Lesbian and Gay Center. She is the author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, Gender Theory, Burn the Binary and TransGRESSIVE. Clare Howell is a senior librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary

GenderQueer

Susan Wright

Silvia Rivera

Gina Reiss

When GenderQueer was first published in 2002, it was groundbreaking, even inventing a new word for those whose voices had been hidden behind the walls of the gender binary. Now—finally!—it's republished, and those voices are still fresh and compelling in a volume that can take its place as one of the field's early and most original "classics." Michael Kimmel SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies Stony Brook University (retired) Perhaps more than any other issue, gender identity has galvanized the queer community in recent years. The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, first published nearly two decades ago, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide the groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. Joan Nestle is the cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York and the writer and editor of six books including the groundbreaking Women on Women series. Riki Wilchins is the executive director of GenderPAC, the national gender advocacy group, and the cofounder of the Gender Identity Project of New York City's Lesbian and Gay Center. She is the author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, Gender Theory, Burn the Binary and TransGRESSIVE. Clare Howell is a senior librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.

GenderQueer-Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary

In BAD INK, award-winning trans activist Riki Wilchins, definitively chronicles how and why the nation’s newspaper of record became the leading national voice for attacking transgender kids. Beginning in 2015 just as A. G. Sulzberger was taking over as Publisher, the New York Times underwent a strange shift: from its long-time support for transgender rights overnight it became the nation’s leading voice attacking transgender kids. In nearly 70,000 words in dozens of articles, it attacked their right to transition, to medical care, to sports participation—even the very idea that they were transgender. It was—as Tom Scocca summed up in Popula— “a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade,” But the Times’ crusade wasn’t based on new reporting or fresh medical evidence, but on talking points being promoted by white Christian nationalist organizations devoted to eradicating gay and transgender people. And it was timed just as MAGA politicians introduced over 1,000 bills in scores of states to outlaw every aspect of trans kids’ lives. It was all apparently part of Sulzberger’s new plan to remake that liberal rag so it could appeal to right-wing readers for the digital age. And unfortunately, it worked. ******************************************************** "A much-needed book that only becomes more necessary by the day, Wilchins' BAD INK presents an unflinching, clear-eyed analysis of the role the Times has played in reversing the course of trans rights." --Harron Walker, VICE Combining close readings of the Times, robust factchecking, astute observation, and Wilchins’ signature cutting prose, BAD INK is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand how we got where we are today. --TJ Billard, PhD Assoc. Professor, Northwestern Univ. & Director, Center for Applied Transgender Studies I can't stop reading this book! Bad Ink is the clearest, most coherent dissection of the Times’ decision to trade journalistic integrity for clicks at the expense of trans kids. Every reporter should be tasked with reading this book! --Kate Sosin, The 19th News

How The New York Times Sold Out Transgender Teens

Bad Ink

For decades trans studies and queer theory have addressed the trans body as an abstraction, a site of gender, instead of a site for desire and or pleasure. But bodies do things, and different kinds of bodies do different kinds of things. This book explains how sex and embodied pleasure went missing from trans studies and queer theory, and uses the author's first person auto-ethnographic accounts to chart a path back for trans studies to engage the everyday realities of trans people's erotic lives and experiences.

The Erotic Erasure of Trans Desire & Sexuality

Let's (Not) Talk About (Transgender) Sex

"In this one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the work of postmodern sex and gender theorists, nationally known gender activist Riki Wilchins clearly explains the key ideas that have shaped contemporary sex and gender studies. Using straightforward prose and concrete examples from LGBT politics -- as well as her own life -- Wilchins makes thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Judith Butler easily accessible to students, activists, and others who are interested in some of the most compelling and divisive issues of the last 100 years. Additionally, Wilchins reports on the ways queer youths today are using the tools of queer theory and gender theory to reshape their world. This is that rare, invaluable book that connects postmodern theory to political passion, personal experience, and the patterns of everyday life."--Page 4 of cover.

An Instant Primer (Large Print 16pt)

A one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the work of postmodern theorists like Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault and Judith Butler that has redefined women's, gay and gender studies. Nationally known gender activist Riki Wilchins combines straightforward prose with concrete examples from LGBT and feminist politics to guide the reader through the ideas that have forever altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire.

An icon of transgender activism for three decades, Riki Wilchins is the author of four influential books on genderqueer, trans politics, and queer theory. Riki Wilchins has been a pioneering and influential thinker and writer for a quarter of a century. Now this single volume offers a selection of Riki’s most penetrating and insightful pieces, as well as the best of two decades of Riki’s online columns for The Advocate never before collected. Think of this as Riki Wilchin’s greatest hits!

Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer and Nonbinary

Burn the Binary!

This book provides a starting point for a long overdue movement to elevate “applied gender studies”, providing both a reference and guide for researchers, students, policymakers, funders, non-profit leaders, and grassroots advocates.

Riki Wilchins

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