Transsexual/Transgender Resources
TRANS RESOURCES
General trans info
Vancouver Coastal Health’s resources for trans people, family and friends: tons of pdf booklets about trans youth, advocacy, hormone therapy, surgery, and diverse health issues. I found the trans youth booklet to be especially useful: it explains in a clear, complete way how it feels to be trans, plus tips on coming out and transitioning.
Trans Youth: links to resources, listed by theme. My favorite: Bending the Mold, an action kit for transgender youth.
Primed: safer intimacy guide for queer transmen and their partners (mature content; not safe for school or work).
Hudson’s FTM Resource Guide: on hormones, surgery, hairstyles, clothes, “passing”…
HRC (Human Rights Campaign) on trans issues: the HRC may not have the best track record when it comes to trans, it does have nice resources such as Trangender Americans: A Handbook for Understanding and the Coming Out as Transgender guide.
glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender & queer culture: Spotlight on transgender issues.
International Bill of Gender Rights.
Yay genderform!: list of almost 1000 gender terms; create your own unique, complex gender!
Transman mapping project: “If you’ve ever had that feeling of being alone in your transition, a quick look at the map will show you otherwise. We really are everywhere! -Gender Outlaw“
Stuff by Kate Bornstein:
–Gender Aptitude Test: adapted from her My Gender Workbook. How far do you question binary gender?
–comic book she made for hospital staff about her trans status
–interview on glbtq enyclopedia about deconstructing gender.
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For people who are questioning their gender
GQ: guide for gender-questioning people and their friends.
Trans Living at Youth Resource: for questioning, genderqueer and transgender youth.
I think I might be transgender; now what do I do?
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For cisgender (non-trans) people
PFLAG’s TNET: The organization Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays has a Transgender Network with articles and online brochures such as “Our trans children” (Spanish edition here).
GenderPalooza! A Sex & Gender Primer from Scarleteen (”sex ed for the real world”).
Suggested Rules for Non-Trans People Writing about Trans.
Raising a Gender-Variant Child.
Creating GLBTQIA-inclusive forms: suggestions for policy and implementation.
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LITERATURE
Beyond Masculinity – essays by queer men on gender & politics
Queer zines: list of several trans and gender-related zines.
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PHOTOGRAPHY, PORTRAITS
Bois & Dykes: Sophia Wallace’s photo essay
GQ: “a stencil portrait series honoring genderqueer individuals who have shaped the ‘female masculinity’ landscape”.
Visual artist Del Lagrace Volcano’s portfolio.
Genderfork (curator blog) explores androgyny and gender variance through artistic photography. Now it’s also a nice community for discussing androgyny, fluidity and genderqueer.
XX Boys: artistic photographs of transmen of all kinds — guys with and without hormones, with and without chest surgery, guys who took T for some time and then stopped, etc. By Kael T Block.
Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America: photographs of diverse queer people (trans, genderqueer, butch, femme and more)
Transformational Project by photographer Jen Rosenstein. Beautiful portraits of transpeople.
Eve Fowler’s portraits of gender-diverse people.
Amanda Morgan: photography. Besides the portraits of her trans lover, in her I AM A MAN series she takes on various male signifiers to explore issues of performative masculinity and its intersection with race, class and sexual orientation.
Sociological Images (Seeing is Believing): briefly-commented media images that represent cultural attitudes towards different subjects; for instance, the construction of gender, transgender, sexual orientation and intersex.
The Transgender Book Project includes pictures of trans individuals alongside handwritten texts where they talk about their identities.
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VIDEOS
Wrong Bathroom: hilarious yet realistic account of gender-diverse people’s restroom troubles.
Gender Rebel: documentary about three female-born genderqueer people, one of whom is physically transitioning.
Transgender Basics: nice introduction to the gender binary (and alternatives to it), transmen, transwomen, and genderqueers.
Silent T Party: talking about trans inclusion in anti-discrimination acts. I like Kalil Cohen’s description of his trans childhood.
LGBtotheT AtoZ is an alphabetical collection of short videos narrating “biographies, pivotal historic moments and critical contemporary issues facing the trans community”. They’re pretty shallow, in my opinion, but good for a quick intro to new subjects. For instance, I hadn’t ever heard of the Dewey’s Lunch Counter protest, a trans protest that happened years before the Stonewall riots.
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MUSIC & PODCASTS
The Cliks: great rock band with a superhot transman singer, Lucas Silveira.
Gender Talk: radio talk show about gender and trans issues. Available for online listening or download.
TransFM: podcasts such as The Radical Trannies (mostly about activism, at least the episodes I listened to) and TransPonder (about transition, the trans world and life in general).
Gender Blender: radio show on transgender and gender in general.
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SPOKEN WORD & SLAM POETRY
Kit Yan: Kit slams about gender, race and food in a style that can go from funny to poignant and every emotion in between. He’s part of Good Asian Drivers, “a music and spoken word duo that only pretends to gig and mostly uses touring as an excuse to eat random foods.” My post about him lists my favorite poems.
Andrea Gibson: Genderqueer poet. She slams about queer gender in Swingset (”are you a boy or a girl?”) and Andrew.
Athens Boys Choir: The Athens Boys Choir isn’t a choir at all – it’s Harvey Katz, a trans spoken-word/hip-hop performer. See my post about him.
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BLOGS
Gender theorizing
Below the Belt: deconstructing gender, one kick to the groin at a time.
Genderkid – Thoughts on gender from an Argentinian transboy’s perspective.
Sugarbutch: the sex, gender and relationship adventures of a kinky queer butch top.
By/about trans and gender-diverse people
A Gender Agenda Blog: Gender rights are human rights.
Being a teenage crossdresser: Wearing a skirt has never been so difficult…
Cheerful Megalomaniac: Ryan is an extremely opinionated young transexual person from Canberra, Australia. (no longer updated)
Female-to-FuckYou: The trials and tribulations of a transmasculine college student.
Gender 3.0: A San Francisco trans dyke’s tales of life in and beyond the gender binary. (no longer updated)
Gender Outlaw: FTM transition journal.
gender, rants and sodomy: an eighteen year old, queer identified, tranny fag.
GenoTypo: Someone forgot to use the genetic spell check — it’s XY, not XX — but I’m getting the correction fluid.
Labels Are For Jars: blog by a mother who doesn’t force societal gender norms onto her boy.
My Life as a Drag King: Performing gender and exploring boundaries
Radical If: “My name is Ryan Radclyffe-Hall. I’m a young Australian activist, who passionately believes that positive social change is possible in my lifetime.”
Tboy Jacky: Just another FTM chronicle
TRANS∙pose: Gender identity, transition, and sexuality through the eyes of a queer, genderqueer living in Los Angeles. (no longer updated)
Gay, lesbian, queer
Lesbian Dad is a personal essay/photography blog about parenthood generally, and lesbian parenthood in particular, with especial attention to the experiences of non-birth and/or butch mums and the many larger questions our unique kind of parenthood opens up.
Queers United: The activist blog Uniting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersexual, Asexual community & Allies in the fight for equality.
Other
blue milk: thinking + motherhood = feminist
Kate Bornstein: Blog for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws
