Resources to Mark International Transgender Day of Visibility
Each March 31 the world marks International Transgender Day of Visibility, an event that has been celebrated since 2009. That year, psychotherapist Rachel Crandall, dissatisfied with how her community was commemorated only in loss, started a low-key effort that paid almost immediate dividends. As she told PrideSource four years later:
“I thought, ‘why doesn’t someone do it?’ Then I thought, ‘Why isn’t that someone me?'”
The event resonated immediately, and by 2021 even saw a proclamation from U.S. President Joe Biden, who signed an executive order on his first day in office on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.”
In a proclamation on the day that same year, the administration wrote:
.Below are several resources that have appeared on Social Science Space centered on trans issues, including a webinar recording on the state of trans studies. Below that recording are external resources identified and curated by the webinar’s panelists.
Five Key Moments in the Struggle for Trans Rights
Watch the Webinar: Trans Rights Priorities for the Biden Administration
In that webinar, panelists mentioned a number of trans-focused organizations during the event:
Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, or BLMP
Familia: Trans Queen Liberation Movement, or TQLM
National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network
UpEnd Campaign (to end the child welfare system as we know it)
Publishers: Changing the Names of Trans People in Their Own Work is Not Enough
Trans Linguistic Activism is About Asking for Basic Respect from Others
With the 2021 publication of The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, a timely question is, what is the state of trans studies now and in the future? This panel of leading scholars in the field — all contributors to the encyclopedia — discuss this topic. The panelists are listed below, followed by their entry in the encyclopedia.
- Marquis Bey, assistant professor, African American studies and English, Northwestern University | Entry on “Black People“
- Aaron Devor, founder, The Transgender Archives; inaugural chair in transgender studies; and professor, sociology, University of Victoria | Entry on “Reed Erickson“
- Julian Kevon Glover, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University | Entry on “Laverne Cox“
- Kristen Renn, Professor, Higher, Adult, & Lifelong Education, Michigan State University | Entry on “Career Development and Trajectories“
- Ann Travers, Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University | Entry on “Pro Sports Athletes“
Emily Skidmore, associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, moderated the webinar, which was sponsored by the UMass Stonewall Center and Clark University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program and co-sponsored by UMass Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and the Five College Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies Certificate
The Literature
Queer Embodiment by Hil Malatino
Black on Both Sides by C Riley Snorton
Reverse Cowgirl by McKenzie Wark
Read My Lips by Riki Wilchins
The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender by Marquis Bey
Black Trans Feminism (forthcoming, January 2022) by Marquis Bey
Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism by Marquis Bey
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law by Dean Spade
Mutual Aid. Building Solidarity During This Crisis and the Next by Dean Spade
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with the Cure by Eli Clare
Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson
“Queer Investments in Punishment” by Sarah Lamble in The Transgender Studies Reader 2
“Trans Necropolitics” by C. Riley Snorton and J. Haritaworn in The Transgender Studies Reader 2
CR: The New Centennial Review, volume 3 issue 3 – Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument by S. Wynter
“On Confusing the Map for the Territory” by Sylvia Wynter in Not Only the Master’s Tools. African-American Studies in Theory and Practice edited by L. R. Gordon and J. A. Gordon
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, volume 15 issue 2 – Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George by S. Razack
Suggested Readings on Trans History
Trans bodies, trans selves: A resource for the transgender community by G. Beemyn (pp. 501-536)
Re-dressing America’s frontier past by P. Boag
Transmen and FTMs: Identities, bodies, genders, and sexualities by J. Cromwell
Histories of the transgender child by J. Gill-Peterson
Men as women, women as men: Changing gender in Native American cultures by S. Lang
Female husbands: A trans history by J. Manion
How sex changed: A history of transsexuality in the United States by J. Meyerowitz
Feminist Studies, volume 37 issue 2 – Constructing the “good transsexual”: Christine Jorgensen, whiteness, and heteronormativity in the mid-twentieth century press by E. Skidmore
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, volume 20 issue 1-2 – Ralph Kerwineo’s queer body: Narrating the scales of social membership in the early twentieth century by E. Skidmore
True sex: The lives of trans men at the turn of the twentieth century by E. Skidmore
Recovering a Gender Transgressive Past: A Transgender Historiography by E. Skidmore
A Companion to Women’s History by (eds.) N. Hewitt & A. Valk
Transgender history: The roots of today’s revolution by S. Stryker
Suggested Readings on Trans College Students
Trans People in Higher Education by (ed.) G. Beemyn
Journal of College Student Development, volume 58 number 4 – Exploring the ways trans* collegians navigate academic, romantic, and social relationships by A. Duran and Z. Nicolazzo
The Counseling Psychologist, volume 47 – Healthcare experiences of transgender university students by A.E. Goldberg et al
Journal of Educational & Psychological Consultation, volume 29 – What is needed, what is valued: Trans’ students’ perspectives on trans-inclusive policies and practices in higher education by A.E. Goldberg et al
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education – Trans students’ advocacy and activism experiences within college and university settings by A. E. Goldberg et al
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education volume 12 – Transgender graduate students’ experiences in higher education: A mixed-methods exploratory study by A. E. Goldberg et al
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, volume 29 issue 9 – “It’s a hard line to walk”: Black non-binary trans* collegians’ perspectives on passing, realness, and trans*-normativity by Z. Nicolazzo
Trans* in college: Transgender students’ strategies for navigating campus life and the institutional politics of inclusion by Z. Nicolazzo
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, volume 30 issue 3 – An exploration of trans* kinship as a strategy for student success by Z. Nicolazzo et al.
International Sociology, volume 34 issue 4 – A Retrospective of LGBT Issues on U.S. College Campuses: 1990-2020 by Garvey S. Rankin, et al.
