Transgender Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Texas’s Fetal Heartbeat Law Isn’t Just a War on Women

When the pro-choice argument includes trans folx, the principles of bodily autonomy and universal healthcare grow stronger

October 1, 2021 • by Kathryn Gruszecki

When the Supreme Court refused to block the Texas Fetal Heartbeat Act in late August, the court signed off on the strictest limitations on abortion since Roe v. Wade (1973). Banning the procedure after six weeks, the Texas law’s most insidious provision permitted the court to undermine the rights conveyed ...

Texas’s Fetal Heartbeat Law Isn’t Just a War on Women

Feminism

How We Are Doing in Texas

S.B. 8 and the hypocrisy of a “pro-life” state

September 8, 2021 • by Lauren Gutterman

_____ On September 2, 2021, I received a text from an old friend, an advocate for global reproductive health. “Sending love to Texas,” she wrote. “How are you all doing?” In short, not well. The day before, Senate Bill 8 took effect; that night, the United States Supreme Court announced it ...

Democracy

Why the Harper’s Letter Got It Wrong

The most serious threats to protest and open debate come not from the left or the right but from the state and powerful political institutions

July 16, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer

So I took a new job in a new city and began again. I have been thinking about my decision to speak up, and its costs, in light of The Letter. You know the one: the open letter in Harper’s magazine that praises the “needed reckoning” of the past few months ...

Why the <em>Harper’s </em>Letter Got It Wrong

Activism

The Pride Wore White

Black trans women step out of the queer chorus

June 23, 2020 • by McKenzie Wark

I’d come for Brooklyn Liberation for Black Trans Lives. We were asked to wear white. I blended in easily with the human snow of the crowd, wrapped all around the museum. Coming up Washington Avenue, so many white-clad bodies streaming, milling, chatting, buying ice cream from the truck, clapping and cheering ...

Reviews

Void Bitches

To be trans is to be already left out of the design of the world.

May 21, 2020 • by McKenzie Wark

If trans writers have an affinity for the disaster of the world, maybe it’s because our bodies are a disaster already. Now that the whole planet has some kind of dysphoria, maybe it’s our time to shine. It’s a ludicrous idea, I know, but one reads in these times with a ...

Prisons and Police

Out of Jail and Homeless

City struggles to stop COVID-19’s spread among New York’s recently released prisoners

May 6, 2020 • by Abigail Kramer

Stefan Outlaw had just recovered from the worst of his COVID-19 symptoms when he learned that a charitable fund had paid to bail him out of the Rikers Island jail. It was mid-March, and much of the jail population was quarantined in cells for 24 hours a day. Outlaw, age ...

History

Female Husbands

A Trans History

March 31, 2020 • by Jen Manion

Female husband as a descriptive category lost its meaning in public discourse just as it proliferated in the U.S. from roughly 1878 to 1906. It had already largely fallen out of use in the U.K. Female husbands -- once defined by manhood and masculinity -- were quietly and subtly subsumed ...

Psyche

Trauma, Transitioning, and “Puberty Book-Ended by Free Fall”

In a new cycle of poems, poet Isa Guzman explores their personal experience of gender-confirmation

February 18, 2020 • by Isa Guzman

1. I think with observable sunsets my mother’s bodily purging calm hums abstracted pigeons awake along a broken wall of context the way the hip doesn’t curve won’t ever the alienating anatomic bone structure of verbs growing winds and winding contours of hysteria anatomical witchcraft another day another extension of empty ...

Trauma, Transitioning, and “Puberty Book-Ended by Free Fall”

Psyche

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

On trans identity, poetry, and fighting for the dignity of one’s body

February 18, 2020 • by Isa Guzman

i. i say morning off-white ceiling insect corpse light dent fixture twenty-year-old piece of double-sided tape breath breaking mirror sun through gate’s red curtain I say to the ceiling: “I wish I wasn’t here anymore.” My body hadn’t been cooperating with me. I was constantly tired. A long-term relationship had ended. My graduate ...

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

Sex & Gender

Don’t Pop the Champagne Yet on “They”

Cultural milestones are powerful — but is language a substitute for equal rights?

December 21, 2019 • by Jen Manion

In 2017, the popular tv show Billions introduced the nonbinary character Taylor Mason (played by Asia Kate Dillon) who used they/them pronouns in a significant recurring role. It features one of the most incisive scenes in television or film that captures the significance of nonbinary identity. Taylor says they don’t want to ...

Sex & Gender

The Sun is the Size of a Human Foot

An Interview with Andrea Long Chu

October 29, 2019 • by McKenzie Wark

But I think the more proper question is: “Whose foot?” It’s not about the foot not “actually” being the size of the sun. It's the fact that there's necessarily a subjective relation that changes from person to person. So I think the place where truth becomes important is not actually ...

Sex & Gender

The Many-handed Hunger of Transsexuality

On T. Fleischmann

October 21, 2019 • by McKenzie Wark

What do we do with what’s left over, with what is in excess of bare life, if we have it? Denounce it as privilege, perhaps. I’m not a particularly moral person. Sure, that’s bad. I’m not very moralistic either. That’s probably good. With what’s left over in my life, I’d ...

Transgender

Texas’s Fetal Heartbeat Law Isn’t Just a War on Women

When the pro-choice argument includes trans folx, the principles of bodily autonomy and universal healthcare grow stronger

How We Are Doing in Texas

S.B. 8 and the hypocrisy of a “pro-life” state

Why the Harper’s Letter Got It Wrong

The most serious threats to protest and open debate come not from the left or the right but from the state and powerful political institutions

The Pride Wore White

Black trans women step out of the queer chorus

Void Bitches

To be trans is to be already left out of the design of the world.

Out of Jail and Homeless

City struggles to stop COVID-19’s spread among New York’s recently released prisoners

Female Husbands

A Trans History

Trauma, Transitioning, and “Puberty Book-Ended by Free Fall”

In a new cycle of poems, poet Isa Guzman explores their personal experience of gender-confirmation

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

On trans identity, poetry, and fighting for the dignity of one’s body

Don’t Pop the Champagne Yet on “They”

Cultural milestones are powerful — but is language a substitute for equal rights?

The Sun is the Size of a Human Foot

An Interview with Andrea Long Chu

The Many-handed Hunger of Transsexuality

On T. Fleischmann

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