Queer Corner

Queer monthly #5: All things Trans*

This month we will focus on trans*, looking into the sexual and gender aspects. Please bear with me, there are quite a view terms that we need to go over.

Vocabulary!

Trans*: The asterisk placed after Trans has been used in many different ways. Some folks think of it as being more inclusive towards gender non-conforming and non-binary folks. But others have offered critique that it feels exclusionary towards GNC and non-binary folks for enforcing a binary expectation to “fill in the blank" for trans man or trans woman.  There have also been discussions/critique regarding the origin of the asterisk.

Trans man: A person may choose to identify this way to capture their gender identity as well as their lived experience as a transgender person.  Some trans men may also use the term FTM or F2M to describe their identity.

Trans woman: A person may choose to identify this way to capture their gender identity as well as their lived experience as a transgender person.  Some transwomen may also use MTF or M2F to describe their identity.

Transgender: Adjective used most often as an umbrella term, and frequently abbreviated to “trans.” This adjective describes a wide range of identities and experiences of people whose gender identity and/or expression differs from conventional expectations based on their assigned sex at birth. Not all trans people undergo medical transition (surgery or hormones).  Some commonly held definitions:

1. Someone whose determination of their sex and/or gender is not universally considered valid; someone whose behavior or expression does not “match” their assigned sex according to society.

2. A gender outside of the man/woman binary.

3. Having no gender or multiple genders.

Transition: An individualized process by which transsexual and transgender people “switch” from one gender presentation to another. There are three general aspects to transitioning: social (i.e. name, pronouns, interactions, etc.), medical (i.e. hormones, surgery, etc.), and legal (i.e. gender marker and name change, etc.). A trans* individual may transition in any combination, or none, of these aspects.

Transsexual (TS): A person who lives full-time in a gender different than their assigned birth sex and gender.  Many pursue hormones and/or surgery. Sometimes used to specifically refer to trans people pursuing gender or sex confirmation.

Pronouns: Linguistic tools used to refer to someone in the third person.  Examples are they/them/theirs, ze/hir/hirs, she/her/hers, he/him/his.  In English and some other languages, pronouns have been tied to gender and are a common site of misgendering (attributing a gender to someone that is incorrect.)

Misgendering: Attributing a gender to someone that is incorrect/does not align with their gender identity.  Can occur when using pronouns, gendered language (i.e. “Hello ladies!”Hey guys”), or assigning genders to people without knowing how they identify (i.e. “Well, since we’re all women in this room, we understand…”).

Check out these listings for more information! The last one may surprise you!!

A Murder over a Girl by Ken Corbett

Call Number: 364.152 C789m 2016

Publication Date: 2016

 A psychologist's gripping, troubling, and moving exploration of the brutal murder of a possibly transgender middle school student by an eighth grade classmate. On Feb. 12, 2008, at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, CA, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his classmate, Larry King, who had recently begun to call himself "Leticia" and wear makeup and jewelry to school. Profoundly shaken by the news, and unsettled by media coverage that sidestepped the issues of gender identity and of race integral to the case, psychologist Ken Corbett traveled to LA to attend the trial. As visions of victim and perpetrator were woven and unwoven in the theater of the courtroom, a haunting picture emerged not only of the two young teenagers, but also of spectators altered by an atrocity and of a community that had unwittingly gestated a murder. Drawing on firsthand observations, extensive interviews and research, as well as on his decades of academic work on gender and sexuality, Corbett holds each murky facet of this case up to the light, exploring the fault lines of memory and the lacunae of uncertainty behind facts. Deeply compassionate, and brimming with wit and acute insight, A Murder Over a Girl is a riveting and stranger-than-fiction drama of the human psyche.
 

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Call Number: F299s
Publication Date: 1993

Jess, a working-class woman living as a man, survives a period of homelessness, tries to unionize fellow workers, worries about being found out, and searches for community while undergoing a secret transsexual operation.

 

Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 1423728912

Publication Date: 2004

Written by a leading activist in the transgender movement, "Becoming a Visible Man" is an artful and compelling inquiry into the politics of gender. Jamison Green combines candid autobiography with informed analysis to offer unique insight into the multiple challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience, ranging from encounters with prejudice and strained relationships with family to the development of an FTM community and the realities of surgical sex reassignment. For more than a decade, Green has provided educational programs on gender-variance issues for corporations, law-enforcement agencies, social-science conferences and classes, continuing legal education, religious education, and medical venues. His comprehensive knowledge of the processes and problems encountered by transgendered and transsexual people--as well as his legal advocacy work to help ensure that gender-variant people have access to the same rights and opportunities as others--enable him to explain the issues as no transsexual author has previously done. Brimming with frank and often poignant recollections of Green's own experiences--including his childhood struggles with identity and his years as a lesbian parent prior to his sex-reassignment surgery--the book examines transsexualism as a human condition, and sex reassignment as one of the choices that some people feel compelled to make in order to manage their gender variance. Relating the FTM psyche and experience to the social and political forces at work in American society, "Becoming a Visible Man" also speaks consciously of universal principles that concern us all, particularly the need to live one's life honestly, openly, and passionately.