The word cisgender describes a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, i.e., someone who is not transgender. The prefix cis- is Latin and means on this side of. The term cisgender was coined in 1994 as an antonym to transgender, and entered into dictionaries starting in 2015 as a result of changes in social discourse about gender. The term has been and continues to be controversial and subject to critique.
Transfeminism, or trans feminism, is a branch of feminism focused on transgender women and informed by transgender studies. Transfeminism focuses on the effects of transmisogyny and patriarchy on trans women. It is related to the broader field of queer theory. The term was popularized by Emi Koyama in The Transfeminist Manifesto.
Sexual attraction to transgender people has been the subject of scientific study and social commentary. Psychologists have researched sexual attraction toward trans women, trans men, cross dressers, non-binary people, and a combination of these. Publications in the field of transgender studies have investigated the attraction transgender individuals can feel for each other. The people who feel this attraction to transgender people name their attraction in different ways.
CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies was founded in 1991 by professor Martin Duberman as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and communities. Housed at the Graduate Center, CUNY, CLAGS sponsors public programs and conferences, offers fellowships to individual scholars, and functions as a conduit of information. It also serves as a national center for the promotion of scholarship that fosters social change.
The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male is a 1979 book about transgender people by American radical feminist author and activist Janice Raymond. The book is derived from Raymond's dissertation, which was produced under the supervision of the feminist theologian Mary Daly.
Del LaGrace Volcano is an American artist, performer, and activist from California. A formally trained photographer, Volcano's work includes installation, performance and film and interrogates the performance of gender on several levels, especially the performance of masculinity and femininity.
Paisley Currah is political scientist and author, known for his work on the transgender rights movement. His book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity examines the politics of sex classification in the United States. He is a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.
Kortney Ryan Ziegler is an American entrepreneur, filmmaker, visual artist, blogger, writer, and scholar based in Oakland, California. His artistic and academic work focuses on queer or trans issues, body image, racialized sexualities, gender, and black queer theory.
In the Indian subcontinent, a kothi is a term for a man or boy who takes on an "effeminate" role in same-sex relationships, often with a desire to be the receptive partner in sexual intercourse. The origins of the term are unclear. The original meaning was intended as a slur, similar to "fag" or "sissy." Local equivalents include durani (Kolkata), menaka (Cochin), meti (Nepal), and zenana (Pakistan). The male partners who perform the penetrative acts are known as panthi.
Susan O'Neal Stryker is an American professor, historian, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and founder of the Transgender Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona, and is currently on leave while holding an appointment as Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership at Mills College. Stryker serves on the Advisory Council of METI and the Advisory Board of the Digital Transgender Archive. Stryker, who is a transgender woman, is the author of several books about LGBT history and culture. She is a leading scholar of transgender history.
Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues of relevance to transgender and gender variant populations. Interdisciplinary subfields of transgender studies include applied transgender studies, transgender history, transgender literature, transgender media studies, transgender anthropology and archaeology, transgender psychology, and transgender health. The research theories within transgender studies focus on cultural presentations, political movements, social organizations and the lived experience of various forms of gender nonconformity. The discipline emerged in the early 1990s in close connection to queer theory. Non-transgender-identified peoples are often also included under the "trans" umbrella for transgender studies, such as intersex people, crossdressers, drag artists, third gender individuals, and genderqueer people.
Eva Simone Hayward is a writer, a Fulbright Scholar (Austria) and a transdisciplinary faculty member of the Department of Gender Studies at the Utrecht University. Her work develops new ground, examining the role of visual representation in scientific knowledge, with particular attention to animal studies, psychoanalysis, ecology, aesthetic philosophy, and sexuality studies.
Marcia Ochoa is a United States-based professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They are the co-founder of El/La Para TransLatinas and is credited with popularizing the term "translatina."
Homonormativity is the adoption of heteronormative ideals and constructs onto LGBT culture and identity. It is predicated on the assumption that the norms and values of heterosexuality should be replicated and performed among homosexual people. Those who assert this theory claim homonormativity selectively privileges cisgender homosexuality as worthy of social acceptance.
Discrimination against transgender men and transmasculine individuals, sometimes referred to as transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, or transmisandry, is a similar concept to transmisogyny and discrimination against non-binary people. Transmisogyny, discrimination against transgender men and discrimination against non-binary people are types of transphobia which affect trans women, trans men and non-binary people respectively.
The Center for Applied Transgender Studies (CATS) is an independent nonprofit research organization founded in 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. The organization works to promote empirical academic research on issues of relevance to transgender populations globally and mobilizes scholarly knowledge to engage in both policy advocacy and public education. Together with Northwestern University Libraries, CATS publishes the platinum open access peer-reviewed academic journal Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies.
Topside Press was an independent publisher of trans and feminist literature based in Brooklyn, New York that operated from 2011 to 2017. The press published fiction, memoirs, short story collections, poetry, and non-fiction by trans authors, for trans readers, and about trans characters. It is often credited as an important contributor to the "trans literary renaissance."
Cotton ceiling is the purported marginalization of trans women in queer sexual spaces.
Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity is a 2022 work by political scientist and transgender activist, Paisley Currah.
Carol S. Riddell is a British feminist and socialist sociologist and transgender lesbian who was active in the UK Women's liberation movement in the 1970s. She is known for authoring Divided Sisterhood, the first feminist critique of Janice Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire.
