Reception
We Both Laughed in Pleasure was generally well received. Slate 's Crispin Long said the book was "ripe with mirth, confusion, lust, despair, hope, and charm." [3] The Nation' s Sasha Geffen said it "dispenses with the ubiquitous narrative of transition as a dreary but necessary inconvenience." [4] Jeremy Lybarger, writing for The New Yorker, called it "a radical testament to trans happiness," saying it was "chatty and tender, casually poetic and voraciously sexual." [5] Chicago Review 's Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué expanded on others' reviews, writing that We Both Laughed in Pleasure is "a deeply erotic book. Sullivan’s diaries record in great detail his sexual exploits, romantic infatuations, and complex personal relationships. These reminiscences are written in a style somewhere between childlike giddiness and deft description, where you can sense that Sullivan is turning himself on with every entry he writes." [6]
We Both Laughed in Pleasure won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction in 2020. [7]
Sexuality in transgender individuals encompasses all the issues of sexuality of other groups, including establishing a sexual identity, learning to deal with one's sexual needs, and finding a partner, but may be complicated by issues of gender dysphoria, side effects of surgery, physiological and emotional effects of hormone replacement therapy, psychological aspects of expressing sexuality after medical transition, or social aspects of expressing their gender.
Jamison "James" Green is a prominent transgender rights activist, author, and educator focused on policy work.
Julia Michelle Serano is an American writer, musician, spoken-word performer, transgender and bisexual activist, and biologist. She is known for her transfeminist books, such as Whipping Girl (2007), Excluded (2013), and Outspoken (2016). She is also a public speaker who has given many talks at universities and conferences. Her writing is frequently featured in queer, feminist, and popular culture magazines.
Louis Graydon Sullivan was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts.
Max Wolf Valerio is an American poet, memoir writer, essayist and actor. He has lived for many years in San Francisco, California.
Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely. Third-wave feminists and fourth-wave feminists tend to view the struggle for trans rights as an integral part of intersectional feminism. Former president of the American National Organization for Women (NOW) Terry O'Neill has stated that the struggle against transphobia is a feminist issue, with NOW affirming that "trans women are women, trans girls are girls." Several studies have found that people who identify as feminists tend to be more accepting of trans people than those who do not.
Cyrus Dunham is an American writer, actor, and activist. Dunham is a published author, whose debut book, A Year Without A Name: A Memoir, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
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.
Transgender Awareness Week, observed November 13 to November 19, is a one-week celebration leading up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), which memorializes victims of transphobic violence. TDoR occurs annually on November 20, when transgender advocates raise awareness of the transgender community through education and advocacy activities.
Nightboat Books is an American nonprofit literary press founded in 2004 and located in Brooklyn, New York. The press publishes poetry, fiction, essays, translations, and intergenre books.
Amos Mac is an American writer, photographer and a publisher from Augusta, Georgia. Mac is based in Los Angeles as a writer for television and film.
Charlie Craggs is a British transgender actress, activist, and author from London.
Sean Dorsey is an Emmy Award-winning transgender and queer choreographer, dancer, writer and trans rights activist. He is widely recognized as the United States' first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer. Dorsey founded his San Francisco-based dance company Sean Dorsey Dance, which incorporates transgender and LGBTQ+ themes into all of their works and has toured to more than 30 cities internationally. Along with creating a dance company, Dorsey is also the founder and artistic director of Fresh Meat Productions. Founded in 2002, Fresh Meat Productions is a non-profit organization that invests in the creative expression and cultural leadership of transgender and gender-nonconforming communities. Fresh Meat Productions creates and commissions new work, presents performing arts programs, conducts education and engagement, and advocates for justice and equity in the Arts. The organization is well known for its annual Fresh Meat Festival in San Francisco, an annual festival of transgender and queer performance.
Meredith Russo is an American young adult author from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Emji Saint Spero is a trans queer writer and performance artist living in Los Angeles.They are curious about the potential of creative intimacies to queer the familiar, mapping the boundaries of collective engagement through movement, documentation, personal ephemera, and collaborative performance. Saint Spero is the author of disgust and almost any shit will do, and they co-founded the Oakland-based small press and queer poetry cult Timeless, Infinite Light with Joel Gregory. With Lauren Levin, were co-developmental editor for We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, which was awarded the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.
Gwen Benaway is Canadian poet and activist. As of October 2019, She was a PhD candidate in the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. Benaway has also written non-fiction for The Globe and Mail and Maclean's.
Kacen Callender is a Saint Thomian author of children's fiction and fantasy, best known for their Stonewall Book Award and Lambda Literary Award-winning middle grade debut Hurricane Child. Their fantasy novel, Queen of the Conquered, is the 2020 winner of the World Fantasy Award and King and the Dragonflies won the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children's/Middle Grade.
Histories of the Transgender Child is a 2018 transgender studies book by the transgender author and academic Jules Gill-Peterson. The book is an exploration of transgender childhood in the United States throughout the twentieth century. It received the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and the 2018 Children's Literature Association Book Award.
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."
