Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and express oneself.
Tri-Ess is an international educational, social, and support group for heterosexual cross-dressers, their partners, and their families.
Fantasia Fair is a week-long conference for cross-dressers, transgender and gender questioning people held every October in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a small Portuguese fishing village and largely gay and lesbian tourist village on the very tip of Cape Cod. This annual event is the longest-running transgender conference in the United States and it provides a week for attendees to experiment with gender-role identities and presentations in a safe and affirming community. The goal of the conference is to create a safe space in which crossdressers, transgender and transsexual people, and nonbinary-gendered people are accepted without judgement, can interact with their peers, and can advocate for their rights. In November, 1980 the event was featured in an article by D. Keith Mano in Playboy magazine and has in ensuing years has continued to generate publicity.
Hanne Blank, also known as Hanne Blank Boyd, is an American historian, writer, and editor. Her written works include Virgin: The Untouched History, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, and The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts.
The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) was a federal level political lobbying and advocacy organization which was founded in 1999 and established as a 501(c)(4) lobbying group in Virginia of 2000. The NTAC was founded by a group of experienced transgender lobbyists dedicated to protecting the civil rights of transgender and gender variant people. NTAC reports and spokespersons are widely cited in the media on transgender issues.
Feminization or feminisation, sometimes forced feminization, and also known as sissification, is a practice in dominance and submission or kink subcultures, involving reversal of gender roles and making a submissive male take on a feminine role, which includes cross-dressing. Subsets of the practice include "sissy training" and variations thereof, where the submissive male is "trained" to become feminine.
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.
The Southern Comfort Conference is a major transgender conference that has taken place annually since 1991. It features seminars, events, and speeches by prominent people in the LGBT community, numerous vendors catering to transgender and transsexual people, and more. The event has become famous and today is known as the largest transgender conference in the United States. The event brings together transgender people, researchers, educators, therapists, doctors, and LGBT organizations fand offers scholarships to some attendees.
Virginia Charles Prince, born Arnold Lowman, was an American transgender activist. She published Transvestia magazine, and started the Foundation for Personality Expression (FPE) and later the Society for the Second Self for male heterosexual cross-dressers.
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.
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity is a 2007 book by the gender theorist, biologist, and writer Julia Serano. The book is a transfeminist manifesto that makes the case that transphobia is rooted in sexism and that transgender activism is a feminist movement. The second edition of the book was published in March 2016.
Ariadne "Ari" Kane is a crossdresser, activist, educator, and one of the founders of the Fantasia Fair. She runs Theseus Counseling Services which specializes in gender issues and remains open currently in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gender Justice League (GJL) is an advocacy group for transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming individuals in Washington State in the United States. The group advocates for transgender legal, political, and medical rights as well as participating in protests, awareness raising, and fundraising events.
Meredith Russo is an American young adult author from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
This article addresses the history of transgender people across the British Isles in the United Kingdom, the British colonies and the Kingdom of England until the present day. Transgender people were historically recognised in the UK by varying titles and cultural gender indicators, such as dress. People dressing and living differently from their sex assignment at birth and contributing to various aspects of British history and culture have been documented from the 14th century to the present day. In the 20th century, advances in medicine, social and biological sciences and transgender activism have influenced transgender life in the UK.
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality is a 2021 nonfiction book by journalist Helen Joyce that criticizes the transgender rights movement and transgender activism. It is published by Oneworld Publications, their fifth book in the Sunday Times bestseller list. Reviews of the book ranged from positive to critical. In 2023 it was shortlisted for the John Maddox Prize.
Helen Joyce is an Irish journalist and critic of the transgender rights movement. She studied as a mathematician and worked in academia before becoming a journalist. Joyce began working for The Economist as education correspondent for its Britain section in 2005 and has since held several senior positions, including finance editor and international editor. She published her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality in 2021.
Andrew "A. J." Sass is an American author of children's and young adult fiction, best known for his middle grade contemporary novel, Ana on the Edge, and his Time op-ed discussing transgender and non-binary character representation in youth literature.
Nancy Nangeroni is a diversity educator and transgender community activist. She is a founder of GenderTalk Radio, the award-winning talk show about gender and transgender issues that was broadcast from 1995 to 2006 on WMBR in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nangeroni served as an executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.
