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Transgender literature is a collective term used to designate the literary production that addresses, has been written by or portrays people of diverse gender identity. [1]
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| Transgender topics |
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Transgender literature is a collective term used to designate the literary production that addresses, has been written by or portrays people of diverse gender identity. [1]
Representations in literature of transgender people have existed for millennia, with Ovid's Metamorphoses (written in the year 8 CE) containing some of the earliest accounts. [2] In the twentieth century, it is notable that the novel Orlando (1928), by Virginia Woolf, is considered one of the first transgender novels in English and whose plot follows a bisexual poet who changes gender from male to female and lives for hundreds of years. [3]
Beyond Orlando, the twentieth century saw the appearance of other fiction works with transgender characters that saw commercial success. Among them is Myra Breckinridge (1968), a satirical novel written by Gore Vidal that follows a trans woman hellbent on world domination and bringing down patriarchy. The book sold more than two million copies after publication, but was panned by critics. [4]
Many publication that foregrounded transgender individuals and their experience were memoirs. Perhaps the earliest example is Man into Woman (1933), by Lili Elbe. Other acclaimed memoirs written by trans people include Gender Outlaw (1994), by Kate Bornstein; Man Enough to be a Woman (1996), by Jayne County; and Redefining Realness (2014), by Janet Mock; among others. [5] [6]
Transgender literature emerged as a distinct branch of LGBTQIA+ literature in the early twenty-first century, when the number of fiction works focused on trans experience saw a pronounced growth and diversification. This was accompanied by a greater academic and general interest in the area, as well as a process of differentiation from the rest of LGBTQIA+ literature. In recent decades, more books than ever have been written by transgender authors with an intended audience of transgender readers. [7]
Susan Stryker’s Transgender History: The Root’s of Today’s Revolution, revised edition published 2017, is a guide to the general history of American transgender culture. Both the original and revised editions are short books, but they provide a good overview of transgender history. Stryker covers topics from terminology to social movements. This book can be a good introduction to transgender culture and a guide for those unfamiliar with the LGBTQIA+ community and culture. [8]
In 2020, Dutch-born Lucas Rijneveld, who is non-binary, won the International Booker Prize with his novel The Discomfort of Evening . [9]
Among the best known works trans literature in Spanish language are: Hell Has No Limits , a novel by Chilean José Donoso published in 1966 whose protagonist is Manuela, a trans woman who lives with her daughter in a deteriorated town called El Olivo; [10] Cobra (1972), by Cuban writer Severo Sarduy, that uses an experimental narration to tell the story of a transvestite who wants to transform her body; [5] and Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976), a novel by Manuel Puig in which a young revolutionary called Valentín shares a cell with Molina, who is presented as a gay man but who during their conversations implies that his identity might be of a transgender woman, as its shown in the next passage: [11]
– Are all homosexuals like that?
– No, there are others that fall in love among themselves. Me and my friends are women. We don't like those little games, those are things homosexuals do. We are normal women that have sex with men.
In recent years, many books in Spanish with transgender protagonists have garnered commercial and critical success. In Argentina, one of the most famous examples is Las malas (2019), by Camila Sosa Villada, which won the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. [12] The novel, inspired by the youth of the author where she narrates the lives of a group of transgender prostitutes working in the city of Córdoba, became a critical and commercial sensation, with more than eight editions in Argentina alone and translations to many languages in the first year of publication. [13] From recent Ecuadorian literature, one example is Gabriel(a) (2019), by Raúl Vallejo Corral, a novel which won the Miguel Donoso Pareja Prize with the story of a transgender woman that falls in love with an executive and faces a discriminatory society in her attempt to become a journalist. [14]
According to a 2015 NPR story, hundreds of books featuring transgender characters have been published since 2000. Although a vast majority of them tend to be targeted to a teenage audience, these publications also consist of picture books for younger children. [15]
Transgender teenage girl Jazz Jennings co-authored a 2014 children's book called I Am Jazz about her experience discovering her identity. [16] [17] [18] Scholastic Books published Alex Gino's George in 2015, about a transgender girl, Melissa, who everyone else knows as George. [15] Unable to find books with transgender characters to explain her father's transition to her children, Australian author Jess Walton created the 2016 children's book Introducing Teddy with illustrator Dougal MacPherson to assist children in understanding gender fluidity. [19] [20] Additional books listed by The Horn Book Magazine include:
In the past few years, transgender women have been finding publishers for their own picture books written for transgender kids. Some of these books include:
Stryker, S. (2017). Transgender history (Second edition): The Roots of Today’s Revolution. Seal Press.
The Compton's Cafeteria riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The riot was a response to the violent and constant police harassment of drag queens and trans people, particularly trans women. The incident was one of the first LGBT-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
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.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in Tamil Nadu are the most progressive among all states of India. Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to introduce a transgender welfare policy, wherein transgender individuals can access free gender affirmation surgery in government hospitals and various other benefits and rights. The state was also the first to ban forced sex-selective surgeries on intersex infants, and also the first state to include an amendment in its state police guidelines that expects officers to abstain from harassing the LGBTQIA+ community and its members. The state also became the first to ban conversion therapy as well as the first to introduce LGBTQIA+ issues in school curricula.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual. Transgender is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex, it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer. Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender. The term may also include cross-dressers or drag kings and drag queens in some contexts. The term transgender does not have a universally accepted definition, including among researchers.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
Transmisogyny, otherwise known as trans-misogyny and transphobic misogyny, is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. The term was coined by Julia Serano in her 2007 book Whipping Girl to describe a particular form of oppression experienced by trans women. In an interview with The New York Times, Serano explores the roots of transmisogyny as a critique of feminine gender expressions which are "ridiculed in comparison to masculine interests and gender expression."
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.
Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely.
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.
Melissa, previously published as George until April 2022, is a children's novel about a young transgender girl written by American author Alex Gino. The novel tells the story of Melissa, a fourth-grade girl who is struggling to be herself to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees Melissa as George, a boy. Melissa uses the class play, Charlotte's Web, to show her mom that she is a girl by switching roles with her best friend, and playing the part of Charlotte. Scholastic first published the novel on August 25, 2015, and it has had a mixed reaction because of its LGBT+ content. In 2021, Gino retitled the novel Melissa.
Accounts of transgender people have been identified going back to ancient times in cultures worldwide. The modern terms and meanings of transgender, gender, gender identity, and gender role only emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, opinions vary on how to categorize historical accounts of gender-variant people and identities.
Transgender and travesti rights in Argentina have been lauded by many as some of the world's most progressive. The country "has one of the world's most comprehensive transgender rights laws": its Gender Identity Law, passed in 2012, made Argentina the "only country that allows people to change their gender identities without facing barriers such as hormone therapy, surgery or psychiatric diagnosis that labels them as having an abnormality". In 2015, the World Health Organization cited Argentina as an exemplary country for providing transgender rights. Leading transgender activists include Lohana Berkins, Diana Sacayán, Mariela Muñoz, María Belén Correa, Marlene Wayar, Claudia Pía Baudracco, Susy Shock and Lara Bertolini.
Gopi Shankar Madurai is an Indian equal rights and Indigenous rights activist. Shankar was one of the youngest, and the first openly intersex and genderqueer statutory authority and one of the candidates to contest in 2016 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election. Shankar is also the founder of Srishti Madurai Student Volunteer Collective. Shankar's work inspired the Madras High Court to direct the Government of Tamil Nadu to order a ban on forced sex-selective surgeries on intersex infants. In December 2017, Shankar was elected to the executive board of ILGA Asia. In August 2020, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment appointed Shankar as the South Regional representative in the National Council for Transgender Persons.
Kai Cheng Thom is a Canadian writer and former social worker. Thom, a non-binary trans woman, has published four books, including the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (2016), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (2017), a children's book, From the Stars in The Sky to the Fish in the Sea (2017), and I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World (2019), a book of essays centered on transformative justice.
Juno Dawson is an English author of young adult fiction and non-fiction. Dawson's notable works include This Book Is Gay, Mind Your Head, Margot & Me, The Gender Games, Clean, Meat Market, and the series, "Her Majesty's Royal Coven".
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
Nadia Fink is an Argentine author, journalist, and editor known for writing the works in the Anti-Princess Series of picture book biographies of Latin American women. After studying proofreading, she worked as a copyeditor at the magazine Sudestada, and later as a writer. An interest in countering what she perceived as harmful gender roles in children's literature led Fink to cofound the independent publisher Chirimbote and create the Anti-Princess Series in 2015.
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 nonbinary people are types of transphobia which affect trans women, trans men and nonbinary people respectively.
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