Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

"I’m proud of that book. Seal Press had been after me for a couple of years to update Gender Outlaw after 15 years. I thought about it, because there are sections of Gender Outlaws that are dated. Then I thought: There’s a whole new generation of gender outlaws who could voice the progress of the transgender movement far more eloquently than I was equipped to. Each and every article in that collection of 50 to 52 writers is written in the voice of a person whose sexuality and gender I never dreamed of back when I wrote Gender Outlaw . Tranny is busting out all over. Each and every writer welcomes the worldview of each and every other. They’re not saying I’ve got the very best kind of gender expression. No, mine is one of many and I wish you the joy of finding your own. That’s the message in that book. I’m really proud of it for gender’s sake. I was recently a featured guest on MSNBC. It was a milestone in trans politics, the very first time that a respectable media outlet devoted an entire hour to trans issues. The next big issue that I’d like to see queer leaders present to the world is stopping the violence against kids – and I mean any freaky kids, whether they’re queer or not. Stop beating them up, stop throwing them out of your house, stop murdering them and stop raping them. That’s something that a coalition, which goes well beyond LGBT, could be forged around. Let’s get a more inclusive politics, a politics of compassion rather than a politics of power. I’d like to say one more thing. It was a terrible thing of you to do, to make me pick only five books. I’ve been hungry to read about gender ever since I was 11 years old and I found out people were writing about it. I’ve been reading pretty much everything about gender for the last 50 years, and I believe that attention must be paid to books that are saving lives right now. The last quarter of a century has seen an explosion of amazing writing in this area. The first that comes to mind is Butch is a Noun by S Bear Bergman. Then Some of the Parts by T Cooper. Anything by Patrick Califia Rice, such as Sex Changes . I would also recommend The Marketplace series by Laura Antoniou. She is the Mark Twain of BDSM – so much gender crossing goes on in her books. Then The Princess is a webcomic by Christine Smith. And let’s not forget the classics. Gender: An Enthnomethodological Approach by Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna taught me that you could question the binary. In Transit from the sixties, by British author Brigid Brophy, is about waking up in an airport terminal and not knowing your gender. Then, of course, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin presents the gentlest picture of gender . And my favorite exploration of cross-dressing of all time is in Huckleberry Finn ."