Jeannette Howard Foster was to lesbianism in the mid-twentieth century what out authors such as Gore Vidal and James Baldwin were to gay men. She unapologetically blew the lid off Cold War sexual repression in 1956 with her Sex Variant Women in Literature-the first-ever study of homosexual, bisexual, and cross-dressing characters appearing in more than…
The youngest-ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be. Drawing on intimate personal experience, A History of My Brief Body is a meditation on grief, joy, love, and sex at the intersection…
During her difficult childhood, Esther Newton recalls that she “became an anti-girl, a girl refusenik, caught between genders,” and that her “child body was a strong and capable instrument stuffed into the word ‘girl.’” Later, in early adulthood, as she was on her way to becoming a trailblazing figure in gay and lesbian studies, she…
This special edition issue by Mohamad Abdouni, co-edited by Joy Stacey and Rayan Abdel Khalek, is a public archive that compiles studio shoots, interviews, personal photographs and archival imagery to record the untold stories of ten trans* women living in Beirut. It pays tribute to trans* women and femme men who have been largely erased…
One of the first-ever books on gender transition, this poignant memoir by a trans woman is “the best first-hand account ever written by a traveler across the boundaries of sex”
What was it like to grow up German during Hitler’s Third Reich? In this extraordinary book, Frederic C. Tubach returns to the country of his roots to interview average Germans who, like him, came of age between 1933 and 1945. Tubach sets their recollections and his own memories into a broad historical overview of Nazism—a…
A soft-spoken transvestite wanting nothing more than to live as a hausfrau, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf instead was caught up in the most harrowing dramas of 20th century Europe, surviving both the Nazis and the Communists. I Am My Own Wife is her exquisitely written autobiography where she reveals her lifelong pursuit of sexual liberty. The…
“I was born a boy, raised as a girl. . . . One may raise a healthy boy in as womanish a manner as one wishes, and a female creature in as mannish; never will this cause their senses to remain forever reversed.” So writes the pseudonymous N. O. Body, born in 1884 with ambiguous…
FRONT RÉSUMÉ A bold, fully documented confession by one of that strange breed of men who have the compulsion to dress up in women’s clothes but remain sexually “normal.” BACK RÉSUMÉ Leonard A. Wheeler is a “normal” male member of society. He has been married once. He has had numerous love affairs. He worships women,…
When Cris Beam first moved to Los Angeles, she thought she might put in just a few hours volunteering at a school for transgender kids while she got settled. Instead she found herself drawn deeply into the pained and powerful group of transgirls she discovered. In Transparent she introduces four of them—Christina, Domineque, Foxxjazell, and…