International Transgender Day of Visibility, 31 March 2022

Posted on by Library Communications

On 31 March celebrate with gender diverse people across Australia by sharing stories, starting conversations and showing support.

Transgender Day of Visibility is an annual event that is marked all around Australia and the world. It is a celebration of trans pride and diverse identity. The day is about raising awareness and the visibility of the trans community, and recognising the achievements and lived experiences of trans and gender diverse people. This visibility is important because many gender diverse people experience isolation through lack of representation and role models.

Here are some awesome resources that are helpful for becoming an informed ally:

To celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility 2022, the Library has compiled a reading list of items within the collection that highlight the stories and experiences of gender diverse people. These items can also be found in a book display in the foyer of Fisher Library.

Permafrost

Author: S. J Norman

This brilliant collection of short fiction explores the shifting spaces of desire, loss and longing. Inverting and queering the gothic and romantic traditions, each story represents a different take on the concept of a haunting or the haunted. Though it ranges across themes and locations – from small-town Australia to Hokkaido to rural England – Permafrost is united by the power of the narratorial voice, with its auto-fictional resonances, dark wit and swagger.

Whether recounting the confusion of a child trying to decipher their father and stepmother’s new relationship, the surrealness of an after-hours tour of Auschwitz, or a journey to wintry Japan to reconnect with a former lover, Permafrost unsettles, transports and impresses in equal measure.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Assuming a body : transgender and rhetorics of materiality

Author: Gayle Salamon

We believe we know our bodies intimately that their material reality is certain and that this certainty leads to an epistemological truth about sex, gender, and identity. By exploring and giving equal weight to transgendered subjectivities, however, Gayle Salamon upends these certainties.

Considering questions of transgendered embodiment via phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud and Paul Ferdinand Schilder), and queer theory, Salamon advances an alternative theory of normative and non-normative gender, proving the value and vitality of trans experience for thinking about embodiment. Salamon questions traditional theories that explain how the body comes to be and comes to be made one’s own and she offers a new framework for thinking about what “counts” as a body. The result is a groundbreaking investigation into the phenomenological life of gender.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Redefining Realness: my path to womanhood, identity, love & so much more

Author: Janet Mock

In a landmark book, an extraordinary young woman recounts her coming-of-age as a transgender teen–a deeply personal and empowering portrait of self-revelation, adversity, and heroism. In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she publicly stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman.

Since then, Mock has gone from covering the red carpet for People.com to advocating for all those who live within the shadows of society. Redefining Realness offers a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged, and transgender in America.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Trans : A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability

Author: Jack Halberstam

In the last decade, public discussions of transgender issues have increased exponentially. However, with this increased visibility has come not just power, but regulation, both in favor of and against trans people. What was once regarded as an unusual or even unfortunate disorder has become an accepted articulation of gendered embodiment as well as a new site for political activism and political recognition.

What happened in the last few decades to prompt such an extensive rethinking of our understanding of gendered embodiment? How did a stigmatized identity become so central to U.S. and European articulations of self? And how have people responded to the new definitions and understanding of sex and the gendered body? In Trans*, Jack Halberstam explores these recent shifts in the meaning of the gendered body and representation and explores the possibilities of a nongendered, gender-optional, or gender-queer future.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Dear Senthuran: a Black spirit memoir

Author: Akwake Emezi

A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times-bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji, “a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self” (Esquire). “I want to write as if I am free,” Akwaeke Emezi declares in the opening of this utterly original spiritual and creative memoir. In the novels Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji, Emezi introduced the landscape of Nigerian childhood through the medium of fiction.

Now, the award-winning author lifts the veil of the invention to reveal the harrowing yet inspiring truths of their personal, spiritual, and artistic journey–from the social constraints of childhood in Aba, Nigeria, through a lifetime of discoveries involving sexuality, storytelling, and self, to their determination to carve their way through the thorny labyrinth of the publishing world. Interweaving candid, intimate letters to friends, lovers, and family, Emezi reveals the raw pain of their journey as a spirit in the human world, the perils of all-consuming love and intimacy, and the hard-earned reward of achieving both literary recognition and peaceful, joyous home.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Testo junkie : sex, drugs, and biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era

Author: Paul Precardio

Preciado declares that Testo Junkie is a “body-essay “, and writes of his use of testosterone as a way of undoing gender inscribed on the body by the capitalistic comodification and mobilization of sexuality and reproduction, a process transcendent from the social norm expected with transitioning.

Testo Junkie is a homage to French writer Guillame Dustan, a close gay friend of Preciado’s who contracted AIDS and died of an accidental overdose of a medication he was taking. In the book, Preciado also processes the changes in his body due to testosterone through the lens of a romantic affair with his then-lover, French writer Virginie Despentes.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Detransition, Baby

Author: Torrey Peters

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn’t hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn’t happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese – and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she’s pregnant with his baby – and that she’s not sure whether she wants to keep it – Ames wonders if this is the chance he’s been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family – and raise the baby together?

Find this title in our catalogue here.

A natural history of transition: Stories

Author: Callum Angus

A NATURAL HISTORY OF TRANSITION is a collection of short stories that disrupts the notion that trans people can only have one transformation. Like the landscape studied over eons, change does not have an expiration date for these trans characters, who grow as tall as buildings, turn into mountains, unravel hometown mysteries, and give birth to cocoons.

Portland-based author Callum Angus infuses his work with a mix of alternative history, horror, and a reality heavily dosed with magic.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Supporting transgender students: Understanding gender identity and reshaping school culture

Author: Alex Myers

Supporting Transgender Students is a guide to help schools learn the basics of what gender is and why it matters in education. Drawing on the author’s 25 years of experience working with schools and transgender students, this book considers how transgender and gender non-conforming youth experience the classroom, the playing field, and other school contexts.

Supporting Transgender Students provides a clear roadmap and practical examples for how to take action in your school to effect change and create a gender-inclusive community

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Transgender resistance: socialism and the fight for trans liberation

Author: Laura Miles

Trans rights and trans lives have come under increasingly vicious ideological attack in recent times, from the ‘bathroom wars’ and Donald Trump’s anti-trans edicts in the United States, to attacks on proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act in Britain. Laura Miles’ book brings together key strands in the resistance to these attacks on the streets, in communities, in workplaces and in unions.

It addresses the roots of transphobia and the history of gender transgressive behaviours, highlights trans people’s fight for the freedom to live authentic lives and explains why that fight deserves unconditional solidarity in all sections of the left.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Too bright to see

Author: Kyle Lukoff

It’s the summer before middle school and eleven-year-old Bug’s best friend Moira has decided the two of them need to use the next few months to prepare. For Moira, this means figuring out the right clothes to wear, learning how to put on makeup, and deciding which boys are cuter in their yearbook photos than in real life. But none of this is all that appealing to Bug, who doesn’t particularly want to spend more time trying to understand how to be a girl.

Besides, there’s something more important to worry about: a ghost is haunting Bug’s eerie old house in rural Vermont…and maybe haunting Bug in particular. As Bug begins to untangle the mystery of who this ghost is and what they’re trying to say, an altogether different truth comes to light–Bug is transgender.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

The transgender issue: An argument for justice

Author: Shon Faye

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war ‘issue’. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country’s population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized ‘debate’ which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.

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Growing up queer in Australia

Author: Benjamin Law

Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, Growing Up Queer in Australia assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity. Spanning diverse places, eras, genders, ethnicities and experiences, these are the stories of growing up queer in Australia.

Find this title in our catalogue here.

Trans love: an anthology of transgender and non-binary voices

Author: Freiya Benson

A ground-breaking anthology of writing on the topic of love, written by trans and non-binary people who share their thoughts, feelings and experiences of love in all its guises. The collection spans familial, romantic, spiritual and self-love as well as friendships and ally love, to provide a broad and honest understanding of how trans people navigate love and relationships, and what love means to them.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about trans (but were afraid to ask)

Author: Brynne Tannehill

Leading activist and essayist Brynn Tannehill tells you everything you ever wanted to know about transgender issues but were afraid to ask. The book aims to break down deeply held misconceptions about trans people across all aspects of life, from politics, law and culture, to science, religion and mental health, to provide readers with a deeper understanding of what it means to be trans.

Find this title in our catalogue here.