A Beginner Archivist Reading List on Trans History, Culture, and Politics [1096 words]
(created by Chaoticcylinder on 2021 May 13 Thu 16:53:15 GMT)
The transgender symbol, created by Nancy Nangeroni in 1994 and popularized by 2002. The original symbol was surrounded by an upside-down triangle, similar to a yield sign in the US. Early this morning, as I scrolled through the #trans tag on Tumblr, I encountered a post pleading for any recommendations for books on the trans movement written by trans authors. An hour later, I reblogged the post with a starter pack of books and articles for the original poster as well as anyone interested. Right after I published the post, I realized that many of y'all on this wiki, especially those who've like my posts on research and culture, would find the reading list pretty neat. I've adapted my post for the wiki, using some of the formatting tricks here to break up the text better than I could originally. Any links to books are to Internet Archive and other archive pages and occasionally storefront pages when digitally archived versions can't be found. The original post is available here. While I've put "archivist" in the title, these recommendations are just as good for someone taking a gender, women's, and sexuality studies (GWSS), history, or cultural studies course or someone just curious about trans history. Keep in mind that while trans history is pretty neat, it isn't pretty, and many accounts of trans history discuss transphobia and homophobia as well as ableism, racism, and sexism. Books Cover of Transgender Warriors. Without a doubt, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue and Transgender Warriors: From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg are great places to start. Both books were written in the 90s and created the modern definition of trans (as in, the trans umbrella) and trans rights (solidarity under the umbrella). Personally, I also like xir cool and casual writing style, and the gallery of images of all sorts of trans people at the end of Transgender Warriors makes me emotional. Other awesome history-leaning trans books by trans authors include: Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gills-Peterson, about the invention of sex, the panic around sex and gender non-conforming children, and the medicalization of transness Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Issues by C. Riley Snorton, about Black trans history in the US starting in the 1600s Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution (2nd ed.) by Susan Stryker, the progenitor of trans history studies that is also a great resource. Adjacent honorable mentions include Jen Manion's Female Husbands: A Trans History on "female husbands," AFAB people attracted to and marrying women who were publicly and often privately men, and cis author Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States that helps place trans history within the greater context of LGBTQ history. Great culture- and politics-leaning trans books by trans authors include: Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serrano, a trans theory book and manifesto around bashing back against transmisogyny Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community, a somewhat tame trans anthology that does cover the spectrum of trans experiences in the US; a 2nd edition--with a piece from me!--is coming out Fall 2021, so maybe wait on picking it up Detransition, Baby!: A Novel by Torrey Peters, a fiction book that captures late 2010s and early 2020s trans discourse in a thought-provoking way. These eight books (ten with the honorable mentions) have helped me build a robust foundation for studying and recognizing trans history (in the US, at least), and I believe that they are essential for anyone else interested in trans history, too. Articles Page from Thomas Blount's Glossographia, or A Dictionary, 1656. The page defines transection as "a turning or passing from one sex to another" and transfeminate as "to turn from women to man, or from one sex to another." While the OP asked for books, I also suggested individual articles and manifestos, as well. Great intro scholarly articles on transness and the English language include Talia Bettcher's "Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Re-Thinking Trans Oppression and Resistance" and Joseph Gamble's "Toward a Trans Philology." An article on the relationship between trans politics and feminism, both pro-trans and trans-exclusive, that is way easier to access is Bettcher's "Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues" in the completely online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Two important manifestos in the spirit of Feinberg are Emi Koyama's "The Transfeminist Manifesto" and Alyson Escalante's "Gender Nihilism." These five articles specifically provide a rich baseline for terminology and the philosophical culture wars around transness. Other Sources A lot of the books and articles I know about focus on the US and UK and the English language but obviously that doesn't fully encompass all trans experiences. This is where the LGBTA Wiki, especially the entries on exclusive genders helps. From experience revising the Meti page here and subsequently on Wikipedia, some pages may be copied from Wikipedia entries that are poorly constructed themselves. However, just having the terms and something about them is worth understanding non-Western trans experiences and trans experiences in the Global South. When all else fails, the archive Trans Reads has many digitized readings (including books, articles, and zines) on trans history, culture, and politics, including many mentioned throughout this post. Created with a similar spirit, the Tumblr blog Trans History is an archive of, well, fragments of trans history through images of writing and art, although the blog hasn't updated since June 2020. Conclusion Trans history is super interesting, and I'm glad people want to know more. This reading list is seven years in the making, and I've got plenty more recommendations. I hope OP found it helpful and that y'all have, too.
My Own Queer History (and Announcing a Short Break) [0 words]
(created by Chaoticcylinder on 2021 May 7 Fri 3:36:54 GMT)
Dude’s Guide to Research [3643 words]
(created by Chaoticcylinder on 2021 May 5 Wed 23:07:49 GMT)
No, this guide isn’t just for dudes. That’s just a play on my username. This guide is for everyone who contributes — or wants to contribute — to the LGBTA Wiki. I’ve written this assuming that my audience is familiar with the editing, style, and community guidelines, but no doubt some of the points and rules brought up in them are repeated here. The bulk of edits I do are to references, from adding references to adjusting how they appear on pages. While the LGBTA Wiki has no specific formatting guidelines for sources, there are ways to effectively do and convey research that help the wiki. What You Should Know Before You Do Any Research Before you start typing into a search bar, or forbid a new page shell, you should know at least two things about what you’re researching: The name of the term and any variations or modifiers A working definition of the term. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, as a famous Bill put it. But as Gertrude Stein wrote just as eloquently, a rose is a rose is a rose. We queer people use many terms to mean the same things, based on our disparate experiences and language preferences. It’s important to know how we overlap. If you know alternative terms or spellings for a single term, that knowledge is helpful to you as a researcher and a member of the community. In the branching world of identities, you should also be aware of modifiers. By far, the most common modifiers are -gender, -sexual, and -romantic. In the edits I’ve done for the wiki, I’ve also found that -boy, -girl, and pangender- are also popular. Once you start to recognize modifiers, it becomes much easier to recognize patterns of language that influence how we name ourselves and create those names. It makes it a lot easier to track down the origins of a term, even if that term has changed over time. Definitions also change over time, which is why it’s crucial to have a working definition when you research. Your definition is likely to change as you do more research — even if you coined the term — and having a rough guideline of who has a gender identity or sexual orientation and how they experience that identity or orientation keeps a term and the page you’re making coherent. Sometimes, your research will lead you to varying definitions of similar or the same terms, some of which work better with your working definitions, others...not so much. It’s ultimately up to your discretion if you’ll make one page in the end or more for the wiki. In the case of peachgender/peachigender, I ended up keeping the page together because more characteristics in each definition overlapped than not. In the case of the orangegender gastrogender and colorgender pages, however, I had to split them. Sometimes you’ll find yourself really doing research for multiple terms. A third, highly recommended thing you do before you start researching is opening a Word or Google doc, or whatever your preferred note taking app is. The best research is retraceable, and keeping notes — or at least copying and pasting URLs and writing short descriptions for each URL — is the best way to keep track of what you find. Doing Research Whether you’re updating an existing page or coining your own term, it’s best to start with the wiki. You want to ensure that whatever you’re adding, or adding to, is original. It can also help you find similar terms and umbrella terms or categories to make a term more searchable. Specific Terms The best place to start is the search bar. Try searching the term you’re working on and see you get back. Try searching for variations as well, especially for potentially modified genders. For example, when I did research for the cosmicboy page, I searched for “cosmicboy” and “cosmicgender” to see how many connections I could make, which also pulled up “cosboy.” In that case, the terms were not connected, but I could still differentiate cosmicboy from the other terms. Some terms may not have their own page yet but are featured in existing pages. Open any relevant pages in separate tabs—the more you can connect to the page you’re doing research for, the less likely that you’ll have a dead-end page on your hands. If you do find helpful pages on the wiki that aren’t exactly what you’re researching, make good use of the internal links on those pages. Internal links are highlighted words that link to other pages within the LGBTA Wiki. Pay attention to unique or unusual internal links. If many of the results you got mention aesthetigenders, you may want to pay extra attention to the mention of aesthetics, sensations, and the word “feel” as you do further research. If a system like the critter system continues to show up, follow internal links up its branches until you can find a main page that lays out terms people with critter system genders use and how they understand gender. This helps you build a reservoir of vocabulary to help you recognize patterns in how your term is being discussed and defined. Specific Concepts Sometimes, especially if you’re coining your own term, you may not find your word or any relevant modifier through searching for them specifically. In that case, you’ll want to break down your term into concepts and categories. Concepts here means free association. If you’re coining mantisic, for example, you’ll want to list words that are important to describing the subject or metaphors of that gender, mantis and bug for example, as well as the experiences around that gender, like fight and nature. If you’re coining a sexual, sensual, or romantic orientation, you’ll want to focus on who feels that attraction (all people potentially, only non-binary people, only women), who do they feel attracted to, and how does that attraction feel (exciting, repulsive). Categories are a fixture of the wiki and important to the growing understanding of the asexual and aromantic spectrums as well as multisexual and xenic experiences of sexuality and gender respectively. Becoming familiar with the categories of the wiki can help you figure out what niche your term fills. Common categories, besides gender and sexuality, include: Aesthetigender Xenogender Multisexual spectrum or m-spec Asexual spectrum or ace-spec Exclusive identities Duplicate Etiquette Occasionally in your research, you may find pages that are duplicates, or the same page with different titles or slight to no differences between them. First, open the Source Editor for the page with the least amount of information and copy all of the code on the page into a Word or Google Doc. Before you leave, add four braces surrounding the word “delete” at the top of the page. It should look like this:{{delete}} Content editors and other wiki members with badges may not take the time to check if the details between pages differ and may delete a page that, even slightly different, has important details the other does not. Duplicate etiquette means making sure any details from a shorter duplicate page that differ at all from the other longer page make their way onto that page. Doing Research Outside the Wiki If you’re coining your own term, you likely don’t need to do any more research outside of the wiki. Feel free to scroll down to the section on citing sources. However, if you’re searching for sources to update an existing page or see if the term has a previously unknown history, you’ll have to traverse the world wide web to find any clues about the term you’re researching. Unlike when doing research within the wiki, you’ll need to stick closely to the term you’re researching and its variations. The only concepts you may use in your search are “gender” or “LGBT” or “queer,” something that orients your search results in the right direction. Below, I’ve listed my four go-to sources: Google, Tumblr, MOGAI-pedia (a wiki minded by exclusionists until March 2020), and other queer, gender, and sexuality wikis hosted on FANDOM. Google Google has the best interface for researching as it follows limits and spellings to a T. Some Boolean tactics that may help you find the most specific results are: Encasing a term in quotation marks “like this” and then adding the word “gender” or “LGBT” (no quotation marks) to your search terms If you want to see if you get any hits in a certain time range, adding two years separated by dots after your search terms in quotation marks, “like this” 2005…2015 Many of your hits may be duplicates of each other, especially if most of your search results are linked to Tumblr. Pay attention to how the hits are titled and where they lead. Open any that look safe or open to familiar sites (like Tumblr or Reddit) in separate tabs. If you see more duplicates than original sources, stop. I usually go three to five pages of results in to make sure I have a range of quality resources to choose from. Tumblr You can also search Tumblr directly. Type in the term in the search bar and scroll through the popular (not recent) posts related to that term. For some terms, you may get the exact coining post. For others, you may get a lot of other posts. Don’t look more than two pages in (if you have pages enabled) or five minutes (if you have endless scrolling enabled) on Tumblr. To save the link to a Tumblr post, click on the three horizontal dots in the top right corner and click the “Copy Link” button. This is also how you can access the exact timestamp of a post. Sometimes, Google searches will lead you to Tumblr posts as seen externally, not inside, the site. Some blog layouts make looking for dates a miserable task. If you are logged into Tumblr and encounter a post like that, you will have to Click the “Reblog” button. Send the post to your drafts (or you can reblog it if you really want to). Go to your drafts (or dashboard if you reblogged it). Click the three horizontal dots on the top right, and record the date. If you have to guestimate the date (based on visual cues like “posted 4 years ago”), still make sure to include a link to the Tumblr post by copying the address at the very top of your screen. MOGAI-pedia One uncomfortable but oddly reliable source is the MOGAI-pedia wiki, an anti-MOGAI wiki run by exclusionists who catalogued MOGAI identities in order to mock them. Their vitriolic zealousness, however, has turned into a great advantage when doing research, especially because they archived posts by deactivated Tumblr accounts like uncommongenders, genderrose, and mogai-archive that we wouldn’t have access to otherwise. For those who don’t find searching their archives and interacting with their vitriol totally off-putting — and are prepared to find sometimes unsavory comments in archived reblogs — it’s a great resource for finding the origins of terms and flags thought lost to time and deactivation. Other Queer Wikis Other wikis like the LGBTA Wiki exist and are a lot less hostile than the exclusionist wiki, including the Gender Wiki, the LGBT Info Wiki, and the LGBT+ Wiki. One problem with these wikis is potential gaps in research, as these wikis often don’t use sources. They also have somewhat jarring color schemes that make them hard to read. However, when they do have sources, it’s awesome, and even when they don’t, they can help point your remaining research in the right directions, bringing up new flags, definitions, and variant terms. Citing Research After you’ve done all of your research, it’s time to synthesize what you have into the page you’re editing or creating. It’s really up to your discretion how you write about a term or how you combine, split up, or arrange sources. A post that covers that revision process is a little beyond me at the moment, but I can walk you through how to create footnotes and formatting research materials for the wiki. If you’ve ever read a Wikipedia page, you’ll notice that there are notes