Namoli Brennet
Website:Â Namoli Brennet
- Tucson-based musician, singer/songwriter, recording engineer and producer.
- Has released ten full-length albums of “her own brand of moody and inspiring folk” since 2002
- Plays an average of 120 shows across the United States each year.
“I know [my trans status] is kind of a quirky and interesting part of my story, but as a human being I’m interested in life, spirituality, meaning, social issues, justice, compassion…and these are the things I write about.”
– via
Pauline Park
New York, NY
Website:Â paulinepark.com
- Co-founder or otherwise involved in the creation of The New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, The Queens Pride House, Iban/Queer Koreans of New York, The Out People of Color Political Action Club, The Guillermo Vasquez Independent Democratic Club of Queens and the Transgender Health Initiative of New York.
- On the coordinating committee leading the campaign for a transgender rights law in New York state.
“Only when the academy begins to foster public policy and activism in the United States and abroad that is a informed by feminist consciousness and that takes into account the insights of post-structuralist theory without being overly encumbered by institutional imperatives of publication for tenure and promotion can it make a significant contribution to the pursuit of a progressive vision of social justice and social change.”
Phyllis Frye
Houston, TX
Website: Transgender Legal
Read the world-changing groundbreaking 1970 documents of Phyllis Frye, as scanned and presented for you by Cristan Williams
Read her oral life history: Houston Library
- The “grandmother of the Trans community.”
- The first transgender judge appointed in Texas.
- Winner of the Dan Bradley Award of 2001 from The Lavender Law and Creator of Change Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
- Former military officer, high school ROTC commander and member of the Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets
- Changed the Houston law against crossdressing in 1980, founded the Transgender Law Conference in 1991
- Texas A&M has created a Diversity Award given in her name annually since 2009.
“I almost started crying, because I remembered 31 years ago, in that very same chamber, I was subject to arrest.”
– Phyllis Frye, on being appointed to a municipal bench by the mayor of Houston
Rebecca Kling
Chicago, IL
Website:Â Rebecca Kling
- Artist and educator whose “multidisciplinary performances incorporate conversational storytelling, personal narrative, humor, movement, video projection, and more” and “explore gender and identity through solo pieces and educational workshops.”
- Author of No Gender Left Behind.
“While other explorers are content to ignore cracks in the walls towering over the roads they travel, She peeks longingly through. She notices what most have become unaware of – the enchanting ponds, meandering streams, and mysterious forests. As She studies the boundless wilderness beyond the walls She begins to understand that the either/or roads represent just one way through the Land of Gender – not the only way.”Â
Reina Gossett
Brooklyn, NY
Website:Â the spirit was
- Trans activist and artist
- Membership director at Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
- Former director of the Welfare Organizing Project at Queers For Economic Justice
- Soros Justice Fellow at Critical ResistanceÂ
- Writing credits include The Scholar & Feminist Online and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex
“I am really inspired by historical moments where people came together to hold ancestral & personal grief as a powerfully political act;Â make plain the connections between grief & state violence, diminishing circles of care, resource and isolation; resist silence & shame by honoring people who passed all the while deepening our own relationships and invested in our own living.”
– via The Politics of Gender Self-Determination: More Interviews with Captive Genders contributors
Rebecca Allison
Website:Â DrBecky.com
- American cardiologist
- Chair of the American Medical Association’s Advisory Committee on LGBT Health.
- Preisdent of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association from 2009-2011.
“We Who Should Know – who are labeled with this diagnosis – maintain that our identities are fixed from earliest life, and do not change despite the most intense and (sometimes) well intended efforts to modify identity through modifying behavior. Such efforts have consistently produced worsening unhappiness up to, and including, suicidal thoughts and actions. The identity is not what changes, and the identity is not disordered.”
– via Back on the Blog: The APA” June 2009
Â
Ryka Aoki
Website:Â rykaryka.com
- Writer, performer & educator
- Honored by the CA Sate Senate and RADAR’s 2010 Eli Coppola Chapbook Contest.
- Head instructor of LGBT-empowerment-focused Supernova Martial Arts
- Charter member of Transgender Advisory Committee for Asian Pacific Islanders for Human Rights (APHIR).
- Appears in anthologies including Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press), and Transfeminist Perspectives (Temple University).
- Inaugural performer for San Francisco’s first ever Transgender Stage at San Francisco Pride 2005
- Has performed and spoken at festivals and Prides and Conferences and Universities all over the country.
- Published the book Seasonal Velocities with Trans-Genre Press.
“This is not a time to get even with the world or tear it down. This is a time to lead. For a world to work better for all of of us. The world needs you, in all your queer glory, to help it find its way. Own the system. Redefine the system. Guide the system. Whatever system you find yourself in. What you have worked for can be reapplied in whatever you pursue. Not in spite of being queer, or without thinking of being queer, but because of it.”
–Cal Poly Pomona’s Lavender Graduation address
Ruby Corado
Washington DC
Website:Â Casaruby.org
- Founder of the Casa Ruby LGBT Center, a non-profit community center for LGBT queer people in Washington DC.
- Advocate against discrimination and hate crimes for the past fifteen years.
- Worked to ensure legal protections and policies for transgender people in Washington DC
“This beautiful, wonderful, amazing person that I was becoming was not supposed to be out in public. And because I was bringing it out in public, people were very cruel. I would apply for jobs and they’d look at me funny from the moment I walked in the door. Really, when I was living as a gay person I had some benefits, because even when I was super gay, the moment I looked butch, that’s where it all stopped. But once I was becoming this gorgeous person, there was no turning back. I cannot be butch anymore. I am who I am. And that’s how I got involved as an activist.”
– via Metro WeeklyÂ
Sadie Baker
- “Survivor, (ex) sex worker, prison abolitionist, community organizer and anarchist agitator committed to building collective power, dreaming of a freer world, and challenging racism, ableism, (cis)sexism, and assimilation within and without the LGBTQ movement.” (via)
- Worked with DC Trans Coalition, HIPS, Occupy Wall Street and The Broadway Youth Center in Chicago.
“This incident really highlights that just because someone might experience relative homophobia, they can still be transphobic, cissexist, racist, sexist, ableist. Just as trans guys can benefit from sexism, and a white trans woman is privileged by racism, LGBQ folks are often complicit in cissexism and transphobia. Trans people have specific needs and experiences that are different, and unless we talk about that, no one will understand us.”
– via The New Gay
Tracie O’Brien
San Francisco, CA
- Co-founder of Transaction (San Diego’s first political, social & transgender group)
- Works with the San Francisco Transgender Law Center
- Former counselor and coordinator of Extend Services at Stepping Stone
- Active with the The California Transgender Leadership Summit and The Center of Excellence for Transgender HIV Protection
- Co-ordinator of Family Health Center’s Project S.T.A.R.
“[The African-American transgender community is] such a diverse and very often (forced) stealth community. As a whole I just wish everyone could feel that they are whole humans beings wonderfully and powerfully made. With this perhaps we as community could aspire to greatness.”
– via Transgriot
Susan Stryker
Tuscon, AZ
Website:Â LGBT ArizonaÂ
- Professor, author, filmmaker and gender/sexuality theorist
- Presently Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona and director of their Institute for LGBT Studies
- Former Executive Director of The GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco (1999-2003)
- Author or co-author of a number of books including Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (1996), Queer Pulp: Perverse Passions in the Golden Age of the Paperback (2001) and Transgender History: Seal Studies (2008)
- Co-director of the Emmy Award-winning public television documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot of Compton’s CafeteriaÂ
- In 1994, her essay was the first published in a peer-reviewed academic journal by an openly transgender author.
- Co-editor of the Lambda Literary Award-winning Transgender Studies Reader
- Launched TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (2006)
“Hearken unto me, fellow creatures. I who have dwelt in a form unmatched with my desire, I whose flesh has become an assemblage of incongruous anatomical parts, I who achieve the similitude of a natural body only through an unnatural process, I offer you this warning: the Nature you bedevil me with is a lie. Do not trust it to protect you from what I represent, for it is a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness of the privilege you seek to maintain for yourself at my expense. You are as constructed as me; the anarchic Womb has birthed us both. I call upon you to investigate your nature as I have been compelled to confront mine. I challenge you to risk abjection and flourish as well as have I. Heed my words, and you may well discover the seams and sutures in yourself.”
– “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix” (1994)
Trisha Lee Holloway
Chicago, IL
- Medical case manager at Howard Brown Health Center
- Started first trans housing program with the Chicago House Organization
Trudy Jackson
Phoenix, AZ
- Pageant Director of the Miss Indian Transgender competition
- Tobacco-program liaison for Native Health, which coordinates programs to prevent smoking-related health problems in urban Native American communities.
- Member of the Arizona American Indian HIV Task Force, HIV Prevention Planning Group of Arizona, Central Arizona HIV Prevention Advocates and The National Native CPG Network
- Works with LGBTQ Health Equity, Native American Outreach For AIDS Walk Phoenix and The Southwest American Indian Rainbow Gathering
“There are numerous issues that affect transgender people in their everyday life. One of the most challenging of these issues is gender identity. Some girls don’t know how to come out to their families, who reside on the reservations, about their lifestyles. When girls come to the city they are able to be themselves, instead of living in the closet. Another issue is employment. Since most girls are unable to be themselves in the work place, they have to find an alternate way of surviving in the city. Stigma is another issue affecting transgender women since the majority of the general population is not educated about transgenderism; they automatically assume they are “men in a dress.”
– via Women Who Kick Ass
Check out the entirety of the Trans 100 now posted on Buzzfeed and check out We Happy Trans just because! Also, if you are a magical being who has quotes we could include for the women on this list for whom there are no quotes, please email riese [at] autostraddle dot com.