In much of the US, August marks Transgender History Month — a time to honor and celebrate the rich contributions to our culture from trans people throughout history. As a community frequently maligned and stigmatized — as well as fetishized and hypersexualized — trans people’s insights on human relationships and the way we can show up with care in dynamics with others are invaluable. Throughout our shared history, trans thinkers, writers, community workers and organizers have offered crucial wisdom on love and connection, both individually and on the community level. Here are the trans voices through history I recommend listening to on the subject.
Leslie Feinberg
Born in 1949, Leslie Feinberg’s impact on the LGBT community through time is impossible to overstate. A writer, political organizer and trade unionist, Feinberg’s trailblazing ideas were crystallized first in hir book Stone Butch Blues. In this text, Feinberg discusses their dynamic relationship to gender and class, and how butch and femme identities were read in queer communities for a previous generation.
Stone Butch Blues also delves into the complex world of relationships — the struggles of Feinberg’s transmasculine protagonist dating straight cis women, and the almost overwhelming intensity of being truly seen and cared for in relationships with queer femmes. Leslie Feinberg’s real-life love story with longtime partner Minnie Bruce Pratt also remains a source of inspiration and aspiration for many after both of their passings.
Image Source: The Gay & Lesbian Review
Julia Serano
Julia Serano’s 2007 book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity is one of the most influential and groundbreaking texts elucidating the position of trans women in broader Western culture. She’s also responsible for coining the term that defines the specific oppression that trans women face: transmisogyny. (She did this pioneering work as a second career, after 17 years in STEM research with a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics!)
Serano’s latest book, Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back, speaks to the specific angle of hypersexualization and fetishization that often comes as part of the package for trans women and other LGBT people. Trans women are almost uniformly entering into romantic experiences recovering from the ongoing experiences of being fetishized, dehumanized, and at risk for real violence from intimate partners; Serano’s work is invaluable in naming and unpacking these influences to better understand and work with how they influence romantic relationships.
Image Source: Wikipedia
Mira Bellwether
Mira Bellwether isn’t necessarily a household name, but is responsible for a major inflection point in the romantic & sexual experiences of trans women in the larger LGBTQ community. In 2010, Bellwether published Fucking Trans Women, a homemade zine that discussed in helpful, applicable detail the subject matter of its title. For the first time, there was concrete information being disseminated about how to have sex with and give pleasure to trans women, created directly by a trans woman without cis gatekeepers. Fucking Trans Women described the diverse range of trans women’s bodies in a value-neutral, body-positive way, including trans women who are pre-op or who don’t plan to have surgery, and coined terminology for some sex acts with trans women’s bodies that’s still used today.
Mira Bellwether contracted lung cancer in 2021, and passed away in 2022. Her death was profoundly impactful for the broader trans community, many members of whom were deeply impacted by her work and advocacy. Her passing serves as a reminder to value, uplift and materially support trans members of our community while they’re here.
Image Source: Mira Bellwether on Instagram
Janet Mock
Janet Mock is known for any of a dozen incredible things — after a celebrated career in media with Marie Claire and People, Mock hosted her own streaming show and produced another show, The Trans List, for HBO. Perhaps most famously, Mock served as writer, director and producer for Pose, HBO’s highly lauded depiction of five trans women of color in New York City’s 80s ballroom scene. The exploration of how fraught — and how important — love is for the women of Pose is one of the show’s most affecting and enduring contributions.
Mock’s memoir Redefining Realness has been highly praised for its nuanced, unflinching exploration of Mock’s complex experiences from a young age. It also has a great deal to say about Mock’s romantic and relational experiences as a trans woman of color, including her eventual husband’s initial rejection of her for her trans status. (Mock married photographer Aaron Tredwell in 2015; the couple divorced in 2019.)
Image Source: Janet Mock on Instagram
Kai Cheng Thom
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, professional somatics coach, facilitator and performer; she formerly worked in social work. Her varied skills at understanding human dynamics and expressing powerful insights through her creative gifts have made her writing and performance deeply impactful. Her long-running advice column for Xtra Magazine has been a great resource for many, and her book I Hope We Choose Love is a text of meaningful calls to action on creating a world where we can relate to each other safely and lovingly, making connection and interdependence a cornerstone even in communities struggling with oppression and peril.
Image Source: Kai Cheng Thom’s Website
Morty Diamond
Morty Diamond is a filmmaker, artist, performer, writer and therapist whose work centers on trans experiences and identities. In addition to their work in film, they’re the author/editor of a number of books that center trans experiences. Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary curates contributions from award-winning trans authors (like Julia Serano, mentioned above) for a “raw and honest depiction of dating, sex, love, and relationships among members of the gender variant community.” Including a range of perspectives and contributors helps reflect the multifaceted range of experiences trans and gender-variant people have with sex, love and relationships, rather than representing them as a monolith.
Image Source: Morty Diamond on Instagram
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