A bibliography for trans history in Canada

This list is not definitive. It started with what was in my own collection, and then I expanded it to cover more titles that I was aware of or had read. Consider it just a snapshot, limited by my own access and bias. It covers up until 2024.

I’m generally uninterested in trans autobiographies beyond the early titles, as they give way to new genres that better contextualize the subsequent eras. To that end I omit Canadian books like Regarde-moi, maman! by Yanni Kin, Love Lives Here by Rowan Jetté Knox, and Pageboy by Elliot Page. For prolific creators, I only included a subset of their catalog – so there’s a lot missing here from Mirha-Soleil Ross, Xanthra MacKay, Vivek Shraya, Kai Cheng Thom, S. Bear Bergman, Ivan Coyote, Nina Arsenault, Sophie Labelle, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay and Casey Plett. After the trans tipping point, publishers started to pay for more than ghostwritten autobiographies or poetry, and in came a proliferation of trans history books. I omit a bunch; I am biased towards earlier examples or those that bring substantive new information.

Not all works listed are by Canadians, trans people, or affirming. Their inclusion is to provide context for the social climate. I do mention some films, though largely exclude those featuring trans characters that were written, directed and portrayed by cis individuals like Boys Don’t Cry, Transamerica, Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl, etc.

By in “Canada” I mean within the greater geographic boundaries of what is now the state of Canada. Similarly, “trans” reflects a recent and specific construction in a long global history of gender variance, one intertwined with colonialism, and it is loosely applied below.

The List

Legend

• ⚧️: Trans or gender bending
• 🍁: Related to people within “Canada”
• ⚜️: French language
• 💿: Audiovisual
• 🌐: Website
• ❌: Transphobic

Titles

• ⚧️⚜️ Yde et Olive (1200s)
• The Roaring Girl (Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, 1611)
• ⚧️⚜️ Mémoires de Madame la comtesse des Barres, à madame la marquise de Lambert (François-Timoléon de Choisy, 1736)
• ⚧️⚜️ La vie militaire, politique et privée de demoiselle Charles-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-Andrée-Thimothée Éon ou d’Éon de Beaumont (M. de la Fortelle, 1779)
• ⚧️⚜️ Démonomanie (Étienne Esquirol, 1814)
• ⚜️ Essai sur l’influence physique et morale du costume féminin (Caroline de La Poix, 1831)
• Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1864-1880)
• 🍁 The Female Spy of the Union Army (Sarah Emma Edmonds, 1864)
• ⚧️🍁 A Mystery Still (Anonymous, 1867)
• ⚧️⚜️ Siège de Metz – Mémoire de Mme Vve Imbert (Madame veuve Imbert née Louise Nay, 1879)
• ⚜️ Monsieur Vénus (Rachilde, 1884)
• ⚧️ Psychopathia Sexualis (Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1886)
• ⚜️ La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane (Jane Dieulafoy, 1887)
• ⚧️🍁 Has Always Lived as a Man (Alexandria Gazette, July 25, 1893)
• ⚧️🍁 Years in Masquerade (Waterbury Evening Democrat, August 10, 1895)
• ⚧️ My Life as a Soldier (Jack Bee Garland, San Francisco Examiner, October 21, 1900)
• ⚜️ Les homosexuels de Berlin. Le troisième sexe (Translation of “Berlins Drittes Geschlecht” by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1904) (1908)
• ⚧️ Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (English: “Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years”) (N. O. Body, alias of Karl M. Baer, 1907)
• ⚧️ Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Die Transvestiten) (Magnus Hirschfeld and Max Tilke, 1912)
• ⚧️ Autobiography of an Androgyne (Jennie June, 1918)
• 🍁 Les Mouches Fantastiques (Edited by Elsa Gidlow & Roswell George Mills, 1918-1920)
• 💿 Anders als die Andern (Richard Oswald, 1919)
• ⚧️💿 Aus Eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (English: “From a Man’s Girlhood”) (Julius Rode & Paul Legband, 1919)
• ⚧️ The Female-Impersonators (Jennie June, 1922)
• ⚧️ Die intersexuelle Konstitution (Magnus Hirschfeld, 1923)
• ⚧️ Peter, a Young English Girl (Romaine Brooks, 1923)
• Die Freundin (1924-1933)
• 💿 Gesetze der Liebe: Aus der Mappe eines Sexualforschers (Magnus Hirschfeld, 1927)
• ⚧️⚜️ Aveux non Avenus (Claude Cahun, 1930)
• ⚧️ Man into Woman (Edited by Niels Hoyer, 1931)
• 💿 Call Her Savage (John Francis Dillon, 1932)
• ⚧️💿 Mysterium des Geschlechtes (Lothar Golte, 1933)
• 💿 Viktor und Viktoria (Reinhold Schünzel, 1933)
• 💿 Girls Will Be Boys (Cedric Dawe, 1934)
• ⚜️💿 Fanfare d’amour (Richard Pottier, 1935)
• 💿 Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935)
• ⚧️💿 Interview of Zdeněk Koubek (1936)
• ⚧️ Man, Once Girl, Weds Friend – He Was Formerly Woman Athlete (Portsmouth Evening News, August, 1936)
• ⚧️ The Undaunted (Alan L. Hart, 1936)
• ⚧️💿 Meet The Girl Who Became A Man (British Pathé, 1937)
• ⚧️ Sexology – September, 1937 Issue: They Want to Change Sexes (1937)
• ⚧️ Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology (Michael Dillon, 1946)
• ⚧️⚜️ Trois cas de désir de changer de sexe (Georges Aubert, 1947)
• ⚧️ Sexology – December, 1949 Issue: Psychopathia Transexualis (1949)
• 🍁 True News Times – Weekly in November 12 to December 31, 1951 Issues: Aspects of Homosexuality (Leo Engle aka. Jim Egan, 1951)
• The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach (Donald Webster Cory, 1951)
• ⚧️ Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty (New York Daily News, December 1, 1952)
• ⚧️💿 Glen or Glenda (Ed Wood, 1953)
• 🍁 Justice Weekly – November 28, 1953 to February 27, 1954 Issues: Homosexual Concepts (J.L.E. aka. Jim Egan, 1953-1954)
• ⚧️ Michel-Marie Poulain (Texts by J. Anouilh P. Imbourg, M. Mourre, A. Warnod, 1953)
• ONE Magazine (1953-1969)
• ⚧️ The Desire For Change of Sex As Shown by Personal Letters From 465 Men and Women (From Acta Endocrinologica 14) (Christian Hamburger, 1953)
• ⚜️ Arcadie (1954-1982)
• ⚧️ But For The Grace (Robert Allen, 1954)
• ⚧️⚜️ J’ai choisi mon sexe: Confidences du peintre Michel-Marie Poulain (Michel-Marie Poulain as told to Claude Marais, 1954)
• ⚧️🍁 Ontario Man Now Woman – First Canadian Sex Change (Ottawa Journal, March 20, 1954)
• ⚧️ Roberta Cowell’s Story: An Autobiography (Roberta Cowell, 1954)
• The Ladder (1956-1972)
• ⚧️💿 Sweet Georgia Brown (Billy Tipton Trio, 1957)
• ⚧️ Homosexuality, Transvestism & Change of Sex (Eugene de Savitsch, 1958)
• Transvestism Today: The Phenomena of Men Who Dress as Women (Edward Podolsky, 1960)
• 💿 The Rejected (KQED, 1961)
• ⚧️ Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions (Michael Dillon, 1962)
• 🍁⚜️💿 À tout prendre (Claude Jutra, 1963)
• ⚧️⚜️ Coccinelle est lui (Mario A. Costa, 1963)
• 🍁 GAY (1964-1966)
• 🍁 MacLean’s – February 22, 1964 Issue: The Homosexual Next Door (Sidney Katz, 1964)
• 🍁 TWO: The Homosexual Viewpoint in Canada (1964-1966)
• 🍁💿 Winter Kept Us Warm (David Secter, 1965)
• ⚧️ I Want What I Want (Geoff Brown, 1966)
• ⚧️ The Transsexual Phenomenon (Harry Benjamin, 1966)
• ⚧️ Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography (Christine Jorgensen, 1967)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Jackie Shane Live (Jackie Shane, 1967)
• 🍁 Place d’Armes (Scott Symons, 1967)
• ⚧️💿 Queens at Heart (1967)
• ⚧️💿 She-Man (Bob Clark, 1967)
• ⚧️ Erickson Educational Foundation Newsletter (1968-1983)
• 💿 The Queen (Frank Simon, 1968)
• ⚧️💿 The Female Bunch (Al Adamson, 1969)
• ⚧️💿 The Love God? (Nat Hiken, 1969)
• ⚧️ Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment (Edited by Richard Green and John Money, 1969)
• 💿 What’s a Girl Like You? (Charles Squires, 1969)
• ⚧️ Gay Dealer – October 1970 Issue: Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation (1970)
• ⚧️💿 The Christine Jorgensen Story (Irving Rapper, 1970)
• ⚧️ Archives Of General Psychiatry – Vol 23, Aug 1970 Issue: Transsexualism in Adolescence: Problems in Evaluation and Treatment (Laurence E. Newman, 1970)
• ⚧️⚜️ L’étiquette (Barbara Buick, 1971)
• 🍁 The Body Politic (1971-1987)
• ⚧️💿 Women in Revolt (Andy Warhol, 1971)
• 🍁 A Not So Gay World: The frank, inside story of what it is like to be a homosexual in Canada (Marion Foster and Kent Murray, 1972)
• ⚧️🍁💿 All About Women: Interview with Dianna Boileau (CBC, 1972)
• ⚧️💿 All Women Are Equal (Marguerite Paris, 1972)
• ⚧️🍁 Behold, I Am a Woman: The story of my life before and after the operation that changed my sex (Dianna Boileau “as told to” Felicity Cochrane, 1972)
• ⚧️💿 I Want What I Want (John Dexter, 1972)
• Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Esther Newton, 1972)
• Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation (Edited by Karla Jay & Allen Young, 1972)
• ⚧️💿 Open Door – Monday 4 June 1973: Transex Liberation Group (BBC Two, 1973)
• ⚧️🍁 A Gender Identity Project: The organization of a multidisciplinary study (Betty W. Steiner et al., 1974)
• ⚧️ Canary: The Story of a Transsexual (Canary Conn, 1974)
• ⚧️ Conundrum (Jan Morris, 1974)
• ⚧️ Guideline for Transsexuals (Erickson Educational Foundation, 1974)
• 🍁⚜️💿 Il était une fois dans l’Est (André Brassard, 1974)
• 🍁💿 Cream Soda (Janis Cole & Holly Dale, 1976)
• ⚧️🍁 Medicolegal Aspects of Transsexualism (C. Nelson, et al., 1976)
• 🍁⚜️ Propos pour une libération (homo)sexuelle (Paul-François Sylvestre, 1976)
• ⚧️ Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography (Mario Martino with harriett, 1977)
• 🍁💿 Outrageous! (Richard Benner, 1977)
• ⚧️💿 The Jeffersons – Season 4, Episode 3: “Once a Friend” (1977)
• ⚧️💿 Becoming Jeanne (NBC, 1978)
• ❌🍁 Gender identity problems of children and adolescents: the establishment of a special clinic (Susan Bradley, Betty W. Steiner, Kenneth Zucker, et al., 1978)
• ⚧️🍁 Gender Review (1978-1985)
• ⚧️ Introduction to VLSI Systems (Lynn Conway & Carver Mead, 1978)
• ⚧️💿 Let Me Die a Woman (Doris Wishman, 1978)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Minimum Charge No Cover (Janis Cole & Holly Dale, 1978)
• 🍁💿 This Show May be Offensive to Heterosexuals (Rogers Cable Television, 1978-1979)
• ⚧️💿 A Change of Sex (BBC, 1979)
• ⚧️ A handbook for transsexuals (Paula Grossman, 1979)
• 🍁 Homosexuality in Canada: A Bibliography (Alex Spence, 1979)
• 🍁⚜️ Les Homosexuels s’organisent: au Québec et ailleurs (Paul-François Sylvestre, 1979)
• ⚧️ Playboy Interview: Wendy Carlos (From Playboy, May 1979 Issue) (1979)
• ⚧️🍁 TAMs & Tissues (Transvestites à Montreal, 1979-1983)
• ❌ The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Janice Raymond, 1979)
• ⚧️ The TV-TS Tapestry (renamed “Transgender Tapestry” in 1996) (1979-2008)
• 🍁⚜️ Guilda: elle et moi (Jean Guilda, 1980)
• ⚧️💿 Soundtrack for The Shining (Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, 1980)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Né homme, comment je suis devenu femme (Brigitte Martel, 1981)
• ⚧️ The Ultimate Angels (Byron Newman, 1981)
• ⚧️ April Ashley’s Odyssey (Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley, 1982)
• 🍁 Flaunting It! A Decade of Gay Journalism From The Body Politic (Edited by Ed Jackson and Stan Persky, 1982)
• ⚧️⚜️ La prise de robe: itinéraire d’une transsexualité vécue (Ovida Delect. 1982)
• 💿 Liquid Sky (Slava Tsukerman, 1982)
• ⚧️🍁 Metamorphosis (1982-1985)
• ⚧️💿 Soundtrack for Tron (Wendy Carlos, 1982)
• ⚧️⚜️ Vouloir être… Transexuelle, Femme et Mère (Marie-Josée Enard, 1982)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Alain, transexxuelle (Inge Stephens, 1983)
• Dykes to Watch Out For (Alison Bechdel, 1983-2008)
• ⚧️⚜️ Je serai elle : mon odyssée transsexuelle (Sylviane Dullak, 1983)
• ❌⚜️ Horsexe (Catherine Millot, 1983)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Amour Impossible (Bashar Shbib, 1984)
• 💿 Before Stonewall (Greta Schiller, 1984)
• 🍁 Homosexuality in Canada: A Bibliography, 2nd Ed. (Alex Spence, 1984)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Hookers on Davie (Janis Cole & Holly Dale, 1984)
• ⚧️ The Aul’ Days (Ewan Forbes, 1984)
• ❌🍁 Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management (Betty W. Steiner, 1985)
• ⚧️ Information for the Female-to-Male: Crossdresser and Transsexual (Lou Sullivan, 1985)
• ⚧️⚜️💿 Appelez-moi Madame (Françoise Romand, 1986)
• ⚧️ Second Serve (Renée Richards, 1986)
• ⚧️⚜️ Coccinelle (Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy, 1987)
• ⚧️ The “Empire” Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto (Sandy Stone, 1987)
• 🍁The Regulation of Desire: Sexuality in Canada (Gary Kinsman, 1987)
• ⚧️🍁 Notes from the Underground (1988-2004)
• 🍁💿 Pissoir (John Greyson, 1988)
• ⚧️💿 Sex Change: Shock! Horror! Probe! (Kristiene Clarke, 1988)
• 💿 Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (Rob Epstein, 1989)
• ⚧️🍁 Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (Aaron Devor, 1989)
• ❌🍁 Clinical Management of Gender Identity Disorders in Children and Adults (Edited by Ray Blanchard and Betty W. Steiner, 1990)
• ⚧️ From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland (Lou Sullivan, 1990)
• 🍁 Lesbians in Canada (Edited by Sharon Dale Stone, 1990)
• ⚧️💿 Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990)
• 💿 Silence = Death (Rosa von Praunheim, 1990)
• ⚧️ A Low Life in High Heels: The Holly Woodlawn Story (Holly Woodlawn, Jeffrey Copeland, 1991)
• Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Judith Butler, 1991)
• ⚧️ My Story (Caroline Cossey, aka. Tula, 1991)
• 🍁 Our Own Voices: A Directory of Lesbian and Gay Periodicals, 1890-1990, Including the Complete Holdings of the Canadian Gay Archives (Canadian Gay Archives, 1991)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Chroniques (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1992)
• ⚧️🍁 Feelings: A transsexual’s explanation of a baffling condition (Stephanie Castle, 1992)
• 🍁💿 Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (Aerlyn Weissman & Lynne Fernie, 1992)
• ⚧️🍁 O Canada! (Jan Morris, 1992)
• ⚧️ The Employer’s Guide to Transition (Dana Cole, 1992)
• ⚧️ Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come (Leslie Feinberg, 1992)
• ⚧️🍁💿 An Adventure in Tucking with Jeanne B (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1993)
• ⚧️💿 Cinema Fouad (Mohamed Soueid, 1993)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Gendertroublemakers (Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra MacKay, 1993)
• ⚧️🍁 Gendertrash From Hell (Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra MacKay, 1993-1995)
• 🍁 k.d. lang Cuts It Close (Vanity Fair, August Issue, 1993)
• ⚧️ Stone Butch Blues (Leslie Feinberg, 1993)
• ⚧️ Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History (Gilbert Herdt, 1993)
• 🍁💿 Zero Patience (John Greyson, 1993)
• ⚧️ Gender Dysphoria: A Guide to Research (Dallas Denny, 1994)
• ⚧️💿 Outlaw (Alisa Lebow, 1994)
• 🍁 Rights of Passage: Struggles for Lesbian & Gay Equality (Didi Herman, 1994)
• The Politics and Poetics of Camp (Edited by Moe Meyer, 1994)
• ⚧️💿 Trans (Sophie E. Constantinou, 1994)
• ⚧️ TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism (Davina Anne Gabriel, 1994-1995)
• 💿 Ballot Measure 9 (Heather MacDonald, 1995)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Gender Möbius (Aiyyana Maracle, 1995)
• ⚧️ Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (Kate Bornstein, 1995)
• ⚧️ Our Trans Children: Publication of the Transgender Network of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG, 1995)
• ⚧️🌐 Susan’s Place (1995-)
• ⚧️🍁 The House that Jill Built: A Lesbian Nation in Formation (Becki L. Ross, 1995)
• ⚧️ Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits (Loren Cameron, 1996)
• ⚧️💿 Different for Girls (Richard Spence, 1996)
• ⚧️ Feminizing Hormonal Therapy for the Transgendered (Sheila Kirk, 1996)
• ⚧️ Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male and Female (Phyllis Burke, 1996)
• ⚧️💿 Girl Talk “Melanie Speaks”: On Developing a Female Voice (Melanie Anne Phillips, 1996)
• 🍁💿 Jim Loves Jack (David Adkin, 1996)
• ⚧️🍁 Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronology, 1964-1975 (Donald W. McLeod, 1996)
• ⚧️ Lesbians Talk Transgender (Zachary I Nataf, 1996)
• ⚧️ Masculinizing Hormonal Therapy for the Transgendered (Sheila Kirk, 1996)
• 🍁⚜️ Mémoires lesbiennes: Le lesbianisme à Montréal entre 1950 et 1972 (Line Chamberland, 1996)
• ⚧️ Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual (Beth Elliott and Geri Nettick, 1996)
• 🍁 Out Our Way: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Country (Michael Riordon, 1996)
• 🍁 Restricted Entry: Censorship on Trial (Janine Fuller & Stuart Blackley, 1996)
• ⚧️💿 Snarkism (Tribe 8, 1996)
• ⚧️ Transgender Warriors (Leslie Feinberg, 1996)
• ⚧️🍁 At Home on the Stroll: My Twenty Years as a Prostitute in Canada (Alexandra Highcrest, 1997)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Dysfunctional (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1997)
• ⚧️🍁 FTM: Female-To-Male Transsexuals in Society (Aaron Devor, 1997)
• ❌ The Homosexual Agenda: How the Gay Lobby is Targeting America’s Children (Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, 1997)
• ⚧️🍁💿 I would never have known: a conversation with Peter Dunnigan (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1997)
• ⚧️ PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (Edited by Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel, 1997)
• ⚧️🍁 Prisoner of Gender (Katherine Johnson and Stephanie Castle, 1997)
• ⚧️ Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender (Riki Anne Wilchins, 1997)
• ⚧️ Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism (Pat Califa, 1997)
• ⚧️ The Last Time I Wore a Dress (Dylan Scholinski, 1997)
• ⚧️ Transgender Care: Recommended Guidelines, Practical Information & Personal Accounts (Gianna E. Israel and Donald E. Tarver II, 1997)
• ⚧️💿 Trappings of Transhood (Christopher Lee, 1997)
• ❌ 7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child: A Parent’s Guide to Protecting Children from Homosexuality and the “Gay” Movement (Scott Lively, 1998)
• ⚧️🍁 Boys Like Her: Transfictions (Taste This, 1998)
• 🍁 Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence: My Life as a Canadian Gay Activist (Jim Egan, 1998)
• ⚧️ Female Masculinity (J. Jack Halberstam, 1998)
• ⚧️ Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Joshua Gamson, 1998)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Journée Internationale de la Transsexualité (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1998)
• ⚧️🌐 Mermaids (1998-)
• ⚧️ My Gender Workbook (Kate Bornstein, 1998)
• ⚧️💿 The Brandon Teena Story (Susan Muska & Gréta Ólafsdottir, 1998)
• 🍁 Are We ‘Persons’ Yet? Law and Sexuality in Canada (Kathleen A. Lahey, 1999)
• 🍁💿 Better Than Chocolate (Anne Wheeler, 1999)
• 💿 But I’m a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Cybersix (1999)
• ⚧️💿 Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities (Monika Treut, 1999)
• 🍁 Lesbian and Gay Rights in Canada: Social Movements and Equality-Seeking, 1971-1995 (Miriam Smith, 1999)
• ⚧️ The Drag King Book (Del LaGrace Volcano and Jack Halberstam, 1999)
• The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999)
• ⚧️ Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (Leslie Feinberg, 1999)
• ⚧️🍁 Triple Echo (Tara Sypniewski, 1999-2003)
• ⚧️🍁 Chronicle of a Transformed Woman (Aiyyana Maracle, 2000)
• ⚧️🍁 Close to Spider Man: Stories by Ivan E. Coyote (Ivan E. Coyote, 2000)
• ⚧️🍁💿 G-SPrOuT! (Mirha-Soleil Ross & Mark Karbusicky, 2000)
• ⚧️🍁 Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgerendered People (Vivian Namaste, 2000)
• 🍁 Queer Judgements: Homosexuality, Expression, and the Courts in Canada (Bruce MacDougall, 2000)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Rupert Remembers (Xanthra MacKay, 2000)
• ⚧️ Social Services with Transgendered Youth (Gerald P. Mallon, 2000) (Renamed to “Social Work Practice with Transgender and Gender Variant Youth” for the second edition)
• ⚧️ The Transgender Debate: The Crisis Surrounding Gender Identities (Stephen Whittle, 2000)
• ⚧️🍁💿 A Boy Named Sue (Julie Wyman, 2001)
• ⚧️ Camp Trans (Simon and Casey, 2001)
• 🍁 Gay Canada: A Bibliography and Videography, 1984-2000 (Alex Spence, 2001)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Madame Lauraine’s Transsexual Touch (Mirha-Soleil Ross, Viviane Namaste, and Monica Forrester, 2001)
• ⚧️ Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach (Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, 2001)
• ⚧️💿 Princesa (Henrique Goldman, 2001)
• ⚧️💿 Southern Comfort (Kate Davis, 2001)
• ⚧️ Venus Envy (Crystal Frasier, 2001-2014)
• ⚧️ GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary (Edited by Riki Wilchins, Clare Howell and Joan Nestle, 2002)
• ⚧️🍁 Heard for the First Time: The 10th Anniversary Incidents Booklet of the Ottawa Police Service Liaison Committee for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Communities (Ottawa Police Service, 2002)
• ⚧️ How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Joanne Meyerowitz, 2002)
• 🍁 Just Married: Gay Marriage and the Expansion of Human Rights (Kevin Bourassa & Joe Varnell, 2002)
• 🍁💿 Little Sister’s vs. Big Brother (Aerlyn Weissman, 2002)
• 🍁 Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada (Tom Warner, 2002)
• ⚧️ Respect and Equality: Transsexual and Transgender Rights (Stephen Whittle, 2002)
• ⚧️ Some of the Parts (T. Cooper, 2002)
• ⚧️💿 Sylvia Rivera: A Tribute (Tara Mateik & Denise Gaberman, 2002)
• ⚧️ The Phallus Palace: Female to Male Transsexuals (Dean Kotula, 2002)
• ⚧️ Transgender Good News (Pat Conover, 2002)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore (Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky, 2002)
• 🍁 A Brief History of GAY: Canada’s First Gay Tabloid, 1964-1966 (Donald W. McLeod, 2003)
• ⚧️ Pinned Down By Pronouns (Edited by Toni Amato & Mary Davies, 2003)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Sexe de rue (Richard Boutet, 2003)
• ❌ The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today (Alan Sears and Craig Osten, 2003)
• ❌🍁 The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism (Michael Bailey, 2003)
• ⚧️🍁💿 100% Woman : The Story of Michelle Dumaresq (Karen Duthie, 2004)
• ⚧️ Becoming a Visible Man (Jamison Green, 2004)
• ⚧️ Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (Joan Roughgarden, 2004)
• ⚧️🌐 Hudson’s FTM Guide (2004-)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ C’était du spectacle! L’histoire des artistes transsexuelles à Montréal 1955-1985 (Vivian Namaste, 2005)
• 🍁⚜️💿 C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2005)
• 🍁 Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada (Douglas Victor Janoff, 2005)
• ⚧️💿 Transparent (Jules Rosskam, 2005)
• ⚧️🍁 Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism (Vivian Namaste, 2005)
• 🍁⚜️ Marriage gai: Les coulisses d’une révolution sociale (Sylvain Laroque, 2005)
• ⚧️💿 Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (Victor Silverman & Susan Stryker, 2005)
• ⚧️ Shortandqueer #4: The Coming Out Issue (Kelly Shortandqueer, 2005)
• ⚧️💿 The Crash Pad (Shine Louise Houston, 2005)
• ⚧️⚜️ Changer de sexe : identités transsexuelles (Alexandra Augst-Merelle & Stéphanie Nicot, 2006)
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Alison Bechdel, 2006)
• ⚧️ Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws (Kate Bornstein, 2006)
• ⚧️⚜️ Histoire des transsexuels en France (Maxime Foerster, 2006)
• ⚧️🍁 Hormones: A Guide for MTFs / Hormones: A Guide for FTMs / Surgery: A Guide for MTFs / Surgery: A Guide for FTMs (Vancouver Coastal Health, 2006)
• ⚧️ Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, 2006)
• ⚧️ The Transgender Studies Reader (Edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, 2006)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans/Forming Feminisms: Transfeminist Voices Speak Out (Edited by Krista Scott-Dixon, 2006)
• ⚧️ Transgender Rights (Edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang and Shannon Price Minter, 2006)
• ⚧️🍁💿 First Stories – Two Spirited (Sharon A. Desjarlais, 2007)
• ⚧️ Her Husband was a Woman! (Alison Oram, 2007)
• 💿 For the Bible Tells Me So (Daniel G. Karslake, 2007)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Primed: A Sex Guide for Trans Men into Men (2007)
• ⚧️🍁💿 She’s A Boy I Knew (Gwen Haworth, 2007)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Snakehouse (The Cliks, 2007)
• ⚧️🍁 The Silicone Diaries (Nina Arsenault, 2007)
• ⚧️ Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Julia Serano, 2007)
• 🍁💿 Confessions of a Sorta Str8 Drag King (Alexis Fosse Mackintosh, 2008)
• ⚧️⚜️ La transidentité : de l’espace médiatique à l’espace public (Karine Espineira, 2008)
• ⚧️💿 Red is Dead / Red Durkin’s Stand-up (Red Durkin, 2008-2015)
• 🍁 she walks for days inside a thousand eyes: a two-spirit story (Sharron Proulx-Turner, 2008)
• ⚧️⚜️ Testo Junkie: Sexe, drogue et biopolitique (Paul. B Preciado, 2008)
• ⚧️ That’s Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, 2008)
• ⚧️ Transgender History (Susan Stryker, 2008)
• ⚧️🍁 Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing (Christopher A. Shelley, 2008)
• ⚧️🌐 Fuck Yeah FTMs (2009-2013)
• ⚧️🍁 Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity (Kelley Winters, 2009)
• 💿 Outrage (Kirby Dick, 2009)
• ⚧️🍁 The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You: Essays by S. Bear Bergman (S. Bear Bergman, 2009)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans PULSE (2009)
• 💿 8: The Mormon Proposition (Steven Greenstreet & Reed Cowan, 2010)
• 🍁 Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65 (Cameron Duder, 2010)
• ⚧️ Becoming: A Gender Flipbook (Yishay Garbasz, 2010)
• ⚧️🍁 Confessions of a Teenage Transsexual Whore (Star, 2010-2012, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁 Copper Rose (Tyler Smith, ~2010)
• ⚧️ Fucking Trans Women (Mira Bellwether, 2010)
• ⚧️💿 Genderbusters (Sam Berliner, 2010)
• ⚧️🍁 Gender Outlaws (Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman, 2010)
• ⚧️🍁 Get That Freak: Homophobia and Transphobia in High Schools (Rebecca Haskell & Brian Burtch, 2010)
• ⚧️🍁 i was Barbie (Nina Arsenault, 2010)
• ⚧️🍁 Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination (Sheila L. Cavanagh, 2010)
• ⚧️ Rooster Tail Comic (Sam Orchard, 2010-)
• 🍁 The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation (Gary Kinsman & Patrizia Gentile, 2010)
• 💿 We Were Here (David Weissman, 2010)
• ⚧️💿 Butch Trans Voices (2011)
• ⚧️ Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (Edited by Eric A. Stanley & Nat Smith, 2011)
• ⚧️🍁 Natural Transitioning: An FTM Alternative (Tristan & Sicily Skye, 2011)
• ⚧️ Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (Dean Spade, 2011)
• ⚧️💿 The Genderfellator (Tobi Hill-Meyer, 2011)
• ⚧️ Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary (Edited by Morty Diamond, 2011)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Soutien aux élèves transgenders et transsexuels dans les écoles de la maternelle à la 12ieme année (Fédération canadienne des enseignantes et des enseignants, 2011)
• ⚧️ Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction (Edited by Brit Mandelo, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁 First Spring Grass Fire (Rae Spoon, 2012)
• 💿 How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012)
• ⚧️⚜️ La Transyclopédie : tout savoir sur les transidentités (Karine Espineira, Maud-Yeuse Thomas and Arnaud Alessandrin, 2012)
• ❌🍁💿 Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012)
• ❌ Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism (Anne Lawrence, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁 One in Every Crowd (Ivan E. Coyote, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁 Ottawa Resource List for GLBTTQ Youth: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, Two-spirit, Queer & Questioning Youth (Centretown Community Health Centre, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁 The Collection (Edited by Tom Léger & Riley MacLeod, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁 TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault (Nina Arseneault, Judith Rudakoff, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Une dernière chance (Paul-Émile d’Entremont, 2012)
• ⚧️ Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, 2012)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Brazen: Trans Women’s Safer Sex Guide (2013)
• 🍁 “Don’t Be So Gay!”: Queers, Bullying, and Making School Safe (Donn Short, 2013)
• ⚧️ Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (Julia Serrano, 2013)
• ⚧️ Grease Bats (Archie Bongiovanni, 2013-2021)
• ⚧️🍁💿 My Prairie Home (Chelsea McMullan & Rae Spoon, 2013)
• ⚧️ Nevada (Imogen Binnie, 2013)
• 💿 Orange is the New Black (Jenji Kohan, 2013-2019)
• ⚧️🍁 Ottawa Resource List for GLBTTQ Youth: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, Two-spirit, Queer & Questioning Youth (Centretown Community Health Centre, 2013)
• ⚧️💿 Steven Universe (Rebecca Sugar, 2013-2020)
• ⚧️💿 Thank You (Skylar Kergil, 2013)
• ⚧️💿 The Whale That Ate Jonah (Schmekel, 2013)
• ⚧️⚜️ Transidentités : histoire d’une dépathologisation (Karine Espineira, Maud-Yeuse Thomas and Arnaud Alessandrin, 2013)
• 🍁 Under the Rainbow: A Primer on Queer Issues in Canada (Jeanette A. Auger and Kate Krug, 2013)
• ⚧️🍁 A Safe Girl to Love (Casey Plett, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Assignée garçon (Sophie Labelle, 2014-)
• ⚧️🍁 Being Safe, Being Me: Results of the Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey (Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, 2014)
• ⚧️ Beyond Magenta: Transgender and Nonbinary Teens Speak Out (Susan Kuklin, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁 Decolonizing Trans/Gender 101 (b. binaohan, 2014)
• ⚧️ Family Portraits: Issues 1 – 3 (Sam Orchard, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁 Gender Failure (Rae Spoon & Ivan E. Coyote, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁 I’ve Got a Time Bomb (Sybil Lamb, 2014 aka. 289)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Le mouvement trans au Québec: Dynamique d’une militance émergente (Mickael Chacha Enriquez, 2014)
• ⚧️ Lumberjanes (ND Stevenson, 2014-2020)
• ⚧️🍁 MacLean’s – January 20th 2014 Issue: What Happens When Your Son Tells You He’s Really a Girl (2014)
• 🍁 Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress (Christine Baldacchino, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Mosaic (Markus Hardwood-Jones and Shane Camastro, 2014)
• ⚧️ Redefining Realness (Janet Mock, 2014)
• ⚧️ Time Magazine – June 9th 2014 Issue: The Transgender Tipping Point (2014)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans Activism in Canada: A Reader (Edited by Dan Irving and Rupert Raj, 2014)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (First Edition) (Edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth, 2014)
• ⚧️💿 Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Against Me!, 2014)
• ⚧️ TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (2014-)
• ⚧️ Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protections, and Privacy (Edited by Jiz Lee, 2015)
• ⚧️ Girl Sex 101 (Allison Moon, 2015)
• ⚧️⚜️ Médiacultures : la transidentité en télévision : une recherche menée sur un corpus à l’INA (1946-2010) (Karine Espineira, 2015)
• ⚧️🍁💿 OUTspoken Biography: in particular, barbara findlay (Becca Plucer, 2015)
• ⚧️🍁 Not Trans Enough: A Compilation Zine on the Erasure of Non Passing and Non-Conforming Trans Identified People (2015)
• ⚧️🍁💿 On Hold: Canadian Transgender Health Access (Vice News, 2015)
• ⚧️🍁💿 One From the Vaults (Morgan M. Page, 2015-2022)
• ⚧️💿 Passing (Lucah Rosenberg-Lee & J. Mitchel Reed, 2015)
• 🍁 Queer Mobilizations: Social Movement Activism and Canadian Public Policy (Edited by Manon Tremblay, 2015)
• ⚧️ Transgender Sexual Violence Survivors: A Self-Help Guide to Healing and Understanding (Forge, 2015)
• ⚧️⚜️ Transidentités : ordre et panique de genre : Le réel et ses interprétations (Karine Espineira, 2015)
• 🍁 A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder (Ma-Nee Chacaby, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 Angus Reid – Transgender in Canada (2016)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau (Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie, 2016)
• ⚧️💿 Free Cece! (Jacqueline Gares, 2016)
• ⚧️💿 Her Story (Sidney Freeland, 2016)
• ⚧️ Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (Torrey Peters, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronology, 1976-1981 (Donald W. McLeod, 2016)
• 🍁 Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-fi Anthology (Edited by Hope Nicholson, 2016)
• ⚧️ Outspoken: a decade of transgender activism & trans feminism (Julia Serano, 2016)
• ❌🍁💿 Professor Against Political Correctness (Jordan Peterson, 2016)
• 🍁 Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism (Tim McCaskell, 2016)
• 🍁 Queers Were Here: Heroes & Icons of Queer Canada (Edited by Robin Ganev & R.J. Gilmour, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Repenser le genre: une clinique avec les personnes trans (Denise Médico, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 Seeking & Step-Dad: Two Queer Short Stories (Maëlys, 2016)
• ⚧️⚜️ Sociologie de la transphobie (Arnaud Alessandrin and Karine Espineira, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 The Boy & The Bindi (Vivek Shraya, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁💿 The Switch (OutTV, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Trans Health Care Activism in Ontario, 1998-2008 (Arquives, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care (Edited by Zena Sharman, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 The Transgender Archives: Foundations for the Future (Aaron Devor, 2016)
• 🍁 We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles (Edited by Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, and L. Pauline Rankin, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 Where’s the Mother? Stories from a Transgender Dad (Trevor Kirczenow, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 You Only Live Twice (Chase Joynt & Mike Hoolboom, 2016)
• ⚧️🍁 47,000 Beads (Angel Adeyoha & Koja Adeyoha, 2017)
• ⚧️💿 A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
• 🍁 Am I Safe Here?: LGBTQ Teens and Bullying in Schools (Donn Short, 2017)
• 🍁 Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer (John Lorinc, 2017)
• ⚧️ Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (C. Riley Snorton, 2017)
• ⚧️💿 ContraPoints (Natalie Wynn, 2017-)
• ⚧️🍁 Dancing The Dialectic: True Tales of a Transgender Trailblazer (Rupert Raj, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Kai Cheng Thom, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 How to (Hide) Be(Hind) Your Songs: An Instructional Booklet With Illustrations (Rae Spoon, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers (Edited by Casey Plett and Cat Fitzpatrick, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotica (Edited by Tobi Hill-Meyer, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Niish Manidoowag (Debbie S. Mishibinijima, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 Resilience: surviving in the face of everything (Edited by Amy Heart, Larissa Glasser & Sugi Pyrrophyta, 2017)
• ⚧️ Trans Like Me (CN Lester, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans Youth CAN! (2017)
• ❌🍁💿 Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? (BBC, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (Edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, 2017)
• ⚧️🍁 Homophobia in the Hallways: Heterosexism and Transphobia in Canadian Catholic Schools (Tonya D. Callaghan, 2018)
• 🍁 Jonny Appleseed (Joshua Whitehead, 2018)
• ⚧️ Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2018)
• ⚧️🍁 Little Fish (Casey Plett, 2018)
• ⚧️🍁💿 My Name Was January (Elina Gress & Lenée Son, 2018)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Noah, 18 ans (Francine Hébert, 2018)
• 🍁 Prairie Fairies: A History of Queer Communities and People in Western Canada, 1930-1985 (Valerie Korinek, 2018)
• ❌ Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports (Lisa Littman, 2018)
• ⚧️🍁 Stop Assessing Us: A Message From Trans Youth (Hudson, Kaeden, Kaysen, Sky, 2018)
• 🍁💿 The Fruit Machine (Sarah Fodey, 2018)
• ⚧️ To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Jess T. Dugan, Vanessa Fabbre, 2018)
• ⚧️ Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows (Edited by Christine Burns, 2018)
• ⚧️💿 What The Trans?! (Ashleigh Talbot & Michelle Snow, 2018-)
• ❌ When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Ryan T. Anderson, 2018)
• ⚧️ Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence (Edited by Lexie Bean, 2018)
• 🍁 Before the Parade: A History of Halifax’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities, 1972–1992 (Rebecca Rose, 2019)
• ⚧️🍁 Being Safe, Being Me 2019: Results of the Canadian Trans and Non-binary Youth Health Survey (Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, 2019)
• ⚧️🍁 Documenting Queer Canadian History (Alex Spence, 2019)
• ⚧️🍁 Glimmerings: Trans Elders Tell Their Stories (Margot Wilson and Aaron Decor, 2019)
• ⚧️🍁 I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World (Kai Cheng Thom, 2019)
• 🍁💿 Killing Patient Zero (Laurie Lynd, 2019)
• ⚧️🍁 Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture (Edited by Amos Mac & Rocco Kayiatos, 2019)
• 🍁 Queering Representation: LGBTQ People and Electoral Politics in Canada (Edited by Manon Tremblay, 2019)
• 🍁💿 Sex, Sin & 69 (Sarah Fodey, 2019)
• ⚧️ trans girl suicide museum (Hannah Baer, 2019)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans PULSE Canada (2019)
• ⚧️💿 Transfinite (Neelu Bhuman, 2019)
• ⚧️ True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Emily Skidmore, 2019)
• ⚧️ We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan 1961-1991 (Edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma, 2019)
• ⚧️💿 Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (Sam Feder, 2020)
• ⚧️🌐 DIY HRT Directory (2020-)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Families in TRANSition: A Resource Guide for Families of Transgender Youth / Familles en TRANSition: Un guide de ressources à l’intention des familles des jeunes transgenres (Central Toronto Youth Services, 2020)
• ⚧️ Female Husbands: A Trans History (Jen Manion, 2020)
• How to Organize Inclusive Events: A Handbook for Feminist, Accessible, and Sustainable Gatherings (Alexandra Ketchum, 2020)
• ⚧️🍁 Kent Monkman: Life & Work (Shirley Madill, 2020)
• 🍁 Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies (Cait McKinney, 2020)
• ❌ Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Abigail Shrier, 2020)
• ⚧️⚜️ Les Genres Fluides, de Jeanne d’arc aux saintes trans (Clovis Maillet, 2020)
• ⚧️🍁 Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (Edited by Joshua Whitehead, 2020)
• ⚧️🍁💿 No Ordinary Man (Aisling Chin-Yee & Chase Joynt, 2020)
• ⚧️🍁 Others Of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories (Alex Bakker, Rainer Herrn, Michael Thomas Taylor, and Annette F. Timm, 2020)
• 🍁 Our Story: Coming Out in the Time of HIV and AIDS (Robert Hamilton, 2020)
• 🍁 Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada (Craig Jennex and Nisha Eswaran, 2020)
• ⚧️🍁 Prim3d: Sexual Health Guide for Queer Trans Men, Trans Masculine and Non Binary People (2020)
• ⚧️ Sporting Gender: The History, Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes (Joanna Harper, 2020)
• ⚧️ Trans Care (Hil Malatino, 2020)
• ⚧️🍁 TRANScestors: Navigating LGBTQ+ Aging, Illness, and End of Life Decisions – Vol I: Generations of Hope / Vol II: Generations of Change (Edited by Jude Patton & Margot Wilson, 2020)
• ⚧️ Detransition, Baby (Torrey Peters, 2021)
• ⚧️🍁 Green Glass Ghosts (Rae Spoon, 2021)
• ⚧️🍁 Growing Up Trans: In Our Own Words (Edited by Lindsay Herriot and Kate Fry, 2021)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ La fille d’elle-même (Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, 2021)
• ❌⚜️ La question trans (Claude Habib, 2021)
• 🍁⚜️ L’homosexualité masculine au Québec: de la Nouvelle-France à nos jours (Serge Fisette, 2021)
• ❌ Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (Kathleen Stock, 2021)
• ⚧️⚜️ Reconnaitrans (Laurier The Fox, 2021)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Sort Of (Bilal Baig & Fab Filippo, 2021-2023)
• ⚧️💿 The Anti-Trans Hate Machine (Imara Jones, 2021-)
• ⚧️ The Appendix: Transmasculine Joy in a Transphobic Culture (Liam Konemann, 2021)
• ❌🍁 The End of Gender (Debra Soh, 2021)
• ⚧️💿 The Lady and the Dale (Nick Cammilleri & Zackary Drucker, 2021)
• ❌ Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (Helen Joyce, 2021)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans Youth Stories: An Intergenerational Dialogue after the “Trans Tipping Point” (Lindsay Herriot & Kate Fry, 2021)
• ❌🍁 Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport (Linda Blade and Barbara Kay, 2021)
• ❌🍁💿 W5: The Transition (CTV, 2021)
• ⚧️ A Self-Defense Study Guide for Trans Women and Gender Non-Conforming / Nonbinary AMAB Folks (TransFighters Oakland, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁 Access to Justice for Trans People (Canadian Bar Association, HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario (HALCO) and TRANSforming JUSTICE: Trans Legal Needs Assessment Ontario, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁 Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis (Florence Ashley, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Before I Change My Mind (Trevor Anderson, 2022)
• ⚧️💿 Casa Susanna (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2022)
• ⚧️⚜️💿 Comment la droite réactionnaire construit une “question trans” (XY Media, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Framing Agnes (Chase Joynt & Morgan M. Page, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Jeunes trans et non binaires: De l’accompagnement à l’affirmation (Annie Pullen Sansfaçon et Denise Medico, 2022)
• ❌⚜️ La Fabrique de l’enfant transgenre : comment protéger les mineurs d’un scandale sanitaire (Caroline Eliacheff & Céline Masson, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ L’agenda trans: Propagande officielle du radical et puissant Lobby Trans (Sophie Labelle, 2022)
• 🍁 Len & Cub: A Queer History (Dusty Green & Meredith Batt, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁 Queer Film Classics: Boys Don’t Cry (Chase Joynt and Morgan M. Page, 2022)
• ⚧️ Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad (Hil Malatino, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Something You Said Last Night (Luis De Filippis, 2022)
• 🍁⚜️ Télévision queer (Joëlle Rouleau, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁💿 The Empress of Vancouver (Dave Rodden-Shortt, 2022)
• ⚧️ The History of Trans Representation in American Television and Film Genres (Traci B. Abbott, 2022)
• ⚧️💿 The People’s Joker (Vera Drew, 2022)
• ⚧️ The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice for All (Shon Faye, 2022)
• ⚧️ The Transgender Studies Reader Remix (Edited by Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston, 2022)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (Second Edition) (Edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth, 2022)
• ⚧️🌐 Trans Legislation Tracker (2022-)
• ⚧️🍁 2 trans 2 furious: an extremely serious journal of transgender street racing studies (Edited by Tuck Woodstock and Niko Stratis, 2023)
• 🍁 A Queer History of Newfoundland (Rhea Rollmann, 2023)
• ⚧️ Am I Trans Enough? (Alo Johnston, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁 Angus Reid – Transgender in Canada: Canada and the Culture Wars (2023)
• ⚧️ ‘Are You OK?’: Portraits + Stories of Trans Youth Across America (Jesse Freidin, 2023)
• Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (Joanna Wuest, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁⚜️ Casa Susanna: L’histoire du premier réseau transgenre américain 1959-1968 (Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Close to You (Dominic Savage, 2023)
• ⚧️💿 Eldorado (Benjamin Cantu, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁 Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls (Kai Cheng Thom, 2023)
• ⚧️ Gender Heretics: Evangelicals, Feminists, and the Alliance Against Trans Liberation (Rebecca Jane Morgan, 2023)
• 🍁 Inside the ArQuives Zine (Emma N. Awe, 2023)
• ⚧️💿 Kokomo City (D. Smith, 2023)
• ⚧️💿 Nimona (Film Adaptation) (ND Stevenson, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁 On Community (Casey Plett, 2023)
• 🍁 Park Cruising: What Happens When We Wander Off the Path (Marcus McCann, 2023)
• ⚧️ Safe & Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair (Mercury Stardust, 2023)
• 🍁⚜️ Queer Film Classics: À tout prendre et Il était une fois dans l’Est (Julie Vaillancourt, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Soft (Joseph Amenta, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Summer Qamp (Jen Markowitz, 2023)
• 🍁 The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island (Volume 1 & 2) (Kent Monkman & Gisèle Gordon, 2023)
• ⚧️💿 The Stroll (Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker, 2023)
• ⚧️ The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (Avery Dame-Griff, 2023)
• To Be Seen: Queer Lives 1900–1950 (Edited by Mirjam Zadoff & Karolina Kühn, 2023)
• ⚧️⚜️ Transidentités: Une histoire volée (Alex Léotard, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans People and the Choreography of Reproductive Healthcare: Dancing Outside the Lines (A.J. Lowik, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁 Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide (Alexandre Baril, 2023)
• ⚧️🍁 A Short History of Trans Misogyny (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁 Accept Yourself Or Die: From Mormon Missionary to Trans Punk (Imogen Reid, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁💿 Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, 2024)
• ⚧️ Boy’s Club: Masculine-Leaning Gender Variant Artists Of The 19th And 20th Century (Trans Masc Studies, 2024)
• ❌ Cass Review (Hilary Cass, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁 Cross-Dresser: Growing Up Trans in the 1990s and 2000s (Kat Rogue, 2024)
• ⚧️💿 Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, 2024)
• ❌🍁⚜️💿 Enquête – Épisode du jeudi 29 février 2024: Trans Express (Radio Canada, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁 Gender/Fucking: The Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body (Florence Ashley, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁 How Do I Sexy?: A Guide for Trans and Nonbinary Queers (Nillin Lore, 2024)
• ⚧️💿 I’m Your Venus (Kimberly Reed, 2024)
• ⚧️💿 I Saw The TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)
• 🍁 Queer Film Classics: Winter Kept Us Warm (Chris Dupuis, 2024)
• 🍁⚜️ Sexualités et dissidences queers (Edited by Chacha Enriquez, 2024)
• ⚧️ The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports (Michael Waters, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁 The Ottawa Trans Walk (The Public Queers Collective, 2024)
• ⚧️ Tranny Central: The History of G.L.F.’s Transsexual and Transvestite Group (1971 – 1973) (TGirlsonFilm, 2024)
• ⚧️🍁 Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects (Edited by David Evans Frantz, Christina Linden, Chris E. Vargas, 2024)
• ⚧️ When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader (Edited by McKenzie Wark, 2024)
• ⚧️ Who’s Afraid of Gender? (Judith Butler, 2024)

Selected Summaries

⚧️⚜️ Yde et Olive (1200s)

A French tale from the thirteenth century about a young woman named Yde who dresses as a man to escape her father, embarks on a series of chivalric adventures, and ends up serving the king in Rome. There she impresses the king, who weds her to his daughter Olive. Olive knows of Yde’s “secret” and is fine with it, but the father is not once he finds out – upon which an angel descends and declares Yde a man to the king.

A later adaptation, from the year 1540, can be read here. An English translation of the original manuscript can be read here.

The Roaring Girl (Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, 1611)

A play about Mary Frith (c. 1584 – 1659), an infamous British thief and performer who wore men’s clothes and defied gender conventions of the era.

The play can be read here.

⚧️⚜️ La vie militaire, politique et privée de demoiselle Charles-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-Andrée-Thimothée Éon ou d’Éon de Beaumont (M. de la Fortelle, 1779)

The memoirs of the Chevalière d’Éon (1728-1810), written by M. de la Fortelle. The Chevalière’s gender transition was acknowledged without judgement at the time of publication in 1779:

Le Chevalier d’Eon, que nous n’appellerons plus Chevalière qu’à l’époque où elle aura pris les habits de son sexe, commença & suivit ses études au Collège Mazarin.

M. de la Fortelle

Born in 1728 in France, la Mademoiselle d’Éon would lead a life full of adventure, which included first being a Paris-based lawyer, and later a spy for the king. She would socially transition full-time at age 49 in 1777.

She was not the first documented trans woman in France; for example there was also Madame Rosette (1678-1725) who was always out to herself since childhood, but publicly transitioned at age 40.

The work can be read here.

⚧️⚜️ Démonomanie (Étienne Esquirol, 1814)

An article by a forefather of French psychiatry mentions what might have been a trans woman:

«J’ai donné des soins, il y a bien des années, à un homme âgé de vingt-six ans, d’une taille élevée, d’une belle stature, d’une jolie figure, qui, dans sa première jeunesse, aimait à revêtir des habits de femme.

Admis dans la haute société, si l’on y jouait la comédie, il choisissait toujours les rôles de femmes; enfin, après une très légère contrariété, il se persuada qu’il était femme et chercha à en convaincre tout le monde, même les membres de sa famille…

Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1864-1880)

Translated as “Researches on the enigma of male-male love”, this German series by the gay lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) portrayed same-sex attraction as natural and spoke to the damage anti-sodomy laws were having.

His work would inspire a young gay man named Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), who would research and advocate the same. Hirschfeld would also later open a clinic for trans people, which the Nazis burned down.

🍁 The Female Spy of the Union Army (Sarah Emma Edmonds, 1864)

The memoir of Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841-1898), who was born in New Brunswick. She took on the name Franklin Thompson and moved to the United-States, eventually joining the Union Army as a man during the American Civil War, first as a nurse, then a spy. Towards the end of the war, she returned to her former name and garb, continuing her work as a nurse.

The book can be read here.

⚧️🍁 A Mystery Still (Anonymous, 1867)

A fictionalized account of Dr. James Barry’s life (c. 1789 – 1865) published in the May 18th, 1867 issue of All the Year Round, a weekly literary journal edited by Charles Dickens. It reveals the contemporaneous awareness of his existence.

Dr. James Barry socially transitioned when he entered medical school, never to present as female again. He would have a long and distinguished career, notably preforming one of the first successful caesarean sections in which the mother and child survived. Posted in Canada in 1857, he would become Inspector General of Hospitals, and advocate for better food, sanitation and medical care for the most marginalized under his care.

The work can be read here.

Another fictionalized account, The Journal of Dr. James Barry by Olga Racster & Jessica Grove was published in South Africa in 1932. While it includes an authentic reproduction of Barry’s death certificate, the rest is entirely fabricated.

A parallel story would be that of Thomas de Croismare (1779-1847) who served in the French Army under Napoleon, fighting the Russians, and being wounded at Waterloo. Like Dr. Barry, he would live his life as a man and make the news upon his death when his birth sex was discovered.

⚧️⚜️ Siège de Metz – Mémoire de Mme Vve Imbert (Madame veuve Imbert née Louise Nay, 1879)

Memoirs of Madame Imbert (born 1844), a French person who in war passed as a man in 1870 and spied on the Prussians.

Unlike other publicized wartime heroines of this era, Imbert would never dispense of men’s clothing after service. The last writings about her were in 1913. Photographs of her are included in Magnus Hirschfeld and Max Tilke’s 1912 book Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Die Transvestiten).

The memoir can be read here.

⚧️ Psychopathia Sexualis (Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1886)

Case 129 (of the 237 case studies documented in the text) is about a trans woman:

I feel like a woman in a man’s form; and even though I often am sensible of the man’s form, yet it is always in a feminine sense.

Girls liked my society; and , though I should have preferred to have been with them constantly, I avoided them when I could; for I had to exaggerate in order not to appear feminine. In my heart I always envied them.

⚧️🍁 Has Always Lived as a Man (Alexandria Gazette, July 25, 1893)

This newspaper article documents a bit of Frank Blunt’s (born c. 1865) life. Those who cared for him used male pronouns despite knowing his sex assigned at birth; by all accounts he’s what we’d now call a trans man:

Has Always Lived as a Man.

Being unable to give bail, Frank Blunt, the woman who masqueraded for 14 years in male attire, is now locked up in jail at Fond du Lac awaiting her trial. There is little doubt that sufficient evidence will be produced to prove that this “mysterious man” is guilty of the larceny of $145 from the woman she calls grandmother. In adopting the dress and life of a man, Miss Annie Morris, for such is her true name, believed in leaving nothing undone which would make the character she had chosen complete, and since becoming of age she had voted, casting her ballot regularly each election.

The registry list shows Miss Morris was registered in due form under her name of Frank Blunt. Her disguise was a simple solution of the difficulty that vexes woman suffragists, and it is safe to assert that she was the only woman that cast a ballot which counted in the last presidential contest.

It is not at all likely that she will ever be known as Annie Morris or that she will ever be seen in women’s clothes. She is now 28 years old, and has not worn a dress since she was 13. Unrestrained by the lacing and the tight-fitting garments usually worn by her sex, her figure has developed so that it is much more masculine than feminine in appearance. She would present a sorry figure in women’s clothes were she to put them on.

Jesse B. Blunt told this story to a correspondent: “Frank is wild, but I have always cared for him. I met him in Maitland, N. S., 14 years ago, where he was working in a shoe factory, he having previously run away from his home. He was dressed in boy’s clothes, and when it was discovered that he was a girl the people became down on him. I heard of the story and sought out the person, and recognized the “boy” at once. I talked with him and we left the village. We traveled all the time. Frank and I have driven in a team from Nova Scotia to Boston. While in the East I received an offer to take charge of a lumber camp in northern Wisconsin. Frank went with me. I put him to work swamping, driving logs and teaming. For a time he also cooked.

“Later on, I had to leave the camp on business. Frank was put in charge of the camp and the men. I could not have conducted the business better than he did. When we then separated he went to Fond du Lac and became acquainted with Miss Lulu Seitz, daughter of a wheat buyer. I was in a little town called Stephenson. One day he telegraphed me that he had married her. Well, he lived with her six years, until last fall, when he began to run about with other women, and his wife secured a divorce.”

Mr. Blunt stated that Frank had always been “very sporty” when he was in the city.

“Why, not very long ago Frank ran away with a saloon-keeper’s wife, and they took $450 of the saloon-keeper’s money with them. The saloon-keeper followed them to Chicago, Oshkosh and all over, but Frank was too cute for him. Later on, Frank and the saloon-keeper met. They bad a foot race around the block, the saloon man following with a revolver. Frank also married another girl, but is not living with her now.”

⚧️🍁 Years in Masquerade (Waterbury Evening Democrat, August 10, 1895)

This article covers a twenty-one year old from Nova Scotia who took on the name Estelle and Violet (born c. 1874) and moved to the United States. Once there, they were first arrested for being assumed to be a woman wearing men’s clothes, and later arrested for being assumed to be a man wearing women’s clothes.

The article can be read here.

⚧️ My Life as a Soldier (Jack Bee Garland, San Francisco Examiner, October 21, 1900)

Jack Bee Garland (1869-1936) was a trans man who worked as a journalist. In 1897, he would be arrested for wearing men’s clothes. In 1899, he accompanied the US military to the Philippines and documented the Philippine-American war. He was cast out when his birth sex was discovered. He would write of his time in this article for the San Francisco Examiner.

He would later work as a nurse during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. During the first world war, he would be arrested on suspicion of being a German spy, and let go without charge. The accounts of the time would portray him as a woman in men’s clothes. His life is the subject of the 1990 book From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland by Lou Sullivan.

⚧️ Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (English: “Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years”) (N. O. Body, alias of Karl M. Baer, 1907)

Autobiography of Karl Baer (1885-1956). Raised in Germany as a girl, he came out as a man age 19 in 1904, and had gender affirming surgery in 1906. His book would be made into the 1919 movie Aus Eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (English: “From a Man’s Girlhood”). He would later combat human trafficking, be persecuted by the Nazis, flee to Palestine, be in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and secretary, and make a new life as an insurance agent.

The book can be read here.

⚧️ Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Die Transvestiten) (Magnus Hirschfeld and Max Tilke, 1912)

A photographic collection of gender diverse individuals. You do not need to understand German to appreciate it.

The book can be read here.

⚧️ Autobiography of an Androgyne (Jennie June, 1918)

Born in 1874 in the United States, the author adopted the name “Jennie” in childhood and described herself has having a “female brain in male body.” Going on to date men, the author would get gender affirming surgery in 1901-1902, and befriend others like her. The book contains selfies and a candor refreshing to this day.

⚧️ Die intersexuelle Konstitution (Magnus Hirschfeld, 1923)

In this paper, Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexualism”. He had previously coined the term “transvestite” in his 1910 book, Die Transvestiten.

Over time we’ve seen many terms for the same phenomena: eonism, androgyne, transsexual, MTF/FTM, genderqueer, transgender and now simply trans / non-binary. Most of these have fallen out of favour but some have also changed meaning over time: transvestite once included trans people, and when I came out a number of people insisted transsexual differentiated itself from transgender by being exclusive to those who had had gender affirming surgery.

⚧️ Peter, a Young English Girl (Romaine Brooks, 1923)

A portrait of Gluck (1895-1978), the non-binary painter, done by Romaine Brooks.

⚧️⚜️ Aveux non Avenus (Claude Cahun, 1930)

A surrealist autobiography by author, photographer and sculptor Claude Cahun (1894-1954), who started going by that name in 1914.

Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.

Claude Cahun, in the book

Cahun was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and sentenced to death over her speaking out against them, but was liberated before the sentence could be carried out. Nevertheless, the mistreatment she suffered led to health problems and her death in 1954.

⚧️💿 Mysterium des Geschlechtes (Lothar Golte, 1933)

A drama centered on sexology; the film’s documentary segment features three trans women: Dora Richter (1891-1933), Toni Ebel (1881-1961) and Charlotte Charlaque (1892-1963).

The Nazis would ban the movie. That same year, the health care provider that connected all of these women, Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin, would also be attacked by a mob and Nazis. It is presumed that Dora Richter was killed in the assault. The institute’s books were taken out and burned.

This was the same clinic attended by Lili Elbe (1882-1931) and documented in the book Man Into Woman (Edited by Niels Hoyer, 1933), which can be read here.

⚧️💿 Interview of Zdeněk Koubek (1936)

Interview and B-roll footage of intersex athlete Zdeněk Koubek (1913-1986) by an unidentified American reporter. Koubek discusses his forthcoming marriage to a woman and future plans.

The footage can be viewed here.

⚧️ Man, Once Girl, Weds Friend – He Was Formerly Woman Athlete (Portsmouth Evening News, August, 1936)

As with a number of newspaper articles at the time, journalists were curious but not scandalized by trans people:

Man, Once Girl, Weds Friend – He Was Formerly Woman Athlete

Mr. Mark Weston, of Oreston, near Plymouth, formerly a woman athlete, who changed her sex from woman to man recently, has secretly married a girl friend.

Mr. Weston was formerly Miss Mary Edith Louise Weston. His bride is Miss Alberta Bray.

He says, “She is a girl in a million. Through all the anxious years of my change from 1928 to the actual operations in May this year Miss Bray was a real friend. We were friends as girls.”

The wedding took place at Plymouth Registry Office. The new Mrs. Weston is in her early twenties.

More on Mark Weston (1905-1978) is found here, which specifies that his gender affirming surgeries took place in 1936 at Charing Cross Hospital.

⚧️ The Undaunted (Alan L. Hart, 1936)

Dr. Alan L. Hart (1890-1962) was a physician, radiologist, and prolific writer in the United-States. Out since he was a child, he got gender affirming surgery in the winter of 1917-1918. He married his first wife in February 1918 and later got on T after it was made available by drug manufacturer Bayer in 1920. In subsequent decades he would save thousands of lives through pioneering the early detection of tuberculosis with X-rays.

The Undaunted was his second novel, about a gay doctor. Despite being fiction, it is an insight into Hart’s own experiences.

⚧️💿 Meet The Girl Who Became A Man (British Pathé, 1937)

A filmed interview with Peter Alexander, a trans man from New Zealand.

The interview can be watched here.

⚧️ Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology (Michael Dillon, 1946)

Michael Dillon (1915-1962) was a British trans man born in 1915, who got on T in 1939, and amended his birth certificate in 1944 after getting top surgery. He would later serve in the merchant navy as a naval surgeon. His book on endocrinology advocated for people to have agency over their bodies.

The work can be read here.

⚧️ Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty (New York Daily News, December 1, 1952)

Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) would leak the news of her gender affirming surgery in Denmark by Christian Hamburger to the press, leading to a flurry of attention on her return. For many trans people in this era, this was the first time they had seen someone else like them.

The article can be read here.

A newsreel can be watched here.

⚧️💿 Glen or Glenda (Ed Wood, 1953) and She-Man (Bob Clark, 1967)

Both are trans exploitation films that are bookended with remarks from an actor playing the role of medical professional.

Glen or Glenda was originally intended as a biopic of Christine Jorgensen. She-Man’s lead actor was a female impersonator.

⚧️ The Desire For Change of Sex As Shown by Personal Letters From 465 Men and Women (From Acta Endocrinologica 14) (Christian Hamburger, 1953)

Christian Hamburger was known at this time for being the Danish surgeon that performed the gender affirming surgery on Christine Jorgensen. The attention resulted in hundreds of people enquiring about such surgeries for themselves, culminating in this paper.

Of the 465 people who contacted Hamburger for gender affirming surgery, 357 were assigned male at birth, 108 were assigned female. Eight were from Canada: 7 trans women, one trans man.

Like today, the age distribution skewed younger, with most being under born in the 1920s and 1930s.

⚧️ But For The Grace (Robert Allen, 1954)

Robert Allen (1914-1997) was a British trans man who was born in 1914, served in the Second World War, changed his identity documents in 1944, and married a woman. This book was his autobiography.

⚧️🍁 Ontario Man Now Woman – First Canadian Sex Change (Ottawa Journal, March 20, 1954)

The title is misleading; Ms. Jefferson (born circa 1920-1923) was a trans woman from Port Colborne but she was not the first Canadian to transition. She was simply the first known to the people covering her at the time; the trope of calling things done by trans people the “first” continuing to this day.

The articles of the period are consistent in the last name and city, but some call her Frances Marie Jefferson, age 24, and others call her Josephine Jefferson, age 21.

The newspaper articles covering her can be read here.

⚧️ Roberta Cowell’s Story: An Autobiography (Roberta Cowell, 1954)

Roberta Cowell (1918-2011) was a British trans woman born in 1918, served in the Second World War as a Spitfire pilot, before being shot down and living in a POW Camp. Following the war, in 1950, she started HRT and got gender affirming surgery the next year. This was facilitated by her relationship with Michael Dillon. She would later maintain neat hobbies such as racing and flying, living to the ripe old age of 93.

⚧️ Homosexuality, Transvestism & Change of Sex (Eugene de Savitsch, 1958)

This book advocated for the acceptance of gay and trans people. It excerpts Christian Hamburger’s paper of the 465 men and women who he documented to seek gender affirming surgery, delves into that medical care, goes into the history of vaginoplasty dating as far back as 1761, and covers the example of Arlette Leber (born 1912), a trans woman who updated her identity documents in Switzerland during the Second World War.

⚧️ Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions (Michael Dillon, 1962)

Michael Dillon’s (1915-1962) memoirs, completed two weeks before his death in 1962, but not published until 2017.

The work can be read here.

⚧️🍁💿 Jackie Shane Live (Jackie Shane, 1967)

Jackie Shane (1940-2019) was a Black trans woman and Nashville native who moved to Montreal in 1960, and then Toronto in 1961. Throughout the sixties she had a number of musical hits, including the song “Any Other Way” that reached #2 in Toronto’s CHUM station in 1962. “Jackie Shane Live” was her live album, released in 1967. She passed away in Nashville in 2019.

The album is available here.

⚧️💿 Queens at Heart (1967)

Interviews with four trans women in New York City, whose full names were withheld as cross-dressing was illegal.

The film can be watched here.

⚧️ Erickson Educational Foundation Newsletter (1968-1983)

Reed Erickson’s (1917-1992) newsletter which provided information for and by trans people.

The newsletter can be read here.

⚧️💿 The Female Bunch (Al Adamson, 1969) and The Love God? (Nat Hiken, 1969)

Two films that cast Aleshia Brevard (1937-2017), a trans woman who had transitioned in the late fifties and had gender affirming surgery in 1962, though she was stealth at the time of filming. She would continue to have a career in theater, film, television, and as a model and author.

⚧️ Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment (Edited by Richard Green and John Money, 1969)

This is a medical textbook out of John Hopkins which was running a gender identity clinic at the time. It covers everything from legal issues, HRT, surgical care, and gender diverse youth. This book was presented to Rupert Raj on the outset of his own transition, helping him realize he was trans.

💿 What’s a Girl Like You? (Charles Squires, 1969)

A documentary about the British drag scene. The movie can be watched here.

⚧️ Gay Dealer – October 1970 Issue: Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation (1970)

The manifesto printed in the October 1970 issue of Gay Dealer: The Rage of Philadelphia, includes the following blurb and demands:

We reject all labels of “stereotype” “sick” or “maladjusted” from non-transvestic and non-transexual sources and defy any attempt to repress our manifestation as transvestites and transsexuals… All power to trans liberation.

The included demands:

1. Abolishment of all crossdressing laws and restrictions of adornment.
2. An end to exploitation and discrimination within the gay world.
3. An end to exploitative practices of doctors and psychiatrists who work in the fields of transvestism and transsexualism. Hormone treatment and transsexual surgery should be provided free upon demand by the state.
4. Transsexual assistance centers should be treated in all cities of over one million inhabitants, under the direction of postoperative transsexuals.
5. Transvestites and transsexuals should be granted full and equal rights on all levels of society and a full voice in the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people.
6. Transvestites who exist as members of the opposite anatomical gender should be able to obtain full identification as members of the opposite gender. Transsexuals should be able to such identification commensurate to that new gender with no difficulty, and not be required to carry special identification as transsexuals. There should be no special licensing requirements of transvestites or transsexuals who work in the entertainment field.
7. Immediate release of all persons in mental hospitals or prison for transvestism or transsexualism.

A later copy in 1971’s Vol. 1 Issue 8 of Detroit Gay Liberator can be found here.

⚧️💿 Women in Revolt (Andy Warhol, 1971)

This satirical film features three trans women as leads: Jackie Curtis (1947-1985), Candy Darling (1944-1974), and Holly Woodlawn (1946-2015).

🍁 The Body Politic (1971-1987)

This was the premiere publication discussing gay rights in Canada. Precursor magazines include GAY (1964-1966) and TWO: The Homosexual Viewpoint in Canada (1964-1966).

The Body Politic included trans topics. For example, from the May/June 1972 issue was a letter from a member of the Association for Canadian Transsexuals, which read in part:

How many people truly understand why transsexual men want to be women or transsexual women who want to be men”: Has society or the medical profession any ‘right’ to deny us a sex change? I think not.

Luckily I discovered A.C.T. After several sympathetic telephone calls to Dianna Dixon of this organization my days became brighter. For the first time in years I felt alive and part of the human race. I was not ALONE anymore. Now, years of confinement in false lifestyles and the prison of my body are at an end. I can be as I always wanted to be. It’s a new sense of freedom.

I would like the readers of this to come out and support A.C.T. at our Wednesday meetings so that you can know and understand us. We are part of the spectrum of the TOTAL SEXUAL REVOLUTION and we will no longer be overlooked.

Or from the Autumn 1972 issue, under the heading “Transsexual Seminar”:

On Saturday, Sept. 16th at 7 p.m. the Association for Canadian Transsexuals (ACT) held its second annual Transsexual Seminar at the CHAT centre at 58 Cecil Street.

The event was highlighted by the presence of Zelda Suplee from the Erickson Educational Foundation in New York… Ginelle Nash, president of ACT, spoke briefly on the topic of transsexuality, outlining the difficulties the transsexual faces in contemporary society. Ms. Suplee outlined the surgical procedures necessary to alter the gender to suit the psychology of the person involved, and further discussed the difficulties that attend every step of a transsexual’s transformation.

Issues of The Body Politic can be read here. A history of GAY can be read here. Issues of TWO can be read here.

🍁 A Not So Gay World: The frank, inside story of what it is like to be a homosexual in Canada (Marion Foster and Kent Murray, 1972)

Interviews with Canadians about what it’s like to be gay by authors who are gay themselves. Marion Foster is a pseudonym for Shirley Shea, who served in the RCAF during the second world war and later became a radio broadcaster.

One of the interviewees might have been trans. From the author’s description:

If you were to meet Wee Geordie on the street, you would assume that she is a boy. Apart from the width of her hips and the over-large rear, there is nothing in her appearance to make you think otherwise. Geordie has thought of herself as a boy for so many years that probably even she has come to believe it.

But there are times when she is made painfully aware that the life she lives is a sham. She has been beaten up a number of times by tough young thugs. She is accustomed to being baited by the bleary-eyed men and women who drink in the same pub she has frequented for years. Her life is filled with violence and danger.

Geordie is not attractive. She does not have the clean-cut, boyish look of many young lesbian dykes. Her skin is swarthy, her body flabby, her eyes cold and flat. Neither her voice nor her vocabulary help soften the impression she creates.

⚧️🍁💿 All About Women: Interview with Dianna Boileau (CBC, 1972)

Dianna Boileau (see next entry) was interviewed by Margo Lane of the CBC for its television programme All About Women. The eleven minute interview and the feminist programme it was part of were never aired as it was deemed too controversial. Other topics for the television series included sexuality, abortion, and pornography.

The television interview can be watched here.

⚧️🍁 Behold, I Am a Woman: The story of my life before and after the operation that changed my sex (Dianna Boileau “as told to” Felicity Cochrane, 1972)

Dianna Boileau (c. 1930-2014) was a Canadian trans woman who transitioned as a teen in Fort Frances, receiving transition-related care from a doctor whose previous colleague was Roberta Cowell’s father. She received media attention following her detention after a fatal car accident in the 1960s, later making the news as Canada’s first sex-change recipient (she wasn’t).

The book can be read here.

⚧️💿 Open Door – Monday 4 June 1973: Transex Liberation Group (BBC Two, 1973)

The BBC had a television show called Open Door, and in this episode trans people were given an open floor to discuss their lives, misconceptions around being trans, discrimination by the state (eg. around marriage), access to care, and so forth.

You can watch the episode here.

⚧️🍁 A Gender Identity Project: The organization of a multidisciplinary study (Betty W. Steiner et al., 1974)

Describes a study of trans people that began in 1968 in Canada. A total of 88 trans people were gathered between September 1969 and October 1970 for the research: 74 trans women and 14 trans men.

The lack of involvement of trans people in conducting the research is especially evident in some of the follow-up papers.

The paper can be read here.

The list of other papers by Betty Steiner can be found here.

⚧️ Guideline for Transsexuals (Erickson Educational Foundation, 1974)

A guide by and for trans people, funded by the eccentric trans millionaire Reed Erickson (1917-1992). Included Information included how up update identity documents, what to do in case of arrest, financing medical help, electrolysis, HRT, etc. Other booklets in the series included “Information for the Family if the Transsexual”, “Information on Transsexualism for Law Enforcement Officers”, and “Religious Aspects of Transsexualism.”

• Guideline for Transexuals can be read here.
• Information for the Family of the Transexual can be read here.
• An Outline of Medical Management of the Transexual can be read here.
• Legal Aspects of Transexualism can be read here.
• Counseling the Transexual can be read here.
• Religious Aspects of Transexualism can be read here.
• Information on Transexualism for Law Enforcement officers can be read here.

⚧️🍁 Medicolegal Aspects of Transsexualism (C. Nelson, et al., 1976)

A paper that covers legal challenges for trans people in Canada, and documents the first laws allowing updating the sex on identity documents (albeit with surgery, a requirement that would remain in effect for half a century.)

⚧️ Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography (Mario Martino with harriett, 1977)

Autobiography of Mario Martino (1937-2011), an American trans man who would be seen as a pioneering transmasc activist of the time along with Lou Sullivan, Rupert Raj and Leslie Feinberg.

🍁💿 Outrageous! (Richard Benner, 1977)

A semi-biographical film of Canadian female impersonator Craig Russell, starring himself.

The film can be watched here.

⚧️💿 Becoming Jeanne (NBC, 1978)

A documentary about Dr. Jeanne Hoff (1938-2023), a trans psychiatrist who was publicly out as such during the seventies.

The documentary can be watched here.

❌🍁 Gender identity problems of children and adolescents: the establishment of a special clinic (Susan Bradley, Betty W. Steiner, Kenneth Zucker, et al., 1978)

Discusses the establishment of a conversion therapy clinic for trans youth at the Clarke Institute, which would later become CAMH.

From the abstract:

Theoretical accounts of the origins of gender identity disturbance are reviewed and then followed by a description of the establishment of a child and adolescent gender identity clinic. Clinical impressions of 16 gender disturbed patients are presented and the position is taken that most patients manifested a confused, as opposed to fixed, core gender identity.

⚧️🍁 Gender Review (1978-1985)

Rupert Raj’s (born 1952) newsletter for his advocacy group FACT (Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Transsexuals) based out of Toronto. It was a wealth of information, including handy bibliographies. Along with Reed Erickson’s newsletter, the way it talked about being trans was decades ahead of its time.

The collection is available here.

⚧️ Introduction to VLSI Systems (Lynn Conway & Carver Mead, 1978); Playboy Interview: Wendy Carlos (From Playboy, May 1979 Issue) (1979)

I wanted to include some other works showing trans people existing outside of the role of advocate or the medical field.

Lynn Conway (born 1938) was a pioneer of VLSI (very large-scale integration), the foundational microchip design process that led to today’s complex processors. Fired from IBM in 1968 for being trans, she would subsequently have a distinguished career that included a stint as associate professor at MIT, joining DARPA, and being at Xerox PARC – a whose who of early computing giants. She would do so stealth, not being public about her being trans until 1999.

Wendy Carlos (born 1939) was a pioneer of synthesizer-based music, and would be out as trans when she recorded the soundtrack to The Shining (1980) and Tron (1982). Though she started medical transition in 1968, it wouldn’t be until the 1979 Playboy issue that she came out as trans to the public.

Throwing in there a third trans person of this era not listed in either title above: Caroline Cossey (aka. Tula, born 1954) who was an actress and model and who started hrt at age 17. She was outed as trans a few times by tabloids, but most viciously in 1981 following the release of the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only that had cast her as an extra. In response, she would release an autobiography in 1982 called I am a Woman. In 1989 she would have her gender legally recognized and get married, but the British government would appeal the decision, overturning the ruling and annulling her marriage.

As of the time of this writing, all are still alive: Conway is 85, Carlos 83, and Cossey 68.

🍁⚜️ Les Homosexuels s’organisent: au Québec et ailleurs (Paul-François Sylvestre, 1979)

This is the oldest comprehensive account of organized gay liberation activism across Canada that I’m aware of. Older tomes like 1972’s A Not So Gay World were more focused on individuals. This one also has a particular focus on Ottawa, the hometown of the author.

🍁 Flaunting It! A Decade of Gay Journalism From The Body Politic (Edited by Ed Jackson and Stan Persky, 1982)

The Body Politic was a gay liberation newspaper, a precursor to Xtra! This book compiles some of its articles from it’s inception in 1971 to 1982.

Among the subjects covered is the We Demand protest, the 1981 bathhouse raids in Toronto, the raid on its office, and a chronology of gay activism from the sixties on.

⚧️🍁 TAMs & Tissues (Transvestites à Montreal, 1979-1983)

From the description:

This newletter, of which the AGQ [Archives Gaies du Québec] has issues dating between 1979 and 1983, was published by TAMs (Transvestites à Montreal), a group comprised of MTF (male-to-female) TVs [transvestites] and TSs [transsexuals]. This group offered social opportunities, discussion groups and workshops. Later, the group split into TAMs and WOMEN à Montréal en Neuf, as the latter responded to the specific needs of transsexual women.

The collection is available here.

See also the similar newsletter from Ottawa from the 80s, Notes from the Underground.

⚧️🍁 Metamorphosis (1982-1985)

Rupert Raj’s newsletter for trans men.

The collection is available here.

⚧️🍁⚜️ Alain, transexxuelle (Inge Stephens, 1983)

The autobiography of Inge Stephens (born 1940), director of the Montreal chapter of FACT (Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Transsexuals).

⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Amour Impossible (Bashar Shbib, 1984)

A 24-minute film from featuring Michelle Deville (born 1958), a trans woman. She also had a role in 1983’s Or’D’Ur and 1986’s Evixion.

Amour Impossible can be watched here.

Or’D’Ur can be watched here.

⚧️🍁💿 Hookers on Davie (Janis Cole & Holly Dale, 1984) and Sexe de rue (Richard Boutet, 2003)

Two Canadian documentaries on street-based sex work that include interviews with trans women; one film English, one French; one set in Vancouver, one in Montreal.

❌🍁 Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management (Betty W. Steiner, 1985)

A medical textbook from holy trinity of medical practitioners who would, over their careers, cause a tremendous amount of harm to trans people in Canada. Ken Zucker, who ran a conversion therapy clinic, Ray Blanchard, who believe trans women don’t exist but are just men attracted to having their own tits or are something something gay (no in-between), and Susan Bradley, who also ran the conversion therapy clinic. The conversion therapy clinic would only be shut down in 2015, and the three would continue to write or be featured in asinine pieces about trans people in conservative rags.

⚧️🍁 Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (Aaron Devor, 1989)

A book about transmascs of the eighties by an author who would later come out as a transgender man (Aaron Devor, born 1951). Pairs well with his book on documenting trans men of the nineties.

⚧️🍁 O Canada! (Jan Morris, 1992)

Jan Morris (1926-2020), a British trans woman, authors this book profiling her travels through Canada. She had previously published Conundrum in 1974, in which she discusses her transition.

In her storied life, she served in WW2, was later the only journalist on the first successful ascent/descent of Mount Everest in 1953, did valuable investigative journalism during the Suez Crisis, and would spend the rest of the 20th century traveling the world and writing books about it.

⚧️ Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come (Leslie Feinberg, 1992)

Leslie Feinberg’s (1949-2014) call for acceptance, citing historical figures that would then be featured in the subsequent title Transgender Warriors.

⚧️🍁 Gendertrash From Hell (Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra MacKay, 1993-1995)

From a biography:

Mirha-Soleil Ross (b. 1969) is a Métis trans sex worker, performance artist and activist. Raised in Montreal, she moved to Toronto and co-founded the pivotal queer zine Gendertrash From Hell with her partner Xanthra Phillippa Mackay. New issues of Gendertrash were published between 1993 and 1995, compiling original art, poetry, fiction and resource lists, all with the aim of giving a voice to the community.

Ross went on to helm Counting Past 2, the world’s first trans art festival, and developed a number of performance art pieces that sought to educate audiences about the realities of sex work and debunk stereotypes about trans identity.

The collection is available here.

⚧️🍁💿 Gendertroublemakers (Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra MacKay, 1993)

From the description:

What happens when two Transdykes get sick of non-transsexual’s uninformed representation of their sexualities and their lives? They grab their 8 millimeter home video camera, their last 200 bucks, and come up with an uncompromising in-your-face flick about their shitty relationships with gay men and their unabashed attraction to other transsexual women.

⚧️ Stone Butch Blues (Leslie Feinberg, 1993)

A pioneering work of trans fiction.

The book can be read here.

⚧️ Gender Dysphoria: A Guide to Research (Dallas Denny, 1994)

One of the tasks early trans resources like the Gender Review newsletter took on was the compilation of bibliographies. Otherwise there was no real way to know what had been published for the lay trans person.

This book, by trans advocate Dallas Denny (born 1949), is one big bibliography. It puts together everything that was known to have been put out there until 1994.

This is a gem.

⚧️💿 Trans (Sophie E. Constantinou, 1994)

An interview with a trans man named Henry S. Rubin (born 1966), who discusses identity in light of first coming out as a dyke and then as trans, and also discusses gender.

The film can be watched here.

⚧️🍁💿 Gender Möbius (Aiyyana Maracle, 1995)

A theater production by Haudenosaunee artist Aiyyana Maracle. It can be watched here.

⚧️ Our Trans Children: Publication of the Transgender Network of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG, 1995)

A guide on for parents of trans youth giving a cursory understanding of terminology and issues. The first edition was published in 1995.

The third edition (2001) can be read here.

⚧️🌐 Susan’s Place (1995-)

A website providing resources to trans folk, at a time when trans visibility online was marginal. It faded as trans people connected over social media platforms rather than topic-specific websites.

The website as it existed in 1998 can be visited here.

The website as it exists today can be visited here.

⚧️🍁 The House that Jill Built: A Lesbian Nation in Formation (Becki L. Ross, 1995)

This book covers a historical time in lesbian activism in Canada, particularly focusing on LOOT (Lesbian Organization of Toronto), and includes a section on how trans women were mistreated. The author saw that as being wrong; stating clearly that trans dykes belonged in lesbian spaces.

Mary Axten, one of the first women to join the Community Homophile Association of Toronto (CHAT) in 1971, and a gay woman since the 1950s, was furious upon receiving news of the [exclusion of trans women from LOOT]. She said, ‘I remember I could have gone and hammered those little suckers [at LOOT] into the woodwork a couple of times and made them listen to some sense. There they were, bitterly complaining about being oppressed, “Nobody loves me,” and turning their backs on people who need warmth and companionship. In this entire world, who is more lonely than a lesbian transsexual?’

LOOT received one letter from a lesbian who could not attend the meeting at which the vote was held. She wrote: ‘The only way we have of identifying a fellow lesbian is her word that she is a lesbian. A self-identified lesbian transsexual is a bona fide lesbian. LOOT should accept the transsexual and laud her “heroic struggle” to become a lesbian.” Disturbed by the fever and tension spurred by the debate, Pat Hugh, the upstairs tenant at 342 Jarvis Street, refused to participate. Several weeks following the vote, she exploded with anger at the paranoia that persisted: ‘A young androgynous-looking friend of mine who was just coming out came to a LOOT Sunday meeting. In the hallway, before she even got to the living room, this woman accosted her and said, “I think you’re this transsexual and your kind is not welcome here.” Well this poor woman just ran out of the house and immediately got involved with a man. She’s out again, thank god, you know, thank god.’

In 1995, most urban lesbian activists in Canada and the United States have demonstrated little enthusiasm for the prospect of bridging balkanized constituencies.

At the same time, attempts within lesbian-feminist communities to supplant old prescriptions with liberal-individualist codes for fashion- able, politically sophisticated ‘queerdom’ in the 1990s threaten to man- date new notions of who’s in and who’s out. Such a focus harkens back to the inward-looking nature of preceding Lesbian Nations rather than forward to the promise of mobilizing against actual state and social discrimination. Exclusionary parameters police populations and operate to compartmentalize constituencies as acceptable or unaccep- table. I argue that no movement for gender and sexual liberation can afford the evacuation of a male-to-female lesbian transsexual, a leather dyke into s/m fantasy, a lesbian (or any woman) who is HIV+, a softball- playing and factory-working gay woman, a rural lesbian who has never heard of Susie Sexpert, or a lesbian of colour who refuses to splice her self into identity-pieces with lesbian on top.

⚧️💿 Girl Talk “Melanie Speaks”: On Developing a Female Voice (Melanie Anne Phillips, 1996)

A 40 minute VHS tape providing a guide for trans women on how to alter their voices to sound more like a typical cis woman’s.

⚧️🍁 Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronology, 1964-1975 (Donald W. McLeod, 1996) and 1976-1981 (Donald W. McLeod, 2016)

An incredible piece of research, citing event after event that took place in gay activist circles. There’s tidbits such as for May 1972:

Toronto * CHAT and the Association for Canadian Transsexuals (ACT) sponsored a forum on transsexuality, held at the CHAT centre. Between 100—150 people attended.

You can download the book from the University of Toronto here.

You can download the sequel for 1976-1981 here.

⚧️ Lesbians Talk Transgender (Zachary I Nataf, 1996)

A collection of quotes, which includes among other topics dismantling TERF attacks on trans people.

Despite theoretically embracing diversity, contemporary lesbian culture has a deep streak of xenophobia. When confronted with phenomena that do not neatly fit our categories, lesbians have been known to respond with hysteria, bigotry, and a desire to stamp out the offending messy realities… [It is imperative to distinguish between emotions and principles. Just as “hard cases make bad law”, intense emotions make bad policy. Over the years, lesbian groups have gone through periodic attempts to purge male-to-female transsexuals, sadomasochists, butch-femme lesbians, bisexuals, and even lesbians who are not separatists. FTMs are another witch-hunt waiting to happen.

Surgery is seen as self-mutilation and the result of some form of deep self- hatred or hysteria. Rad fems in their arrogance believe they know best what’s good for other people. They don’t seem to listen or hear when transgendered people say they are healing themselves and choosing the best options to turn around dysfunctional lives, fully accepting the health risks of the surgery (which is radical and intrusive) and hormones (which increase the likelihood of breast cancer in MTFs and liver cancer in FTMs, among other conditions). It is worth the risks to live their lives as themselves and as they choose, not as someone else chooses for them.

My argument is that a biological determinist policy is harmful and could set back the entire women’s movement, theoretically affect it and skew its direction. But that a policy of ‘all women welcome’ is really going to revitalise the women’s movement and I’m finding a very receptive ear.

🍁 Restricted Entry: Censorship on Trial (Janine Fuller & Stuart Blackley, 1996)

The Canadian government used to censor books on gay topics coming into the country, deeming them obscene. The books would be impounded and destroyed, and bookshops catering to gay people were blacklisted.

This caused American publishers, who were on the hook for the continually lost books, to refuse to ship their titles. This prompted a court case with the Vancouver-based Little Sisters book shop, which is the subject of this book.

The book also documents two bombings the shop experienced for being by and for queer folk. For more, see also the documentary Little Sister’s vs. Big Brother (Aerlyn Weissman, 2002).

⚧️💿 Snarkism (Tribe 8, 1996)

Eighteen years before Against Me!’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues, there was Tribe 8’s Snarkism. Songs on this album include Republican Lullaby, Tranny Chaser, and Wrong Bathroom.

From the song Wrong Bathroom:

Punk rock band touring the USA
Stopping along the American highway
Roll into the truck stop ’cause I gotta take a leak
Everybody’s staring like I’m some kind of freak
Fuck all this attention
I think I’ll try to sneak
Into the ladies room
Without getting caught

Excuse me, sir?
Over by the stall?
Um, wrong bathroom
Men’s is down the hall

…

Is that a he or a she
Is that a him or a her
Oh excuse me ma’am -uh, sir?
Am I supposed to feel ashamed
‘Cause you’re confused
‘Cause I don’t fit in your box you loser
I’m gonna have a bladder burst
While you ponder gender!

⚧️🍁 At Home on the Stroll: My Twenty Years as a Prostitute in Canada (Alexandra Highcrest, 1997)

Alexandra Highcrest was a sex worker from 1972 to 1992, moving around a bit but spending much of her life in Toronto. This book discusses her experiences and advocates for sex workers. Refreshingly, the way she talks about being trans was decades ahead of its time for the literary world.

A friend of mine was in contact with her a few years ago, and sadly, received a final note indicating that she had passed away.

⚧️🍁💿 I would never have known: a conversation with Peter Dunnigan (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1997)

From the description:

A conversation with Toronto community activist and female-to-male transsexual Peter Dunnigan. He speaks openly about addiction, recovery, sexuality, and life as a gender outcast. More than an educational tool fora general audience, this video is a call for transsexuals, both female-to-males and male-to-females, to unite, heal, and resist.

⚧️🍁 Prisoner of Gender (Katherine Johnson and Stephanie Castle, 1997)

Katherine Johnson (1949-2014) was a trans woman who spent most of her life in Canada’s correctional system. In this book, she goes over her life, and the opposition she faced at having her gender recognized. It includes a treasure trove of letters sent to and from various authorities, demonstrating the institutional transphobia within Corrections Canada.

It wouldn’t be until she was in her sixties, in 2010, following a human rights complaint that she finally was transferred to an institution for women and accessed gender affirming surgery. She would pass away at age 66 in 2014.

The book is available here.

⚧️ Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism (Pat Califa, 1997)

The nineties saw a lot of transgressive essays on trans topics, whose content still rings true today. Pat Califa’s (born 1954) book combines a number of these. If you want to know where younger trans activists were at in terms of their politics, read this.

🍁 Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence: My Life as a Canadian Gay Activist (Jim Egan, 1998)

An autobiography of Jim Egan, who was out during his military service in the second world war, met his lifelong partner in 1948, and starting the following year became a public advocate for gay rights in Canada.

In the book he describes how it was being gay in Toronto in the 1950s. He has this description of what today we might call trans women:

Frances and Geraldine

Two characters stand out in my memories of the Corners. It is hard to say how old they were when I knew them. I don’t know if I ever knew their real names, although everyone called them Frances and Geraldine. Frances was a black guy who weighed two hundred pounds at the absolute minimum and was always plastered with makeup, including green eye shadow and lipstick. He dressed in a unisex way so that it was difficult to tell whether you were looking at a man or a woman. Geraldine was the very mirror opposite. He was also about two hundred pounds but with porcelain features and makeup galore. The two of them were great sisters. They were hustlers. They’d come to the Corners in the evening to drink beer and look for clients. I don’t know that they made many pickups at the Corners, but they would cruise the streets and some horny heterosexual would pick them up. They’d say that it was the wrong time of the month, but they could give him a good blow job! Frances and Geraldine could pass, especially back then, because the average straight man meeting them really wouldn’t question that they were women. I was great friends with both of them.

I remember one night there at the Corners. The two of them were sitting at a table, as usual, together, dishing up a storm about something. Four or five really rough looking numbers came in and took seats in the middle of the room, and kept glaring over at Frances and Geraldine. And they knew they were being looked at. The more the guys looked at them, the more flamboyant they became. So, finally, Frances got up to go to the washroom, and two seconds later one of these guys from the table got up and followed him. And in about half a minute you never heard such screams and shrieks coming out of the washroom! Frances was whaling the shit out of this tough guy. The bartender jumped over the bar and went in with a sawed off pool cue and dragged this straight one out and threw him out the front door. The gay ones were always protected down there, but in this particular instance Frances handled the situation very well.

The book includes documents and photos from throughout his life. Egan was also profiled in MacLean’s – February 22, 1964 Issue: The Homosexual Next Door (Sidney Katz, 1964).

⚧️ Transgender Care: Recommended Guidelines, Practical Information & Personal Accounts (Gianna E. Israel and Donald E. Tarver II, 1997) and My Gender Workbook (Kate Bornstein, 1998)

Transgender Care reference book on transition-related care aimed at medical practitioners and written by a trans person, but suffering a bit from the gatekeeping and pathologization mentality that was pervasive in the medical profession. Still, it’s better than other references consumed by medical professionals at the time.

By contrast, My Gender Workbook, is by and for trans people, about being yourself whatever that looks like.

⚧️ Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Joshua Gamson, 1998)

In the nineties, the only trans representation I saw on television was as clown-like objects of derision on talk shows like Jerry Springer. In my case, that form of representation pushed me away from considering I could be trans, because it was so distant from my own experience.

This book was a contemporaneous critique of that representation.

⚧️🍁⚜️💿 Journée Internationale de la Transsexualité (Mirha-Soleil Ross, 1998)

From the description:

Every year, l’Association des Transsexuels-les du Québec organizes, in collaboration with Café Cléopatre, an evening of transsexual pride.Entitled “Journée Internationale de la Transsexualité,” the event is an opportunity for several generations of transsexual women to get together, recognize the involvement of many in their community and pay tribute to individuals who figure importantly in their history.

FEATURING: Améthyste, Candy, Lily Champagne, Chanelle, The Duvénil Sisters, Diane Gobeil, Marie-Marcelle Godbout, Evan Joanness, Judy, Franke Knight, Lady Brenda, Madame Sissy, Madame X, Brigitte Martel, Viviane Namaste, Natasha and Diane West.

⚧️🌐 Mermaids (1998-)

Founded in 1995 by a group of parents, Mermaids is a British resource to help trans youth. A poem called Mirrors from a then sixteen-year old trans youth named Aiofe was on the website in 1999:

Each time I look into a mirror,
I see a face look back at me.
Sometimes it’s the face of a girl,
And sometimes it’s a boy.

Each face shows its sadness,
Each one shows its pain.
Both of them have their sorrow,
But one has room for Joy.

I know some day that I must choose a face,
And live with it forever more.
But which one can joy live in?
Which one can I scorn?.

The website, as it existed in 1999, can be visited here.

The website, as it exists today, can be visited here.

⚧️💿 Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities (Monika Treut, 1999)

A documentary elevating trans voices and includes Susan Stryker (born 1961), Max Wolf Valerio (born 1957) and Sandy Stone (born circa 1936). Some interviews make it decades ahead of its cis-made contemporaries.

The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999)

A still deeply prescient essay about the impulse of some “respectable” gay and trans people to throw the perceived deviants that remain under the bus in order to secure modicums of liberty for themselves.

⚧️🍁 Triple Echo (Tara Sypniewski, 1999-2003)

The Ottawa trans newsletter/zine. The Ottawa Trans Library uploaded the issues here.

⚧️🍁 Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgerendered People (Vivian Namaste, 2000)

For a decade after it’s release, this book could seemingly be found on every trans advocate’s bookshelf.

It was documenting and critiquing the widespread transphobia in Ontario and Québec, through the lens of specific wrongs, written for an academic audience by a trans person.

🍁 Queer Judgements: Homosexuality, Expression, and the Courts in Canada (Bruce MacDougall, 2000)

While there was legislative progress in Canada with regards to gay rights, the judicial system remained quite conservative. Judges being overwhelmingly older white men.

This meant that you could lose custody in Canada during divorce as a loving parent if you were gay, that if you were a teacher with an excellent record you could be fired for being gay, etc.

This book takes a look at cases like this throughout the country.

⚧️🍁💿 A Boy Named Sue (Julie Wyman, 2001) and She’s A Boy I Knew (Gwen Haworth, 2007)

Two Canadian docs, one centered on a trans man and the other a trans woman, about normative people going through transition and how the cis people around them feel. We’ve seen this done countless times, these are earlier examples.

A Boy Named Sue can be watched here.

She’s a Boy I Knew can be watched here.

🍁Just Married: Gay Marriage and the Expansion of Human Rights (Kevin Bourassa & Joe Varnell, 2002)

In 2001, a lesbian and gay couple got married in Toronto: Anne and Elaine Vautour and Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell. It would shape part of the story on the path to same-sex marriage being recognized by the state in Ontario in 2003, and later in Canada. At their wedding, a bomb threat was made on the church and protesters showed up to harass them.

This book documents the lead up from the perspective of one of the couples. Twenty years later, both couples were still married.

⚧️ Venus Envy (Crystal Frasier, 2001-2014)

This was the proto trans webcomic that served as inspiration for future webcomics of the genre.

The series can be read here.

Another webcomic, Rooster Tails, by Sam Orchard can be read here. Sam also made one of when we met!

⚧️🍁 Heard for the First Time: The 10th Anniversary Incidents Booklet of the Ottawa Police Service Liaison Committee for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Communities (Ottawa Police Service, 2002)

Documents homophobic and transphobic incidents reported to the Ottawa Police between 1991 and 2001. The Ottawa Police has been pretty transphobic, beating up my trans ex, and when another trans friend got beat up at a bar over the gender marker on his ID, the police sided with the business. Understanding the context of the authoring organisation, the information is still valuable.

June 15 incident behind the Chateau Laurier about 1 a.m. Two male acquaintances, argument resulted in a physical assault. Victim, a member of the transgender community, adamant he did not want to go to court, that the problem had been worked out.

Report from 1995

Hull police did a wonderful job getting the media to stop hounding a transgender member of the armed forces. Circulated (and mailed with minutes): intrusive front-page cover photo and story and inside article (the Sun). The Citizen also started to hound the woman, but was stopped.

Report from 1998

A member of GM [Gender Mosaic] asked if the HCS had received a report about someone tossing eggs on three separate occasions at a transgendered individual. HCS said no: many reports are now being handled outside the section because the section is short-staffed.

Report from 2000

The booklet can be downloaded here.

⚧️ Pinned Down By Pronouns (Edited by Toni Amato & Mary Davies, 2003)

A collection of creative works, from poetry to essays to photographs to comics, from trans, Two-Spirit and gender diverse authors.

⚧️🍁💿 100% Woman: The Story of Michelle Dumaresq (Karen Duthie, 2004)

Michelle Dumaresq was a Canadian downhill mountain bike athlete who faced protests against her participation in competitions on account of her being trans, with the Cycling BC and the Canadian Cycling Association initially pushing her to quit. She persevered, and would eventually win the 2002 Canada Cup and the 2003 and 2004 Canadian National Championships.

This documentary covers her, and is available here.

⚧️🌐 Hudson’s FTM Guide (2004-)

One of the key resources for trans men during the aughts.

The website as it existed in 2006 is accessible here.

The website as it exists today is available here.

⚧️🍁⚜️ C’était du spectacle! L’histoire des artistes transsexuelles à Montréal 1955-1985 (Vivian Namaste, 2005)

Covering trans performers in Montreal from the 1950s to the eighties, and documenting the parallel evolution of cabarets into strip clubs.

⚧️🍁 Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism (Vivian Namaste, 2005) and Decolonizing Trans/Gender 101 (b. binaohan, 2014)

Both are a collection of essays critiquing mainstream trans discourse of their times; Vivian Namaste targets imperialism and b. binaohan white/masc/colonial-centrism of this discourse. They’re both still prescient and essential reading to contextualize trans activism.

Also of interest: Namaste’s book includes an interview with Mirha-Soleil Ross. She also discusses the Nixon case, in which a trans woman was fired from her job in BC for being trans. The BC supreme court sided with the transphobic employer.

⚧️🍁 Hormones: A Guide for MTFs / Hormones: A Guide for FTMs / Surgery: A Guide for MTFs / Surgery: A Guide for FTMs (Vancouver Coastal Health, 2006)

For years these were the go-to guides for trans people in Canada to get informed about hormone replacement therapy, dosages, how long for the onset of certain changes. This is what I used at the time. A number of people I knew would provide this to their doctor, who usually had no idea about trans health care.

Hormones: A Guide for MTFs can be read here.

Hormones: A Guide for FTMs can be read here.

Surgery: A Guide for MTFs can be read here.

Surgery: A Guide for FTMs can be read here.

⚧️ Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, 2006)

A series of transgressive essays challenging the primacy of passing.

⚧️🍁 Trans/Forming Feminisms: Transfeminist Voices Speak Out (Edited by Krista Scott-Dixon, 2006)

A collection of essays from trans people and TERFs.

Included are works from Kyle Scanlon and barbara findlay, who both shaped trans history in this country.

⚧️🍁⚜️ Primed: A Sex Guide for Trans Men into Men (2007) and Brazen: Trans Women’s Safer Sex Guide (2013)

For a while, these were the definitive safer sex resources available to trans people in Ontario.

Primed is available here. Brazen is available here.

Both have French-language versions available as well.

⚧️🍁💿 Snakehouse (The Cliks, 2007)

First album from Canadian rock band The Cliks, whose vocalist and guitarist is Lucas Silveira, a trans man.

I still have a ticket stub from when I saw them perform a few years after this.

⚧️ Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Julia Serano, 2007)

This was another of those works, much like Invisible Lives, that every trans advocate of the period had read.

This book put to words a lot of the mistreatment that trans women in particular faced, and it was in this book that Julia Serano (born 1967) coined the term transmisogyny.

⚧️💿 Red is Dead / Red Durkin’s Stand-up (Red Durkin, 2008-2015)

Red Durkin’s stand up performances and skits were hilarious and memorable.

The performance at the Tranny Roadshow North West tour in 2010 can be watched here.

The performance at the ‘Less Beard, More Tits’ benefit in 2012, which has the gorilla suit skit, can be watched here.

A parody of the Philly Trans Health Conference from 2013 can be watched here.

⚧️🌐 Fuck Yeah FTMs (2009-2013)

Tumblr was where a whole generation of trans and gender diverse people first connected, myself included. In particular, it was during the selfie culture and this was the first platform I saw where we got to be proud of our bodies. Along with a bunch of trans and non-binary YouTubers, young trans people achieved an unprecedented visibility to each other.

A bunch of accounts emerged during this time: Fuck Yeah MTFs, Fuck Yeah FTMs of Color, etc.

The adoption of Tumblr by trans people died in 2013, when Yahoo took ownership and started to censor trans content as inappropriate “adult” material. Transphobic censorship was taking place on YouTube as well, albeit in a less halting manner.

Fuck Yeah FTMs as it existed in 2010 can be visited here.

Fuck Yeah MTFs as it existed in 2010 can be visited here.

⚧️🍁 Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity (Kelley Winters, 2009)

While the title suggests an American-only context, the book refers to the works of Canadian researchers like Zucker and Blanchard, who pushed absurd theories of such as autogynophelia that plagued trans people in both countries.

The book itself is a critique of the way trans people have been treated by the mental health care field.

⚧️🍁 Trans PULSE (2009) & Trans Youth CAN! (2017) & Trans PULSE Canada (2019)

Trans PULSE was then the most comprehensive study by and for trans people in Canada, despite being Ontario-only. The scope would a decade later be expanded to nationwide with Trans PULSE Canada. Trans Youth CAN! was a study for the aforementioned by some of the same team members as the Trans PULSE studies.

At the time of the original study cisgender researchers were regularly being given funding to rehash tropes about trans people, leading to no improvements to our lives, while trans researchers wanting to gather valuable data were denied. When the data started progressively coming out of Trans PULSE it was immediately put to use by advocates across the country.

Trans PULSE can be viewed here.

Trans PULSE Canada can be viewed here.

Trans Youth CAN! can be viewed here.

⚧️🍁 Confessions of a Teenage Transsexual Whore (Star, 2010-2012, 2014)

An autobiography by Markus Harwood-Jones (born 1991) centred around being a trans teen sex-worker in Toronto, published as posts on an anonymous blog during the burgeoning era of trans YouTubers and Tumblr. These were then edited and put together as a series of zines in 2014. In a “small trans world” kind of thing, the author crashed at mine once to attend an event in Ottawa. It’s a contemporaneous, candid, and precious sharing of feelings and thoughts during one’s youth.

The collection is available here.

⚧️🍁 Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination (Sheila L. Cavanagh, 2010)

At this time in Canada, the moral panic was about trans women using gendered spaces like bathrooms. This book takes a critical look at the gendered politics surrounding washroom use.

🍁The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation (Gary Kinsman & Patrizia Gentile, 2010)

From the 1950s to the 1990s, the Canadian government used the RCMP to hunt and purge its ranks of gay employees. This book documents that effort.

⚧️💿 Butch Trans Voices (2011)

Up until this panel at the 2011 Butch Voices conference, I had never seen other butch trans women. At that point, I was hanging out with transmascs because that was more relatable. Watching this presentation on YouTube gave me permission to be me.

Watch Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6.

⚧️ Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (Dean Spade, 2011)

A collection of essays about the contemporary trans rights discourse, and warns about how assimilating into existing power structures rather than challenging them leaves people behind.

⚧️💿 The Genderfellator (Tobi Hill-Meyer, 2011)

A 1h32m trans-made film directed by Tobi Hill-Meyer, starring Texas, Gloria Divine, Maya Mayhem, James Darling and Susan Stryker.

From the synopsis:

A young trans man wakes up in the future and in the middle of a major conflict between the authoritarian Androdyke Brigade and the Radical Gender Resistance. As a response to The Gendercator (a 2007 film depicting trans people and evangelicals working together to force butch women to transition to male), this plot-driven pornographic parody is a critical exploration of conflicts and dynamics around trans people in queer women’s communities.

⚧️🍁 The Collection (Edited by Tom Léger & Riley MacLeod, 2012)

This was a book of short stories from Canadian and American trans authors, published by the then freshly formed Topside Press. The company had been created by Tom Léger, Riley Macleod, Julie Blair, and Red Durkin after other publishers had declined their works on the grounds that there wasn’t a market for trans literature.

Operating between 2011 before ending with drama in 2017, Topside would release classics like Imogen Binnie’s Nevada and Casey Plett’s A Safe Girl to Love. Nevada was the first time many trans people saw a novel written about us by us. It was so different than depictions of our lives written by cis authors.

After the success of Torrey Peters’ Detransition Baby from a mainstream publisher in 2021, Nevada and A Safe Girl to Love would both be republished. The former by a mainstream publisher who once scoffed at the idea, and the latter by Vancouver-based Arsenal Pulp Press, which had already published Casey Plett as well as Ivan Coyote, Rae Spoon, S. Bear Bergman and Vivek Shraya.

⚧️ Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, 2012)

Another essential for anyone seeking to understand community dynamics.

⚧️🍁💿 My Prairie Home (Chelsea McMullan & Rae Spoon, 2013)

Rae Spoon’s (born 1981) charming genre-bending musical documentary focused on their youth.

You can watch it here.

⚧️ Nevada (Imogen Binnie, 2013)

This book represented a big shift in trans lit, being long-form fiction for and by trans people, versus being written for cis people.

⚧️🍁⚜️ Assignée garçon (Sophie Labelle, 2014-)

I debated including this webcomic for the same reason I don’t list later autobiographies and newsletters. They’re valuable but in terms of fleshing out history there are other works in a given time period that can provide more context. However, Sophie Labelle’s (born 1988) unapologetic criticism of transphobia has made her a constant target of death threats, and her comics are a time capsule of current events. So I listed it.

You can read the comics here.

The English language version can be read here.

⚧️🍁 Being Safe, Being Me: Results of the Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey (Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, 2014) and Being Safe, Being Me 2019: Results of the Canadian Trans and Non-binary Youth Health Survey (Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, 2019)

The 2014 report surveyed 923 individuals and can be read here.

The 2019 report surveyed 1,519 individuals and can be read here.

The 2024 survey is under way as of the time of writing this bibliography.

⚧️🍁⚜️ Le mouvement trans au Québec: Dynamique d’une militance émergente (Mickael Chacha Enriquez, 2014)

A portrait of trans activism in Quebec. The thesis can be read here.

⚧️🍁 MacLean’s – January 20th 2014 Issue: What Happens When Your Son Tells You He’s Really a Girl (2014) and Times – June 9th 2014 Issue: The Transgender Tipping Point (2014)

There’s a moment in trans history called the Trans Tipping Point, in reference to a Times article that featured actress Laverne Cox (born 1972). Her portrayal in the Netflix hit Orange is the New Black was a big deal for trans representation. Cis people who had only seen caricatures of us on television and film suddenly had a character that was meant to be more than a punching bag.

Before the tipping point, mainstream cis people saw us as an object of mockery or pathetic – never as equals. After, you started to see a humanizing shift in everything from talk shows, to news coverage, to movies. Before the tipping point, gay rights organizations were uninterested in protecting trans people, seeing us as a threat to their advocating for the assimilation of gay people in mainstream society, because our existence was too queer. After, they saw there was fundraising potential in our inclusion, and they changed tact. Companies trying to appeal to young people started to incorporate trans people in marketing. Book stores started to carry titles on trans stuff. Reputable news orgs stopped misgendering and dead naming. It was a substantial and rapid shift.

Six months before the Times article, Canada’s weekly, Maclean’s, had its own trans-themed cover.

⚧️🍁💿 Mosaic (Markus Hardwood-Jones and Shane Camastro, 2014)

From the summary:

A co-production of Shane Camastro and Markus “Star” Harwood-Jones, Mosaic follows Markus during the summer of 2012 during which he was a homeless queer and trans youth couch-surfing across Toronto, Montreal, New York City, Philadelphia, Orlando, Tampa, Houston, Redlands, Oakland, and San Francisco. Along the way, Markus connected with nearly 50 different trans people and asked them to share their insights on the topics of Gender, Community, and Survival.

I’m also in it, though the parts with me are cringe to watch now.

You can watch it here.

⚧️🍁 Trans Activism in Canada: A Reader (Edited by Dan Irving and Rupert Raj, 2014)

A collection of essays by trans people in Canada about the subject, including Susan Gapka (born 1950s) and Vivian Namaste.

⚧️🍁 Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (Edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth, 2014 & 2022)

This was the guide by and for trans people that was a repudiation of every pathologizing title written by medical professionals, academics, and all those that were writing freely about us without us. The two editions are very different from each other despite covering the same general topics; they are time capsules of the prominent trans voices in the English-speaking world at their time of publication.

⚧️🍁 Not Trans Enough: A Compilation Zine on the Erasure of Non Passing and Non-Conforming Trans Identified People (2015)

Self-explanatory. I contributed to this zine at the time, and unfortunately the theme is still relevant. Pairs well with Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity that was edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore in 2006, and Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? by the same author in 2012.

⚧️🍁💿 On Hold: Canadian Transgender Health Access (Vice News, 2015)

A documentary about the gatekeeping of health care for trans people in Canada.

The documentary can be seen here.

⚧️🍁💿 One From the Vaults (Morgan M. Page, 2015-2022)

Morgan M. Page’s trans history podcast, dispensing with the white-centrism of popular historical trans narratives.

The series is available here.

⚧️ Transgender Sexual Violence Survivors: A Self-Help Guide to Healing and Understanding (Forge, 2015)

A 132 page book, free for distribution, for trans survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence.

The book is available here.

An accompanying guide for loved ones of survivors is available here.

⚧️🍁 Angus Reid – Transgender in Canada (2016) and ⚧️🍁 Angus Reid – Transgender in Canada: Canada and the Culture Wars (2023)

Angus Reid conducted polling of Canadian attitudes towards trans people in 2016 and then 2023.

In 2016, 72% of Canadians weren’t acquainted with a trans person, and a quarter of men weren’t okay with a trans person moving next door.

In 2023, there was a drop in acceptance of trans people from 2016, notably on trans youth – a focus of conservative disinformation.

I recommend ignoring the analysis, and going straight to the data charts.

The 2016 report is available here.

The 2023 report is available here.

⚧️🍁💿 Trans Health Care Activism in Ontario, 1998-2008 (Arquives, 2016)

In 1998, the conservative Ontario government delisted coverage for gender affirming surgeries in the province. The ten years following saw a lot of work to get coverage again, succeeding in 2008. This forced trans Ontarians to go to places like Thailand to get care, as it was unaffordable closer to home. One recounted bleeding on the plane back, as you can’t afford to stay long enough to wait that out.

This is an oral history of those involved. Watch the exhibit here.

⚧️💿 ContraPoints (Natalie Wynn, 2017-)

A YouTube channel of video essays by Natalie Wynn (born 1988). Some stand outs:

• Degeneracy (2017)
• Autogynephilia (2018)
• Jordan Peterson (2018)
• Pronouns (2018)
• Gender Critical (2019)
• “Transtrenders” (2019)
• Canceling (2020)
• The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling (2023)

⚧️🍁 Dancing The Dialectic: True Tales of a Transgender Trailblazer (Rupert Raj, 2017)

Rupert Raj’s autobiography, which illuminates on a lot of the activism done in the eighties especially towards addressing the gatekeeping and pathologizing of trans people in medical circles; pioneering a consumer model.

As an Ottawa resident, it was nice to see photos of him in 1971, post transition, taken in my hometown.

This book pairs well with We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan 1961-1991.

⚧️🍁💿 Niish Manidoowag (Debbie S. Mishibinijima, 2017)

A five minute short of an indigenous transmasc youth talking about perceived gender and challenges faced, contrasting that experience with how Two Spirit people were accepted and a normal part of the community.

The short can be seen here.

⚧️🍁 Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (Edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, 2017)

A series of good essays on visibility.

⚧️🍁 Homophobia in the Hallways: Heterosexism and Transphobia in Canadian Catholic Schools (Tonya D. Callaghan, 2018)

My start in activism was a challenge to the complete ban on “Gay-Straight Alliances” in Ottawa Catholic schools, which are government-funded and run. This problem wasn’t local; the ban was provincial. At the time, the Liberal government wasn’t willing to intervene, sending an awful message to students.

This book covers this and more.

⚧️🍁💿 My Name Was January (Elina Gress & Lenée Son, 2018)

The 2010’s saw a number of trans women murdered throughout Canada; almost always Black or Brown sex workers. Among them was January Lapuz (1986-2012).

The documentary can be seen here.

🍁💿 The Fruit Machine (Sarah Fodey, 2018)

A documentary about the witch-hunt of gay people by the RCMP and Canadian military.

The documentary can be watched here.

⚧️ To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Jess T. Dugan, Vanessa Fabbre, 2018)

A book of portraits of elderly trans Americans.

⚧️ Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows (Edited by Christine Burns, 2018)

A crowd-funded book that offers a great account of trans activism in Britain from the 1960’s to the mid-2010s.

⚧️💿 What The Trans?! (Ashleigh Talbot & Michelle Snow, 2018-)

The two biggest exporters of transphobia to Canada in this period are the US and the UK. This podcast has a news segment that documents the events in the UK, from the virulently transphobic media ecosystem, to a government using its power to portray trans people as a threat and discriminating against them, to organizations acting on these manufacturered panics on gender diversity, to the flurry of anti-trans hate groups operating under the “sex-based rights” dog whistle.

The podcast can be listened to here.

⚧️🍁 Documenting Queer Canadian History (Alex Spence, 2019)

A 1850 page bibliography, mostly relating to sexual orientation but with a number of trans titles.

The full tome can be read here.

⚧️🍁 I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World (Kai Cheng Thom, 2019)

I’ve always loved the way that Kai Cheng Thom (born 1991) looks at the world. I have friends like that, where you after you discuss difficult issues with them, you go “oh yeah, that’s a kinder and more grounded way to look at this.”

In this collection of essays, everything is tackled from how neoliberalism is stealing trans liberation, to confronting a culture of enabling in the queer community, to complications of consent, to asking why are trans elders disappearing.

⚧️🍁 Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture (Edited by Amos Mac & Rocco Kayiatos, 2019)

Original Plumbing was a professionally done zine for transmascs. Very normative, but also a time capsule of 2009-2019.

One of my pals has their art featured in it.

⚧️💿 Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (Sam Feder, 2020)

While American, this documentary covers trans representation on film and television, which shaped the experiences of trans people in Canada. Much of it is not great.

This documentary is an essential piece of history.

If the negative representation depicted gets you down, watch Bilal Baig’s (born 1995) Sort Of.

⚧️🌐 DIY HRT Directory (2020-)

Given the intentional inaccessibility to gender affirming care rooted in regarding trans people as undesirable, trans people have long connected each other with ways to obtain what represents for some life-saving treatment. This had been done through word-of-mouth and zines.

Around 2020, the website diyhrt.wiki popped up in the spirit of this, initially under the name “DIY Trans Wiki”.

⚧️🍁 Kent Monkman: Life & Work (Shirley Madill, 2020)

Kent Monkman is an an interdisciplinary Cree visual artist, producing striking works that explores colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience, and critically plays with Western European and American art history. Gender is a recurring theme, including through his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.

This book delves into his life and work, and can be read here.

⚧️🍁 Others Of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories (Alex Bakker, Rainer Herrn, Michael Thomas Taylor, and Annette F. Timm, 2020)

A good overview of the current consensus for early trans history from a Western perspective, with plenty of images. I would recommend this over Transgender History, the latter which is more notable for its importance to the environment it was first published in.

More information about the book is found here.

⚧️🍁 Glimmerings: Trans Elders Tell Their Stories (Margot Wilson and Aaron Decor, 2019), TRANScestors: Navigating LGBTQ+ Aging, Illness, and End of Life Decisions – Vol I: Generations of Hope / Vol II: Generations of Change (Edited by Jude Patton & Margot Wilson, 2020)

So many non-fiction works related to trans people are oriented around coming out, transition care, discrimination, sharing a life story, or deconstructing something or other: it’s centered on youth and/or theory and/or meant for cis people to consume. Topics outside of this like dealing with aging get precious little attention.

If it wasn’t for the indy trans-run publisher owned by Margot Wilson in Victoria that put this work from her and Jude Patton (born 1940) out, it’s unlikely we’d see books like this for years if not decades.

⚧️⚜️ Reconnaitrans (Laurier The Fox, 2021)

The anecdotes from dozens of trans people on living with transphobia, in comic book form.

⚧️💿 The Anti-Trans Hate Machine (Imara Jones, 2021-)

By the third month in of 2023, over 400 anti-trans bills had been introduced in American legislature that year. They were using the state to purge trans people from society. The ugly rhetoric associated with these would make its way to Canadians, resulting in sporting bodies excluding trans women, drag story times being attacked, bomb threats to venues where we gather, targeting of trans students in schools, and trans people being hounded online with conspiratorial vitriol.

This podcast looks at the organized efforts to introduce such laws, which include hate groups providing already made bills for Republicans to introduce.

The podcast can be listened here.

For a recounting of legislative transphobia in the US from 2010 to present, I also recommend reading the article The Modern Electoral History of Transphobia.

⚧️🍁 Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis (Florence Ashley, 2022)

Up until it was banned in Ontario in 2015, the province funded a conversion therapy clinic for trans youth through CAMH. It would later give Zucker, who ran the clinic, half a million dollars in compensation for the closure.

This as far as I’m aware is the only book that partially documents what CAMH was doing, though trans survivors’ stories are available online.

⚧️⚜️💿 Comment la droite réactionnaire construit une “question trans” (XY Media, 2022)

A French-language documentary on how the reactionary right is constructing the “trans question”, and how these are being picked up in the media.

The documentary can be watched here.

⚧️🌐 Trans Legislation Tracker (2022-)

A website tracking bills to legislate trans people out of existence in the United-States, with over 550 bills introduced in 2023 alone. These bills have influenced similar policies in Canada.

A snapshot from the website in 2023 is here.

The website as it currently exists is here.

⚧️ ‘Are You OK?’: Portraits + Stories of Trans Youth Across America (Jesse Freidin, 2023)

A book of portraits and interviews with trans youth. While it speaks to the American legal situation, the transphobia expressed is pan-anglosphere.

The portraits can be seen here.

For a Canadian angle, consider Trans Youth Stories: An Intergenerational Dialogue after the “Trans Tipping Point” (Lindsay Herriot & Kate Fry, 2021) and Growing Up Trans: In Our Own Words (Edited by Lindsay Herriot and Kate Fry, 2021).

⚧️ The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (Avery Dame-Griff, 2023)

Most works looking at trans history don’t acknowledge the crucial role of the Internet and it’s precursors to connect and inform trans people, specifically English-speaking ones.

This book follows that evolution from BBS’, through to Usenet, LiveJournal, sites like Hudson’s FTM Guide, and later social media platforms like Tumblr and Tiktok.

⚧️🍁 A Short History of Trans Misogyny (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2024)

An essential follow-up to Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl. It’s a fresh look at trans history, starting with how colonial authorities used a quasi-trans panic to assert its sovereignty.

⚧️💿 I Saw The TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)

What Nevada did for trans literature, this did for movies. It’s an escape of the cis-led framing of trans lives.

⚧️🍁 Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects (Edited by David Evans Frantz, Christina Linden, Chris E. Vargas, 2024)

A museum of contemporary trans history, in book form. It is a one-of-a-kind gem.

Some People Cited

Here are some trans and gender diverse figures mentioned above. The “🍁” means that they lived in Canada at some point.

• Mary Frith (c. 1584-1659)
• François-Timoléon de Choisy (1644-1724)
• Mademoiselle Rosette (1678-1725)
• Charles-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-Andrée-Thimothée Éon (1728-1810)
• Thomas de Croismare (1779-1847)
• Christophe-Paulin de La Poix / Caroline de La Poix (1787-1848)
• 🍁 Dr. James Barry (c. 1789-1865)
• Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916)
• 🍁 Frank Blunt (born c. 1865)
• Jack Bee Garland (1869-1936)
• 🍁 Reginald Culton / Estelle Dare / Violet Dell / Violet Beacon (born c. 1874)
• Jennie June (born 1874)
• Toni Ebel (1881-1961)
• Lili Elbe (1882-1931)
• Karl M. Baer (1885-1956)
• Dr. Alan L. Hart (1890-1962)
• Dora Richter (1891-1933)
• Charlotte Charlaque (1892-1963)
• Claude Cahun (1894-1954)
• Gluck (1895-1978)
• Mark Weston (1905-1978)
• Michel-Marie Poulain (1906-1991)
• Arlette Leber (born 1912)
• Ewan Forbes (1912-1991)
• Zdeněk Koubek (1913-1986)
• Billy Tipton (1914-1989)
• Michael Dillon (1915-1962)
• Reed Erickson (1917-1992)
• Roberta Cowell (1918-2011)
• 🍁 Frances Marie Jefferson / Josephine Jefferson (born c. 1920-1923)
• 🍁 Stephanie Castle (1925-2017)
• Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989)
• Jan Morris (1926-2020)
• 🍁 Dianna Boileau (c. 1930-2014)
• Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy (1931-2006)
• April Ashley (1935-2021)
• Sandy Stone (born c. 1936)
• Aleshia Brevard (1937-2017)
• Mario Martino (1937-2011)
• Dr. Jeanne Hoff (1938-2023)
• Lynn Conway (born 1938)
• Wendy Carlos (born 1939)
• 🍁 barbara findlay (born 1940s)
• 🍁 Jackie Shane (1940-2019)
• Jude Patton (born 1940)
• 🍁 Inge Stephens (born 1940)
• Candy Darling (1944-1974)
• Holly Woodlawn (1946-2015)
• Jackie Curtis (1947-1985)
• Kate Bornstein (born 1948)
• Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014)
• Dallas Denny (born 1949)
• 🍁 Katherine Johnson (1949-2014)
• 🍁 Aiyyana Maracle (1950-2016)
• 🍁 Alexandra Highcrest (born 1950s)
• 🍁 Susan Gapka (born 1950s)
• 🍁 Aaron Devor (born 1951)
• Lou Sullivan (1951-1991)
• Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002)
• 🍁 Rupert Raj (born 1952)
• Riki Wilchins (born 1952)
• Caroline Cossey / Tula (born 1954)
• Pat Califa (born 1954)
• Melanie Anne Phillips (born 1956)
• Max Wolf Valerio (born 1957)
• 🍁 Michelle Deville (born 1958)
• 🍁 Vivian Namaste (born 1960s)
• Susan Stryker (born 1961)
• Henry S. Rubin (born 1966)
• Julia Serano (born 1967)
• 🍁 Ivan Coyote (born 1969)
• 🍁 Mirha-Soleil Ross (born 1969)
• 🍁 Michelle Dumaresq (born 1970)
• Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (born 1973)
• 🍁 Nina Arsenault (born 1974)
• 🍁 S. Bear Bergman (born 1974)
• Dean Spade (born 1977)
• 🍁 Alexandre Baril (born 1979)
• Jiz Lee (born 1980)
• 🍁 Rae Spoon (born 1981)
• Amos Mac (born 1981)
• 🍁 Vivek Shraya (born 1981)
• Tobi Hill-Meyer (born c. 1983)
• 🍁 Casey Plett (born 1987)
• Rebecca Sugar (born 1987)
• 🍁 Morgan M. Page (born 1987)
• Natalie Wynn (born 1988)
• 🍁 Sophie Labelle (born 1988)
• 🍁 Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (born 1990)
• 🍁 Markus Harwood-Jones (born 1991)
• 🍁 Kai Cheng Thom (born 1991)
• ND Stevenson (born 1991)
• 🍁 Bilal Baig (born 1995)

Further Reading

• A Gender Variance Who’s Who: Canadian (auto)biographies / Lists and Timelines / Main Page
• Digital Transgender Archives
• University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives
• The Arquives
• Trans Reads
• Transgender Media Portal
• Two-Spirit Archives
• YouTube: Chair in Transgender Studies
• Ottawa Trans Library Archives
• Ottawa Trans History
• Queer History Timeline
• Newfoundland and Labrador Queer Archive
• Mirha-Soleil Ross
• Morgan M. Page
• Xantha MacKay