Books of the vreer
My Inspiration sources:
Gender Studies Literature
- Donna Haraway: Simians, Cyborgs & Women;
Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium : FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse
The first is very interesting literature for vreers. It contains among other
chapters the famous "[A] cyborg manifesto". A must read for politically interested
transgenders. The second (Modest witness) is even deeper. It's about cultural science
about genetic engineering, a grammar of feminism and technoscience.
(and it 's also about vampires :-)
- Judith Butler: Gender Trouble; Bodies that Matter
About gender and performance. Richly misunderstood. Butler says all gender
is performance, and we learn how to perform those continously repeated patterns by
imitating until it really has become our own way of moving, of thinking of living. It 's
something very deeply hidden in us. How deep and how to honour your maybe abject body
is the subject of this difficult but beautiful book.
- Judith Butler: Genderturbulentie;
A dutch only book with some crucial texts from Butler's gender books: first chapter of Gender Trouble, introduction and first chapter of Bodies that Matter and chapter 5 from The psychic life of power
- Sandy Stone:
The Empire strikes back,
Violation and Virtuality;
What Vampires know;
These three are interesting stuff. "Empire" is a virulent comment on Janice Raymond's vicious book "The Transsexual Empire". "Violation" is more about virtual worlds and what it does to people [it gets you really connected :-)] And number thre
e is quite interesting also. In her book "The war of technology and Desire at the Close of the Mechanical Age" Stone uses these stories in a more comprehensive work.
- Kate Bornstein: Gender outlaw;
My Gender Workbook
S/he's growing famous this performer and author. She started hir own project on
deconstructing being strictly gendered. If you get a chance: see hir, hear hir, read hir.
You want to change your gender, but not your sex? Read the Gender workbook. What Judith Butler
has done on the theoretical level Bornstein teaches us to do. Here you can take the test yourself.
- Leslie Feinberg: Transgender Warriors;TransLiberation
Transgender Warriors is the book on all of us queerly gendered people in history. You may not agree with hir opinions, hir descriptions are quite accurate. "TransLiberation" is hir latest book. A collection of talks on transgender issu
es s/he has held at several ocasions. Alas Les is not very responsive to e-mail you send to hir.
- Tim de Jong: Man of vrouw: min of meer : gesprekken over een niet-gangbare sekse ("Man or woman, more or less : conversations about an infrequent sex
)
>
The book is written in dutch, it's about the dutch scene but the stories are
internationally recognizable. By means of interviews the author tries to depict how some 20
dutch transgendered people have lived their lives unto now. Featuring both the s/hes theirselves
and scientists and a therapist.