How to Do Effective Gender Communication
Gender Education and Advocacy is a new national non-profit organization with twin missions of education and nonpolitical advocacy in the areas of health and media. By focusing on these areas, GEA seeks to improve the lives of all gender-variant people, regardless of their sexual orientation or individual identities.
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Gender Education Training for the New Millennium (2001)
As a movement, the time has come for us to prioritize our public gender education efforts in order to remove this stigmatization and restore our basic human dignity.
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The Third Sex (1995)
In her view, Denny said, transsexuality was just one more manifestation of the human urge to transform the body.
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Who’s Who in the Transgendered Community (1993)
JoAnn Roberts′ Who’s Who in the Transgendered Community (note the now antiquated ed word ending) was an admirable attempt to list notable persons and resources in the transgender community.
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On the Future of the Transgender Community (1998)
Considering the profound nature of the change I expected, I thought it expedient to begin with a look at the transgender community as it existed at the time I began writing and end with speculation about the community’s future.
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The Case Against Camping (2008)
Rebecca took great offense at the illustrations and turned her venom on me. She threatened to sue me. Telling her I did not select the images made no impression on her, nor did she seem to understand just what an editorial is. I eventually told her to go f**k herself. It made for a most interesting comments section.
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In the Beginning: How My Photos of 1950s Crossdressers Inspired a Hit Show on Broadway (2014)
In 2013 Andrea was visiting our own Miqqi Gilbert at Miqqi’ s home in Toronto and Miqqi showed her Hurst and Swope’s book. Andrea immediately realized she had taken and developed most of the photos in the book.
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Creating Community: A History of Early Transgender Support in Atlanta (2015)
In which I provide an illustrated and incomplete history of transpeople in Atlanta, ending around 1994.
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Being Virtually Virtual (2011)
Letting people into our real lives can be dangerous. Even if the window into our lives is a narrow one, we must be concerned with issues of privacy, safety, and security.
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Dangerous Curves: The Trouble with Injectable Silicone (2014)
Today silicone injections are occurring in epidemic proportions. Typically, large amounts (liters, sometimes) are administered by non-licensed and usually non-medically trained “practitioners” who use big-bore needles to pump large quantities of non-medical grade silicone into virtually every part of the body.
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All We Were Allowed to Write (2014)
Before 1994 or so, transpeople were excluded from our own literature. We authored no textbooks and had no book chapters or articles in professional journals. What we could get published, at least from the 1950s onward through 1990 or so, were autobiographies.
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Gender Reassignment Surgeries in the XXth Century (2015)
The techniques used in modern plastic surgery—including GRS—were developed almost exclusively by this man, who is considered the father of plastic surgery. His name was Harold Gillies.
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Dismantling the Gender Binary (2015)
This are the notes for my keynote delivered at Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law, Farmington, CT, 25 April, 2015
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My Self-Nomination for the 2015 Trans 100 List
This year I nominated myself for the 2015 Trans 100 list.
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All We Were Allowed to Write (2014)
There are hundreds and hundreds of trans bios. In this presentation I describe and discuss some of them.
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Dining With the Privileged (2014)
How is it that those who dine most lavishly manage to pay less than they ought?
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Fantasia Fair 2013: The Movie
I appear briefly in this promo for the trans conference Fantasia Fair.
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Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (2014)
Jamison Green and I prepared a 30,000-word chapter on trans representations in the media. As things sometimes go in the book publishing business, it morphed into a series of media spotlights. Anyone interested in a great chapter on trans people in the media?
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The Language of Gender Variance (2014)
In 1998 Jamison Green, Jason Cromwell, and I distributed a questionnaire asking transgendered and transsexual people their reactions to selected terms and asking them what they did and did not wish to be called. One hundred thirty-seven questionnaires were returned, of which 134 were usable responses. We also conducted focus groups in September and October 2001 at the Southern Comfort and Fantasia Fair conferences to discuss our project and ask what message(s) about language usage participants would like professionals to hear. Ten years later we again distributed the survey and received 2651 responses. In our paper, we present our findings.
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The Language of Gender Variance (2001)
This paper presents data from a national survey of attitudes of transpeople about various and assorted terms which had been used to describe them. The survey was done in 1998. Ten years later we again surveyed transpeople about their preference for terminology. The resulting paper is now under review for consideration for publication in the International Journal of Transgenderism.
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Interview for Monika Kowalska, The Heroines of My Life (2014)
Polish transwoman Monika Kowalska publishes a brilliant blog in which she prints interview of people she admires. She’s been at it since January, 2013 and has interviewed more than 100 trans women. I’m happy to be one of them!
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Trans Pioneers to Lead University of Victoria Symposium (2014)
Dallas Denny is one of four pioneers of the trans rights movement featured at Moving Trans History Forward, a three-day symposium starting today at the University of Victoria.
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Preserving Trans History: A Short History and Suggestions for the Future (2014)
Clearly the mere establishment of a trans archive at the University of Michigan has resulted in donations in the form of money and materials—and clearly the university itself is proud of the collection and is motivated to grow it. And clearly, the collection has grown since 2000.
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Interview for University of Missouri Maneater (2013)
This is an audio recording of an interview I gave to reporter Elizabeth Loutfi of the school paper Maneater following my keynote during Trans Awareness Week at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
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Not Screwed Up Enough (2013)
I was honored to be asked by The Triangle Coalition to present this keynote. I was treated like royalty while at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
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InsideOUT Radio 11/13/2013
On 13 November, 2013, I was a guest on the University of Missouri radio show InsideOut.
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The Campaigns Against Transsexuals: Part I (2013)
Today I’m talking about a remarkable—and successful—plot to end sex reassignment in the United States. Yes, right here in River City! The year was 1979.
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Transgender Communities in the United States in the Late Twentieth Century (2006)
What were the historical roots of this larger transgender community, and how did it so quickly arise and so quickly grow? What kept these communities apart for so many years, and what eventually brought them together?
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First Contact: Transgender Community Educational Efforts in the Late Twentieth Century (Keynote, 2009)
Why is trans education important? Well, ask yourself if there was ever a time in your life when you badly needed information about who you were, what you could do about it, who you could be, and how you could plan your life. If you’re like me, you were at one time or another, and maybe even for half your life, desperate for such information.
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Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (1998)
Current Concepts is an edited textbook; I was privileged to be the editor. The text consists of emerging ideas about trans* issues authored by physicians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and advocates, many with decades of experience in the field. The work is in part an homage to Richard Green and John Money’s 1969 edited text Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, which established early treatment protocols. Both Green and Money contributed chapters to Current Concepts. Of Current Concepts, Of just how much things have changed, Green wrote in his chapter, “I am struck at the outset that the biggest change with this new text may be that it is edited by a transsexual.”
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Black Telephones, White Refrigerators: Rethinking Christine Jorgensen (1998)
If she changed the world for nontranssexual people, Jorgensen had an even more profound effect on people who were like her. Her story galvanized many transsexual men and women into seeking the same sort of medical treatment. In 1953, Christine Hamburger published a paper in which he described receiving 465 letters from men and women, desperately begging for a “sex change.” Neither he, nor anyone else, was prepared to oblige them.
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Gender Variability, Transsexuals, Crossdressers, and Others (2007)
This draft differs in small way from the printed version. I was unable to scan the printed pages without breaking the book’s spine. The chapter appears here courtesy of Praeger Publishers.
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Coming of Age in the Land of Two Genders (1997)
I was honored to be asked to make a contribution to this book of autobiographies of famous sexologists.
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Terminology, Gender Diversity, and the Primacy of Gender (2000)
I’m grateful to Dr. Sandra Cole for allowing me to be second author of this chapter.
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Gender Identity: From Dualism to Diversity (2007)
This draft differs in small ways from the printed version. I was unable to scan the printed pages without breaking the book’s spine. The chapter appears here courtesy of Praeger Publishers.
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Discovering Who You Are (1991)
Much has changed since I wrote this series of booklets in the early 1990’s. Not only have I become older and hopefully wiser, but there has been a revolution in the way gender identity issues are viewed. The term “gender dysphoria,” with its implication of mental illness, does not accurately describe the transgender process for all of us, and for most of us, we are only dysphoric for a relatively short time.
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Deciding What to Do About Your Gender Dysphoria (1991)
Much has changed since I wrote this series of booklets in the early 1990’s. Not only have I become older and hopefully wiser, but there has been a revolution in the way gender identity issues are viewed. The term “gender dysphoria,” with its implication of mental illness, does not accurately describe the transgender process for all of us, and for most of us, we are only dysphoric for a relatively short time.
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Dealing With Your Feelings (1991)
This was the first of a series of booklets I wrote while executive director of nonprofit American Educational Gender Information service.
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A Word from the Editor (Chrysalis, 1991-1998)
Here are the Word From the Editor/Publisher columns from the various issues of Chrysalis.
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The Shark in the Swimming Pool (1993)
Confronted, Willis claimed the increasing tensions within the group were the fault of the various group members, and certainly not his. He was insistent he was not the problem.
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My Three Transitions (1996)
Ten years earlier, at age 18, the answer to the question “Will I someday pass?” would have been an unequivocal yes. Ten years in the future, at age 38, the answer would have been an unequivocal no. Looking at my thinning hair and hardening features, the best answer I could come up with was an unequivocal maybe.
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In Search of the “True” Transsexual (1996)
In dealing with my own transsexualism. and in working with hundreds of other transsexual people, it has become clear to me that transsexualism, as conceptualized by Benjamin, is an invented way of looking at a much larger transgender phenomenon, and that the process of sex reassignment is but one way of dealing with that phenomenon.
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Ariadne Kane Interviews Dallas Denny (2005)
I chanced across this video, which was made by LipTV in 2005. I had had no idea it was available online. In it, I talk with Ariadne Kane about Fantasia Fair and a little about myself.
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Prodigal Son (1994)
My feelings about the rejection have ranged from bewilderment to sorrow to anger, but the overriding emotion, the one which came first and which has lasted longest, is disappointment. It reinforces my belief that my family was just an assortment of people I drew by chance, like one draws a roommate in a college dorm. My family is made up of imperfect human beings, unable to love unconditionally, unable to rise to a challenge, unable to communicate. I’m sad for them, for I gave them a wonderful challenge, and they have failed to rise to it.
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An Interview with Anne Bolin (1993)
Is the feminist movement a threat? You’d better believe it. It’s a big threat. When my male students get concerned in my classes on gender and sex, I tell them. “You bet it’s a threat. It’s going to change everything.” But what do you get from it? You get partnerships in life. You’re both on equal footing. You can work it out with your partner according to your different likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.
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