Society & Culture

Transgender society and culture — essays, interviews and reporting on the transgender community and the world around it: how people live, gather, argue and make things.

This is the reading guide; the Society & Culture section page is the pillar it belongs to. For portrayal specifically, see Media & Representation.

Latest in this guide

Everything filed under this guide, newest first. New pieces appear here automatically as they publish.

What does this guide cover?

Community life rather than law or portrayal.

Gatherings and conferences, the institutions people build and sustain, arguments inside the community as well as about it, and the ordinary business of living somewhere as a transgender person. Where a piece is primarily about a court ruling it belongs in politics; where it is primarily about a film it belongs in media. This guide holds the rest.

Why treat community disagreement as part of the subject?

Because a community that is only ever described from outside gets flattened.

Coverage of transgender life tends to arrive from one of two directions — sympathy or hostility — and both smooth over the fact that people inside any community disagree with each other, sometimes sharply, about language, strategy and priorities. Recording that honestly is more useful than presenting a united front that does not exist.