Student Curation Project: Let Them Speak - Platforming Transgender Voices

This summer we are delighted to have two Student Curators working with us in the Library. You can read the first post in this series here, from Ania Kaczynska. Below is today's post from Tilly Edney Harrison: Tilly is working on building a collection to help platform transgender voices.

Photo: Stop Killing My Trans Siblings by Alisdare Hickson. Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

Meet the Student Curator:

Hi, I’m Tilly! I’m a second-year English Literature student from London, and I’m nonbinary. I am passionate about the authorial presence and representation of transgender people in popular literature, film, and art, and aim to encourage greater curiosity, understanding and acceptance within the university community. During my study at the University of York I have felt the freedom to experiment with, and explore, my gender identity. Amongst other vital facilities, such as societies and socials, materials available through the University Library have been a crucial element of that. I hope to highlight these innumerable resources, accessible through the University Library and its archives, and encourage not just my fellow trans/genderqueer peers, but also the wider community, to throw themselves into the diverse narrative worlds of transgender authors. Amid recent upsurge in transphobic political rhetoric, legislation, the inaccessibility of health care, and increasing hate crimes - prompting the university community to uproot intolerant, societally dominant assumptions is imperative. Platforming the voices of transgender creators is essential to achieving this.

What are Transgender Narratives?

The Stonewall Organisation defines “trans” as an “umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth.” My project shall embrace this non-restrictive definition, including works by authors who queer the dominant conceptualisation of gender in endlessly different and unique ways. This curation shall highlight the voices of those who transverse and transcend binarizing Western gender norms.

The transgender community has historically been silenced. Often violently. Their voices have been subverted into stereotyped narratives that conform to (and bolster) the dominant, hegemonic Western gender binary. The life story of Lili Elbe in Man Into Woman (1933) and The Danish Girl (2015), for example, was mainly constructed through the voice of author/editor Niels Hoyer and publicist Paul Weber, and portrayed by cis actor Eddie Redmayne and director Tom Hooper. How then, might transgender people reclaim their voice, and begin to tell their own stories? These are the questions Sandy Stone asked in her foundational 1987 essay The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto. Progress has certainly been made since then; transgender authors and publishing houses have emerged and flourished. However, there is still work to be done.

Why Read Transgender Narratives?

As a literature student, I know that stories are undeniably a force to reckon with. They permeate our everyday lives and are deeply enmeshed within our societal consciousness, in ways that we may not even be aware of (in our own subjectivities, news articles and recipes, for example). I believe that literature is not just a source of artistic beauty, it is also an integral tool for the exploration of the human experience. I remember reading Orlando (1928) at school, realising possibilities previously unimagined, and seeing feelings that I had previously been unable to shape into words represented. My understanding of gender was transformed when I read Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) for the first time in college and began to question the societal conceptions I had previously credulously accepted. I remember watching Ruby Rose’s short film Break Free in 2014 and feeling an overwhelming sense of validation.

Narratives – told through films, paintings, plays, comic books, and many other forms - shape not only the way we see the world around us, but also how we see ourselves. This is why literature plays such a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the complex issue of gender identity: as a platform for representation, an environment for exploration, and a window into diverse experiences and perspectives.

Over the course of my internship, I’ll be curating a list of widely varying materials, available from the University library, that exemplify the importance of narratives and artistic creation in the consideration of gender identity. Each book, movie and art piece might nurture a sense of validation, help to foster empathy and tolerance, serve as an educational tool, encourage deconstructive possibilities, be a safe space for self-reflection and exploration, and inspire critical thought.

Why Now?

Platforming transgender voices in our university community is particularly crucial amid a contemporary hike in trans-hate in the UK. Frequently labelled a “culture war”, an element of “identity politics”, there has been an undeniable increase in anti-trans rhetoric and proposed legislation in UK politics within recent years. Organisations such as The Trans Rights Index and Transgender Europe (TGEU) have stated that the UK is going ‘backwards’ on transgender rights, as transphobia has seemingly infiltrated the government’s agenda. They cite incidents such as the Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, proposal (in April, this year) to alter the 2010 Equality Act to change the legal definition of ‘sex’, stripping trans people of many of many rights and protections, a proposal that was supported by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. The use of Section 35 to block Scotland’s new Gender Recognition Legislation (this January) sparked protests from trans people and their allies around the United Kingdom. And recently, leaked video footage of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak mocking transgender women at a Conservative committee meeting, on June 5th, displays the government’s willingness to deride and dehumanise transgender people.

Healthcare is also an area of strife for transgender people in the UK – The London Assembly Health Committee found in 2022 that 70% of trans people had experienced transphobia from their primary care provider, and 14% were refused GP care. Gender affirming healthcare is extremely difficult to access through the NHS – a process plagued with invasive questions, and seemingly endless waitlists – forcing some transgender people to immigrate in order to receive life-saving medical attention.

This political rhetoric and medical inaccessibility has an undeniable impact upon the lives of trans people in the UK. Transphobic media narratives, political hostility and widespread ignorance translates into violence against the trans community, as evidenced by a rocketing in hate crimes targeting transgender people – there was an increase of 56% from 2021-2022 (according to The Independent). Tragically, this February, one such hate crime resulted in the murder of sixteen-year-old transgender girl Brianna Ghey in Cheshire. UK media outlets, such as The Times, Sky News and even the BBC were criticised for their transphobic coverage of Ghey’s death (deadnaming and misgendering her). Additionally, due to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 that prevents minors from acquiring gender recognition certificates, Ghey’s death certificate will likely misgender her - a failing that has been described as a final insult from the English government.

This is why diversifying the library is crucial. My curation aims to educate, and shine a light of validation upon, the University community amid misinformation and derision.

An Endless Curation:

Undeniably, my curation shall be far from exhaustive. It shall be unavoidably informed by its privileged frame of reference and Western context. However, I shall attempt to provide an introduction to the manifold creations of transgender authors, reflecting the unending diversity of transgender experience and oeuvre.

This curation shall strive to engage with the complications of intersectionality, exploring how issues of gender intersect and interact with other aspects of identity (such as ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability, and age), by platforming authors who give voice to these interconnected identities. My curation shall attempt to represent cultural variations in conceptualisations of gender, and the Colonial and Orientalist implications of the imposition of Western gender constructs. It shall strive to generate questions of subjectivity and fluidity, deconstructing privileged notions of stability. Addressing the question of historical contexts, this curation shall explore intriguing antecedent sociocultural understandings of gender and queerness, and the benefits of ‘queer affect’ - seeing one’s queerness in ancient texts - without imposing definitive modern labels and conceptualisations upon historic subjects.

The imaginative and deconstructive potentialities that abound from transgender voices (especially those engaging with Queer Theory) mean that many of these works shall defy genre, form and convention. They shall call into question preconceived notions of, not only gender and sex, but also race, misogyny, nationality, embodiment, and authorship.

Therefore, despite its limitations, I hope that this collection shall go a short way towards highlighting the marginalised narratives of gender queer people, perhaps introducing you to texts that you haven’t previously heard of and encouraging readers to make a deliberate and continual effort to engage with transgender voices.