Self-Organizing Men
How Does Your Masculinity Work?
Self-Organizing Men explores that much-written about, highly politicized, rarely understood phenomenon known as "man." A kickass anthology of transgender poetry, transgender photography, trans cartoons...transgender prints and lithographs. Imagine. Included you will also find new trans and feminist theories about masculinity, transgender stories, some transgender performance art and a highfemme drag king musing. Oh, and two bio dudes round out the contributions.
But don't take my word for it, read my introduction for free. For more free stuff, read bio dude Tim'm T. West, listen and read Eli Clare and Nick Kiddle .
I've been reading it every night for the past week. And I can't put it down. I told S. (as ridiculous as this may sound) that I feel like carrying it around and hugging it because for the first time in a very long time, it makes me feel less alone in the world. I feel company. It has been, in short, a very emotional and powerful experience for me to read, especially in this current moment of my life.
The book made my truly feel a sense that mine and S.'s experience as a couple is actually not so uncommon. The past nine months have basically turned my world around in really beautiful and difficult ways, and the depth of my own experience with S.'s transition has been something I haven't been able to share with many people who really *get* it. It has changed my own sense of self, my own representation, and my identity as a queer person in the world. All of which has simultaneously made me feel more grounded in myself, and very isolated from my friends and peers.
Yes, people have been incredibly supportive of both of us. But folks don't really connect to the nuances of the experience. I realize that the day-to-day things that others might not think are such a big deal can become the MOST significant parts of any given day in my own life, as a queer person, as a person of color, as a woman, as the partner of a trans man, (and all my other identities and their intersections and all that stuff...) In reading the writings of the people who contributed to your book, many of those nuances became centralized and validated. Even though it's not a book specifically about the experiences of "partners of trans people," it IS largely about my experience, and has facilitated helpful ways for me to think about myself. And it is most de finitely the most important book I've read in a very long time. A reader from Ann Arbor, Michigan