By far the craziest thing I have done in my life is creating and publishing these cartoons. I can’t draw. In real time I don’t think I’m funny. But as long-post, uber theoretical blogger, I suck some serious wind. So I decided that if I couldn’t say what I needed to say in a business-card sized cartoon, I had no business saying it.

"Better Branding Opportunities" Self-Organizing Men, pg. 11

The second craziest thing I have done in my life is change my gender.

Homofactus Press published its first book in September 2006, Self-Organizing Men to rave reviews. (Yes, this is shameless self-promotion on my part, since I edited the book.) In 2007, we published Eli Clare’s The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion, a collection of prose and poetry that spans a 15 year period and is organized not as a memoir but as an exploration of how bodies carry and translate histories and identities. In 2008 we published Scott Turner Schofield’s book Two Truths and a Lie and Cripple Poetics by Neil Marcus and Petra Kuppers. In 2009 we published Visible: A Femmethology, the only 2-volume book dedicated to femme identity. 2010 brought the long-awaited release of Kicked Out. Currently we are seeking submissions for a SOFFA Anthology.

Thank you applying some of your irreplaceable life energy to this website.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron flying over water (wikipedia).

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare is a poet and essayist with a penchant for rabble rousing. He has, among other activist pursuits, walked across the United States for peace; coordinated a rape prevention program in Ann Arbor, Michigan and helped organize the first Queerness and Disability Conference in 2002. Additionally, he has spoken all over the country at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, LGBT identities, and other social justice issues. Eli is the author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (South End Press, 1999). More recent work can be found in GLQ: Desiring Disability Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies, From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond, and Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving. He lives in Vermont and works at the University of Vermont’s LGBTQA Services. When not otherwise occupied, you can find Eli having fun adventures with his sweetie, riding his trike, and hanging out with his dog.

Print by Eli J. VandenBerg

Aren Z. Aizura is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. He’s currently completing a Ph.D. on transness and travel and maintains a weblog at goingsomewhere.blogsome.com.

Have You Ever? by Eli J. VandenBerg

Nick writes about being trans male identified and pregnant and actively enjoying his female body.

Podcast of DJ Sam Halloway reading an excerpt of Nick Kiddle’s I Can’t Be Male

At the age of five Nick Kiddle wanted to be a missionary: I’m still trying to spread the truths I’ve learned. I studied physics at university because I was lucky enough to have the chance, but writing was always my first love. I’ve written six Sci-Fi novels, and I’m carving out the seventh page by page, whenever I have a break from the demands of single parenthood.

Jordy Jones (J.J.) What is a man?

Doran George (D.G.) Help!

I suppose the easiest way to answer this would be to say he is a highly contested phenomenon. I? like to say that what a man is depends entirely on self?dentity. Anyone who says, I am a man is one. Defining sex by individual choice would be the most democratic solution and, intuitively, would be the use of the term that would result in the greatest happiness.(pgs. 123-124)

Letterman, photography, (pg. 75)

Jordy Jones is a long-time San Francisco resident currently residing part-time in the California High Desert Arts Ghetto of Joshua Tree. He is a scholar, curator, multimedia artist, and community advocate. His work has included the investigation of issues of the human body and its relationship to economics, technology, culture, censorship, and the law. Jones has worked with cultural organizations as diverse as the San Francisco Art Institute; The GLBT Historical Society; The International Lesbian and Gay Association; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Intermedia Arts Minnesota; and The Guggenheim Soho, New York. He has served on the governing boards of The San Francisco Pride Celebration and Parade Committee, The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and The Lab. He is a past member of the LGBT Advisory Committee of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. As male chair of the San Francisco Transgender Civil Rights Implementation Task Force, he was key in implementing trans inclusion in the health benefits package for city employees and for furthering trainings for the police and sheriff’s departments. He has a B.A. in Conceptual and InformationArts, an M.A. in Museum Studies and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Visual Studies and Critical Theory at the University of California, Irvine, where he is a UC Chancellor’s Fellow. His dissertation, due for completion in 2008, is entitled The Ambiguous I: Photography, Gender, Self. According to Mark Leno, member of the California State Assembly representing District 13: “Jordy Jones is San Francisco’s Secret Weapon!”

Gaylourdes is a queer genderfucker fascinated with theories about bodies and music and ideas. Feelings. Gaylourdes is intense and models himself on his gay friends. He likes to speak in masculine terms because it’s easier being campy that way. You could call him a drag king but the performance is not wholly unreal. Surreal, more like. He’s a pansy with a passion for muscle marys: he has a weakness for kooky queer types who love books about drugs and dancing and performance. He loves a style of camp that is vivid in visceral terms; he wishes there were more camp lesbians, so that he didn’t have to rely so much on a specifically gay camp aesthetic to be understood. Then he wishes he didn’t have to say lesbians, because while that’s the heart-shaped box that he sprang from, he realises the ID tag isn’t really what he’s talking about. He wishes he could be in Manjam (a local male revue), he wants to perform and bring his masculinity to life, but he’s not a self-identifying male, and people would probably think he’s just performing anyway. He wants (dreams) to be lean and lizard-like, sinewy and wiry, 47 years old, smoking a rollie, and talking about dancers. (pgs 89-90)

Gaylourdes was once a secretly passionate pianist. He’s a student in Performance Studies and lives in Sydney, Australia. He can be contacted via his blog.

Jordy Jones (J.J.) What is a man?
Doran George (D.G.) Help!

I suppose the easiest way to answer this would be to say he is a highly contested phenomenon. I? like to say that what a man is depends entirely on self?dentity. Anyone who says, ? am a man is one. Defining sex by individual choice would be the most democratic solution and, intuitively, would be the use of the term that would result in the greatest happiness. (pgs. 123-124)

Doran George is an artist, dancer, writer, and curator. His “live art” work has been staged across Europe and the United States and has ranged from him being encased in brick for a working day to having a sexual relationship as an art practice. He has been supported by the London Arts Board; The Arts Council of England; The British Council; Chisenhale Dance Space; Arnolfini, Artsadmin; The Finnish Arts Council; The Arts Council of North Savo (Finland); Stichting Fonds De Trut (The Netherlands); and others. He has curated for ?he International Transgender Film Video Festival (U.K. and The Netherlands), ?ital Signs Festival (U.K.) (interfaces between disability politics and contemporary art), and Chisenhale Dance Space. He regularly contributes to symposia and is published in print and on the web in dance, film, and performance art journals and art publications. Doran has a B.A. in experimental dance and choreography and an M.A. in Feminist Performance. He teaches in universities in he United States, Britain, and Central Europe.

In order to move beyond lip service to difference amongst us, I suggest we instead seek out in-coherence, which is the productive failure to cohere as a self, as a gender, as a race, as a community. This sense of failure need not be dangerous. It can be one very important way of challenging assumptions that somehow we have enough in common to form a we to begin with. Before we can be posited, we must first seek after an elaboration of the ways that we as trans peoples are not only different from each other but, to echo Audre Lorde, are the very site of difference itself.Lorde’s imperative reminds us, especially white trans men, that instead of assuming that our political work is over once we arrive in our chosen genders, we rethink our relation to power. We must, instead, posit that our political work, as whatever kind of men we may find ourselves becoming, is only just beginning. (pgs. 149-150)

Eli J. VandenBerg’s prints are fantastic. One of them ended up on the cover of my book.

When Eli J. VandenBerg began transitioning, he also began creating self-portraits. Throughout his transition, he created and continues to create images of what his body looks like in the mirror and what it looks like in his mind. This series, like his body, is a work in progress. Eli received his B.F.A in Printmaking from Arcadia University and his M.F.A in Printmaking at Pratt Institute. He now works at The Print Center in Philadelphia. He has shown his work both nationally and internationally and was recently featured in the National Queer Arts Festival. His works have also appeared in several books and magazines. For more information about Eli and his work, visit Body in Progress.