The Transfeminine Review

One down, four to go! This is the second of five shortlists I’m publishing today for the 2024 TFR Reader’s Choice Awards, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be recognizing five fantastic nonfiction entries published over the last year.

Voting won’t close until 11:59pm EST on December 27th, so you’ve still got plenty of time to add your voice to the conversation.

Books will be ordered alphabetically by author’s last name in order to reduce bias to the greatest extent possible. I will be including only information found in publicly available marketing and publishing materials. Remember that every book on this list was nominated by the readers, and you can still vote for any book! If you want to see one of these books win the award, or think that a text not listed here deserves recognition, then make sure to vote in the link at the bottom of the article ❤

Without further ado, here are the five contenders for the Best Transfeminine Nonfiction of 2024 award!

1. The Shortlist
   1. “The Third Sex” – Talia Bhatt
   2. Feminism Against Cisness – ed. Emma Heaney
   3. Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema – Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay
   4. A Brief History of Transmisogyny – Jules Gill-Peterson
   5. When Monsters Speak: a Susan Stryker Reader – Susan Stryker, ed. McKenzie Wark

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The Shortlist

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“The Gender Binary” is a misnomer; gender has always been a hierarchy.

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The contributors to Feminism against Cisness showcase the future of feminist historical, theoretical, and political thought freed from the conceptual strictures of the fallacy that assigned sex determines sexed experience. The essays demonstrate that this fallacy hinges on the enforcement of white and bourgeois standards of gender comportment that naturalize brutalizing race and class hierarchies. It is, therefore, no accident that the social processes making cisness compulsory are also implicated in antiblackness, misogyny, indigenous erasure, xenophobia, and bourgeois antipathy for working-class life. Working from trans historical archives and materialist trans feminist theories, this volume demonstrates the violent work that cis ideology has done and thinks toward a future for feminism beyond its counter-revolutionary pull.

Contributors. Cameron Awkward-Rich, Marquis Bey, Kay Gabriel, Jules Gill-Peterson, Emma Heaney, Margaux L. Kristjansson, Greta LaFleur, Grace Lavery, Durba Mitra, Beans Velocci, Joanna Wuest

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A radical history of transness in cinema, and an exploration of the political possibilities of its future.

In the history of cinema, trans people are usually murdered, made into a joke, or viewed as threats to the normal order — relegated to a lost highway of corpses, fools, and monsters.

In this book, trans film critics Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay take the reader on a drive down this lost highway, exploring the way that trans people and transness have evolved on-screen. Starting from the very earliest representations of transness in silent film, through to the multiplex-conquering Matrix franchise and on to the emergence of a true trans-authored cinema, Corpses, Fools and Monsters spans everything from musicals to body horror to avant garde experimental film to tell the story of the trans film image. In doing so, the authors investigate the wider history of trans representation — an exhilarating journey of compromise, recuperation, and potential liberation that they argue is only just the beginning.

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There is no shortage of voices demanding everyone pay attention to the violence trans women suffer. But one frighteningly basic question seems never to be answered: why does it happen? If men are not inherently evil and trans women do not intrinsically invite reprisal—which would make violence unstoppable—then the psychology of that violence had to arise at a certain place and time. The trans panic had to be invented.

Award-winning historian Jules Gill-Peterson takes us from the bustling port cities of New York and New Orleans to the streets of London and Paris in search of the emergence of modern trans misogyny. She connects the colonial and military districts of the British Raj, the Philippines, and Hawai’i to the lively travesti communities of Latin America, where state violence has stamped a trans label on vastly different ways of life. Weaving together the stories of historical figures in a richly detailed narrative, the book shows how trans femininity emerged under colonial governments, the sex work industry, the policing of urban public spaces, and the area between the formal and informal economy.

A Short History of Trans Misogyny is the first book to explain why trans women are burdened by such a weight of injustice and hatred.

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Susan Stryker is a foundational figure in trans studies. When Monsters Speak showcases the development of Stryker’s writing from the 1990s to the present. It combines canonical pieces, such as “My Words to Victor Frankenstein,” with her hard to find earlier work published in zines and newsletters. Brought together, they ground Stryker’s thought in 1990s San Francisco and its innovative queer, trans, and S/M cultures. The volume includes an introduction by editor McKenzie Wark, who highlights Stryker’s connections to developments in queer theory, media studies, and autotheory while foregrounding Stryker’s innovative writing style and scholarly methods. When Monsters Speak is an authoritative and essential collection by one of the most important and influential intellectuals of our time.

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And that’s the shortlist! Voting will remain open until December 27th at 11:59 EST – there are thirty-four categories, so plenty of room to recognize the best transfeminine literature of the year beyond the non-fictional. Remember that you can vote for any book, not just the ones listed here. Voting link:

If you missed the poetry shortlist, you can check it out here. I’ll be back in a bit with the Author of the Year shortlist :)))