JRB recommends…

From the zine’s site: “Made for gender, by gender, and focused on gender, the Orange Octopus gender zine is a collaborative creative publication that celebrates the diversity of gender and gender expression with a creative, positive and pro-active outlook.” I have a copy, and it’s awesome! There are personal stories, poems, artwork and a comic, all clearly made with love and care. I read through it in one go and was left with abundant warm fuzzies for my fellow humans.

» Recommend something. «

Ben Lenoir recommends…

Many people have a common misconception of how femininity and masculinity are linked to sexuality. Just because I may be homosexual does not mean that I fit the media’s mass marketed version of the gay male. We all face these misconceptions and I think they need to be put to rest. I speak about this through the language that comes most natural to me, art.

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Adelai recommends…

Already well known in GLBTQ circles for writing The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O’Brien has admitted to feeling like he’s trans or third-gendered. “There is a continuum between male and female. Some are hard-wired one way or another, I’m in between. Or a third sex, I could see myself as quite easily.”

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Charlie recommends…

A kick-ass queer who knows what it’s all about.

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Woolfist recommends…

It’s an amazing film that portrays the idiocy of a society that celebrates the birth of boys but loathes the birth of girls.

The action takes place at the end of the 19th century in a village near the Adriatic sea. One family, ‘doomed’ with all female children, decides to raise one of the girls as a boy. Towards the end, the film reveals some interesting facts about the life in this village.

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Andi recommends…

L.P. has an amazing androgynous style and casual humor which will charm anyone. But more important than any gender presentation or sexuality she has a voice that will chill you to the bone and make you jump to your feet. Every song is incredibly powerful and you couldn’t ask for anything better.

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A reader recommends…

Antony Hegarty is the transgendered singer and musician in band Antony and the Johnsons. They’ve made a few marvellous albums. He has a divinely mournful voice. And i simply love the way this article describes him… “voluptuous not tough” … “Today i am a boy” … “I am a bird now” … there’s this very refreshingly gentle, poetic, unassuming way of talking about gender/and or/identity.

To quote said article:

“Antony Hegarty is an embodied paradox. Imagine a looming rugger thug who defines his physique as voluptuous, not tough, and behaves like a shy adolescent of indeterminate sex. Is he a futuristic being whose home is not on this earth or a throwback from some other time? Lou Reed, one of his earliest supporters, said: “When I heard him, I knew that I was in the presence of an angel…” And how, if we respect the binary logic of human biology, do we classify the idiosyncratic Antony? Even his own designation, transgender, hardly does justice to his mutability.”

GO ANTONY!

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A reader recommends…

This is a neat set of pairs of photos where the two outfits in the picture stay the same, but the people wearing the outfits change.

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A reader recommends…

Everybody likes musicals, everybody likes laughing, everybody likes Harry Potter.
I think genderfork is also probably especially theatre-inclined, and some of the roles are deliciously genderbending.

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Ariel Silvera recommends…

In their early days, the Manics, a welsh alt.rock band, played a lot with androgyny and a critique of oppressive masculinity. In a rock world that was, and still is, heterosexist and binary, the Manics messed around with suggestive videos that show some of them fooling around with each other while wearing gas masks and beautifully applied, heavy make-up. And hey, the lyrics aren’t bad either, about the alienation of all people under capitalism and how that tears us apart from each other.

Some other good songs/videos from that era: Stay Beautiful, Little Baby Nothing, You Love Us.

» Recommend something. «

Luz recommends…

When gender boundaries were being busted down, and androgyny was rampant and acceptable. Conversely there is also an ad for the first male operator who resembles ashton kutcher.

at&t wants girls that can climb and boys that can talk on the phone for hours

» Recommend something. «

Sally Sapphire recommends…

This is actually my event, so I’m a bit biased, but I’m hosting what I think is a really interesting, positive even – a Gender Identity & Expression Reading Challenge. My goal is two-fold: to get those of us in the community talking about books that speak to us and which we identify with (which is the fun and fabulous part); and to encourage those outside the community to take a chance, read something new, and hopefully develop a little more awareness and some understanding of the community (which is the educational part).

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Kat recommends…

John Skillpa, a quiet bank clerk living in tiny Peacock, Nebraska, prefers to live an invisible life. This might have to do with John’s secret: he has another personality no one knows about, a woman who each morning does his chores and cooks him breakfast before he starts his day. Then, in a moment, everything changes…

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A reader recommends…

A short but well-written first person photo essay about being transgendered/androgynous.

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A reader recommends…

Logo, the GLBTcable channel has a dating series called: Can’t Get a Date. They had an episode about a femme who only wanted to date butches.

» Recommend something. «

Cat recommends…

The Magnetic Fields have been around for 20 years now. They have released nine albums (including the epic three-disc 69 Love Songs) and they’re also responsible some of the very subversive songs in terms of gender and sexuality issues. Their first two albums, in particular, bundled on the Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees compilation, are especially striking and ahead of their time nearly two decades since their release, including songs dealing with such matters as fanciful as bisexual werewolves or as serious as having a relationship with an FTM in a trans-hostile world. While Stephin Merritt, the band’s songwriter, is a cissexual gay man and often sings from what is presumably his own experience, he very convincingly writes through others’ perspectives, and confounds gender in his choice of singers.

The 69 Love Songs album also is fantastically diverse in its array of gender and sexuality perspectives and the frequent “mismatch” between the two. Anyone who’s a gender outlaw and likes literate, witty indie pop ought to give them a listen.

» Recommend something. «

A recommends…

Baby X is a story of a child raised as an experiment. X is raised just named X, and X’s physical sex is kept a very tight secret. Nobody other than the parents know, and they are sworn to exclusive secrecy, telling everybody who asks that X is neither a boy or a girl: just an X. The story follows Baby X as it grows up without any pressure towards either male or female, encouraged strongly in both areas. X thrives in school, but soon complications arise. It’s a very sweet story with a very, VERY good message.

» Recommend something. «

A reader recommends…

You gorgeous people who read gender fork seem like the sort of awesome crowd who will already know about this, but hey, if you haven’t – you’ve missed out!

The Gossips msuic video for “Listen Up” Features a transgirl and a transman getting tashed, perfumed, binded, and dressed up for a night out. And then Dancing. It’s cute, and to the funky infectious sound of The Gossip. It’ll have you dancing in your bedroom before you know it.

“OOooohoohoohh – on the playground, we learn so much!”

» Recommend something. «

Campbellx recommends…

Hi there
BD Women Black lesbian lives and history. It was shown on Channel 4 TV in the UK and won is in the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

Really like the warmth and openness of this site.

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A reader recommends…

Just in case you missed her in high school, check out this English singer-songwriter with amazing vocal talents. When she was 19 she won a national TV talent contest (in the U.K. that is). For a butch, out-lesbian in the early 2000s this was quite a statement.

» Recommend something. «