Transgender Books & Film

When I was first transitioning one of the things that helped me most with coming to terms with my identity and navigating the world as a transgender person was reading books and watching film (especially documentaries) with transgender subjects. I put this list together so those new to transition (or their curious friends and allies) have a reference point in terms of trans media that is available.

This list is by no means complete - there are scores of movies with "trans" characters (often as marginalized sex workers), so I tried to stick with books and film that positively represented trans and gender variant folk rather than trying to compile a complete list of every book or film that happens to have a trans character.

If you have any suggestions for a title to add to this list, leave it in the comments below or e-mail me at charliewarhol@gmail.com

Books: 

Leslie Feinberg
Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman 
Transgender Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue 
Stone Butch Blues 

Kate Bornstein
Gender Outlaws: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us 
Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely
A Queer and Pleasant Danger, a memoir

Jenny Finney Boylan
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders 
I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: a Memoir

Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodiment among Transsexual Men, Henry Rubin

Emergence, Mario Martino

Body Alchemy, Loren Cameron

Becoming a Visible Man, Jamison Green

Transfigurations, Jana Marcus, Jamison Green [foreward]

Second Son: Transitioning Toward My Destiny, Love, and Life, Ryan Sallans

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man, Chaz Bono

Susan Stryker
Transgender History
Gay by the Bay
The Transgender Studies Reader 
GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary, Joan Nestle, Riki Wilchins, Clare Howell

The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transition from Female-to-Male, Max Wolf Valerio

Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, Matt Bernstein Sycamore (editor)

Morty Diamond [editor]:
From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond 
Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Julia Serano

Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities, Jason Cromwell

Just Add Hormones, Matt Kailey

Trumpet, Jackie Kay

Parrotfish, Ellen Wittlinger

Becoming Alec, Darwin Ward

Hung Jury

Film 

Documentary

Southern Comfort

Trained in the Ways of Men

Red without Blue

The Brandon Teena Story

Transgeneration

The Cockettes

Screaming Queens

Gendernauts

Enough Man

Sex Change Hospital

She's a Boy I Knew

No Dumb Questions

Prodigal Sons

Becoming Chaz

Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She

Fiction/Dramatizations 

Boys Don't Cry

Albert Nobbs

Soldier's Girl

The Crying Game

Trans America

By Hook or Crook

Ma vie en Rose

Hedwig & the Angry Inch

The Adventures of Sebastian Cole

SF & LA Transgender Film Festivals [film, events]

The 10th Anniversary of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival is happening November 3-5, 2011.


Find them on Facebook here and Twitter here.



If you're down in SoCal, the Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival will be held November 4-6 , 2011.



Find them on Facebook here.

Transgender Documentary: Enough Man [film]

Enough Man is a documentary by filmmaker Luke Woodward which explores sex, sexuality, body image, and relationships from the perspective of nine FTM transmen. It has been both criticized and praised for its implicit depictions of sex and has often been referred to as the intersection of documentary and pornography. It screened at Frameline International LGBT Film Festival in San Francisco in 2005.

Luke's second film, Tour De Pants, screened at Frameline 33.

The Frameline Film Festival is the largest and longest-running LGBT film event in the world. Frameline 35 will be held June 16-26th this year; many programs are selling out already, so be sure to purchase tickets soon!

Follow Frameline on Twitter

Subscribe to Frameline on YouTube

Become a fan on Facebook

For the Bible Tells Me So [documentary film]

This is a wonderful documentary film that takes on the heated debate centered at the intersection of homosexuality and Christianity. Told from a progressive standpoint, this film is truly eye-opening and should be watched by those who oppose homosexuality as well as those who believe homosexuality and Christianity are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Harvard Divinity scholars offer academic testimony while the film also intimately follows the personal lives of several families with gay and lesbian children and the repercussions the hatred of the church has had on their childrens' lives.

For the Bible Tells Me So

Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen [trans documentary]

Check out the film "Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen."

I Got a Sex Change with My Best Friend! [documentary: parts 1 & 2]

In the spring of 2007 I made a short documentary film while in college about my best friend Troy (tro23y on YouTube) getting our chest surgeries done together in December of 2006. We went to Dr. Beverly Fischer in Baltimore (Timonium), Maryland.

Chest surgery was one of the most moving and empowering experiences I have ever had, and I can wholeheartedly say it was made 1,000 times better by having it done with Troy.

trans-themed books & dvds

a quick overview of trans-themed books and films. this is by no means a comprehensive list.