Author: Cristan Williams

Cristan Williams is a trans historian and pioneer in addressing the practical needs of underserved communities. She started the first trans homeless shelter in Texas and co-founded the first federally funded housing-first homeless program, pioneered affordable health care for trans people in the Houston area, won the right for trans people to change their gender on Texas ID prior to surgery, started numerous trans social service programs and founded the Transgender Center as well as the Transgender Archives. She has published short stories, academic chapters and papers, and numerous articles for both print and digital magazines. She received numerous awards for her advocacy and has presented at universities throughout the nation, served on several governmental committees and CBO boards, is the Editor of the TransAdvocate, and is a founding board member of the Transgender Foundation of America and the Bee Busy Wellness Center.

1993: The Life and Times of a Gender Outlaw: An Interview with Leslie Feinberg

Twenty years ago, a now defunct trans newsletter captured a really interesting moment in trans history: a linguistic tipping point. As I’ve noted: “Transgender” has been around since at least 1965 “Transgender” was not “coined”…

Gender Orientation, Identity, and Expression

I’ve witnessed many arguments and misunderstandings explode over the conflation of these THREE dimensions of what we in trans discourse collectively refer to as gender: Gender Orientation: One’s subjective experience of one’s body, including its sexed attributes. Gender Identity:…

Bigots Unite! Deploying the Klan Fallacy in 3… 2… 1…

It’s happened. TERFs and the people who DEFENDED Prop 8 have untied as one voice to proclaim that pre/non-op transwomen – as a group – are 1.) icky because 2.) they’re actually men, and therefore 3.)…

Unity, NOT Uniformity!

As you may know, most of the TS Separatist leaders have moved on with their lives and the ones who are left seem to be the Ashley Love/Just Jennifers of the world who regularly make absurd and demonstrably false…

Ashley Love, Quit Colonizing Isis King!

Isis recently modeled political shirts that read, “Legalize Gay” and “Gay is O.K.” and I know what you’re thinking… You’re thinking that it’s cool that an out transgender woman is able to support one of the many…

TERFs are Attacked at Dyke Gathering!

Or not. A lot has been made over a Cathy Brennan – a TERF – being “attacked” at a dyke event by event organizers and some cis and trans folk. Here’s the video of what occurred: http://vimeo.com/44796073…

What Inclusionism Means

I wanted to take a moment and address what it means to be a non-Separatist; that is, what it means to be an Inclusionist – part of the transgender community. The Houston transgender community has been an explicitly Inclusionist…

Ashley “I’m Colonized” Love

For example, this Spring a few self-promoting and self-aggrandizing “transgender” bloggers, authors and “gender outlaw” entertainers (who actually financially and professionally profit by enforcing transgender socio-politics and umbrella-ism theory) are obsessing over how to stop…

My Response to Love’s Transsexual Rally

Ashley “I’m Colonized” Love So, Ashley Love supposedly held a rally outside of a GLAAD meeting. She writes: Though GLAAD does some good work, primarily for gays and those who support transgender socio-politics, we hold this education…