Gender.Network
Gender.Network is an archive of flyers, photos, artwork, cartoons, letters, poems, and other media by trans, Two Spirit, non-binary, and gender liberation activists, organizers, and artists. It currently focuses on 1960s-1990s North America. It has been created collaboratively in that these materials were identified based on many conversations, including conversations with some of the people represented in the archive. You can help build and shape this archive too — please contact us or submit material at or join us at one of our upcoming workshops to help curate, notate, and edit what is here, and help identify what is not.
This archive is created in honor of the many activists, organizers, and artists who continue to lead the way forward, and in honor of those who have left us, whose voices and images and energy live on in these materials. And this is an altar to the many many lives that don’t appear here at all.
This is a scrapbook of our transcestors, our transparents and transgrandparents, our cousins and siblings, people related to us by shared experiences and struggles rather than by blood. It traces what was important to them, what their lives were like. It maps how they/we have taken care of each other, organized ourselves as activists, created art and shaped culture. Above all it shows how we fought for our lives and liberation and the lives of those around us. But like any family, ours is filled with complex, multifaceted people, with stories and lives that are at times inspiring, joyful, triumphant, and at times tragic, traumatized, and frustrating.
So what I am searching for are trans voices talking back, weaving networks of care and organizing for solidarity. As a result, this archive is not primarily about the struggles or violence we have faced, but a story of how we have resisted, overcome, and of all of the work we still must do. We have a lot to learn from the struggles of those who came before us. In order to write this hirstory we first need to create a network here and now, to hear each others’ stories, and rewrite some of these blunted, biased, oversimplified narratives we have been told.
I believe this is healing work that will help us create new forms of solidarity.