A list of online resources for transgender people and their family and friends

A list of online resources for transgender people and their family and friends

Culture and community

TransUnite

www.transunite.co.uk

The site is run by volunteers and a not for profit organisation We are the most up to date resource for the UK and online based support groups; users can find a local group and even message them directly from our site using the "Contact Group" button. We don't store any details and the site is secured by SSL.

We're verifying and adding groups on an ongoing basis with our next focus being online groups with Discord Servers, Telegram and Facebook groups becoming increasingly popular to compliment those that meet up in person.

The Angels

angelsforum.co.uk

Forum 'supporting the TG community'.

Club Wotever

woteverworld.com

A London bar space for trans, queer, LGBT people and their friends, with an emphasis on queer/trans performance.

Deep Stealth Productions

deepstealth.com

Founded by Calpernia Addams and Andrea James, Deep Stealth strives for positive media representation of trans people.

Gendered Intelligence

genderedintelligence.co.uk

Creative workshops, arts programmes, conferences and youth group sessions.

Meta

pocketmags.com

'A unique digital magazine which brings you the very best of trans and genderqueer news, advice and entertainment'.

Sparkle

sparkle.org.uk

The 'national transgender celebration' which takes place in Manchester every year.

Trans Media Watch

transmediawatch.org

Aims to combat prejudiced or sensationalist media reporting of trans issues, and offer advice to people or organisations.

Transfabulous

transfabulous.co.uk

Former London-based organisation devoted to transgender performance art, with an interesting archive.

Transfriendly

transfriendly.co.uk

Online forum for the trans community.

Female-to-male (FtM)

FTM International

ftmi.org

A comprehensive website for the female-to-male community, offering information about healthcare, law, events and family support.

FTM Network

ftm.org.uk

A British-based site acting as a friendship/support group for FtM transgender and transsexual people.

FTM Resource Guide

ftmguide.org

For trans men and friends, with tips on hormones, grooming, clothing, surgery and more.

FtM UK

ftmuk.net

UK-based FtM lifestyle forum.

Original Plumbing

originalplumbing.com

US magazine 'dedicated to the sexuality and culture of FtM trans guys'.

TransGuys

transguys.com

'The internet's magazine for transgender men'.

History and politics

The Empire Strikes Back

actlab.utexas.edu

Trans woman Sandy Stone's spirited rebuttal of Janice Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire (1979). This essay is one of the key texts of the 90s trans rights movement.

Genderqueer Revolution

genderqueerrevolution.org

For people beyond gender binaries.

Gender Variance Who's Who

zagria.blogspot.co.uk

'Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective'. Includes plenty of further reading, with a list of international trans resources.

Intersex UK

intersexuk.org

Committed to human rights for intersex people.

Just Plain Sense – The Trans Tapes

blog.plain-sense.co.uk

Interviews by Christine Burns with a variety of trans people.

Press For Change

pfc.org.uk

Political lobbying and educational organisation campaigning for equality and human rights for British trans people through legislation and social change. The original website is archived here.

Sylvia Rivera Law Project

srlp.org

US-based organisation seeking to raise the voices of marginalised trans people.

Trans London

translondon.org.uk

London discussion group.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

gender.org

Observed every 20 November to commemorate victims of transphobic violence.

Women Born Transsexual

womenborntranssexual.com

'For people who recognise transsexualism as an innate condition rather than a gender identity disorder'.

Medical services and healthcare

Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic online support group uk.groups.yahoo.com

A discussion group for those who have used the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross.

Mind OUT

lgbtmind.com

Service for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people with mental health concerns.

National archives – Gender Identity

webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Department of Health documents relating to gender identity.

NHS Choices

nhs.uk

The NHS page on gender dysphoria, covering terminology, symptoms and treatment.

Trans Health

trans-health.com

Magazine covering health and fitness issues.

Transhealth UK

transhealth.co.uk

The London Gender Clinic, the UK's largest private service.

World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)

wpath.org

Professional organisation devoted to 'the understanding and treatment of gender identity disorders'. Originally named after pioneering physician Harry Benjamin, WPATH produces the ethical guidelines and standards of care for professionals working with patients with gender identity issues.

Support groups and information

The Beaumont Society

beaumontsociety.org.uk

National self-help body run by and for those who cross-dress or are transsexual, and for their partners.

Clare Project

clareproject.org.uk

Brighton-based support group 'open to anyone wishing to explore issues around gender identity'.

Depend

depend.org.uk

Support group for families and friends of transsexual people in the UK.

Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES)

gires.org.uk

Information for trans people, their families and medical professionals.

Gender Trust

gendertrust.wordpress.com

Organisation which supports adults whose lives are affected by gender identity issues, as well as families and employers of transsexual or transgender people.

Mermaids

mermaidsuk.org.uk

Family and individual support for teenagers and children with gender identity issues.

Scottish Transgender Alliance

scottishtrans.org

Support for trans people, equality organisations, policymakers and employers in Scotland.

Susan's Place

susans.org

A comprehensive collection of online transgender resources, allowing people to add links/information themselves.

Trans Resource & Empowerment Centre

transcentre.org.uk

Based in Manchester, with monthly meetings, talks and workshops.

Transgender Zone

transgenderzone.com

Comprehensive website including medical information, a guide to venues and opinion about transgender representation in the media for both MtFs and FtMs.

Transsexual Road Map

tsroadmap.com

An excellent free guide to process of transitioning, and the social issues around it.

Courtesy of Juliet Jacques guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 November 2012 

A list of online resources for transgender people, their family and friends. -update

A list of online resources for transgender people and their family and friends

Culture and community

TransUnite

www.transunite.co.uk

The site is run by volunteers and a not for profit organisation We are the most up to date resource for the UK and online based support groups; users can find a local group and even message them directly from our site using the "Contact Group" button. We don't store any details and the site is secured by SSL.

We're verifying and adding groups on an ongoing basis with our next focus being online groups with Discord Servers, Telegram and Facebook groups becoming increasingly popular to compliment those that meet up in person.

The Angels

angelsforum.co.uk

Forum 'supporting the TG community'.

Club Wotever

woteverworld.com

A London bar space for trans, queer, LGBT people and their friends, with an emphasis on queer/trans performance.

Deep Stealth Productions

deepstealth.com

Founded by Calpernia Addams and Andrea James, Deep Stealth strives for positive media representation of trans people.

Gendered Intelligence

genderedintelligence.co.uk

Creative workshops, arts programmes, conferences and youth group sessions.

Meta

pocketmags.com

'A unique digital magazine which brings you the very best of trans and genderqueer news, advice and entertainment'.

Sparkle

sparkle.org.uk

The 'national transgender celebration' which takes place in Manchester every year.

Trans Media Watch

transmediawatch.org

Aims to combat prejudiced or sensationalist media reporting of trans issues, and offer advice to people or organisations.

Transfabulous

transfabulous.co.uk

Former London-based organisation devoted to transgender performance art, with an interesting archive.

Transfriendly

transfriendly.co.uk

Online forum for the trans community.

Female-to-male (FtM)

FTM International

ftmi.org

A comprehensive website for the female-to-male community, offering information about healthcare, law, events and family support.

FTM Network

ftm.org.uk

A British-based site acting as a friendship/support group for FtM transgender and transsexual people.

FTM Resource Guide

ftmguide.org

For trans men and friends, with tips on hormones, grooming, clothing, surgery and more.

FtM UK

ftmuk.net

UK-based FtM lifestyle forum.

Original Plumbing

originalplumbing.com

US magazine 'dedicated to the sexuality and culture of FtM trans guys'.

TransGuys

transguys.com

'The internet's magazine for transgender men'.

History and politics

The Empire Strikes Back

actlab.utexas.edu

Trans woman Sandy Stone's spirited rebuttal of Janice Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire (1979). This essay is one of the key texts of the 90s trans rights movement.

Genderqueer Revolution

genderqueerrevolution.org

For people beyond gender binaries.

Gender Variance Who's Who

zagria.blogspot.co.uk

'Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective'. Includes plenty of further reading, with a list of international trans resources.

Intersex UK

intersexuk.org

Committed to human rights for intersex people.

Just Plain Sense – The Trans Tapes

blog.plain-sense.co.uk

Interviews by Christine Burns with a variety of trans people.

Press For Change

pfc.org.uk

Political lobbying and educational organisation campaigning for equality and human rights for British trans people through legislation and social change. The original website is archived here.

Sylvia Rivera Law Project

srlp.org

US-based organisation seeking to raise the voices of marginalised trans people.

Trans London

translondon.org.uk

London discussion group.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

gender.org

Observed every 20 November to commemorate victims of transphobic violence.

Women Born Transsexual

womenborntranssexual.com

'For people who recognise transsexualism as an innate condition rather than a gender identity disorder'.

Medical services and healthcare

Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic online support group uk.groups.yahoo.com

A discussion group for those who have used the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross.

Mind OUT

lgbtmind.com

Service for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people with mental health concerns.

National archives – Gender Identity

webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Department of Health documents relating to gender identity.

NHS Choices

nhs.uk

The NHS page on gender dysphoria, covering terminology, symptoms and treatment.

Trans Health

trans-health.com

Magazine covering health and fitness issues.

Transhealth UK

transhealth.co.uk

The London Gender Clinic, the UK's largest private service.

World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)

wpath.org

Professional organisation devoted to 'the understanding and treatment of gender identity disorders'. Originally named after pioneering physician Harry Benjamin, WPATH produces the ethical guidelines and standards of care for professionals working with patients with gender identity issues.

Support groups and information

The Beaumont Society

beaumontsociety.org.uk

National self-help body run by and for those who cross-dress or are transsexual, and for their partners.

Clare Project

clareproject.org.uk

Brighton-based support group 'open to anyone wishing to explore issues around gender identity'.

Depend

depend.org.uk

Support group for families and friends of transsexual people in the UK.

Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES)

gires.org.uk

Information for trans people, their families and medical professionals.

Gender Trust

gendertrust.wordpress.com

Organisation which supports adults whose lives are affected by gender identity issues, as well as families and employers of transsexual or transgender people.

Mermaids

mermaidsuk.org.uk

Family and individual support for teenagers and children with gender identity issues.

Scottish Transgender Alliance

scottishtrans.org

Support for trans people, equality organisations, policymakers and employers in Scotland.

Susan's Place

susans.org

A comprehensive collection of online transgender resources, allowing people to add links/information themselves.

Trans Resource & Empowerment Centre

transcentre.org.uk

Based in Manchester, with monthly meetings, talks and workshops.

Transgender Zone

transgenderzone.com

Comprehensive website including medical information, a guide to venues and opinion about transgender representation in the media for both MtFs and FtMs.

Transsexual Road Map

tsroadmap.com

An excellent free guide to process of transitioning, and the social issues around it.

Courtesy of Juliet Jacques guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 November 2012

Hello world! A closet crossdressers first outing...

Hello world! This is my first post ever! Feel honoured (or ambivalent!) It's an exciting event for me at any rate. I've been a closet crossdresser for nearly 40 years but, like others for sure, culture and upbringing have made me hide who I am. It probably had something to do with my last relationship of over 10 years failing and since then I've withdrawn from the world as a male and started to explore my other half, as it were.

I recently started visiting a support group in girl mode (now that was truly scary) but have always managed to get there without being seen by many people. The group is wonderful but I probably didn't leave a very good first impression because I was concentrating on not hyperventilating. I was being seen!!! Suddenly everything was real and out in the open. A step forward but also a step that could never be undone. I was officially a crossdresser.

The group is mainly filled with transgendered people (please excuse the choice of terms, I don't really understand labels and therefore may not be using them correctly). But there is also a genetic woman  there who comes to provide support, encouragement and advice (Lady L, for the purposes of this blog). I think this was the cosmos finally throwing me a lifeline because without her I wouldn't be writing about the experiences I've had.

Lady L invited me to a performance at a fringe festival. With real people. Breathing people. Seeing people! Could I go? Was I ready for that? Would they be ready for me? I started to panic. I wanted to run. The head of the tortoise started to withdraw. So I said 'ok!'. Idiot. Way to go!

The day of the event was pretty much a blur. I did my makeup. Twice. I put on a blue dress (long sleeved because my arms are seen at work, so they still have hair, albeit trimmed and bleached, so arms don't really fit in either of my worlds), picked up my handbag and left. The trip to the car is always really traumatic but kept looking through my handbag as a walked away and hoped no-one would recognise me.

The Medieval transgender poem

I was reading through some of my favourite blogs and came upon this delightful gem. Although transgender issue did exist in medieval times, this is an enlightened poem by a 14th century Jewish philosopher. 

The story about a medieval  poem on  becoming your true gender.

Many of you will have met the following argument in the transgender debate:

Since crossdreaming and transgender identities are social constructs, they are most likely to be the end product of modern Capitalist society, the Patriarchy or something equally sinister -- an line of argument which will most likely lead to a discussion about sexualization and fetishes.

This impression is reinforced by the fact that historians and art scholars have had a tendency to ignore -- or outright censor -- the voices of gender variant people from other cultures and epochs.

As I pointed out in my blog post on  crossdreamers in the Kama Sutra, until recently all English translations of that work skipped the part about straight women dominating straight men, most likely because it was considered threatening to the world order or impossible to understand.

So a lot of work is needed in this field. I am confident that if we look, we will find crossdreamers and transgender people in all cultures and all periods of time. They lives will be expressed in different manners according to  local language and cultural framework (as they are today), but they will have this in common: A desire or a need to express or be recognised as their true gender or as a blend of the two.

A Medieval Poem About the Longing to Become a Woman

CD / TRANS SUPPORT GROUP

Post It Notes

RSS Feed Widget

Comprehensive* List of LGBTQ+ Term Definitions

Lately I have received a few emails from people who are finding it difficult to find the correct definitions used by the LGBT community. I found this one quite useful. Courtesy of: 

http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/

Comprehensive* List of LGBTQ+ Term Definitions

*This list is neither comprehensive nor inviolable, but it’s a work in progress toward those goals. With identity terms, trust the person who is using the term and their definition of it above any dictionary. These definitions are the creation of a cultural commons: emails, online discussions, and in-person chats, with the initial curation being mine, then growing into a collaboration between Meg Bolger and me at TheSafeZoneProject.com. - See more HERE 

We are constantly honing and adjusting language to — our humble goal — have the definitions resonate with at least 51 out of 100 people who use the words. Identity terms are tricky, and trying to write a description that works perfectly for everyone using that label simply isn’t possible.

Some definitions here may include words you aren’t familiar with, or have been taught a flawed or incomplete definition for; I’ve likely defined those words somewhere else in the list, but if I also missed many. This is an ever-evolving project that I do my best to check back in on every three or four months. All that said, let’s get started… alphabetically:

Advocate – (noun) (1) a person who actively works to end intolerance, educate others, and support social equity for a marginalized group. (verb) (2) to actively support/plea in favour of a particular cause, the action of working to end intolerance, educate others, etc.

Ally – (noun) a (typically straight- or cis-identified) person who supports, and respects for members of the LGBTQ community.  While the word doesn’t necessitate action, we consider people to be active allies who take action upon this support and respect, this also indicates to others that you are an ally.

Androgyny/ous – (adj; pronounced “an-jrah-jun-ee”) (1) a gender expression that has elements of both masculinity and femininity; (2) occasionally used in place of “intersex” to describe a person with both female and male anatomy

Androsexual/Androphilic – (adj) attraction to men, males, and/or masculinity

The Battle for Self-Expression amidst #Transphobic Street Violence

Anna Kozak

RyersonUniversity

“What I Wanted to Wear”: The Battle for Self-Expression amidst Transphobic Street Violence 

( you can download PDF here)

On Sunday, July 12th, 2015 at 11:10 pm, Alok Vaid-Menon, one of the two members of the Trans South Asian poetry collective, Darkmatter, posted a picture on Facebook of themselves in a dress. The caption stated, “The story goes something like this: Every morning when I wake up and look at my closet I ask myself, ‘How much do I want to be street harassed today?’” (Vaid-Menon). Vaid-Menon, who prefers the pronoun ‘they,’ answers their own question with, “This means I usually gravitate away from the skirts and dresses and move begrudgingly toward the more conventionally ‘masculine’ clothing. I consider for a moment how peculiar it feels that I have been made to find safety and security in masculinity—this thing that has been such a site of violence and anxiety in my past.” This post was particularly salient in the social media world, receiving almost twenty-thousand likes and producing valuable dialogue on what it means to be trans and gender non-conforming in a world that demands conformity to gender binaries in exchange for physical and emotional safety. This post’s capacity for discursive production, however, was not limited to the world of social media. It also inspired a movement called “What I Wanted to Wear” on the website, Medium, which is a self-proclaimed online

“community of  readers  and  writers  offering unique  perspectives  on  ideas  large  and  small”

(“About Medium”). “What I Wanted to Wear” extends Vaid-Menon’s post into a project centred around trans and gender non-conforming subjects’ clothing selections, fixating on the disparity between what they desire to wear and what they ultimately choose to wear to avoid street harassment and life-threatening transphobic violence. Each contribution to the project follows a similar pattern: the user creates a post that contains two juxtaposing photos—one that resembles relatively cis-normative attire, representing “what I wore,” and one that reveals the individual’s authentic gender expression, representing “what I wanted to wear.” The term “authentic” in this context refers to the gender expression with which the individual most closely identifies, although the notion of authenticity is often used in dominant gender discourse to dismiss trans and gender non-conforming individuals’ identities, which will be discussed later on in this paper. Beneath each set of photographs are quotations from the trans or gender non-conforming subject that foster a discussion about the connection between clothing, gender fluidity, and transphobic violence. Each post ends with the individual’s preferred pronoun use and the statement, “Feeling deep ambivalence about how we dress is something the trans and gender non-conforming communities experience acutely, but it’s not just about us. We’d love to hear from everybody about how we navigate self presentation each day.” I use the words “trans” and “gender non-conforming” in accordance with the movement’s terminology, although many contributors have more specific identities, such as “transwoman” for Aaryn Lang or “agender trans male” for Pax Gethen. This combination of visual presentation and text depicts clothing choice as a symbol of self-expression and raises awareness about the daily struggles that gender non-conforming people endure, which are potentially life-threatening, to express a fluid gender that defies the

“two-sex model” of binary gender, “radical dimorphism, [and] biological divergence” that has dominated gender discourse since the “late eighteenth century” (Lacqueur 5-6).

Transexualism, Feminism, and Gender / The Great Transsexual Radical Feminist Menace

Exploring my pc I discovered a couple of articles I had saved on the feminist criticism of transexuals. They are dated 2008, so obviously some time ago. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate the original posts to refer to them. But, I'm going to post them here anyway....

Transexualism, Feminism, and Gender

" As aggressively vitriolic and hurtful as radical feminist criticism of transexuals often is, I believe that transexuals do themselves a grave disservice by dismissing that criticism as entirely rooted in blind transphobia. There is certainly a very strong element of transphobia in certain quarters of the feminist movement, but even a broken clock is right two times a day. It is hardly surprising that the majority of transexuals are heteronormative in terms of their chosen gender presentation and behaviour, but this becomes exceedingly problematic due to the extremely loud and highly active minority of transexuals who are militantly heteronormative.