Book divination be upon ye!

Pick up the nearest book or access what you’re currently reading on your e-reader. Go to page 73. Point to a place on the page at random. What does it say about your day?

Reblog this post with the line, phrase, or sentence you landed on. Add the book title in the tags if it feels good. Or don’t, and just embrace the chaos! Up to you!

We’ll go first.

Like we know something other people do not.

“What would happen if gender creativity was celebrated, not punished? If trans people were seen as a gift to those around them, prompting them to reflect on their own genders and lives too?”

Travis Alabanza, quoted in Gender: A Graphic Guide by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele, p.144

The first violence is the act of gendering, then to decide there are only two is to kill or erase or never archive all those who said they were neither.

- Travis Alabanza, Gender (2021)

Burgerz by Travis Alabanza

Hurled words. Thrown objects. Dodged burgers.

After someone threw a burger at them and shouted a transphobic slur, performance artist Travis Alabanza became obsessed with burgers. How they are made, how they feel, and smell. How they travel through the air. How the mayonnaise feels on your skin.

Burgerz is the climax of their obsession – exploring how trans and gender non-conforming bodies exist and how, by them reclaiming an act of violence, we can address our own complicity.

Burgerz by Travis Alabanza

goodreads

Hurled words. Thrown objects. Dodged burgers. After someone threw a burger at them and shouted a transphobic slur, performance artist Travis Alabanza became obsessed with burgers. How they are made, how they feel, and smell. How they travel through the air. How the mayonnaise feels on your skin. Burgerz is the climax of their obsession – exploring how trans and gender non-conforming bodies exist and how, by them reclaiming an act of violence, we can address our own complicity.

Mod opinion: I haven't heard of this play before, but it sounds interesting and it is definitely something I think I would love to see performed.

"i do not want to base my transness on cisgender people's definition of it.

i do not want to define myself in relation only to them.

i do not want to play by their rules of what my gender should look like.

if my transness is a gift, let it be protected by those who will cherish it."

none of the above - travis alabanza

from None of the above by Travis Alabanza

🫠🪸🍑shummer shelfie🍑🪸🫠

pink books 💗💗💗💗💗💗

Pride Month reading 2023—None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza

I have long been ambivalent about Pride, but the rising waves of anti-LGBTQ, and especially anti-trans, sentiment seen over the past few years has made me very concerned. As a transgender individual who is white and fits visibly into the accepted gender binary, I have been able to stand in the shadows for a long time. For more than two decades. In fact, when I was a single parent supporting two…

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None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza

goodreads

A “humane and heart-rending” memoir exploring what it means to live outside the normative boundaries imposed by society, from an award-winning trans writer and performer ( The Guardian ). In None of the Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary , Travis Alabanza considers seven phrases people have directed at them throughout their life. These phrases—some deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or violent, some celebratory—have fundamentally shaped Alabanza, both for better and for worse. But these phrases also illuminate broader issues about a world that insists on gender as a fixed identity. Alabanza considers the meaning of gender, and the role it plays in a world that rigidly and aggressively enforces the binary. Drawing from their experiences as racialized queer person, Alabanza deftly interrogates our current frameworks around identity with nuance, openness, and humor. The result is a meditation on doubt and language that turns a mirror back on society, and on ourselves. By heralding transformative futures, None of the Above questions what we think we know—and shares new ways that we might live.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this book yet but it's on my tbr.

I do not think it is a coincidence that things are often seen as “just beginning to exist” when they are placed within frames of the West and/or whiteness. Did we mean to say “non-binary was new”, or did we just mean to say “non-binary is now something I see more white, western, middle class people talking about”. Gender cannot be separated from race, and we cannot ignore the power whiteness has to force defaults onto things, to erase histories, or to homogenise and flatten complex existences. [...]

I say “I am non-binary” so the person can understand me. They ask “how I identify” and I say “non-binary” so I do not need to spend the next 10 minutes explaining my gender. It becomes shorthand for “ah, you’re not this, and maybe not this”. But with that I begin to see how (through association) this word maybe becoming something far from what I first imagined.

I say it to “be understood”, and then I remember that maybe this does not have to be my goal. Can I, and my gender(s), be more complex than a goal of comprehension? Who am I aiming to be understood by? Should I even expect a word or label to hold all of my complexities?

"instead of positioning all of our transgressions as something to justify and defend, i was seeing it in proximity to having a skill. those of us 'transcending gender' (or more accurately: deciding we are outside of male and female), are lucky because we have decided to choose something else. to choose something else, in a world where even those like samantha who are victims of the gender binary themselves, still have power to police our choices — we still managed to become ourselves. despite barriers of our own samanthas in our lives, or the pressures of schools, uniforms, legislations, violence, mockery and being told that we literally do not exist — we are still here. such a defiance and commitment to our own autonomy over other people's comfort feels like an undeniably lucky and privileged skillset to hold. "

none of the above - travis alabanza