A one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the core of postmodern theory, particularly its impact on queer and gender studies. Nationally known gender activist Riki Wilchins combines straightforward prose with concrete examples from LGBT and feminist politics, as well as her own life, to guide the reader through the ideas that have forever altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire. This is that rare postmodern theory book that combines accessibility, passion, personal experience and applied politics, noting at every turn why these ideas matter and how they can affect your daily life.
Riki Wilchins is the founding executive director of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition. The author of Read My Lips and GenderQueer. She was selected by Time magazine as one of “100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century.”

Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer

Politics & Social Sciences

Wilchins, Riki

Social Sciences

Alyson Pubns

A one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the core of postmodern theory, particularly its impact on queer and gender studies. Nationally known gender activist Riki Wilchins combines straightforward prose with concrete examples from LGBT and feminist politics, as well as her own life, to guide the reader through the ideas that have forever altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire. This is that rare postmodern theory book that combines accessibility, passion, personal experience and applied politics, noting at every turn why these ideas matter and how they can affect your daily life.

Queer Theory, Gender Theory

Riverdale Avenue Books

In the early 1990s, no one talked about transgender people, and no one knew one. We were not on TV or in movies. What formed the visible part of the transcommunity – overwhelmingly white, urban, and middle class – was also overwhelmingly focused on conferences, surgery or hormones and cisgender acceptance. This was still a determinedly non-political population, often in defensive crouch because it was also constantly under attack by the media, police, local legislatures, feminists and even LGB-but-never-T advocates. We were a group that still thought of ourselves as a collection of separate individuals, not a movement. What made political consciousness so difficult was that there was no “transgender section” of town, where we saw each other regularly. And mainstream society mostly ignored us. And when it didn’t, it usually made clear it despised us. We were freaks. We were gendertrash. We lived in a transient and indoor community that knew itself only a few days at a time during conferences at hotels out on the interstate. But all that was about to change. Even when politics are avoided, bringing despised and marginalized people together is itself a political act. Without realizing or intending it, the community was reaching critical mass. Even in those pre-Internet, pre-cellphone days, enough transpeople were running into one another often enough to begin realizing we could be a force, that we didn’t really need cisgender acceptance. What we needed was our civil rights. This is the inside story of how in just a few years, a handful of trans activists would come together in the face of enormous difficulties and opposition to launch from the very margins of society what would grow into the modern political movement for gender rights.

TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress… and Won!

An icon of transgender activism for three decades, Riki Wilchins is the author of four influential books on genderqueer, trans politics, and queer theory. Riki Wilchins has been a pioneering and influential thinker and writer for a quarter of a century. Now this single volume offers a selection of Riki’s most penetrating and insightful pieces, as well as the best of two decades of Riki’s online columns for The Advocate never before collected. Think of this as Riki Wilchin’s greatest hits!

Burn the Binary!: Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer and Nonbinary

When GenderQueer was first published in 2002, it was groundbreaking, even inventing a new word for those whose voices had been hidden behind the walls of the gender binary. Now—finally!—it's republished, and those voices are still fresh and compelling in a volume that can take its place as one of the field's early and most original "classics."\nMichael Kimmel 
SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies 
Stony Brook University (retired)\nPerhaps more than any other issue, gender identity has galvanized the queer community in recent years. The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, first published nearly two decades ago, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide the groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices.

GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary

Rivera, Silvia

Reiss, Gina

Magnus Books

Originally published in 2004, Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer is a classic of LGBTQ+ literature and is taught in most gender studies programs throughout the United States. It was the first book to offer a one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the core of postmodern theory, particularly its impact on queer and gender studies and is still powerfully relevant today.Nationally-known gender activist Riki Wilchins combines straightforward prose with concrete examples from LGBTQ+ and feminist politics, as well as her own life, to guide the reader through the foundational ideas of Derrida, Foucault, and Judith Butler that have forever altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire. This is that rare postmodern theory book that combines accessibility, passion, personal experience and applied politics, noting at every turn why these ideas matter and how they can affect your daily life.

Queer Theory, Gender Theory - An Instant Primer

Originally published in 2004, Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primeris a classic of LGBTQ+ literature and is taught in most gender studies programs throughout the United States. It was the first book to offer a one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the core of postmodern theory, particularly its impact on queer and gender studies and is still powerfully relevant today.Nationally-known gender activist Riki Wilchins combines straightforward prose with concrete examples from LGBTQ+and feminist politics, as well as her own life, to guide the reader through the foundational ideas of Derrida, Foucault, and Judith Butler that have forever altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire. This is that rare postmodern theory book thatcombines accessibility, passion, personal experience and applied politics, noting at every turn why these ideas matter and how they can affect your daily life.Riki Wilchins is Executive Director of TrueChild, an action-tank that promotes "gender transformative"approaches to philanthropy and policy that challenge rigid gender norms and inequities in order to improve life outcomes for at-risk youth. Her work has been profiled in The New York Timesand TIMEmagazine selected her one of "100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century."

In 2018, transgender teens in all 50 states could freely be prescribed hormones and blockers, legally change their names and pronouns, and play in gender-appropriate school sports. No one cared. But before the year was out, terror would come. The evangelical Christian right -enraged and vengeful from a long series of legal defeats-was seeking an issue to reignite its endless war on homosexuality. In just a few years, over 1,000 anti-trans bills would be introduced into state legislatures nationwide, as the names, pronouns, genders, and bodies of a few thousand children were transformed virtually overnight into an issue of state concern, and animus towards them an integral fiber in the evangelical Christian right's tribal identity. Terrified parents of transgender children found themselves suddenly under investigation, threatened with charges of felony child abuse, in danger of imprisonment, and fearing the loss of their children to state foster care, began fleeing their home states. They were part of huge wave of internal political refugees unknown in the U.S. since the terrible days of chattel slavery, and in their wake they left behind their homes, careers, extended families, pensions, and life savings as they streamed across state lines in search of safety for their transgender children.

When Loving Your Kid is a Crime: Parents of Transgender Children Speak Out

LGBTQ+ Books

Biographies & Memoirs

"Compelling. Revealing. Thought-provoking - Wilchins meticulously uncovers the people, planning, & tactics behind the brutal campaign against trans youth. " -- Erin Reed, "Erin in the Morning""Through deep research and vivid storytelling, lifelong activist/writer Riki Wilchins tells us the inside story of how the right has wreaked so much damage on trans kids, using their lives to reignite its endless war on gay and queer people. Buy this book!"-Ted Allen, OG Queer Eye castIf we could go back to 2020, we would be shocked at lives of transgender children, who changed their names and birth certificates, played school sports, and got puberty blockers and hormone treatment freely and without comment in all 50 states. But in three short years it would all disappear. Without warning, over 1,000 bills would be introduced across half the country criminalizing nearly every facet of their lives virtually overnight. What happened? Evangelical Christian nationalists-enraged after string of devastating Supreme Court defeats-had pivoted from gay to transgender, investing hundreds of millions of dollars into remaking trans youth as the new face of the anti-gay culture war. And it worked, beginning in Texas, which enacted the nation's first effective ban on treating transgender youth by redefining providing gender affirming medical care as felony child abuse, criminalizing loving parents, and sending scores of families fleeing across its borders in panic. This is the story of how that happened. Filled with exclusive new details and behind-the-scenes interviews, this book is the first in-depth account of how evangelical Christian nationalists and their Republican allies conceived, plotted, launched, and prosecuted the nationwide War on Transgender Youth.

When Texas Came for Our Kids: How evangelical extremists launched a war on TRANSGENDER TEENS

Read My Lips burst on the scene in 1997 without precedent. It was unique, radical, endearing, outrageous, and very funny. It stood the orthodox academic and medical theories about transexuals on their heads. At last, a trans-intellectual built a theoretical foundation of transgenderism in accessible language, and, most importantly, laid out the tools to fight back against gender oppression. Now re-published as a canon of trans-writing—a book that has influenced queer academics and genderqueer folk everywhere for more than fifteen years—its message remains radical.

Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender

Memoirs

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilchins, Riki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wilchins, Riki

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilchins, Riki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer

Queer Theory, Gender Theory

TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress… and Won!

Burn the Binary!: Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer and Nonbinary

GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary

Queer Theory, Gender Theory - An Instant Primer

Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer

When Loving Your Kid is a Crime: Parents of Transgender Children Speak Out

When Texas Came for Our Kids: How evangelical extremists launched a war on TRANSGENDER TEENS

Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender