"We’ve Got Gender All Wrong: We Lean on Biology to Argue for Equal Rights for All Genders, Ignoring Bigger Systems of Oppression" by Laurie Essig, Medium.com, September 14, 2015. "By that logic, as long as we LGBTQ persons can’t help ourselves, we can keep our weddings. But give us agency, and we best cancel the catering and send back the flowers, because no one in their right mind would ever choose to be one of us. This deterministic mentality thrives at the expense of what seems to me the much more appealing idea—that we should treat people fairly because it is a basic tenet of human dignity. . . . [And] what frustrates me is that 'born this way' protects straight and cisgender persons from ever being one of us."
"Kate Bornstein: A Transgender Transsexual Postmodern Tiresias." An interview with Kate Bornstein by Shannon Bell, in which the Kate proclaims, "I make it clear that I am a transsexual by choice and not by pathology. . . . Gender is a cult. Membership in gender is not based on informed consent. There is no way out without being ridiculed and harassed."
Elizabeth's Gender-Free Universe by Elizabeth Pietrzak, a pre-op/non-op MTF transsexual. "In fact, gender is a conscious choice of belonging and identity. It is not something that can be determined by scientific data, by psychological treatment, or HRT and SRS, for that matter, but simply IS because we say so. We choose who and what we associate with. We choose our sexual preference and we choose how we present ourselves. We do not need to resort to 'biologically determined' roles, because doing so puts the power of our selves, bodies, personas in the hands of others. . . . Sometimes I think that being a woman trapped inside the body of a man is like saying I am a blonde trapped inside the body of a brunette."
"Gaining a Daughter: A Father's Transgendered Tale" by Lennard J. Davis, from The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 24, 2000. "My son says that it's all about a person's right to choose. He defines himself as a 'transgirl.' Some women may choose to define themselves as men. [My son] has come into conflict with more-conservative elements in the trannie community who do not agree with his radical politics. He has had to deal with the fact that some people within that community do not regard him as truly transgendered, because he hasn't taken hormones or had an operation. He is evolving a position that I have come to respect and from which I have learned a great deal."
"I Am An Intentional Mutation" by FTM transsexual artist Del LaGrace Volcano, from The Body Politic, No. 5. "I am specifically something else, an intentional mutation of male and female, an emulation of incorporation that equals what, for lack of a better term, I call 'intersexual by design'. In other words I choose to be as I am now."
"Birth Defects" by Morgan, a non-op MTF transgendered Belgian. "Many people claim gender dysphoria is innate—one of the chromosomes in their final pair has an extra leg, or is missing one. Or their actual genitals don't match the chromosomes, for instance when someone has XX chromosomes, and is a healthy young man. In this case, people who feel they're the wrong gender point to birth defects. Others claim that the feeling is caused by a gene or a group of genes, quite similar to a 'gay gene,' or that they have a male or female brain. This is likely false."
"Mutilating Gender" by Dean Spade, Spring 2000
"We Can Choose to Be Gay" by Tucker Lieberman, gay FTM transsexual. "I did not arbitrarily decide to be a gay transsexual. I never would have chosen this particular journey; it would have appeared, from the outside, all pain and no light. Only in the midst of my journey am I finally able to say that the view from here is great. Of course it's been rocky, but if I were to claim I have no choice to be here, that would only increase my feelings of victimization. To eliminate conscious decisions from one's sexuality is to shrink one's humanity."
"The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender" by MTF transsexual writer Martine Rothblatt. Asserts our right to choose our own genders freely.
"Do Transsexuals Have A Choice?" by Callan Williams, 1996
"Politicizing Gender: Moving Toward Revolutionary Gender Politics" by transgendered writer Carolyn. "Interestingly, in other columns Donna Minkowitz has stated there are no essential sexual categories, therefore she has chosen to be a lesbian. Yet, if we use the same logic in Brandon [Teena]'s case, can't she accept and respect his choices [to be a man]?"
"'Female Camp'? Drag and the Politics of Parody and 'Queer' Performance" by Vicki Cooper, from Cultural Studies from Birmingham, Vol. 2 No. 1, 1998
"Lesbian Identity and the Politics of Butch-Femme Roles" by Amy T. Goodloe, 1993
"On Gender and Sexual Orientation" by transsexual writer Julie Waters, 1992. "What about people who have shown sexual interest specifically in me? If a lesbian is interested in a woman who has a penis is she still a lesbian? If a gay male is interested in a woman who wants to exchange her penis for a vagina is he still a gay male? Are we interested in the person behind the sex organs or are the sex organs our primary motivating force in determining to whom we are attracted? Do I, to be at a particular point on the Kinsey scale, have to demonstrate my interest in people in terms of how their appearance, actions and attitudes relate to their perceived gender? Their biological gender? Is sexual orientation constructed in a manner which even allows for such perspectives as my own?"
Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warrior website
"Imagining Deregulated Desire: Written on the Body's Revolutionary Reconstruction of Gender and Sexuality" by Christy R. Stevens. An essay on Jeanette Winterson's novel Written on the Body, a love story in which the protagonist's gender is never specified.
"The Madness Outside Gender: Travels with Don Quixote and Saint Foucault" by Carol Siegel, from RhiZomes