The Brooklyn Rail

In the 1990s, trans people were talking to each other. It sounds trivial, but amidst a landscape of social exclusion that encouraged trans people to live stealthily and avoid contact with one another, the emergence of larger trans networks of communication and organizing marked a turning point. Xanthra Phillippa MacKay, the late transsexual videographer, radio host, and zine publisher recognized this shift in trans sociality as a world-shaping one, proclaiming in the mid-nineties: “The most important event for transsexuals & transgendered people in the last twenty-five years, is happening right now: the emergence of a transgender liberation movement.” In her appeal to trans organizing, MacKay positions this moment as the most important development in trans activism since the Stonewall uprising. Significantly, alongside prolific Quebecois videographer, performance artist, and transsexual and sex worker activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, the two women—artistic collaborators and girlfriends—published and distributed the zine Gendertrash from Hell.

Published in Toronto between 1993 and 1995, Gendertrash galvanized a trans rights movement and formed the social fabric of what was, at the time, an emerging collective trans culture. The first issue of the zine, from spring 1993, boldly proclaims the mission of the publication: to give “a voice to gender queers, who’ve been discouraged from speaking out & communicating with each other.” The zine circulated widely through trans networks, their third issue boasting stockists across Canada and the US. Now, three decades later, Brooklyn-based LittlePuss Press compiles four issues of the path-breaking transsexual zine, alongside additional material from an unpublished fifth issue, into a facsimile edition edited by Mirha-Soleil Ross. Aptly republished by a press run by trans women, this collection revisits the transformative political power of Ross and MacKay’s Gendertrash in a moment of highly visible trans antagonism and attacks on trans rights.

The Gendertrash from Hell anthology returns to what Ross and MacKay co-created through a lens of retrospection and reverence, making accessible a trans counter-history that has not yet been shared through such visible channels. First encountered on the shelves of feminist and queer bookstores in the 1990s, Gendertrash occupies a fond and nostalgic place in collective trans memory, but is notably unsung within mainstream narratives of queer history. Like many trans people of a slightly younger generation, I instead first encountered the zine online, perusing its pages via the digitized collection of the ArQuives, Canada’s LGBTQ2+ archives. This anthology from LittlePuss Press, scanned from the publication’s original masters, puts the content of the zine back into the hands of a readership, this time speaking to a new, expanding public.

Within its pages, readers encounter articles on trans politics, calls to action, interviews with trans organizers, and practical resources for trans women and sex workers. What set Gendertrash apart from other trans zines and newsletters in the second half of the twentieth century was its militant and uncompromisingly political perspective, coupled with the intentional integration of activism and art within its pages. Highlights from the anthology are expansive in form: an article from a trans prisoner details human rights abuses at Pelican Bay; a “Hooker of the Year” feature honors trans sex worker Justine Piaget while calling out anti-sex worker rhetoric within white, middle-class, trans circles; trans directories inform readers of safe organizations for trans people to receive services from. This material is interspersed by trans-authored artistic content championed by the zine: collage artwork honoring Grayce Elizabeth Baxter, a trans sex worker murdered by a client in 1992; a poem by MacKay holding close the sacred intimacy of her butch-femme t4t (trans for trans) relationship.

Most significant, perhaps, is that all of this circulated in a context that allowed for trans audiences to be prioritized. The collection’s afterword offers an essay by historian Leah Tigers contextualizing the moment in trans culture out of which Gendertrash was born. Tigers remarks that trans zine subculture “may be read as a sustained argument for minority communal existence.” In the introduction to the anthology, poet Trish Salah reiterates this sentiment, writing that reading Gendertrash in the nineties “blew up what I thought I knew about the political work of art…it was possible to make art with other trans people, for a largely trans audience!” Emblematic of this t4t ethos of the zine, the cover of the anthology features a black-and-white photograph of Ross and MacKay embracing, their lips frozen in an immutable kiss. This is Gendertrash’s legacy: trans women loving each other, both in their romantic relationships and through the larger networks of activism and organizing in which their lives were embedded.

Ross and MacKay’s zine inaugurated a trans culture and forged networks of communication and support, prioritizing the voices of the most marginalized in doing so. Gendertrash gave a voice to factions of the trans community largely rejected or erased by mainstream, professionalizing queer and trans culture: trans women who were sex workers, prisoners, Indigenous, and racialized found their place within the pages of Gendertrash, joining a mosaic of trans perspectives to build a movement simply but outstandingly “devoted to the issues and concerns of transsexuals.” Now, in Gendertrash’s collected republication, we are offered an opportunity to return to the sharp, political wisdom shared by trans women, sex workers, and activists thirty years ago, to attune to a worldview that celebrates all who have been reduced to disposable or pushed to the outskirts.