Queer Ressources
Here, I list conferences, essays, books, movies, videos, articles, songs and essentially anything queer-related that I deem relevant and helpful. I apply an inclusive interpretation of queerness, including essentially anything that I find interesting and deem a ressource that I'd like to see more widely disseminated, whatever the topic might be and regardless of why it interests me. This site is currently under construction. More to come.
Conferences
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Crossfyre
International workshop on cryptography, robustness, and provably secure schemes for female young researchers
One of the goals of the conference is to promote gender awareness within the community and people of all genders are welcome. The conference was founded in 2011 by Cristina Onete at TU Darmstadt and takes place yearly since then. Cristina and I were office mates back then, and I admit that I had reservations about the event at the time. I was wrong, and I am grateful to Cristina for initiating this brillant event that has helped build a community of people who return to the event and exchange experiences. By now, I have attended 4 out of the 8 Crossfyre workshops and had the honor and pleasure to be an invited speaker twice, once before I gender-transitioned and once after I gender-transitioned to male. Crossfyre 2019 will be co-located with Eurocrypt in Darmstadt.
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UNIT
The International LGBT+ Tech Summit SUMMIT is organized by UNICORNS IN TECH The Global LGBT+ Tech Community.
UNIT 2019 will take place in Berlin in September.
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WIT
Women in Theory was founded in 2008 by Tal Rabin and takes place bi-annually.
WIT 2018 took place in Harvard, next WIT takes place in 2020.
Books
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Outspoken
Julia Serano
Collection of essays by Julia Serano, collected over a bit more than a decade of trans-activism. This book is my favorite book by Serano. One essay usually corresponds to one idea, and her ideas build onto each other. I found reading her essay collection a very insightful learning experience.
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Men speak out
Editor: Shira Tarrant
Collection of essays by men. I appreciate this book for the diversity of male perspectives.
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Manning Up
Editors: Zander Keig, Mitch Kellaway
Collection of essays by trans men. I appreciate this book for the diversity of trans male perspectives.
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Trans Homo.GASP!
Editors: Avi Ben-Zeev, Pete Bailey
Collection of essays by trans men who date men and cis men who date trans men. I appreciate this book for the diversity of gay trans male perspectives and the perspectives of their partners.
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The Heart of Aces
Publisher: Good mourning Publishing
Collection of romatic fiction short stories by and about asexual/Grey-A people.
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The Danish Girl
David Ebershoff
Novel based on the life of Lili Elbe, one of the pioneer trans woman.
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I know what heaven looks like
Lawrence Richardson
Autobiography of Richardson who is a pastor and pioneer Christian trans man of color
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Redefining Realness
Janet Mock
Autobiography of Mock who is a model and trans woman from Jamaica
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Escape from Freedom
Erich Fromm
Psycho-analysis-informed approach to characterizing German society around the reformation and the nazi times. Many of the insights/approaches are still interesting and
relevant today. E.g., Erich Fromm writes about the appeal of submitting to authority where authority can be something abstract such as public opinion.
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Was ist Aufklärung?
Immanuel Kant
Encouragement to make life-relevant decisions one-self and not delegate them to authority. (The phasing is quite provocative and especially, the word 'guild' is maybe a bit
ill-suited for an encouragement for learning, i.e., it would be better to state that if one does not learn to make life-relevant decisions, then the learning will not happen. I.e.,
regardless who bears the responsibility, it is a very pragmatic observation that each human is the only person who can decide to learn the decision-making.)
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Thinking, fast and slow
Daniel Kahneman
An encouragement to improve one's thinking/choices by paying attention to certain typical mistakes, such as a human tendency to be risk-averse to 'very bad' events and to overlook
the importance of many small bad events. A nice complementary book is 'Risk' by Gerd Grigerenzer who, e.g., advocates to trust intuition when it builds on substantial experience.
The books are not necessarily consistent in their views, but often, they come to similar observations, based on different methodology. E.g., both authors investigate the
phenomenon of defensive decision-making where a decision-maker does not make the best decision (in the interest of some other person or entity) but rather minimizes the risk for
suffering negative consequences themselves.
Movies, Series
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Transparent
This series is fantastic. Most importantly, there are not only many trans people involved as actors, but also behind the scenes. Thereby, the story is often actually told from a trans perspective. In the early production, the presented perspective was rather white and at times problematic in terms of race - the later seasons reflect broader perspectives.
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The Danish Girl
I find the movie beautiful. The beauty is interrupted by some odd scenes on conversations with psychologists and also some violence. I am not sure, why those scenes are in the movie, but they are few, and one can ignore them and simply enjoy the beauty of the love story told in the movie and the gender exploration of Lili. Lili is played by a Eddie Redmayne who I learnt to appreciate seeing him in this movie. The movie has been criticized for only consulting trans people but not sufficiently involving trans people, as, e.g., the movie does not star a trans woman as main actor. Regardless, I like the movie a lot for its beauty...
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Moonlight
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Blue is the warmest color
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Three generations
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Call me by your name
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A raisin in the sun
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The color purple
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All my life
(2008)
Toul omry (original title)
About gay life and feminism in Kairo.
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Show me love (1998)
Fucking Amal (original title)
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The Intouchables (2011)
Intouchable (original title)
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The Blindflyers (2004)
Die Blindgänger (original title)
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La Famille Belier (2014)
Videos
Essays
Music
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Last update: 2019-01-15