Here, kitty kitty! Have you been feeling the queer lit itch that you just can’t scratch? Outburst’s stunning Reading Group and Book Group returns this year facilitated by your friendly neighbourhood queer poet extraordinaire, Mícheál McCann!
Details about our Book Group will be announced shortly, but for those not in the know, our Reading Group is where once a month, we dig into theories that help us to see the world around us, and our place in it, in a different way.
We’re kicking this group off on 15th June at 7:00pm – 8:30pm online with a chapter from Shon Faye’s stunning work “The Transgender Issue”, debunking the media frenzy of transphobic hit pieces and asking us where we begin to understand what it means to be trans in the UK.
“Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war ‘issue’. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country’s population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized ‘debate’ which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.
In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the ‘transgender issue’ to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.
The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.”
The reading group is free and open to all, but there are limited places. So book now!
