Riki Wilchins - Background

Background

While she started out as a transgender leader—founding the first national transgender advocacy group (GenderPAC) -- her analysis and work broadened over time to include discrimination and violence regardless of individuals' identity. While this perspective has been widely accepted, its breadth has provoked criticism by some in the transgender community. Wilchins' work and writing has often focused on youth, whom she not only sees as uniquely vulnerable to the gender system's pressures and harm, but whom she sees as capable of "looking with fresh eyes." Wilchins' work has been instrumental in bringing transgender rights into the mainstream LGBT movmement, and has helped bring awareness of the impact of gender norms to a wider audience. In 2001, Wilchins' work resulted in her being selected one of just six community activists named by TIME Magazine among its "100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century." A founding member of Camp Trans, since the mid-1990s Wilchins has been highly active in founding a number of organizations and events focused on gender issues, including:

• The Transexual Menace, the first large direct action group for transgender rights, which was modeled along the lines of Queer Nation and which at one point boasted representatives in 40+ cities (co-founder Denise Norris).
• Hermaphrodites With Attitude, the first direct action group for the intersex (co-founder Cheryl Chase, Executive Director of the ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America).
• NYC Gay Community Center Gender Identity Project (co-founder Dr. Barbara Warren, Dir. of Social Services).
• NYC Gay Community Center Transgender Health Empowerment Conference, an annual event (co-founder Dr. Barbara Warren, Dir. of Social Services).
• Camp Trans, an annual educational event outside the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival that contests the exclusion of anyone who is not deemed a "womyn-born womyn" (co-founders Janice Walworth, Nancy Jean Burkholder).
• National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (co-founder Susan Wright, its first Exec. Dir.)
• National Gender Lobby Day, an annual event on Capitol Hill (co-founder Phyllis Frye).