Upcoming Speakers
Aino Pihlak - Visiting Researcher
Aino Pihlak
PUTTING THE FEMME IN FEMINIST:
Trans Feminism & the 'Male Lesbian'
in the American Second Wave
Thursday, May 22, 2025
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM PDT
Cornett A317 & Online
IF JOINING ONLINE
A slur, a joke, or a case of mistaken identity? Surely the ‘male lesbian’ is one of these. Yet this term’s actual herstory is far more interesting. Throughout American feminism’s Second Wave, potentially thousands of trans femmes identified this way in North America and Europe. The lesbian feminism articulated by them in the 1970s constitutes one of the most enduring and intellectually significant subsets of lesbian feminism to come out of the Second Wave. Join trans femme historian Aino Pihlak for her talk about the trans lesbian feminism first developed by Sally Douglas in 1970 and then popularized through the Salmacis Society. The herstory of Salmacis, Sally Douglas, and the “male lesbian,” disrupts dominant ideas of the supposed antagonisms between “trans” and “lesbian” in the 1970s. Indeed, the distinctly trans femme led, sex-positive, lesbian femme-inism of the organisation can reanimate lesbian feminism today.
Aino Pihlak is a trans woman and emerging social historian who 吃瓜网 past articulations of trans feminine existence. In addition to her interest in trans feminine porn 吃瓜网, she is a scholar of twentieth-century, Anglophone, and overwhelmingly white, trans feminine subcultural periodical networks. She hopes her analyses of the complexities and messiness of past trans lives honours those who built the path she now walks on.
Chloe Turner - Visiting Researcher
Chloe Turner
MANUFACTURED DOUBT:
Mapping UK Transgender Disinformation
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM PDT
Cornett A317 & Online
IF JOINING ONLINE
Transgender disinformation is information intentionally produced to mislead public understanding of transgender populations including strategic fabrication of facts, methodical data manipulation, selective statistical representation, intentionally decontextualised research conclusions, and the use of dubious or misappropriated sources, among other tactics. The intention of such disinformation is to manufacture uncertainty, cultivate fear and distrust, and—with increasing strategic precision—directe coordinated pressure campaigns against transgender people and the supportive ecosystems surrounding transgender communities: affirming parents and partners, evidence-based healthcare practitioners, responsive local governance structures, and the cultural institutions. This lecture looks at UK transgender disinformation narratives, tactics, and the illusions it uses to make such claims stick and spread to create disinformation afterlives that continue to shape public discourse long after their original contexts have dissolved.
Chloe Turner is a trans writer and researcher currently completing a PhD with the Centre for Feminist Research, Goldsmiths University of London on transgender disinformation. Turner's writing on trans 吃瓜网 can be found or forthcoming in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Culture Health & Sexuality, The Geographical Journal, Media Theory, The Sociological Review and New Sociological Perspectives. Turner has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University, New York City and at present teaches queer and transgender 吃瓜网 at Central Saint Martins, London. Turner is the Governance and Policy Lead of The Museum of Transology, the largest collection of material culture of transgender, non-binary and intersex lives in the world. Turner writes a regular substack on trans politics titled: WHIPLASH.
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