Riki Wilchins

Riki Wilchins has been a leading advocate for gender rights and gender justice for 20 years, one of the founders of modern transgender political activism in the 1990s as well as one of its first theorists and chroniclers. In 1995 Riki launched Transexual Menace, the first national transgender street action group, which spread to 41 cities. The following year they launched GenderPAC, the first national political advocacy group devoted to gender identity rights. Riki was an early supporter in the launch the intersex rights movement as well as the movement for alternative sexualities  They are the author of four books on gender theory and politics:  Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion & the End of Gender; Queer Theory/Gender Theory; An Instant Primer; and Voice from Beyond the Sexual Binary.

Riki’s writing and research on gender norms have been published in periodicals like the Village Voice, GLQ, Research on Adolescence and Social Text as well as anthologies like Contemporary Debates in the Sociology of Education, Gender Violence, Feminist Frontiers, Language Awareness, Negotiating Ethical Challenges in Youth Research, Out at Work, Women on Women and The Encyclopedia of Identity. Riki has done trainings on gender norms and nonconformity at the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Office on Women’s Health. The New York Times has profiled Riki’s work; in 2001 Time Magazine selected them as one of “100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century.”