Future exhibit #2: TRANS FEMINIST BOOKS BY OTTER LIEFFE
The books before you articulate hard-won community learnings that open up fresh spaces of solidarity. The author of these books, Otter Lieffe, is a working class, femme, trans woman and the author of two trans feminist novels—’Margins and Murmurations’ and ‘Conserve and Control.’ She has been a grassroots community organiser for over two decades. Otter has worked and organised in Europe, the Middle-East and Latin America. Her particular focus is on the intersection of gender, queerness and environmental struggles.
Otter fights to share knowledge and to create an alternative reality where marginalised trans women feel safe and heard. She envisions future spaces of kindness and femininity.
L I S T E N The second narrative in the Museum of Hidden Paths is Otter’s story.
At the heart of her story is the importance of creating real spaces for marginalised folk to regroup, heal and organise against oppression. Her narrative tells of the struggle that it took to bring this inclusive community into reality.
Her testimony comes from a place where resistance to violence is powerfully guided by the understanding that no one is free until all are free.
I M A G I N E
The fight for empowering not only trans narratives, but trans individuals, and their intersections with other marginalised groups, centres a reality where kindness and femininity are supported and empowered.
Consider a future in which the fight for liberation is everywhere. Consider a future in which marginalised human experience is communicated and appreciated, a future in which norms are defied, and support given to those who are moving into new spaces of identity.
In the first decades of the 21st century care-work was poorly resourced and understood. Despite the lack of resources, activists and community organisers galvanised their time and effort and participated in a transformation of society.
What if communicating the issues of the marginalised made a possibility space real? And what if these real spaces supported diverse communities to grow and thrive? And this in turn joined with other voices to create a movement?
Consider a future in which people who are marginalised lead the push for environmental and social justice.
Can you change your assumptions, understandings and prejudices to help a future of care flower? Like many, Otter does not imagine there will be an end to this struggle but sees it as a continual process of life, resistance and creativity.
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Since publishing her first novel in 2017, Otter Lieffe has been building networks to counter the systemic oppressions faced by working-class trans women. In 2018, she helped establish Books Beyond Bars UK, a queer/trans prisoner support group and in 2019 she launched her new organisation, Trans Feminism International, a grassroots and community-driven organisation to empower trans women and trans-feminine people to change their own lives and to resist the violence, discrimination, marginalisation and precarity they often face.
Otter runs an online school where she offers writing classes to raise the voices of marginalised writers. You can read her articles, and find out more about her books, or sign up to her newsletter through her websites.
Otter’s Websites:
www.otterlieffe.com
www.transfeminism.net
photo credit
chroma.space
chroma.space