Too Radical:
The Writings of Riki Anne Wilchins

Introduction

Riki Anne Wilchins is one of the most brilliant and controversial writers on the transgender scene. She is "too radical", in that her work is brutally honest, sometimes confrontational, and often explicitly sexual. I am proud to be able to present some of her writing here. (Note: Riki prefers the spelling "transexual," over the more common "transsexual.")

Prose Works

Video Tape: Riki's signature piece, "Video Tape," is brilliant postmodern autobiography and the best short piece about transsexualism I've ever read.
The Castrated Woman: This essay examines the destructive ways some of us alter our bodies and personalities as we desperately try to appear nontranssexual.
A Sunday's Sermon On Spirituality, the God-Thing, & Other Deep Stuff: Riki delivered this address at a Metropolitan Gender Alliance meeting in New York in 1994. It's a beautiful essay on transsexual spirituality.
Denial, Dissociation, and Transexuality as Incest: Riki considers the typical treatment of gender-variant children by their caregivers to be a form of child abuse, comparable in some ways to incest.
17 Things You DON'T Say to a Transexual: This hilarious essay makes some serious points, while displaying Riki's famous wit.
A Shopping List of Transexual Shame: Here is Riki's list of the ways we act out of shame about our transsexualism.
Lines in the Sand, Cries of Desire: This is Riki's powerful account of her struggle to exorcise the ghosts of childhood sexual abuse. As usual, the body is Riki's battleground and sex is her weapon of choice. Sexually explicit.

Poetry

60 Seconds on the IRT: An "is she or isn't she?" vignette, beautifully observed and told.
a womens movement: Love poetry; Riki at her sweetest.
menstrual period: Transsexual women bleed differently than natal women.
No More Tears: Confronting the mutilation and death that haunt transgendered lives.
I Was Astride a Young Man: The pain of sexual rejection: Do we ever overcome it?
Knots Revisited - I: Is she a man, a woman, or a transsexual? Sexually explicit.
Knots Revisited - II: More conundrums of transsexual identity. Sexually explicit.
Knots Revisited - III: A moving end to the series. Sexually explicit.

Too Radical: The Writings of Riki Anne Wilchins

Introduction

Prose Works

Poetry

Too Radical:
The Writings of Riki Anne Wilchins