Troubling the Waters: Mobilizing a Trans* Analytic

Kai M. Green stages a conversation between black lesbian feminism and transgender studies. Through a series of close readings of editorials by Alycee Lane that appeared in Black Lace, a black lesbian erotic magazine, he demonstrates how black lesbian as a Trans* modifier of feminism indexes the contradiction of (white) feminist exclusion of black women, while simultaneously forging a space for the expansion of the category “woman.” Through a Trans* reading of black lesbian feminist texts, he demonstrates the productivity of Trans* as a method or optic that refuses temporal or spatial fixity to rethink the category of “woman” beyond cisgender black women.