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BGQD bookstore presents Susan Stryker & Jack Halberstam in conversation about Changing Gender. At Church of the Village in Manhattan ***NEW LOCATION*** Due to the significant interest in this event, BGSQD, the hosting queer indie bookstore, is moving it to a larger venue. BGSQD will now host this conversation with Susan Stryker and Jack Halberstam at Church of the Village (201 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011), on the corner of 7th Avenue and 13th Street, across the street from the NYC LGBT Community Center. The date and time remain the same. As a result of this venue change, we've updated the registration process. Please read all of the details below. Important Registration Information: If you already RSVP'd for this event via Eventbrite, you're all set. You're on the list to get in. This event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required. Register via Eventbrite. You must register in advance to be granted entry. If you'd like, you can pre-order a copy of Stryker's new book, Changing Gender, when you register for the event. Books will be available to pick up at Church of the Village the evening of the event. Stryker and Halberstam will sign books after the talk. This venue costs $800. We're taking donations via Eventbrite to help us pay for this, so that we can keep the event free and open to the public and not lose our shirts. More info below. ***A CALL TO THE COMMUNITY*** It's important to us that as many people as possible have access to this conversation. We are not requiring a ticket purchase to attend. Learning from each other, especially through trans and queer intergenerational exchange, shouldn't be gate kept. We're keeping it free. As mentioned above, this venue will cost our queer indie bookstore $800 for the four hours we'll need for set up, doors, show, book signing, and breakdown. We're taking donations via the Eventbrite page to help us cover the cost of the venue. Anything you chip in will make this event free for the entire community. If you cannot attend the event, but would like to donate to the venue cost, please make a donation through our GoFundMe page. It’d mean a lot if we could share this cost so that all of us can share this experience. Thank you! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ About the Conversation That gender is a hotly contested topic becomes ever clearer as antigender ideology continues to be mobilized by the far right and transgender people's lives are increasingly targeted. But what are we talking about when we talk about gender? Where did the concept itself come from, and where might it go? In Changing Gender, the leading trans scholar Susan Stryker invites readers to ride along on her lifelong quest to uncover what gender means and does. She traces the gender concept's roots in grammar and tells the story of how it transformed into a battleground of the culture wars. From the origins of “Yankee Doodle” to acid trips in Joshua Tree National Park, from nineteenth-century phrenology to present-day anti-trans conspiracy theorists, Stryker finds surprising places to tune in to the origins, idiosyncrasies, and generative possibilities of the gender concept. Along the way, she weaves stories drawn from her lifetime as a pathbreaking historian, filmmaker, activist, and founding figure of transgender studies. Poignant and deeply researched, lyrical and authoritative, Changing Gender is a book for our fraught time, exposing limiting assumptions about gender across the political spectrum and imagining what life might look like if some of those limitations were lifted. Ultimately, Stryker argues, to change gender is to change what it means to be human—and to change reality itself. After the event there will be time for Susan (and Jack) to sign copies of their respective books, which will be available for purchase at the Bureau. *** Susan Stryker’s historical research, theoretical writings, media-making, activism, and academic field-building activities have helped shape the conversation on trans issues since the early 1990s. Stryker retired from the University of Arizona in 2020 and currently holds a distinguished visiting appointment at Stanford University's Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She is the author of many academic and general audience works, including Transgender History. She lives in San Francisco. Jack Halberstam is the David Feinson Professor of The Humanities at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of seven books including: Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011), and, a short book titled Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (University of California Press) among others. Halberstam’s new book is Anarchitecture After Everything: A Trans Manifesto, which will be published by MIT Press in August 2026. Halberstam was recently the subject of a short film titled “So We Moved” by Adam Pendleton. Halberstam was recently named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow.

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