Presented by Dr. Hil Malatino (Penn State)
Lecture Description:
This talk contextualizes trans millionaire, philanthropist, and noted eccentric Reed Erickson’s legacy in relationship to contemporary trans politics, which means grappling with tough questions that continue to inform trans justice struggles: what role have non-profits and philanthropic support played in trans movement work? What role should they play? What are the historical and contemporary tensions between trans activism and gay and lesbian advocacy? Why has the legacy of trans advocacy consistently resulted in the burnout and fatigue of advocates and organizers? What are the ongoing impacts of that exhaustion, and what alternative visions of trans flourishing does the Erickson archive provide? Focusing on the legal battle between the Erickson estate and ONE Inc., a prominent US homophile organization, Malatino gleans lessons from the terse legacy of trans and LGB politics.
About Dr. Hil Malatino:
Hil Malatino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, a senior research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Philosophy. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a graduate certificate in Feminist Theory from Binghamton University. Prior to coming to Penn State, Dr. Malatino was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University and Assistant Director and Lecturer in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University.
Dr. Malatino's work draws upon trans and intersex studies, critical sexuality studies, transnational feminisms, disability studies, and medical ethics to theorize how experiences of violence, trauma, and resilience play out in trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming lives. His most recent book, Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) is a critical phenomenology of fatigue, envy, burnout, numbness, and rage amid the ongoing onslaught of casual and structural transphobia. His first book, Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) examines the relationship between intersex embodiment, biomedical technologies, and the forms of subjectivity both enabled and constrained by the medicalization of gender non-conformance. His second book, Trans Care (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), offers a critical intervention in how care labor and care ethics have been thought, arguing that dominant modes of conceiving and critiquing the politics and distribution of care entrench normative and cis-centric familial structures and gendered arrangements.