This broadside is a performance of labor and a study of the language that threatens my rights and those of my transgender loved ones and greater community. Each letter, punctuation mark, and space is its own object I selected and arranged, forcing careful time spent with words.
Making this broadside involved hand typesetting approximately 6,000 characters and sifting through 50 documents of state legislation passed in 2024. The selections here are primarily excerpts attempting to confine the definitions of gendered words and the words "gender" and "sex." There are many more examples that I did not include due to limited space.
This work is a sequel to the broadside I did using 2023 legislation. It is larger than that broadside, because there were more anti-trans bills introduced in 2024 than in 2023. This number has been increasing since 2019. The way things are going, I'll be filling the whole press bed with type for the 2025 edition.
How do I feel about this? Well, I'm disappointed that elected officials in my country are spending so much time debating the definition of "sex" and believing they have the right to determine what words transgender people use to talk about ourselves. I'm laughing (maybe to keep from crying) that an executive order was passed in January that accidentally categorized all Americans as women. I'm scared that my rights over my own body are being taken from me too fast for me to read about it. I'm scared for myself, for the people I love, and for the country I called home, but I'm also still here making art, taking care of myself, and doing what I can to support my communities.
handset type locked in the chase before being moved to the press bed to be printed
2025
letterpress on Stonehenge paper
15in x 22in
edition of 24
with research from translegislation.com
Contact iris.write.artist{at}gmail.com to inquire about purchase.