Author(s)	Ivan E. Coyote; Rae Spoon
Publisher	Arsenal Pulp Press
Publication Year	2014

ISBN: 9781551525365

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Gender Failure

Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon are accomplished, award-winning writers, musicians, and performers; they are also both admitted "gender failures. " In their first collaborative book, Ivan and Rae explore and expose their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary, and how ultimately our expectations and assumptions around traditional gender roles fail us all.

Contributors

Rae Spoon

Ivan Coyote is the award-winning author, co-author or co-editor of eleven books, including Tomboy Survival Guide, shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Nonfiction Prize and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. They are also the creator of four short films as well as three CDs that combine storytelling with music. Ivan is a seasoned stage performer and an audience favourite at storytelling, literary, film, and folk music festivals. Their latest book is Rebent Sinner. Ivan lives in Vancouver.

Ivan E. Coyote

Rae Spoon is a non-binary musician, producer, and author from Treaty 7 (Calgary) living on Lekwungen territory (Victoria). Rae is the author of the Lambda Literary Award finalist First Spring Grass Fire (2012), and co-author (with Ivan Coyote) of Gender Failure (2014). Rae was awarded a Dayne Ogilvie Prize Honour of Distinction by the Writers' Trust of Canada. They are the subject of a National Film Board documentary entitled My Prairie Home (2013), which screened at film festivals internationally, including the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. They have released ten albums for which they have been nominated for two Polaris Prizes and a Western Canada Music award. They are the founder of Coax Records, dedicated to work by marginalized musicians traditionally underrepresented in the music industry.

Chapter	Contributors	Pages	Year	Price
Introductions In these introductions, trans artists Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon explain how they conceived of a show explicitly centred on trans experience. View	Ivan E. Coyote; Rae Spoon	10	2014	$1.00
Girl Failure In this chapter, trans masculine writers Spoon and Coyote describe feeling different than other young girls growing up, and their experiences with ostracization for not identifying with … View	Ivan E. Coyote; Rae Spoon	14	2014	$1.40
Rosie In this chapter, Coyote describes their deep friendship with Rosie, a trans woman, set in Vancouver’s West End while they were nineteen. View	Ivan E. Coyote	8	2014	$0.80
God Failure In this chapter, Spoon describes their childhood in a Pentecostal church in northwest Calgary, where strict gender roles shaped daily life. View	Rae Spoon	8	2014	$0.80
Listing My Sisters In this chapter, Coyote critiques the ritual of reading the names of murdered trans women at vigils while living trans women remain excluded from shelters and social spaces. View	Ivan E. Coyote	8	2014	$0.80
Cowboy In this chapter, Spoon traces their formative bond with cowboy culture in Alberta, centred on their Uncle Carl and the three oil-rig uncles who toiled through the prairie seasons. View	Rae Spoon	8	2014	$0.80
The Rest of My Chest In this chapter, Coyote recounts their experience with chest binding. View	Ivan E. Coyote	10	2014	$1.00
Prarie Gender In this chapter, Spoon explains how gender roles in white, working-class Prairie communities shaped their personal identity. View	Rae Spoon	10	2014	$1.00
Man Failure, Part 1 In this chapter, Spoon describes their relationship with their body, and recounts a surgical consultation for a bilateral mastectomy. View	Rae Spoon	14	2014	$1.40
Man Failure, Part 2 In this chapter, Coyote discusses their gender self-discovery in Vancouver, beginning at nineteen, when encounters with trans men at the Legion on East Pender make transitioning feel tangible. View	Ivan E. Coyote	14	2014	$1.40
My Body Is a Spaceship In this chapter, Spoon traces their evolving relationship with their body, from a Pentecostal childhood marked by bodily restriction to a late-2000s reckoning with gender politics and eating disorders. View	Rae Spoon	8	2014	$0.80
Message to Lynn This chapter is a series of messages from Coyote to their friend Lynn, documenting their decision to undergo top surgery in Vancouver and their recovery over roughly the first ten days. View	Ivan E. Coyote	6	2014	$0.60
How to Be a Transgender Country Singer In this chapter, Spoon traces their experience of becoming a transgender country singer in Canada, a journey spanning the mid-2000s through the early 2010s. View	Rae Spoon	10	2014	$1.00
Invested In this chapter, Coyote describes their experience with top surgery, and a CBC radio debate questioning butch identity. View	Ivan E. Coyote	8	2014	$0.80
Youtube Gender In this chapter, Spoon describes how in January 2008, they uploaded a home-recorded video from Weimar, Germany, singing a song about Canada’s colonial history. Viewers fixated on whether … View	Rae Spoon	6	2014	$0.60
Dear Family This chapter is Coyote’s letter to their extended family in Vancouver, in which they disclose their non-binary gender identity and their decision to undergo a double mastectomy. View	Ivan E. Coyote	8	2014	$0.80
How to Be a Transgender Indie Rocker In this chapter, Spoon describes their transition from country and folk singing to electronic indie rock after moving to Weimar, Germany. View	Rae Spoon	8	2014	$0.80
A Cautionary Tale In this chapter, Coyote describes their recovery from a double mastectomy, arguing that healing demands unlearning masculine self-reliance. View	Ivan E. Coyote	6	2014	$0.60
How to Be Gay When the Gays Won't Have You In this chapter, Spoon describes their repeated rejection within the gay male community during the mid-to-late 2000s. View	Rae Spoon	6	2014	$0.60
Many Moons In this chapter, Coyote describes swimming for the first time post-top surgery. View	Ivan E. Coyote	8	2014	$0.80
Drag Failure In this chapter, Spoon describes their brief experiment with a drag persona named Cocolene, born from a music-industry prank in Montreal and Toronto. View	Rae Spoon	5	2014	$0.50
Do I Still Call Myself a Butch In this chapter, Coyote reflects on their identity as a butch. View	Ivan E. Coyote	4	2014	$0.40
How I Got to "They" In this chapter, Coyote describes their journey from adopting "he" pronouns to choosing the singular "they." View	Rae Spoon	6	2014	$0.60
The Facilities In this chapter, Coyote discusses the harrasment that transgender people face in public washrooms. View	Ivan E. Coyote	8	2014	$0.80
What Do You Think I Am? In this chapter, Spoon reflects on being misgendered in public spaces. View	Rae Spoon	8	2014	$0.80
Their, There In this chapter, Coyote describes their relationship with the singular "they" pronoun and discusses its roots in English stretching back to Chaucer. View	Ivan E. Coyote	6	2014	$0.60
Touring Success and Touring Failure In this chapter, Spoon discusses the vulnerability of public visibility as a trans performer in small towns and the small moments of connection that make them worth it. View	Rae Spoon	6	2014	$0.60
Between the Boat and the Dock In this chapter, Coyote discusses the tension between butch and trans male identities and how both communities face a scarcity of representation. View	Ivan E. Coyote	6	2014	$0.60
Stories I Tell Myself and Others (Gender as Narrative) In this chapter, Spoon discusses gender as a narrative one constructs and revises across a lifetime, tracing their movement through identities—lesbian, transgender man, and gender-neutral … View	Rae Spoon	6	2014	$0.60
Danger In this chapter, Coyote discusses the emotional toll of existing outside the gender binary. View	Ivan E. Coyote	4	2014	$0.40
Gender Retirement In this chapter Spoon introduces the concept of gender retirement, a refusal to identify within the gender binary, building on their decision to adopt the pronoun "they." View	Rae Spoon	8	2014	$0.80

Gender Failure

Contributors

Rae Spoon

Ivan E. Coyote

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