Trans Lives: Susan Rudy in conversation with Raewyn Connell, Nottage Maritime Institute, Wivenhoe, 7 pm, Friday, 20 March 2026. Hosted by the Wivenhoe Bookshop.

In this book, Raewyn Connell, a world-leading sociologist and gender researcher, gathers the evidence and writes about the lives of trans women and men, hijra, travesti, and other groups around the world. She looks at the forces shaping trans lives, including medicine and its limitations, precarity and poverty, unequal gender relations, the role of sex work, and encounters with the state and the corporate economy. She discusses what is behind anti-trans campaigns, criticizing the simplistic idea that 'transphobia' explains these, and suggesting more potent causes. Finally, by exploring the creative ways trans groups have organized, she argues for the contribution they can and should make to solving our shared contemporary crises.