Nonfiction edited by Mirha-Soleil Ross, reviewed by Willow Campbell
GENDERTRASH FROM HELL (LittlePuss Press)

From 1993 to 1995, four issues of the zine Gendertrash From Hell were assembled and distributed by genderpress, a project of Canadian activists Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay. Now in 2025, LittlePuss Press—an independent, feminist publisher run by trans women—in collaboration with Ross as editor, have remastered those four issues from their original layouts (plus the makings of a previously unpublished fifth issue) to bring the luminous spirit of Gendertrash into the often-turbid present. 

Author, scholar, and historian Susan Stryker notes in her 2017 book, Transgender History (Seal Press), that Gendertrash “drew inspiration from the still-flourishing punk zine culture of the later 1970s and 1980s and formed part of the larger subcultural phenomenon sometimes called the ‘queer zine explosion.’” Gendertrash’s skillfully crafted issues were about thirty pages each and included poetry, fiction, journalism, and interviews alongside images, graphics, photographs, newspaper clippings, drawings, advertisements, and public service announcements. Ross and MacKay sought submissions from trans people of all gender identities, cisgender allies (“gender positive genetics”), and especially trans sex-workers, prisoners, and people of color. 

Before reading Gendertrash From Hell, I had never encountered such an expansive history of trans people—my people—published in their own words. In her introduction to the book, Trish Salah, Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario, explains that there is an “alternate history” to what we now deem trans studies or culture—a history “rooted in sex-worker, racialized, Indigenous and street active transsexual and transgender people’s communities, one that is not ‘queer-paradigmed’ in its frame, or oriented towards respectability or institutional legitimation.” Gendertrash is a document of this alternate and oft-forgotten history. Salah describes Gendertrash as “a wartime text” offering readers a “manual for how to make something from nothing, how to refuse and revolt against the idea that there is nothing t/here, that we are nothing without recognition from somewhere, someone else.”  

A reader of this collection gets the sense that Gendertrash was building a novel platform for the trans community worldwide. Ross and MacKay were located in Toronto, but the zine had a global audience and included submissions from Canada, all over the United States, and even one industrious letter from Berlin, Germany, written by a member of the “BdT (Bundesvereinigung der Transsexuellen) <Federal union of the transsexuals!”¹ This suggests not only the gravity and importance of Gendertrash’s materials at the time, but also that the zine was orbiting in much larger circles than one might expect from a publication of its type.

Letters to the editors also offer insight into the impact Gendertrash immediately had—promoting conversations and expanding awareness about the challenges facing the trans community—in the time of its circulation. For example, Issue #2 of Gendertrash includes a “Genetic Jerk Quiz” with the sardonic description: “take this simple & easy test to see how much of a genetic jerk you really are.” There is a tally system for how many boxes are checked “Yes” or “No” to statements like, “Transexuals are fucked up,” “Transexuals are psychotic killers,” and “Transsexuals are just self mutilated transvestites or drag queens/kings.” In a letter included in Issue #4, the sender mentions having shown the “Genetic Jerk Quiz” to a friend who they thought “pretty much knew the score” and was surprised when the friend couldn’t understand why the tone of the quiz was so angry. The sender of the letter warmly thanks the editors for “creating a voice & a forum where we & our friends can speak about our selves, ourselves.” 

For Ross and MacKay, embodying a voice for the trans community was foundational. Issue #1 proffers a list of “TS Words & Phrases² (“TS” meaning transsexual) put together by MacKay, with labels and definitions, and a call for readers to join in developing a common language to impose “on this gender suppressive society.” The list proposes that the word “metamorphosis” replace the “clinical term transition,” “non-transexual” people be referred to as “genetics,” and “members of the gender communities” said in place of “the clumsy-sounding transpersons.” A note at the bottom of the zine’s original page indicates that “the word gender is much better than the prefix trans, which seems to be genetically inspired in its origin.” (Issues #3 and #4 of Gendertrash offer a catalog of mail order buttons for purchase; one reads “I’d rather be dead than genetic.”) Many of the zine’s published submissions voice anger at how, even amongst the queer scene, trans people were flippantly dubbed “trannies,” “transies,” or “drag queens”; stripped of any gender understanding; and thought of as gay, no matter how they might identify sexually. While it is evident now that these terms did not catch on, it is electrifying to witness an early attempt to take control of the verbiage used for trans people. In a concluding reflection at the end of the book, Emily Zhou, editor for LittlePuss Press, encourages contemporary trans readers to see themselves “as a part of this unfinished project.”

Trans and genderqueer modes of expression have always been policed by “genetic,” anti-trans policies. In Canada and the United States, up until the late 2010s, a trans person needed to provide documented proof of sex reassignment surgery in order to be legally recognized as their gender. In Gendertrash’s time (the early 90s), such procedures usually ranged from $5,800 to $10,000 and were usually denied to those infected with HIV. The weight of these policies falls hardest on those already at the intersection of multiple marginalized or disenfranchised identities within society—trans sex-workers, trans people of color, trans prisoners. Ross and MacKay were most concerned with amplifying these voices and confronting the brutalities they faced. 

One such piece—among the most powerful and harrowing included in Gendertrash—is reprinted from a 1993 issue of the Prison News Service, a Canadian publication dedicated to prison-related issues. It is the personal narrative of Lofofora Contreras, a trans and deaf prisoner legally classified as male, as she details the dehumanizing treatment she experienced. On her first day in prison, Contreras was subjected to a “violent, brutal” cell extraction because she could not hear the guards calling her to “show skin” for count. Contreras describes how the guards “stood me before them in my cell, naked, and played their flashlights on my breasts and privates, giggling like idiots.” A sergeant began to scold her, unaware of her inability to hear him due to her medically diagnosed deafness. Contreras’ narrative eloquently lists an array of sadistic, violating actions she and her fellow (specifically fellow deaf/trans) prisoners were the victims of. An editorial update originally included at the end of Contreras’ narrative explains that prisoners at Contreras’ facility later filed civil rights lawsuits against the prison—and won, with a judge ordering an end to “the pattern of needless and officially sanctioned brutality.” Nevertheless, many of the institution’s abusive practices were allowed to remain. 

Reading Gendertrash, I felt connected to a past that I both am and am not a part of. I learned from experiences and voices I had not heard before. I want to join in their outcry, to understand—as Kat Fitzpatrick, editrix of LittlePuss Press, suggests—the “the bald directness” of Gendertrash’s demands “both on us and for us.” Gendertrash From Hell insists that trans people be trusted to speak on our own issues, that there be more spaces dedicated to trans-specific needs, and that the paradox in which trans people always find themselves—the paradox of being made to justify our existence to someone who has never had to question theirs—comes to an end. Readers of Gendertrash—past, present, and future—can expect to experience Ross and MacKay’s fierce and empowering advocacy for their community and feel bolstered by a fresh connection to a meaningful method of trans resistance through literary communion. 

Gendertrash from Hell, ed. Mirha-Soleil Ross, was released in paperback by LittlePuss Press on November 4, 2025.

Cleaver Editor’s Notes

1. All quoted material appears exactly as it does in Gendertrash from Hell. In this case, punctuation reflects that which was published.↩
2. All quoted material appears exactly as it does in Gendertrash from Hell. In this case, all bold-face text appears as such in the book.↩

Willow Campbell (they/them) is a fiction writing candidate in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program at Cleveland State University. Their work has appeared in venues such as X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Gordon Square Review, Your Impossible Voice, Glass Mountain Magazine, and American Literary Review. You can find them on Instagram @unbroken.blue.

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