Riki Wilchins is an author, activist and gender theorist. Riki currently serves as Executive Director of TrueChild, a network of experts and researchers that helps funders, nonprofits and policymakers challenge rigid gender norms by connecting race, class and gender. Riki has been a leading advocate for gender rights and gender justice for over two decades, one of the founders of modern transgender political activism in the 1990s, and one of its first theorists and chroniclers. In 1995, Riki launched The Transexual [sic] Menace, the first national transgender street action group with chapters in 41 cities. The following year she launched GenderPAC, the first national political advocacy group devoted to the right to one's gender identity and expression. Riki was an early supporter in the launch of the intersex rights movement, as well as the movement for alternative sexualities. She is the author of five books on gender theory and politics: Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion & the End of Gender; Queer Theory/Gender Theory: An Instant Primer; Burn the Binary! Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer and Nonbinary; Trans/Gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media and Congress... and Won!; Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary (with editors Claire Howell and Joan Nestle); and this volume. Riki's writing and research on gender norms have been published in popular periodicals like The Village Voice and Social Text, as well as peer reviewed publications like the Journal of Homosexuality and the Journal of Research on Adolescence, as well as dozens of anthologies. Riki has overseen training on gender norms for public agencies like the White House, the Centers for Disease Control, HHS Office of Adolescent Health, and HHS Office on Women's Health, and for philanthropic networks like the Association of Black Foundation Executives, Hispanics in Philanthropy, and Women's Funding Network. The New York Times has profiled Riki's work; in 2001 Time Magazine selected them as one of "100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century." Riki is currently working on a murder mystery titled, "The Sound of Angels Falling."
