My New Bios

I’m working on a new website to highlight my lecture work and the like, and wrote a few new bios.

I’ve got a Wiki.

The short version:

Helen Boyd is the author of My Husband Betty and She’s Not the Man I Married, books chronicling contemporary crossdressing culture, relational gender, and her own marriage to a trans woman. While she isn’t teaching, she consults on films, delivers lectures, and does training in gender diversity for corporate and community groups. Her blog (en)gender is at www.myhusbandbetty.com.

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The longer story:

Helen Boyd Kramer is a lecturer in Gender Studies at Lawrence University. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English and Masters in Writing from City College of New York. She is a prolific writer with many essays published in anthologies, journals and magazines and is the author of two books. Both portray an honest account of her relationship with a transgender partner.

My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life With A Crossdresser, published in 2004, has been called “a standard text in gender studies,” and was nominated for a Lamda Literary Award. Her second book, She’s Not the Man I Married: My Life With A Transgender Husband has been described as “the (im)perfect modern love story” and “a postmodern reflection on transness.” You can follow Boyd’s thoughtful prose through her blog (en)gender or follow her on Patreon.   

At Lawrence, Boyd teaches such courses as introduction to gender studies, feminist theory and practice, queer theory, and transgender lives.

Her commitment to the rights of women and the LGBTQ community is extensive.  She regularly gives interviews, guest lectures at universities and devotes time to corporate and government training on trans identity and related issues. In 2011 she appeared on Dan Savage’s podcast Savage Love, and that same year, received the Fair Wisconsin Community Activist Award. In 2016, Boyd attended a roundtable hosted by the Office for Violence Against Women in Washington DC.

But really:

Boyd is the pen name of Gail Helen Kramer, who almost always has at least three cats, hails from Long Island, was made in Brooklyn, and misses her hometown despite having figured out how to live life in a northern town in Wisconsin. She hates patriarchy and still loves punk rock. She believes the world is by and for creatives, queer folx, and misfits. Raised by working class social justice catholics, she is a proud SJW and made up of equal parts earnestness, compassion, and anger.