Scholars in sexuality and organization studies have highlighted the centrality of sexuality in organizational power and the ways in which sexuality is in/visibilized, controlled, violently exercised, normativized, and/or resisted in organizations. However, there is still little empirical research focusing on social-movement organizations that promote political change in transgender sexual cultures. With this article, I contribute a qualitative case study of a trans and non-binary do-it-yourself (DIY) sex-toy workshop. Drawing on organization, social-movement, and transgender studies, I develop the notion of ‘trans-organizing’ as a specific mode of organizing and ask: How does trans-organizing around sexuality displace the gender binary in the context of a DIY sex-toy workshop? My findings hint at three dis/organizing processes: dis/organizing language, embodiment, and knowledge sharing.

In recent years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the relationship between history, memory, archiving and trans experiences. This body of work has shown how questioning the praxis of archiving from the vantage point of trans experiences has the potential to problematise cis-heteronormative assumptions around the body, time and space and to queer the epistemological premises around what constitutes archives and archival practices. In this article, we present the experience of the project ArchiviST* – Archivi Storia Trans (Trans History Archives) which aims to create the first archive exclusively dedicated to the history of trans lives and activism in contemporary Italy. The project has been promoted by Trans Identity Movement, the most influential and long-lived trans association in Italy. Since its birth in 1979, Trans Identity Movement informally collected a substantial documentary heritage concerning trans and LGBTQIA+ history as a political practice to preserve the counter-memories of its people and movements. The ArchiviST* project carries out the inventorying and digitising of the materials, together with the collection of original video-recorded interviews with pioneering activists of the trans movement. By presenting a reflection on the process of ‘reconstructing’ an archive in this context, we unpack and explore some of the key issues surrounding trans archiving and collective memories in the Italian context: what counts as collective memory? What types of relationships are established between trans memories and the documents present in the archive? What memories have (not) been told, and what voices and subjects have (not) emerged as protagonists? We encourage a reflexive attitude towards the practice of trans archiving to problematise established historiographical categories, such as time, private/public, political engagement, life history and memory and to recognise the ethical and methodological challenges that such a path poses to historiography and archive research in general.

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