Laurie Penny

Laurie Penny

Date of birth	28 September 1986
Place of birth	London, England
Nationality	English
Pronouns	she/her or they/them
Gender identity	Genderqueer woman
Occupation	Writer

Laurie Penny is an English journalist, columnist and author. She came out in 2015 as a genderqueer woman, using the pronouns she/her or they/them.

Quotes

"I choose 'genderqueer woman' to signal that I acknowledge my unwilling membership in the socially imposed sex class of 'woman.' Politically female, personally genderqueer. It works for me."

"I am a woman, politically, because that's how people see me and that's how the state treats me. And sometimes I'm also a boy. Gender is something I perform, when I put on my binder or paint my nails. When I walk down the street. When I talk to my boss. When I kiss my partner in their makeup and high heels.

I don't want to see a world without gender. I want to see a world where gender is not oppressive or enforced, where there are as many ways to express and perform and relate to your own identity as there are people on Earth. I want a world where gender is not painful, but joyful.

But until then, we've got this one. And for as long as we all have to navigate a gender binary that’s fundamentally broken and a sex class system that seeks to break us, I'm happy to be a gender traitor."

Books written

• Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (Zero Books, 2011)
• Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent (Pluto Press, 2011)
• Discordia: Six Nights in Crisis Athens (Random House, 2012)
• Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013)
• Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014)
• Everything Belongs to the Future (Tor.com, 2016)
• Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults (Bloomsbury USA, 2017)