Susan Stryker

Acting

Susan Stryker

Born 1961-01-01

Susan Stryker is an award-winning scholar and filmmaker whose historical research, theoretical writing, and creative works have helped shape the cultural conversation on transgender topics since the early 1990s. Dr. Stryker earned her Ph.D. in United States History at the University of California-Berkeley in 1992, later held a Ford Foundation/Social Science Research Council post-doctoral fellowship in sexuality studies at Stanford University, and—before her one-year appointment at Yale (2019-2020)—has been a distinguished visiting faculty member at Harvard University, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California-Santa Cruz, Macquarie University in Sydney, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of numerous books and anthologies, including Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (Chronicle 1996), Queer Pulp: Perverse Passions in the Golden Age of the Paperback (Chronicle 2000), The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge 2006), Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution (Seal Press 2008, 2017), and The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (2013).

Acting credits

Disclosure poster
7.8

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

Disclosure

2020

Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution poster
6.2

This rapturous documentary steps into the dynamic world of queer stand-up and examines the powerful cultural influence it has had on social change in America. The film combines rare archival materials, stand-up performances, and interviews with a show-stopping lineup to present a definitive history of queer comedy.

Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution

2024

Genderation poster
8.0

20 years after Gendernauts, Monika Treut seeks out the pioneers of the transgender movement back then to find out how their lives and their activism have evolved, how they have grown into their identities and how their energy continues to have an impact today.

Genderation

2021

Just Kids poster
NR

Three families with transgender children face an impossible choice in states banning gender-affirming care: stay home and risk their children's well-being or uproot entirely.

Just Kids

2025

Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities poster
6.5

Monika Treut explores the worlds and thoughts of several female to male transgendered individuals. As with Treuts first film, Jungfrauenmaschine, Gendernauts, enters a minority sector of San Fransisco culture. The characters in this film have a lot to complain about, and they do. They are people whose physical appearance (female) does not match their inner sexual identity (male). The subject is pinpointed in the film independant of sexual orientation. Leave your conservative hats at the door, this is going to need your special attention.

Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities

1999

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria poster
4.2

The first major uprising against police brutality, harassment, and societal oppression was not at Stonewall in 1969, but at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Those who stood up were trans women and gay men. Now, nearly 40 years on, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman tell the story of this oft-overlooked event in the history of American civil rights.

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria

2005

No Ordinary Man poster
4.0

The legacy of Billy Tipton, a 20th-century American jazz musician and trans icon, is brought to life by a diverse group of contemporary trans artists.

No Ordinary Man

2021

Maggots and Men poster
2.0

A utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history's first cast of over 100 transgender actors, paints a portrait of formerly pro-Soviet sailors at the Kronstadt naval garrison who rebelled against the perceived failures of the new Bolshevik state.

Maggots and Men

2009

No artwork available
NR

An animated history of the term "Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists". Taking cues from the origins of radical feminism in the 1960's and utilizing visual metaphor throughout, this film aims to educate a broad audience to the nature and danger of the TERF ideology.

What even is a TERF?

2022

Masculinity/Femininity poster
NR

Masculinity/Femininity is an experimental film project interrogating normative notions of gender, sexuality and performance. Shot primarily on Super 8, the project merges academic and creative critique -- a document of gender de-construction rather than a documentary about gender construction.

Masculinity/Femininity

2015

Reel in the Closet poster
8.0

Never before seen home movies made by queer people dating back to the 1930s and the struggle to save them before they are lost forever.

Reel in the Closet

2015

Behind the camera

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria poster
4.2

The first major uprising against police brutality, harassment, and societal oppression was not at Stonewall in 1969, but at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Those who stood up were trans women and gay men. Now, nearly 40 years on, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman tell the story of this oft-overlooked event in the history of American civil rights.

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria

2005

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria poster
4.2

The first major uprising against police brutality, harassment, and societal oppression was not at Stonewall in 1969, but at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Those who stood up were trans women and gay men. Now, nearly 40 years on, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman tell the story of this oft-overlooked event in the history of American civil rights.

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria

2005

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria poster
4.2

The first major uprising against police brutality, harassment, and societal oppression was not at Stonewall in 1969, but at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Those who stood up were trans women and gay men. Now, nearly 40 years on, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman tell the story of this oft-overlooked event in the history of American civil rights.

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria

2005

Compton's '22 poster
NR

On an unknown date in August 1966, trans women in San Francisco's Tenderloin district rioted against police violence at Gene Compton's Cafeteria. There was no news coverage, and the arrest records no longer exist. Decades later, historians Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman unearthed the history of the riot and interviewed the surviving “Compton’s queens.”

Compton's '22

2022

Christine in the Cutting Room poster
NR

Susan Stryker uses the career of 1950s transsexual icon Christine Jorgensen to explore identity, embodiment, technology and representation.

Christine in the Cutting Room

2013