Transcending Gender

Blawg Review #84, on this Transgender Day of Remembrance, is hosted by Jennifer Clare Burke on Transcending Gender, where she examines ways that the law both enforces and challenges the sex/gender binary system.

Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice (transphobia). The event is held on November 20th to honor Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 kicked off the "Remembering Our Dead" web project and a San Francisco, California candlelight vigil in 1999. Since then, the event has grown to encompass memorials in hundreds of cities around the world.

Jen Burke graduated from Villanova University School of Law in 2004, where her electives focused on civil practice, including civil rights and tort law. During the summer after her 1L (2001), Jen won the Public Interest Fellowship. Jen applied her fellowship to working for the Disabilities Law Project.

Jen’s main interest now is in Active Grey Matter, a business incubator for people with disabilities.

Jen obtained her Master’s degree summa cum laude in counseling psychology at Chestnut Hill College. She focused on sexuality and gender. Saint Joseph’s University Counseling Center asked her to present her work there on sexual identity in 1999. She competed with graduate students state-wide for the Pennsylvania Psychological Foundation (PPF) award. She received the Elliot Riegler Memorial Award from PPF in recognition of her GPA, clinical work, and research projects. Jen has found ways of using both post-graduate degrees to combine her interests in law, psychology, and writing.

Jen has written on her blog about her personal struggles with illnesses and her battles with becoming a disabled professional and, recently, a novel, A Life Less Convenient: Letters To My Ex.


A Life Less Convenient isn't just a book; it’s a blog too, where Jen blogs about sex, mortality, age, and illness.

We are pleased to have Jen Burke host Blawg Review #84 at Transcending Gender on this special day, to heighten our awareness of Transgender Law and Policy and to remember those who have died for lack of understanding.

More people are becoming aware of and caring about these issues. We need to know the victims’ stories, especially those who have been denied justice. We need to honor the dead and work to make a better world than the one they were taken from. -- Cynthya BrianKate