Object Photography, with MoT

<p>The Museum of Transology&#039;s collection of over 1000 artefacts is currently housed at the <a href="https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/archives" target="_blank">Bishopsgate Institute&#039;s Special Collections and Archives</a>. In anticipation of MoT&#039;s National Day of Collecting, Queercircle is working along side EJ, founder of MoT to upskill our members in the field of archiving. </p>

<p>The Museum of Transology (MoT) is the UK’s most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary and intersex people’s lives. </p>

<p>Never again will historians be able to say that you can’t call trans people ‘trans’ in the past. Never again will trans, non-binary and intersex people be hard to find in history. And never again will the records of our lives be written by the media that spectacularise us, the legal systems that criminalise and the psychiatrists who pathologise us. </p>

<p>With our own museum we will write ourselves back into history, on our own terms, in our own words. </p>

<p>Collectively, we will halt the erasure of transcestry.</p>

<p>The Museum of Transology’s collection was built by E-J Scott as a form of curatorial direct action designed to halt the erasure of transcestry. E-J established the MoT with the collection of artefacts they saved from their gender affirming surgery (including human remains, medical documentation and hospital room ephemera).</p>

<p>In 2014, Scott launched the MoT’s community collecting project in Brighton (by the seaside less than an hour from London), thought to be home of the largest population of trans people in the UK. Rather than asking trans, non-binary, and intersex people to go into the museum environment (of which they were sceptical), E-J ran community collecting workshops in queer community spaces. This built trust within the broader trans community in the intent and integrity of the project, and it swiftly grew in scale.</p>