I’m Cristan.
I work at the intersection of social determinants, policy, and community development.
Research excites me. Philosophy, psychology, and sociology grounds me. Historical materialism defines me.
I’ve spent decades advancing trans history, scholarship, and community health.
Gender-expansive history has been an interest of mine for decades. I founded the Houston Trans Archives and have significantly contributed to trans scholarship. I’ve founded and led numerous social service programs, established community centers, and earned multiple awards for my community work. I’ve presented at universities across the country, served on public health and executive boards, and am a founding member of the Transgender Foundation of America and the Bee Busy Wellness Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center. I have a bachelor’s in sociology, a master’s in clinical psychology, and will complete my PhD in clinical psychology in 2026.
Dr. Milton Diamond referred to my research as being “extremely valuable not only to me but to the many researchers who strive for accuracy. Your work has certainly opened my eyes and corrected for me many misconceptions…” and trans activist and author, Kate Bornstein called my research a “must-read” for those in gender studies. Both Dallas Denny and Susan Stryker claim to be fans of my research, and Jamison Green called it “brilliant.” While I don’t tend to tend to be on social media, you can also check out the stuff I write for the TransAdvocate. My Google Scholar profile is here, my Academia profile is here, and here is a selection of books that cite my research.
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Bodies & Reproduction are material realities. Your thoughts about those realities are gender.
Just life.
When I think of the things that I’ve been able to be a part of or even instrumental in, I am more than awestruck. From setting up a trans shelter and indigent trans medical care program in the 1990s to fighting for and accomplishing setting up the first trans-specific housing-first program and getting to be intimately involved in establishing two trans-positive FQHCs; from helping Brenda Thomas with her dream of having a trans center to somehow being able to make it happen, over and over again; from collecting some trans history as a hobby to setting up a trans archive and library; from helping Brenda with her research decades ago to getting several papers of my own published; from being curious about trans lexical and feminist history to being able to help rewrite that very history… to now working on my doctorate in clinical psychology.
Self-resentment, guilt, and shame can come so easily in a cishet-supremacist culture, becoming something of a Gordian knot, locking genuine selfhood away in a tomb of interwoven toxic messages until it becomes an identity that one might even fight to preserve. I shudder to think of all that would be lost had cishet-supremacist culture succeeded in its work of dividing me from myself.