WE'RE QUEER & TRANS PARENTS
We insist on exuberantly playful, bold, & innovative educational materials and books that also address and dismantle inappropriate power-over dynamics and cycles of oppression
WE'RE ARTISTS, AUTHORS, & PUBLISHERS
We cofounded our own publishing house in 2009 to bypass gatekeepers and get our books and materials OUT to our community in our own voices. Gender Wheel books and ed tools are published by POC, Queer, and Trans owned independent publisher, Reflection Press
WE'RE EDUCATORS & CONTENT CREATORS
Maya has spent decades researching and synthesizing Nature's truths into a symbol and approach to expand us out of limited binary thinking. We opened our Learning Center on Patreon in 2025 to create a central source for videos, lessons, coloring pages, creative projects and more related to our Gender Wheel Approach.
MEET THE TEAM
Maya Gonzalez
Author, Artist, Educator, Researcher, Lead Trainer, original creator of the Gender Wheel & Approach
Matthew S.G.
Occasional Author, works behind-the-scenes on everything Tech and Design
OUR HISTORY
The Gender Wheel was first created in 2010 by Maya Gonzalez and published by Reflection Press in The Gender Now Coloring Book: a learning adventure for children and adults. That same year, Maya began providing presentations on the Wheel and Approach to local organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 2017, the Gender Wheel was updated and expanded and prominetly featured in the children's book, The Gender Wheel: a story about bodies and gender for every body. Following that book's release, Maya's presentations expanded beyond the Bay Area, and additional books supporting the Gender Wheel and Approach were published.
Starting in 2021, Maya has been consistently providing our 9 hour Decolonizing Gender with Nature professional development trainings through Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Services as well as offering Gender Wheel trainings and presentations to organizations, libraries, and government agencies.
In 2025, we opened the Gender Wheel Learning Center on Patreon to house all of the educational materials related to the Gender Wheel and Approach and establish an online learning community accessible to everybody.
The Gender Wheel and Approach hold and synthesize decades of ongoing research. The Approach draws on the work of Joan Roughgarden, Bruce Bagemihl and many other researchers documenting the vast body, gender, and relationship diversity of the animal world. It also expands on the work of historians like Will Roscoe, Susan Stryker, Kit Hayem, Jen Manion and more who provide meticulous research into suppressed 2SLGBTQIA+ history and experience. Maya’s combined experience and research deeply informs the Gender Wheel Approach, giving it a maturity and emotional stability that allows participants to trust, relax, and learn.
Some of our
CURRENT & PAST CLIENTS
- Santa Clara Office of LGBTQ Affairs
- County of Santa Clara Behavioral Health Services
- Los Angeles County Office of Education
- University of San Francisco Critical Diversity Studies Forum
- MEDA (Mission Economic Development Agency)
- Santa Clara Office of Education
- First 5 Alameda County
- BANANAS Inc – a non-profit childcare support agency
- University of Oregon
- Sonoma County Library
