Be Oakley: On How GenderFail’s Form Follows its Function

Be Oakley shares a behind-the-scenes look at the process and structure of GenderFail, a publishing outlet founded in 2015 that focuses on instigating works that expand queer subjectivities. Oakley talks in depth about how the organization functions, using past projects to illustrate how GenderFail is purpose-built for practical sustainability but also for the bigger work of celebrating, memorializing, and disseminating. Rather than being mutually exclusive Oakley describes these priorities as supporting each other, allowing the organization to remain nimble, responsive, and crucially, not beholden to the whims of financial backers.

Be Oakley (they/them) is an artist, writer, and publisher in Queens, NY. In 2015, they founded GenderFail, a nonbinary and trans-run publishing platform that operates on a profit for-survival model. GenderFail publications can be found in the library and special collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Modern, and more than 100 other institutions. Oakley has exhibited in programs and exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (Past and Future Fictions, 2018), The International Center of Photography (Queering the Collection, 2018), Center for Book Arts (Imperfect Archiving, Archiving as Practice, 2021), Women’s Studio Workshop (Seize Control of the FDA, 2022), Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (An Incessant Unknowability: An Archive of Protest Inspired Typography and Its Open Source Uses, 2024–2025). They have been artist in residence with the ICALA (2024–2025), Acre Residency (2022), and Wendy’s Subway (2018). Oakley was awarded a 2022–2025 grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Oakley is currently a NEW INC Y11 member in Cooperative Studies with the New Museum.