Transgender identity and intersex

Suggested reading

Trans Forming Families: Real Stories About Transgendered Loved Ones
Boenke, Mary, ed.
Imperial Beach, CA: Walter Trook Publishing, 1999.

This is a family-oriented book published especially for families, friends, and others interested in understanding and learning about transgendered persons. The first edition sold out; this is the expanded second edition, published in 2003. It deals with all ages and types of transgender—FTM, MTF, Intersex, crossdressing, and androgeny. It is an ideal first book for families who want to understand.

There are seven sections. Section One is comprised of stories written by parents of very young gender variant children, i.e., pre-schoolers and school age children who insisted they were not the gender their parents thought they were. Section Two is by parents of adult transgenders, each describing their child's coming out process and the journey this revelation started for both the adult child AND the whole family. Section Three includes stories by spouses and partners who have weathered the trauma of living through a gender change with their most significant other. Section Four is by strategic others— grandparents, siblings, friends, children of trangenders. In Section Five, transgender folks tell about coming out to their children, with both positive and some painful results. Section Six includes short autobiographies by transgender persons, who are FTM, MTF, Intersex, crossdresser, and androgenous. In Section Seven several psychotherapists talk about common issues transgenders raise in therapy.

The back matter includes:

• Glosary of Transgender Terms
• National Transgender Organizations
• Transgender Family Reading List
• …How to Contact Authors

Also included are short quotations, quips, poems and items that are both profound and humorous. A quick, fun read.

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Gender Outlaw — On Men, Women and the Rest of Us
Bornstein, Kate.
New York: Routledge, 1994.

A thoughtful challenge to gender ideology that continually asks difficult questions about identity, orientation, and desire. Bornstein cleverly incorporates cultural criticism, dramatic writing, and autobiography to make her point that gender (which she distinguishes from sex) is a cultural rather than a natural phenomenon. The chapters range from "fashion tips" on her writing style to dialogue between herself and another about the "nuts and bolts" of the surgical process of a gender change (which she has undergone). Confronting transgenderism and transgendered people is not easy for many individuals, but Bornstein does it in a way that sparks debate without putting her audience on the defensive. She suggests that "the culture may not simply be creating roles for naturally-gendered people, the culture may in fact be creating the gendered people." Her discussion of the "parts" of gender is based on respected sources and includes analyses of gender assignment, identity, and roles. Things get mixed up, according to Bornstein, because "sexual orientation/preference is based in this culture solely on the gender of one's partner of choice," in effect confusing orientation and preference. Seeing queer theater as a place in which gender ambiguity and fluidity can and should be explored, she includes in the book her play, Hidden: A Gender. Bornstein uses the term "gender defenders" to describe those who work hard to maintain the current rigid system of gender, and she claims that her "people" (i.e., the transgendered) are just beginning to challenge the system and to demand acceptance and understanding. Bornstein's witty style, personal approach, and frankness open doors to questioning gender assumptions and boundaries.

Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism-For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals
Brown, Mildred L. and Rounsley, Chloe Ann.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996.

Filled with wisdom and understanding, this groundbreaking book paints a vivid portrait of conflicts transsexuals face on a daily basis—and the courage they must summon as they struggle to reveal their true being to themselves and others. True Selves offers valuable guidance for those who are struggling to understand these people and their situations.

Using real life stories, actual letters, and other compelling examples, the authors give a clear understanding of what it means to be transsexual. They also give other useful advice, including how to deal compassionately with these commonly misunderstood individuals—by keeping an open heart, communicating fears, pain and support, respecting choices.

While transsexualism may seem a rare phenomenon, statistical data indicates that about 10% the population is transsexual. Add to that number the friends, family, coworkers, and professionals who treat them, and it becomes apparent that the experience of transsexualism affects a great number of people. Mildred Brown—one of the country's most experienced clinicians in the field of transsexualism—and journalist Chloe Rounsley have written the first book that combines authoritative information and compassionate insight into the transsexual experience. Filled with wisdom and understanding, this groundbreaking guide paints a vivid portrait of the myriad conflicts transsexuals face on a daily basis and the courage they must summon as they struggle to reveal their true essence to themselves and others. Using real-life stories, actual letters, poems, and other compelling examples, the authors give a clear understanding of what it means to be transsexual. And the book offers important recommendations for the friends, families, coworkers, and professionals who treat these commonly misunderstood individuals. In addition to breaking down common misconceptions about transsexualism, the book offers important recommendations and guidance about dealing with both the phenomena and with the transsexual person. The authors illustrate how the support of family, friends, and professionals can help ease the burden of confusion, fear, and frustration that plagues the lives of transsexuals. And, the book provides a wealth of down-to-earth information including:

• A clear explanation of the differences between transsexuals and homosexuals, lesbians, transvestites, drag queens, and female impersonators
• Basic information about the emotional and physiological components of the transsexual experience that will help to demystify this often misunderstood group
• Suggestions for friends and family to help them cope during the difficult adjustment period

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Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman
Feinberg, Leslie.
Boston: Boston, 1996.

In this fascinating, personal journey through history, Leslie Feinberg uncovers persuasive evidence that there have always been people who crossed the cultural boundaries of gender. Transgender Warriors is an eye-opening jaunt through the history of gender expression and a powerful testament to the rebellious spirit.

Leslie Feinberg has been a leader in the transgender rights movement as long as such a movement has existed. This book is both deeply personal and widely researched. Feinberg examines perceptions of the body, the status of clothing, and the structures of societies that welcome or are threatened by gender variance. The portrait gallery that closes the book contains photographs and capsule biographies of contemporary transgendered people.

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Crossing: A Memoir
McCloskey, Deirdre N.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

This fascinating memoir chronicles Deirdre McCloskey's transformation from Donald McCloskey, an economist at the University of Iowa and married father of two, into the woman he finally accepted he had always wanted to be. McCloskey had been dressing in women's clothes since he was 11, but after his daughter went to college in 1994, the 52-year-old man grew increasingly aware that he was more than "just a heterosexual crossdresser." As he moved toward the decision to become a transsexual, his wife reacted angrily, and his sister tried twice to have him declared insane. The passages detailing McCloskey's ordeal within the psychiatric and legal establishment are as gripping as a topnotch thriller. But the memoir's deeper interest lies in the author's reflections on the nature of gender and identity. Donald was a macho academic who dominated every discussion, viewing conversation as an exercise in one-upmanship. As he surgically altered his appearance and began to take estrogen on the road to "The Operation," he found himself relating to people in a more conventionally female way: listening to others, considering feelings. "The hormones are working, he thought at first. Or was it merely that the real person could now stand up? … Biology or core identity?" There are no final answers to such questions, but McCloskey poses them with sensitivity and insight.

Wendy Smith

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Transmen and Ftms: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities
Cromwell, Jason.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Cromwell provides an interesting ethnography of female men from a FTM perspective in a time when the transgender community is calling for scholarship about transpeople by transcholars. He gives an insider's perspective of a fairly homogenous type of group of transmen that capably provides a few new glimpses into female men's stories.

It's a much understudied population, no matter which discipline is framing the work. Also interesting to consider is how US anthropology is more well versed in gender studies of other cultures, so this ethnography provides stories from home that resist being ethnocentric. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of the text is that it is not theoretically framed by the toxic God-like oppression of the psycho-medicalizing discourse that makes everyday transgender experiences fit into a disease model of gender identity disorder, body dysphoria, social deviancy, and personal deficiency.

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Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism
Califia, Pat.
San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1997.

Common sense has dictated that there are two genders—female and male. But this perspective is becoming less accepted and making less sense for many people. Pat Califia's Sex Changes is a frank, forthright, and sometimes funny challenge to the traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. Transgenderism is the term used to describe people who feel they belong to both, or neither, traditional genders. Califia—a vocal sex radical as well as a therapist—explores the worlds of biology, sociology, psychology, and politics and comes to the conclusion that life and personal experience is far more complicated than most people believe and that the simple two-gender system most people accept is more harmful that helpful. Clear-headed writing and enormous empathy for everyone who exists outside of "the norm" make Sex Changes challenging and vital reading.

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Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits
Cameron, Loren.
San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1996.

The idea of gender is no long as fixed as it once was: Tootsie, La Cage aux Folles, and Milton Berle saw to that. But none of this has prepared us for Loren Cameron's amazing portraits of transsexuals. Beautifully reproduced and complemented with notes and short essays, these portraits of women who are now men may startle, but they will also make you marvel at the genuine complexities of life, sex, and desire. Body Alchemy might have been a curiosity, like Diane Arbus's photographs of those outside the physical and cultural mainstream, but Cameron's art is so empathetic, so precise, that we are left in awe and with a new understanding of the realities of being human.

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Lessons from the Intersexed
Kessler, Suzanne J.
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

This an excellent book on the "gender theory". It is also a starting point for new gender activism. Kessler tells us the intersexed "real lives stories" of pain and suffering. She deconstructs the medical retoric as to how doctors "enforce gender" while inflicting both physical and psychological harm on their intersexed patients. She compares the genital reconstruction imposed on the intersexed with that begrundgingly provided to (MTF) transsexual women and suggested to women with genital cancer. Kessler shows how we might change gender for the benefit of all. She says: "Institutionalized mutilations occur because the genitals too are taken too seriously … If we want people to respect particular bodies, they need to be taught to lose respect for ideal ones." She suggests that genital piercing, people creating "custom" genitals or men growing breasts for their own self-pleasure are initial steps to breaking down the connection between body and gender. Following that, the two-gender system will break down.