(Evanston, IL: Chicago Spectrum Press, 1996)
(ISBN: 1-886094-51-9; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.9.E77 1996)

    Randi Ettner is a psychologist
who accidentally began working with transsexuals.
She has appeared in various media defending changing sex.
Ettner believes that transsexuals are born that way
—with a psyche at odds with their bodies.
She gives psychological support to all who wish to change sex.
And this book presents the stories of about 10 of her clients.
It also includes 'before' and 'after' pictures
of some of the people who changed sex.
The purpose of this book seems to be
to support transsexuals in their choice
rather than to broaden our scientific understanding
of the several phenomena that might be involved.

22. Gordene Olga MacKenzie 

Transgender Nation

(Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1994)       190 pages
(ISBN: 0-87972-596-6; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0-87927-597-4; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.M54 1994)

     This book supports all variations of sex and gender.
It is written from within the emerging sub-culture itself.
The author has had considerable contact with individuals in New Mexico
who vary from standard patterns of sex and gender in several ways.

     As of the early 1990s, there was already a movement
within the 'transgender nation' away from conceptions
imposed by the scientific and medical establishments.
People were beginning to claim the right to live
as any sex or gender they pleased
—with or without the approval and/or physical help
of the medical profession.
Increasingly, these individuals were merely living as the other sex
if that seemed right to them.

     This book is another addition to the literature of transsexualism
from the perspective of the transsexuals themselves.
Each person with some variation of sex and/or gender
usually develops some personal explanation
before he or she begins any scientific reading
or begins to consult any professionals.
The author favors transsexual persons remaining active
in the 'gender' community rather than fading into the population
of unremarkable males and females.

23. Anne Bolin 

In Search of Eve:
Transsexual Rites of Passage

(South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1988)       210 pages
(ISBN: 0897890825; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0897891155; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.9.B65 1988)

     Original anthropological research based on two years
of being with 16 male-to-female transsexuals.
Bolin attempts to get beyond the standard transsexual story
that had to be told to doctors in order to be approved for a sex-change.
This sample of transsexuals does not conform to the stereotypes
expected by the early 'explanations' of transsexualism:
close mother-distant father,
being a sissy in childhood, hating one's penis.
Bolin gives considerable attention to the various processes
(social, educational, emotional, hormonal, surgical)
that the transsexuals must undergo
in order to emerge as complete women a few years later
—women's personality, emotional responses,
appearance, voice, hair, nails, walk, interests,
& perhaps marriage to a man and children by adoption.
This is an important document of the transsexual phenomenon
as seen by a participant-observer
who was not driven by any preconceived theory
of the 'causes' of transsexualism.

24. Viviane K. Namaste 

Invisible Lives:
The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000)       340 pages
(ISBN: 0-226-56809-1; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0-226-58810-5; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.95.C2N35 2000)

     A male-to-female transsexual with close connections
with the drag-queen sub-sub-culture of Montreal, Quebec, Canada
makes a strong case for recognizing this sub-sub-culture
and giving drag queens health care, especially for AIDS,
which they mostly contracted by having sex with gay men.

     Because drag queens are male prostitutes
who pretend to be female to please their gay male clients,
they are often erased both by the general culture
(which does not acknowledge homosexuals at all)
and by the gay men's sub-culture
because drag queens are entertainers and prostitutes
not regular members of the gay men's sub-culture.
Thus the subjects of this book are doubly marginalized.

     (Of course, not all drag queens have sex-change operations
in order to be closer to females in body,
but all do pretend in many ways to be women.
Some even sell sex to heterosexual men
by pretending to be ordinary female prostitutes.
But most sell sex to men who are sexually aroused
by the image of men who pretend to be women.)

     In contrast to most scientific research on transsexuals,
which is done by non-transsexuals
studying individuals who are very different from themselves,
this book is written definitely from within
this very small sub-group within the larger gay and lesbian sub-culture.

     The author established a health-clinic
to deal with the problems of males who sell sex as females.
Their daily problems include drugs
and sexually-transmitted diseases associated with their occupation.
What should drag queens do when they discover they are HIV positive?
Should they risk passing the virus to their clients?
Because they have few others skills,
and when the economy does not have many opportunities,
it is economically difficult for them to give up selling sex
to gay men who are attracted to drag queens.
Should they retire from the game and adapt to a shortened life?
What about their housing conditions?
What about the working conditions of phone-sex workers?

     Despite the author's sex-change,
this reviewer senses that his mind is all male. 
He has done pains-taking detailed research
into other writings on transsexualism.
(For instance, he summarizes a great deal of writing
on the various 'causes' of transsexualism.)
He is an activist, rather than merely suffering his fate.
His prose is hard-hitting and hyper-logical
rather than diffuse and supportive.
Someone whose thinking was formed as a female
would have written a completely different book.

     Male-to-female transsexuals face employment discrimination
because employers do not want to hire someone
who used to be a male and who now dresses and acts like a woman.
This fact tends to keep drag queen prostitutes in that line-of-work
in order to pay for their sex-change and other health-care needs.

     The author's basic hope in writing this book
is to make the daily problems of MTF transsexual prostitutes
more visible in the hope that greater public awareness
will lead to improvement in their lives.
This differs fundamentally from more objective research,
which just describes a given phenomenon
without any agenda of helping the people being studied.

     Namaste makes no attempt to explain why some people are gay
or why some gay men want to imitate women
in their sexual encounters with other gay men
or why some drag queens decide to sell sex to other men.
These are all assumed and established facts.
The thrust of the book is to make this minority better known,
in the hope that they will receive better treatment
by the police, health-care workers, & medical systems.

     One problem encountered by drag queens who want to change sex
is that clinics usually require a period of living as the chosen sex,
which (for MTFs) includes being employed as women.
And prostitution usually did not qualify as a valid form of employment.
Many felt that they were set up to fail
when they were told to put on a dress and get a job.

     This book provides some interesting glimpses
into the lives and problems of MTF prostitutes,
who are such a small group
that they will probably never have another book written about them.
Only some of them want to undergo sex-change operations,
which are not really needed for them to continue their way-of-life.

26. Bernice L. Hausman 

Changing Sex:
Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995)                245 pages 
(ISBN: 0822316803; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0822316927; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: RC560.G45H38 1995)

     Hausman believes that the technical ability to do sex-change surgery 
is the fundamental cause of transsexualism.
Janis Raymond (in Transsexual Empire, reviewed below)
proposed a similar thesis.
Both women see the phenomenon of
men turning themselves into woman
thru feminist glasses,
which makes them see a conspiracy of male surgeons
turning men into conventional women.

     Because Hausman was very aware
of the cultural causes of such phenomena as sex-roles
(behavior assigned on the basis of one's sex)
and gender-personalities
(traits enculturated into us, making us either 'masculine' or 'feminine'),
she assumes that there must be a cultural cause of transsexualism.
Herein this reviewer believes she is profoundly mistaken.
The phenomenon now called transsexualism
has existed for hundreds of years.
Thus, it was not the result of the technology of sex-change surgery,
which only became possible in the second half of the 20th century.

     Hausman especially blames television transsexuals
for planting the notion
that one can solve all one's problems by changing sex.
Clearly many people latch onto the concept of transsexualism
when they first hear about the phenomenon,
but we should not blame the medium for making the concept known.

     Hausman is correct about the standard transsexual story.
Because male-to-female transsexuals must convince
(mostly male) doctors that they are women,
they must conform to the stereotypes of what
women look like, how women move, behave, feel, talk, etc.
They must be interested in "women's concerns"—marriage, family, etc.
Some feminists complain that these features constitute
men's ideas of what women are like.

     But if transsexualism were a result of a conspiracy of male doctors
to make more women because that pleases men,
they would take all comers:
Every man who wanted a sex-change could get the operation.
Hausman seems unaware that scientific doctors
turn down more applicants than they operate on.

     Another major flaw of this book—a revision of a PhD thesis—
is that most of the research upon which it was based
were cases that took place before 1950.
It would need a lot of updating to take recent
facts, discoveries, & theories into account.
Finally, this question: Is working against transsexualism
really a good way to promote the feminist agenda?

27. Janis Raymond

The Transsexual Empire:
The Making of the She-Male

(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979)
(ISBN: 080721644)
(Library of Congress call number: RC560.C4R38 1979)

(New York: Teachers College Press, 1994—second edition)       220 pages
(ISBN: 0807762725)
(Library of Congress call number: RC560.C4R38 1994)

     This book is a feminist critique of the practice of changing sex.
Raymond is offended by transsexuals who want to be conventional women
—the very stereotypes she has been trying to counteract.
Why should men want to join an oppressed class?
To Raymond this seems as foolish
as whites changing their skin color to become blacks.
Sex-change operations only reinforce the conventional differences
between men and women.
Raymond wants to overcome such differences.
She compares sex-change operations
to women having their breasts enlarged—to please men.

     Raymond sees the transsexual doctors—psychiatrists and surgeons—
in a conspiracy trying to keep the sexes separate and distinct,
which includes keeping women in subordinate roles.
But the fact is that these few 'transsexual' individuals
freely seek out such professionals
because they do not feel at home in their bodies.
The surgery is intended to relieve suffering,
not to 'keep women in their place'.
And most people who seek to change sex
are turned down by the professionals.

     Thru-out the book, Raymond confuses gender-personality traits
with male/female self-designation.
She believes that male-to-female transsexuals
are trying to become more 'feminine'.
But surely men can be more sensitive, warm, loving, & nurturing
without a sex-change!

     Raymond believes that transsexualism is an ideology
—a social construct created by society—like sexism and patriarchy.
And because treatments for transsexuals undercut the efforts
to eradicate sex-role stereotyping and sex-discrimination,
such treatments move in the wrong direction
according to Raymond's feminist ideology.

     Raymond's conclusions were based on only 15 transsexuals
and interviews with professionals in the field.
She seems to lack empathy for these male-to-female transsexuals
in claiming that society made them want to become women.

28. Martine Rothblatt

The Apartheid of Sex:
A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender

(New York: Crown, 1995)       178 pages
(ISBN: 051759997X)
(Library of Congress Call number: HQ1075.R68 1995)

     Rothblatt wants complete freedom for people
to be and express any variation of sex and gender they please:
to dress any way they want;
to have whatever personality traits they prefer;
to marry anyone they want;
to raise children in whatever ways please them;
to have sex with whomever they please; &
to have any surgery to change sex.
He believes all of these are matters of social convention.
But this reviewer believes that the last two
(sex-scripts and biological sex) are much deeper than enculturation.

     Rothblatt believes there is a continuum of sex from female to male.
He uses the analogy of race:
Skin color shows every possible shade and variation.
And Rothblatt believes it is possible
to have the body of one sex but the mind of the other.

     As the title suggests,
Rothblatt wants to end sex-segregation and discrimination
—just as racial segregation and discrimination are now ending.
Historically speaking the races are converging.
The geographical separations that originally created
the different races of the human species are now disappearing.
And interracial reproduction
is reducing the differences between the races.
Rothblatt's own 4 children are interracial,
since he is white and his wife is black.
But inter-breeding between males and females
has not reduced the biological differences
between the two sexes of the human species.

     Rothblatt's basic argument conceals an unstated shift:
Traditional sex-roles for men and women can be changed.
And our gender-personalities are converging
(especially the admirable qualities of both 'masculinity' and 'femininity').
But we cannot 'go further' to abolish all sex-differences.
Our biological sex-differences are as pure and strong
as they have ever been.
And there is no way to abolish sex-differences.
Our success in eliminating sex-role and gender-personality stereotypes
does not imply that sexual differentiation will be the next to disappear.

     We have great flexibility in gender-personalities:
As self-creating adults, we can choose our personality traits
from any of the hundreds of characteristics
listed on the Gender-Pattern Chart.

(See Ch. 7 of James Park's New Ways of Loving:
How Authenticity Transforms Relationships:
"Masculinity/Femininity: Loving Beyond Our Gender-Personalities".
This Gender-Pattern Chart also appears in
Variations of Sex and Gender,
Ch. IV "Gender Personalities: Thousands of Possible Gender-Patterns".)

But none of the changes in personality-traits
requires or suggests that a sex-change is needed.
Rothblatt makes a classic switch
(also found in other advocates of sex-change freedom):
Because 'masculinity' and 'femininity' are flexible,
so are maleness and femaleness.
But such thinking confuses biologically-given sex
with enculturated sex-roles and gender-personalties.

     Rothblatt wants to sell us a radical change
(sex-change operations on demand)
under the guise of a moderate change most of us would endorse
(moving away from rigid and stereotyped gender-personalities
and conventional sex-roles assigned to men and women).
Calling all such changes "gender freedom"
hides the profound differences between biological sex on one side
and sex-roles and gender-personalities on the other.
Contrary to the author's aim,
sex-change operations on demand are not a part of the feminist agenda.

     Rothblatt also suggests ending sex-typing at birth.
This would allow the child to choose a sex later—or no sex.
Unisex bathrooms would de-emphasize the differences between the sexes
and solve some of the problems associated with segregated bathrooms.

     Rothblatt himself lived most of his life as a man:
He married a woman, fathered 4 children,
became a successful lawyer and businessman.
In the middle of his life, he decided to put his 'female' persona first.
He now lives full time as a woman,
wearing women's clothes, jewelry, nail polish, hair-style, etc.
He has remained married to his wife, now calling it a lesbian marriage.
They go out together in public as a lesbian couple.
He tells us nothing about their sex-life,
either before or after his change to living as a woman.
His children still regard him as their dad.
And judging only from the printed words of his book,
his personality is still more 'masculine' than 'feminine'.
He remains stern and hard-hitting in every line of the text.
A more 'feminine' person would emphasize
the tender and intuitive side of being a woman.
He remains a 'masculine' writer, for example,
using lots of scientific examples of paradigm shifts
in his attempt to promote a paradigm shift in our thinking about sex.
He has not changed his professional interests or activities.
He has no 'feminine' interests or activities.
He continues to run his own business, now as a female CEO.
So his decision to live as a woman was not really a personality shift.
His personality probably remains
much the same as it was when he lived as a man.

     Rothblatt has written a very personal book
—even tho it takes the form of a legal or philosophical argument—
based on his own mental change from calling himself a man
to calling himself a woman.
But (for this reader at least) he does not sufficiently explain his change.
And he shows very little evidence
of having read any scientific books on sex.

29. John Money

Biographies of Gender and Hermaphroditism
in Paired Comparisons:
Clinical Supplement to the Handbook of Sexology

(Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier, 1991)       375 pages

     Detailed case studies of 22 intersex individuals,
most followed from infancy thru adulthood.  Main themes:
(1) sex assignment confusions, problems, mistakes, & later corrections;
(2) hormonal problems prenatally and at puberty
—and their correction when possible;
(3) surgical correction of make the body more male or female;
(4) family histories of coping with sexual birth defects;
(5) male/female self-designation struggles for all the intersex individuals;
(6) sexual histories, romantic histories, marriage, adoption of children,
adjustment, & mal-adjustment.

     This book should be read by all intersex individuals,
their families, & all professionals who deal with them.

     Even tho this book does not deal with transsexuals
as normally understood
—persons who decide to change sex in the middle of life—
it may be the first scientific book that deals with the questions
concerning what makes an individual one sex or the other.
Everyone with a personal or professional interest in transsexualism
should also read this book.

30. John Colapinto

As Nature Made Him:
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

(New York: HarperCollins, 2000)       279 pages
(ISBN: 0-06-019211-9; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: RC560.G45C65 2000)

    This is not really a book about transsexualism,
but it does tell the story of a baby boy whose parents decided
that he should be raised as a girl because he lost his penis.
Later (at age 14) he decided to become a male again.
It is related to transsexualism in that
it does deal with the question of how set or permanent one's sex is
or how easily one can change sex.

    This book is journalism rather than science.
But it will introduce thousands of people to sexology
who would never have taken the opportunity
to read a more technical book.

     Colapinto tells the story of David Reimer,
who lost his penis in a circumcision accident at age 8 months.
After his parents saw a television program
featuring sexologist John Money,
they decided explore the possibility of raising their son as a girl.
In consultation with John Money
and other psychological and medical professionals,
they decided to raise Bruce (David's original name)
as a girl (Brenda) beginning at age 19 months.
The infant's testicles were removed at age 22 months.
In retrospect, this might have been too late to change sex.
Male/female self-designation ("I am a girl" or "I am a boy")
is probably set—imprinted—by age 18 months,
by the time a child begins to speak.

     David Reimer's story is a psychological experiment that failed.
After some troublesome years as a girl, at age 14 years,
when David learned that he was born a boy
(just like his identical twin brother),
he decided to begin living as a male once again.
And as of the publication of this book,
he has lived more than half of his life as a male again.
He married a woman who already had three children,
thereby becoming an instant father.

     Hormone treatments and a new constructed penis
have helped him to cross the sex-line for a second time.
Psychologically he seems well adjusted to being a male,
even tho he spend his childhood (ages 2-14) as a girl.

     As Nature Made Him is based mainly on interviews with David,
when he was an adult male in his early thirties,
and as many other people as John Colapinto could find
three decades after the story began.
When depending on recollections years after the events,
it now appears obvious that it was never a good decision
to try to raise David as a girl.
But David may now be remembering mainly the facts
that support his decision to live as a male again.
(In reading the life-stories of many sex-changed people,
we often note that the childhood recollections
almost always support the later decision to change sex.)
Here the adult David Reimer might want to remember
that he was always a boy,
even tho everyone around him tried to raise him as a girl.

     However, we do have some good records from her childhood
that show that Brenda always resisted having a vagina constructed.
She believed that she was a girl, but she did not want any more surgery.
Her sexual attractions (such as they were) were toward 'other' girls.

     To this reviewer's knowledge,
John Money never responded to this book,
which is highly critical of his role in advising the Reimer parents
to raise their damaged boy as a girl.
John Money is familiar with other cases of failed sex-changes,
in which the individual later decides to go back to the original sex.

     In this case, there are three possible explanations for the failure:

     (1) Perhaps 19 months was too late to try to switch the sex of a child.
If the child has already begun to speak
and has heard itself referred to as either a "he" or a "she",
the imprinting of male/female self-designation has already happened.
David Reimer might have had some awareness of being a boy
from his life before he was switched to being a girl at age 19 months.

     (2) Even more important, his parents and other adult relatives
were already very accustomed to thinking of Bruce as a boy.
Even tho they were all told to treat the new Brenda as a girl,
they knew the truth of his birth as a normal boy
and the circumcision accident which destroyed his penis,
and they might have communicated this family secret unconsciously.
David's father now reports that he knew the experiment was a failure
when Brenda was 7 or 8 years old.

     (3) Even without testicles to supply testosterone (the male hormone),
Brenda developed in ways that were remarkably like
her identical twin brother, Brian.
So Brenda's body might have compensated,
still producing a boy, because all his cells said XY,
rather than XX, which is the genotype for a normal girl.
If this was the case, his body was pulling one way,
even tho his socialization was pulling in the other direction.

     When David learned the secret of his birth, he was relieved
—and immediately set out plans for becoming a boy again.
He was given all the necessary hormonal and surgical treatments,
which have helped him to be nearly a normal male as of the year 2000.

     All in all, this is a very interesting case study.
But even the author admits at the end
that one case is not a sufficient basis for a scientific conclusion,
John Colapinto was able to convince David Reimer to go public
at least in part because his case was being misused
to show the ease with which children could be raised as either sex.

     Now that one person has been willing to tell the whole story,
others might come forward with other case histories,
some confirming that nurture cannot overcome nature
and some showing that people can successfully switch
from one sex to the other.
It will be an interesting time for sexology.

    Postscript 2004:  David Reimer ultimately killed himself in 2004,
two years after the suicide of his twin brother.
We might never know whether his sex-change problems
were a factor in his decision to end his life at 38. 

31.  Kate Bornstein

My Gender Workbook:
How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman,
the Real You, or Something Else Entirely

(New York: Routledge, 1998)       292 pages
(ISBN: 0-415-91672-0; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0-415-91673-9; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ1075.B69 1998)

     The author was born a man
and later had a sex-change to become a woman.
During her years living as a woman, she was a militant lesbian.
But later her female lover decided to become a man,
which ended their sexual and romantic relationship,
altho they have continued to be friends.

     Bornstein now claims to be neither a man nor a woman
—or to be both sexes.
And the basic purpose of this book is to support all persons
who have some variation of sex and/or gender.
Bornstein argues for complete freedom
in all forms of 'gender' expression:
sex-change surgery; dressing as any sex;
having any gender-personality; any sex-roles;
any sexual relationships; any fantasies;
any pornography; & any (safe) sexual practices.

     My Gender Workbook is not a book of science or philosophy.
It is all performance: I can be any sex I want—and so can you.
Bornstein never faded into the female population,
becoming indistinguishable from other women.
(This is the wish of many transsexuals.
They want all the new people in their lives
never to know that they were once the other sex.)
Rather Bornstein has become
a poster-child for the public transsexual,
or "gender outlaw" as s/he prefers to express it.
S/he has made a profession of promoting sex-change themes
on stage and online and by writing books about being able
to switch back and forth between being a man or a woman.

     This book is argumentative and outspoken.
And it contains many interesting quotations
from others who share the same opinion
that 'gender' is a cultural construct,
which now needs to be destroyed.

    The basic flaw of My Gender Workbook
is that it confuses sex with gender on nearly every page.
Bornstein wants to use the word "sex"
to refer only to sexual behavior.
"Gender" is supposed to cover everything else.
Most enlightened people agree that gender-personality
(the ways in which we are 'masculine' and/or 'feminine')
is a cultural construct—and therefore very flexible.
Also we agree that social roles and behavior
assigned by society on the basis of sex (sex-roles)
are entirely arbitrary and therefore completely flexible.
But biological sex (whether our genes are XX or XY)
cannot be changed
because these genes exist in every cell of our bodies.

     Nevertheless, readers of this book will find much to think about,
stimulated by this militant advocate
of complete freedom in sex and gender expression.
S/he not only observes the many variations of sex and gender,
but s/he lives them every day.

    If you would like to read the first-person stories of a few transsexuals,
go to this bibliography: Transsexualism—Autobiographies.

    This bibliography is related to several others in sexology.
Here is the complete list:

Sexology                                      B-SEXOLO

Sex-Script Hypothesis                 B-SEX-SC

Variations of Sex and Gender      B-V-SG

I. Intersex                                     B-CRIT

II. Transsexualism                        B-TS

Transsexualism—Autobiographies      B-TS-AB

III. Sex-Roles                                B-ROLE

IV. Gender-Personality                 B-GEND

V. Sexual Orientation                   B-ORNT

VI. Cross-Dressing                       B-TV