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Becoming a Visible Man
 
 
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Becoming a Visible Man [Paperback]

Jamison Green (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

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Book Description

June 4, 2004

Best Book in Transgender Studies, 2005
Winner, Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies (CLAGS), NY
2005 Lambda Literary Award Finalist

Written by a leading activist in the transgender movement, Becoming a Visible Man is an artful and compelling inquiry into the politics of gender. Jamison Green combines candid autobiography with informed analysis to offer unique insight into the multiple challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience, ranging from encounters with prejudice and strained relationships with family to the development of an FTM community and the realities of surgical sex reassignment.

For more than a decade, Green has provided educational programs on gender-variance issues for corporations, law-enforcement agencies, social-science conferences and classes, continuing legal education, religious education, and medical venues. His comprehensive knowledge of the processes and problems encountered by transgendered and transsexual people--as well as his legal advocacy work to help ensure that gender-variant people have access to the same rights and opportunities as others--enable him to explain the issues as no transsexual author has previously done.

Brimming with frank and often poignant recollections of Green's own experiences--including his childhood struggles with identity and his years as a lesbian parent prior to his sex-reassignment surgery--the book examines transsexualism as a human condition, and sex reassignment as one of the choices that some people feel compelled to make in order to manage their gender variance. Relating the FTM psyche and experience to the social and political forces at work in American society, Becoming a Visible Man also speaks consciously of universal principles that concern us all, particularly the need to live one's life honestly, openly, and passionately.


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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gender goes beyond chromosomes, a point broadly knowledgeable transgender activist Green makes early in the compelling, immensely readable story of his FTM (female-to-male: Jamie to Jamison) transsexual experience, from which he emerged fortysomething chronologically yet younger than 20 psychosexually as a consequence of biochemical and surgical sex reassignment. In discussing adjustment to a man's body, Green remarks that those whose bodies originally "match their gender identity take their bodies for granted in the process of identity formation"--a luxury "transgendered and transsexual people don't have." Perhaps nontranssexuals may more easily grasp Green's journey from Jamie to Jamison via the concept of realizing personal integrity, and thereby gain immeasurably from his testimony. Meanwhile, they will be educated by Green's detailed descriptions of available transsexual surgeries--he underwent metoidioplasty, the transformation of female genitalia into a male-appearing organ that, sometimes called a micropenis, is significantly smaller than average for penises, though functionally normal--and by his summary of his expenses since 1989 and his comparison of them to the costs of similar procedures today. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Jamison Green tells, with integrity, and in a moving and thoughtful way, his story.
--Dallas Denny, Editor, Transgender Tapestry Journal

An intelligent and engaging book. Jamison Green, an extraordinary activist and advocate for FTM transsexuals, demonstrates that he is also an extraordinary writer. Green artfully blends the personal, the informative, and the political, and grounds it all in a generous vision of inclusive communities. He makes a thoughtful and persuasive case for making gender visible.
--Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States

When the premier trans-activist of a generation decides to write a memoir, we should be grateful. When Jamison Green weaves his personal and political experiences into a magnificent story it is all the more reason to celebrate. Becoming a Visible Man shows why he is a leading voice to a generation of transmen and transwomen and why this issue should be on the top of the agenda for all of us in the 21st century.
--Henry Rubin, author of Self-Made Men

Jamison Green has given a great gift--based on experience born of a great personal journey, he demystifies gender in a way that transfixes the reader. The biological journey from zygote to adulthood unfolds to challenge the neat little boxes into which our culture drives gender each day. This is an essential contribution to the growing body of literature on gender identity and expression.
--Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director, Human Rights Campaign

Product Details

  • Paperback: 264 pages
  • Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press (June 4, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 082651457X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0826514578
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Clinical Psychologist, July 9, 2004
By 
Max Fuhrmann (California United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Becoming a Visible Man (Paperback)
I will highly recommend this book to my female to male transgendered psychotherapy clients and to those interested in learning about this phenomenon. It is an excellent blend of autobiographical, social and political topics. Mr. Green does a great job of taking the reader through his personal struggles with gender, sexual and social identification in an empowering and positive manner, an approach which I have found lacking in many other autobiographies of transgendered individuals. He triumphs over his difficulties of loss of contact with one of his children, shunning by his mother and rapid changes in his body as he attempts to match the outside with the inside of his identity, but allows the reader to know that these victories were not easy. He also provides the female socialized person in a newly male body with an impressive role model for how to learn about male socialization, which I also have not encountered in most works on this subject. Mr. Green does not profess to be an academician, but he obviously has done background reading on this subject, spanning at least 25 years and attempts to use his life stories to support and negate a great deal of medical and mental health literature on the subject of transgenderism and transsexualism. As an individual who started out believing that the journey from female to male bodied would be solely his personal journey, he reminds us of how one person, who becomes inspired to help others, can make such a large difference, clearly beyond what he would have ever anticipated. Max E. Fuhrmann, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A most excellent read!, March 5, 2007
This review is from: Becoming a Visible Man (Paperback)
Jamison Green's book Becoming a Visible Man is easily among my current top choices of trans-related texts. Not only does Green give readers pieces of his own personal experiences (following the trend of many other trans texts), but he also offers accessible, educational, and nuanced arguments around trans issues. In this way, Becoming a Visible Man is not only the story of Green's own personal becoming, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the story of the structures, institutions, and other forces that circumscribe, shape, and color all our becomings. In this vein, I'm confident that this book would appeal to transpeople and non-transpeople alike, both those with none or very little knowledge of trans issues, as well as those with much experience in this area.

While I haven't had the fortune (yet) to be familiar with Green's writings in the FTM Newsletter, I have no doubt that he provided much help and wisdom to its breadth of readers. His writing is balanced and aware of its biases, always mindful of questioning the existing structures of power, and responsible to those with whom he seems himself in community and alliance. By no means does this mean that Green attempts to speak for or about all transpeople or all transmen, or that he understands all transpeople or their experiences to be the same. Rather, Green is quite adamant about the differences between and among transpeople, at the same time that he is clear that we must come together in all our differences to effect true social change. And to his credit, through this all, his author's voice is calm and poetic; a great combination indeed of form and context!

I really could go on at length about the merits of this text...there isn't one thing I didn't like or find useful in its 231 pages. But, I'll settle for highlighting some of my most favorite passages:

(68) "I realized that if I could live in a way that declared my own self-acceptance--that is, not to broadcast my history every minute of the day, but to speak up honestly when it was appropriate, not necessarily with anger or even impatience, but with the compassion that I was finding within myself, to dispel myths and stereotypes that people cling to about us--that it would show others they could do it, too. Together we could change the conditions that generated our fears."

(78) "Politics is the art of negotiation among divergent goals, and cooperation is difficult when people are unaware of their motives or goals, or unable or unwilling to reveal them."

(89) "Being a transsexual is not something we do in the privacy of our own bedrooms; it affects every aspect of our lives, from our driver's licenses to our work histories, from our birth certificates to our school transcripts to our parents' wills, and every relationship represented by those paper trails."

(127) "For some people, the consequences of a transperson's assertion of his or her identity are simply too frightening because it threatens their own position within a particular community of ideology or faith."

(128) "My brother was not exactly disapproving of my sexual orientation, nor was he resentful of my ability to pitch in with his friends on construction projects or to manage home electrical problems, but he was much more comfortable when he didn't have to explain me anymore. This is not a reason to transition, as far as I'm concerned, but is a fact that an appearance of conformity with normative gender behavior does cause less social friction, a fact that every child has had drummed into her or him from earliest consciousness.

(177) "The extent to which we convey the truth of our experience is the extent to which any audience will receive us, yet so long as other people control the forum, or so long as the analyzing or commenting voices are not informed by direct experience of us, we are still vulnerable to being treated with nothing more enlightened than prejudice."

(180) "Social conventions and institutions support individual prejudice against the rights of transsexual people, adding to the burden of secrecy. These conventions persist because no one has tried, until very recently, to correct them."

(191) "Gender is a private matter that we share with others; and when we share it, it becomes a social construction, thus it requires, like language, a `speaker' and a `listener.' It is between the two of these actors that gender is defined, negotiated, corroborated, or challenged...But if we don't speak a language that others understand, then it can be a source of difficulty, even conflict, if we find ourselves in an intolerant environment."

(210) "If we are concerned that others will perceive our physical differences as laughable deficiencies, the answer is not to dehumanize and desensitize ourselves so we can manage rejection, but to sensitize others to appreciate us, and to learn to manage our own self-doubts so that others will be able to see worthy partners in us."
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars the FTM end of it., September 4, 2006
By 
Helen Boyd (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Becoming a Visible Man (Paperback)
So - why Jamison Green's Becoming a Visible Man? For starters, it's a good read. James writes to be read, unlike a lot of writers on trans experience or in gender theory. Since my "audience" comes mostly from the MTF end of things, I also think it's vital for us to educate ourselves as to what the experiences are from those on the other side of the fence. Having run FTM International for a million years, James has more than his own experience to rely upon for this book - he has head the stories of thousands of FTMs, from those that embrace a more genderqueer radical place, to those who wish, simply, to pass well enough so they can marry and mow their lawn on Saturdays.

Becoming a Visible Man was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the CLAGS book award.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
You all know what sex you are, right?" That's how I like to start. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
rough annual cost, most transsexual people, other transsexual men, surgical sex reassignment, genital reconstruction, transsexual status, transsexual experience, gender variance, intersexed people, transsexual man, testicular implants, transsexual person, transgendered people, taking testosterone, new birth certificate, gender expression
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
San Francisco, New York, Steve Dain, Lou Sullivan, Loren Cameron, United States, Billy Tipton, David Reimer, Stephan Thorne, Bay Area, Holly Devor, Jude Patton, Kate Bornstein, David Harrison
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