Customer Reviews

Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex Changing

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This is a more academic collection than many others discussing transgender and transexual issues. Thirteen researchers and activists have contributed to this book. Usually their biases are clearly stated up front and for the most part the evidence is also well presented. As in most academic articles the reader may be surprised by the personal focus and "attacks" in some of the articles -- sadly this is all too common in many of the social and medicial sciences. Not geared toward the average reader; having a good grasp of social or psychological theory plus some experience in college level analysis is practically a must to get the most from this book.

Although it covers a broad spectrum of experience (if from a somewhat limited viewpoint) I expected a lot more from a book that has Stephen Whittleand Janice Raymond contributing adjacent chapters. Thecore of the book is a debate about the historical construct- ion of "transgender" and its legitimacy in modern culture. The arguments against, with the exception of Raymond's revised introduction to the Transsexual Empire (1994), seem to predate the emergence of "transgender" as a term, and thus don't address any of the cultural developments that have sprung up around it. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts predominate, there is an annoying tendency for essays to treat transgendered subjectivity as a source only for raw data, and not a legitimate independent critical voice.