Mariette Pathy Allen documents the lives of extraordinary individuals, their partners, families and friends. Through photographs and short texts, the reader is offered an intimate connection to the book’s subjects and -insight into how their own lives are affected by gender. As Allen says: "Trans-gendered people offer the rest of us a potentially exhilarating -vision of fluidity, freed from traditional roles or definitions. They make vivid the questions: What is the essence of humanness beyond masculinity or femininity?"
Framed by the emerging transgender political movement, The Gender Frontier is one of the first book to include both female-to-males and male-to-females, as well as queer youth. One of her subjects, Robert Eads, a female-to-male who died of ovarian cancer, was also prominently featured in the award-winning film Southern Comfort
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ecological Diversity of Gender,
By daniel shea (Pleasantville, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gender Frontier: Mariette Pathy Allen (German Edition) (Hardcover)
Ever since the 1970's there has been a growing literature on the topic of gender, some of it of very high quality, some of it negligible. But Mariette Pathy Allen's new book, "The Gender Frontier"(Kehrer, 2004) stands out from all of the books that have preceded it in its immediate humanity, its depth of insight, its extraordinary drama, its excitement at the birth of a new human community, its emotional pathos and its uninhibited celebration of the lives of some of the most courageous people alive today, those who identify themselves as transgendered. The story that Mariette tells us of the transgendered person who had her throat slit while a group of New York cab drivers stood by and laughed is not fiction. Nor is the story of Robert Eads, a female-to-male transsexual whose transition surgeon told him that a hysterectomy was unnecessary for his change to a man. When Robert contracted ovarian cancer, he was faced with the life-shattering irony that all that was left of his previous existence as a woman was killing him as a man. In a brazen mockery of the Hippocratic Oath, 20 doctors and three hospitals refused to treat him. When he finally found a doctor willing to treat him the cancer had progressed too far to be arrested. The doctors, it seems, were afraid that having "that kind of person" in their waiting rooms would scare away business. Mariette is both a photographer whose work ranks as genuine, lasting art and a writer whose personal and intimate style, free of all the gender jargon, describes for us the daily lives of transgendered people with their families, their children, their hopes, their fears, their dreams, their aspirations and their vocations in life. Through her words and through the lens of her camera we see them as real people dealing with the exigencies of life just like the rest of us and not as the sordid, commercialized, pornographic freaks we all too often meet on the Internet and in the pages of XXXX magazines. For this reason Mariette Pathy Allen will take her rightful place in the history of art, and of human liberation, as the original pioneer who brought the human universe of transgendered people to light and as an activist artist whose unflinching dedication to the truth has brought relief, happiness, dignity, self-esteem and psychological self-acceptance to thousands of transgendered persons. "The Gender Frontier" is a truly beautiful, inspirational book in every sense of those words. It is a "keeper" that everyone should have in their library. Please go buy it. Then feel yourself challenged and transformed as you proceed from one page to the next, from one story to the next. And when you arrive at the end you will have come to realize that we human beings are far more fascinating and complex and mysterious and wonderful then we thought we were when we unthinkingly imprisoned our own minds in the claustrophobic confines of the traditional binary concept of gender.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art & Activism,
By Veronica Vera "Miss Vera" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gender Frontier: Mariette Pathy Allen (German Edition) (Hardcover)
Without Mariette Pathy Allen's art and activism, the transgender movement would not be the vital force that it is today. It's that simple. If you care enough about the provocative subject of gender to have found your way to this page, this book belongs in your library. Enjoy!
Veronica Vera Miss Vera's Academy
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
moving photography and personal histories,
By just some "guy" (philadelphia, pa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gender Frontier: Mariette Pathy Allen (German Edition) (Hardcover)
this book avoids being sensationalistic and instead shows a very real portrait of what different transgendered lives and experiences look like. the histories of the subjects are particularly moving and personal. i'd recomend this book for anyone interested in gender studies or portrait photography. if, however, you're looking for a sesational and exploitative book of "trannies" than you might want to pass this one up.
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