So You Want To Be A Woman: A Transsexuals's Guide [Paperback]

RitaLynn Sly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2004

An autobiography of a male-to-female transsexual from birth, to returning home from the final gender reassignment surgery. This book is meant to assist in mentoring a transsexual through the sometimes difficult time of transition, helping you to be aware of the many things that need to be done along the way to the final goal of becoming a woman. It is also a means of support for your decision to transition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

An autobiography of a male-to-female transsexual from birth, to returning home from the final gender reassignment surgery. This book is meant to assist in mentoring a transsexual through the sometimes difficult time of transition, helping you to be aware of the many things that need to be done along the way to the final goal of becoming a woman. It is also a means of support for your decision to transition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing (October 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141204149X
• ISBN-13: 978-1412041492
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #824,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Transgender

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Guide to What?, November 25, 2005

By 

feministman - See all my reviews

This review is from: So You Want To Be A Woman: A Transsexuals's Guide (Paperback)

I agree with the previous reviewer. I found the book to be something wholly different than the title encouraged the reader to believe that it was. It was more a memoir and truly a very personal memoir - certainly valuable as a journey to the writer - but of little value to the reader, more a chatty diary than a guide to transsexualism. Plus, it was very poorly edited. I felt like I was reading a first draft of a book, something that the editor had failed to review before publishing. In fact, I wonder if the Trafford publishers act as editors at all. Are they simply publishers of texts submitted to them without any sort of review before publication? Many of the spelling errors could have been identified with a decent spell-checker program, and the book was rife with grammatical errors, which weighed down the reader with having to add letters to a text which was already fairly indecipherable.

As a "guide for transsexuals" it was of minimal value. There are many personal memoirs in the marketplace about transition to womanhood, many of them written in a manner which draws the reader into the story with much more verve, such as Jennifer Boylan's "She's Not There: A Life of Two Genders", Deirdre McCloskey's "Crossing: A Memoir", or Erica Zander's "TransActions". All of those memoirs are not only written in a far more interesting style, but give good information about "the transition" to a reader interested in such information. Ms. Sly, the author of "So You Want To Be A Woman" would have done herself and her readers a favor to coauthor the book with a ghost writer, who knew HOW to write and who was a good editor.

There are several books on transsexualism which are far better "Guides" than this one, and which give the information they purport to give. "Trans-X-U-All: The Naked Difference" by Tracie O'Keefe and Katrina Fox; "The Univited Dilemma: A Question of Gender" by Kim Elizabeth Stuart; and "In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage" are far better texts on this subject and much more intelligently written. Ms. Sly's little book is a waste of time to any person who is interested in information about "the process of transition". It is personal to her alone and should have remained so, to be shared, at most, with close friends, as the 'first draft' that it is.

Like the previous reviewer, after reading this book, I also felt "ripped off" by the purchase.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Guide that Fails to Guide, July 17, 2005

By 

G. West "The Womblereader" (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: So You Want To Be A Woman: A Transsexuals's Guide (Paperback)

I honestly feel cheated having bought this little book. The title is misleading, for it is not so much a guide as a poorly written memoir. I was looking for information and found nothing useful here. If you're looking for a thoughtful and eloquently written memoir see Jan Morris's classic "Conundrum." If you're looking for a source of information for potential transsexuals - well, I haven't found one yet. You'd do well to just skip this one.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ignorant, April 24, 2007

By 

Mindwalker - See all my reviews

This review is from: So You Want To Be A Woman: A Transsexuals's Guide (Paperback)

As most transsexual woman know, they don't "become" women, they just gain the visible ability to be seen as the women they felt themselves to be inside. Anatomy does not define a woman. This book is offensive because it invalidates the fact that trans women are already women, not just men who "want to be" women. Part of transsexual women's struggle is gaining the basic respect they deserve from other people regarding their identities as women. Also, there are many kinds of women with diverse cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, and geographical influences, including women from extremely diverse personalities. Transsexual women need to be the kind of women that fit with their diverse personalities- there is no one way to be a non-trans woman, so why would anyone try to caim there is one way to be a woman of trans experience? Buy another book that is less essentialist and dogmatic.