Trans Women

Conundrum

cover of ConundrumConundrum

Author: Jan Morris
ASIN: 0140264299
Binding: Paperback
List Price: £6.99 GBP
Amazon Price: £6.99
Recommended Reading

“I have a particular fondness for Jan Morris’s book, because its serialisation in The Sunday Times in the 1970s was the first time I understood that there were others like me … that I was not alone in knowing myself to be female despite the insistence of others that I was male. In my boarding school, I carefully stored the weekly instalments at the bottom of the pile of newspapers I kept as bedding for my pet gerbils … and read and re-read them until fear of discovery led a frightened ten-year-old to carefully destroy them.
    It was a further twenty years before I managed to start my transition, two decades in which I found little to read about trans issues, apart from a brief and furtive foray into the university library when I encountered some of the classic medical texts (dismal reading, all of them). When I finally bought my own copy of Conundrum, and proudly placed it on my bookshelves rather than hiding it in a cupboard, it was eerie to discover how much of the text had remained lodged in my memory from those furtive childhood readings.
    Morris’s account of her life is tenderly written, focusing more on the joys of her varied career than on the pains of being trans. Nonetheless, she describes in detail all-too-familiar for other trans women the long years of secret realisation, of shared secrets, and eventual self-realisation. Her account of surgery in a Casablanca clinic is sparse in detail but wonderfully evocative in atmosphere, and the reason for her trip to Casablanca — the NHS’s requirement that divorce should be a pre-requisite for surgery — is all too familiar to those still facing similar restrictions in some NHS clinics.
    Some may find the prose in Morris’s later works too rich for their taste, but Conundrum is a lovely book, a worthy memoir of a prolific writer.” — CMcN
    — See also a biography of Jan Morris by Christine Burns.

Crossing: A Memoir

cover of Crossing: A MemoirCrossing: A Memoir

Author: 288 McCloskey
ASIN: 0226556689
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: £17.50 GBP
Amazon Price: £17.50
Recommended Reading
One of the world’s foremost economists, Deirdre McCloskey’s story of her gender transition is notable not just for the prominence of the author, but for its frankness in describing the unnecessary humiliations which we all have to ensure at the hands of those who can provide the necessary medical assistance. (See also The New York Times’ review)

Call Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a Transsexual

cover of Call Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a TranssexualCall Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a Transsexual

Authors: Nelson, Eugenia Jackson
ASIN: 1583487344
Binding: Paperback
List Price: £12.99 GBP
Amazon Price: £28.34 GBP

Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography

cover of Christine Jorgensen: A Personal AutobiographyChristine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography

Author: Christine Jorgensen
ASIN: 1573441007
Binding: Paperback
List Price: £11.99 GBP
Amazon Price: £11.99
An intimate memoir of the world’s first publicised sex-change operation, with an introduction by Susan Stryker. In her down-to-earth style, Christine Jorgensen, formerly George, offers a first-hand account of her life as a long-suffering, sexually confused youth that chose to end his unhappiness by becoming a woman.

Fantastic Women

Fantastic Women

Author: WOODHOUSE
ASIN: 0813514436
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: £29.95 GBP
Amazon Price: £29.95

Feminizing the Male Face: A Cosmetic Surgery Guide for the Male-to-female Transsexual

cover of Feminizing the Male Face: A Cosmetic Surgery Guide for the Male-to-female TranssexualFeminizing the Male Face: A Cosmetic Surgery Guide for the Male-to-female Transsexual

Author: Douglas K., MD Ousterhout
ASIN: 1886039933
Binding: Paperback
List Price: £33.60 GBP
Amazon Price: £33.60

Fixed for Life: The True Saga of How Tom Became Sally

cover of Fixed for Life: The True Saga of How Tom Became SallyFixed for Life: The True Saga of How Tom Became Sally

Author: Irene Preiss
ASIN: 158348728X
Binding: Paperback
List Price: £12.99 GBP
Amazon Price: £12.99 GBP

In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage

cover of In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of PassageIn Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage

Author: Anne Bolin
ASIN: 0897891155
Binding: Paperback
List Price: £16.95 GBP
Amazon Price: £67.97 GBP

“This study of a group of trans people in the USA is quite old now, being based on PhD research carried out in the early 1980’s. But even though it is in some ways outdated, it marked a turning point in writings about trans women.
   The author is an anthropologist, and as such she starts with that discipline’s approach of learning and recording the lives of her subjects, as they see themselves. The result is a book light years away from the pattern of previous writings, which were predominantly written by psychiatrists, psychologists and others … professions whose ethos is to bring to their work an expertise and insight supposedly lacked by the people who they study, and whose writings routinely dismiss and distort the experiences and understandings of those whom they purport to describe.
    Those earlier texts, and all too many since, have explained at great length the their authors’ prejudices of how trans people are deluded, or the hapless victims of their deep needs, and marginalise or ignore the voices of trans people themselves. Instead, Bolin describes with great tenderness the details of the learning processes involved in transition, the economic, social and medical hazards faced, and extent to which the trans women involved have to work around the “professionals” who purport to help them, and how the truths of this wonderful journey are all too often a secret which must be carefully guarded, particularly from those same “professionals”.
   By avoiding the temptation to construct grand theories, and working instead to build a relationship of trust with the women with whom she spent two years, Bolin was able to share the secrets witheld from those who exercise power over trans people. In Search of Eve stands as a record of the realities of the lives of her subjects … and an indictment of the dehumanising nature of so much of the rest of the academic literature. If for nothing else, her critique of the absurdity and misuse of the psychological tests applied to trans people makes this a valuable reference.
   As a model for how to write about trans people, Bolin’s book has stood the test of time far better than any of its contemporaries. My own copy is regularly lent out as required reading for those who want to understand more about how we are portrayed.” — CMcN

In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage

In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage

Author: Anne Bolin
ASIN: 0897890825
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: £27.95 GBP
Amazon Price: £27.95