Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (1998)
Current Concepts is an edited textbook; I was privileged to be the editor. The text consists of emerging ideas about trans* issues authored by physicians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and advocates, many with decades of experience in the field. The work is in part an homage to Richard Green and John Money’s 1969 edited text Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, which established early treatment protocols. Both Green and Money contributed chapters to Current Concepts. Of Current Concepts, Of just how much things have changed, Green wrote in his chapter, “I am struck at the outset that the biggest change with this new text may be that it is edited by a transsexual.”
Read MoreBlack Telephones, White Refrigerators: Rethinking Christine Jorgensen (1998)
If she changed the world for nontranssexual people, Jorgensen had an even more profound effect on people who were like her. Her story galvanized many transsexual men and women into seeking the same sort of medical treatment. In 1953, Christine Hamburger published a paper in which he described receiving 465 letters from men and women, desperately begging for a “sex change.” Neither he, nor anyone else, was prepared to oblige them.
Read MoreDiscovering Who You Are (1991)
Much has changed since I wrote this series of booklets in the early 1990’s. Not only have I become older and hopefully wiser, but there has been a revolution in the way gender identity issues are viewed. The term “gender dysphoria,” with its implication of mental illness, does not accurately describe the transgender process for all of us, and for most of us, we are only dysphoric for a relatively short time.
Read MoreDeciding What to Do About Your Gender Dysphoria (1991)
Much has changed since I wrote this series of booklets in the early 1990’s. Not only have I become older and hopefully wiser, but there has been a revolution in the way gender identity issues are viewed. The term “gender dysphoria,” with its implication of mental illness, does not accurately describe the transgender process for all of us, and for most of us, we are only dysphoric for a relatively short time.
Read MoreDealing With Your Feelings (1991)
This was the first of a series of booklets I wrote while executive director of nonprofit American Educational Gender Information service.
Read MoreA Peculiar Fixation (Ongoing)
Several years ago I made, as a mental exercise, a list of the various motor vehicles I’ve owned. I was amazed to discover that in forty-some years of driving I had acquired, driven, and sold or otherwise disposed of more than 30 automobiles (the current count is 33 and one pickup truck) and some 17 motorcycles. When I compared my automotive experiences with acquaintances of a like age, I discovered most had owned far fewer vehicles—some as few as three, some as many as six. None had owned more than a dozen. I began to suspect I was a rare bird.
Read MoreBOSCO (Behavioral Observation System, COmputerized) Operations Manual (1985)
The behavioral data gathering and analysis program Behavioral Observation System, COmputerized is a program written in the BASIC programming language for the TRS-80 Models 100 and 102 portable computers. I am the sole author. It was used extensively by researchers at the Special Education Department at George Peabody College, which is a part of Vanderbilt University.
Read MoreIdentity Management in Transsexualism (1994)
I wrote this book to help transsexuals with the formidable challenge of changing their legal identities from one gender to the other.
Read MoreGender Dysphoria: A Guide to Research (1994)
I didn’t realize it as I was preparing the manuscript. It was only when I was listening to Phyllis Frye speak at her International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy in Texas that it came to me: I was the first transsexual to produce a book-length nonautobiographical contribution to the medical and psychological literature of transsexualism—the only out-of-the-closet transsexual, anyway. It astonished me.
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