Shifting Paradigms? Making the Move to Transgender Clinical Practices (2004)
My chapter in the edited text Transsgender Subjectivities rated a paragraph from reviewer Karl Bryant.
Read MoreLetter to the Editor, The Journal of Sex Research (2002)
Dr. Robinson writes that the various points we made about the Standards are unsubstantiated. This is not true; with one exception, our reference section contains citations which corroborate our various points. The exception is our assertion that the Standards place restrictions on access to body-altering medical treatment “without empirical evidence that such restrictions are necessary or even advisable”. We are not sure just what source we could have cited to confirm this lack of data. We believe the burden of proof here is on HBIGDA and Dr. Robinson. Where are the data?
Read MoreLetter to the Editor, Psychiatric Times (1994)
It’s very like the old Sufi parable of the blind men and the elephant, but with all of the blind men standing in the same spot, experiencing the same part of the elephant. Until outdated notions about crossdressing and transsexualism are discarded, we’re never going to see the elephant
Read MoreElectrolysis in Transsexual Women: A Retrospective Look at Frequency of Treatment in Four Cases (1997)
This study is, so far as I am aware, the only empirical study of electrolysis in transsexuals.
Read MorePreschool Children’s Performance on Two Measures of Emotional Expressiveness Compared to Teacher Ratings (1982)
Read MoreEffects of Prey Movement and Prey Odor on Feeding in Garter Snakes (1983)
This paper, published in the German ethology journal Zeitscrhift fürTierpsychologie, is based upon my master’s thesis at the University of Tennessee. I volunteered second authorship to my advisor, Gordon Burghardt, because he put in considerable work on the published version.
Read MoreEffect of Tongue Removal on the Feeding of an Adult Garter Snake, Thamnophis Sirtalis (1977).
In my first year in an experimental psychology graduate program at the University of Tennessee Dr. Gordon Burghardt gave me and another first-year student a pair of precision Japanese motors and told us to do something with them. From that came several journal articles and my master’s thesis.
Read MoreYou’re Strange and We’re Wonderful (1994)
With its newly-found voice, the transgender community will no longer tolerate colonization by the gay community. People like Billy Tipton, Radclyffe Hall, and Joan of Arc are being reclaimed as transgendered—queer, but not gay. And it’s clear it’s a reclamation and not a revision, for they were stolen from the transgender community, which wants them back. And make no mistake about it: the murmur of today will be a roar tomorrow.
Read MoreTransgender in the United States: A Brief Discussion (1999)
Transgender then, is not only a new term, but an alternate way of looking at gender. Transgender sensibility blends elements of feminist and queer and deconstructionist theory to posit that male and female genders are not natural categories, but are socially constructed and vary from culture to culture and over time within cultures.
Read MoreWalk a Mile in My Shoes (1982)
Throughout that evening the vans and station wagons trickled back in. They discharged the ride-weary but happy individuals who were eager to try out new ideas, programs, and projects they had seen in operation.
Read MoreHalfway to Where? Why Halfway Houses for Transsexual People Aren’t a Good Idea (1993)
Rather than dream of transsexual halfway houses, we should focus on helping those transsexual men and women who are already in society to stay there by serving as advocates and educators rather than as landlords.
Read MoreRachel and Me (2000)
Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach is a work which has aged well. Unfortunately, it remains largely unknown to medical professionals and is under-referenced in the medical literature of transsexualism. It should be required reading for every clinician who works with transsexual and transgendered people.
Read MoreChanging Models of Transsexualism (2004)
The transgender model has opened a middle ground that was not possible under the medical model it replaced. Before about 1990, transgendered persons were expected to declare themselves to be crossdressers, who were not expected to seek sex reassignment; or transsexuals, who were expected to and who came under pressure from peers when they didn’t.
Read MoreA Selective Bibliography of Transsexualism (2002)
Under the new transgender model, transsexuals were not mentally ill men and women whose misery could be alleviated only by sex reassignment, but rather emotionally healthy individuals whose expression of gender was not constrained by societal expectations. Instead, the pathology was shifted from the gender-nonconformist to a society which cannot tolerate difference.
Read MoreThe Girl With No Name (1992)
… and the girl-with-no-name was dismembered as effectively as if we had cut her up and thrown her chunk by bleeding chunk from a speeding car on a moonless summer night.
Read MoreReview, Two Transsexual Autobiographies (1993-1994)
…the reader is left not with a sense that they made the correct decision, but a conviction that they rushed headlong into something the consequences of which they were just beginning to understand at press time.
Read MoreReview of Stephanie Castle, Feelings (1991)
Once I was able to concede to myself that Ms. Castle had written the book she had written, and not the book I wished she had written, I was able to settle down and enjoy it.
Read MoreReview of Claudine Griggs, Passage Through Trinidad (1995)
It’s as if their disgust with their male genitals carries over to their new female ones. It’s not surprising to me, as there’s no particular reason to believe, the transexual mythos notwithstanding, that a lifetime of distancing oneself from one’s genitals will be miraculously cured by a three hour surgical procedure.
Read MoreReview of Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed (2002)
I was prepared to dislike JoAnne Meyerowitz’ How Sex Changed, for its title suggested it was a work I would have liked to have written: a history of transsexualism in the United States. From the first page, though, I found myself absorbed.
Read MoreReview of Jason Cromwell, Transmen & FTMs (1999)
When anthropologists turn their attention to contemporary Western culture and, in particular, to subjects studied by Western social scientists, it would behoove social scientists to pay attention.
Read MoreReview of Tracie O’Keefe & Katrina Fox (Eds.), Finding the Real Me (2004)
A Chorus of Transgender Voices
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