Psychology as Art; Psychology as Science; Psychology as Pseudoscience (1992)
Holly Boswell did a good job of critiquing Glenn Humphrey’s doctoral dissertation. I was outraged enough by Humphrey’s analysis to critique it myself. I was not gentle.
Read MoreRupert Raj’s Review of Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (2001)
I was happy to come across this review by FTM clinician Rupert Raj.
Read MoreShifting 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 MoreReview of Transgender Emergence (2004)
Lev does her peers in the helping professions a great service by giving them strategies and case histories that will help them work with gender-variant clients without unconsciously maneuvering the client into an outcome the therapist favors.
Read MoreReview of Tsing Lee, Mother of All She-Boys (2000)
“I did the layout myself, but I hired an artist to do the cover. Do you think the penis in the design is too subtle?” Paige asked anxiously. “The jacket designer thought it might hurt sales if it was too obvious, but I’m afraid some readers won’t notice it.” I didn’t see a penis at first glance, but considering the subject matter, I said, “I think subtle is better. Definitely.” Paige beamed.
Read MoreInterview with David Ebershoff (2000)
It’s a remarkable tale, one deserving of wide recognition, but Lili Elbe’s story, although news in the 1930s, had been largely forgotten— that is, until David Ebershoff wrote The Danish Girl, a novel based on Lili and Gerda’s experiences.
Read MoreBeware False Prophets (1997)
In March, 1996 a woman named Sandra Davis showed up at the IFGE conference in Minneapolis, hawking a book in which she made extravagant claims about being able to “cure” transsexual and transgendered people,
Read MoreCrushes On the Wrong People: A Review (2012)
Meet Billy Abbott. At age thirteen he finds himself in the public library of the little Vermont logging town of First Sister, smitten by the tall, broad-shouldered librarian. “In less than a minute of excited, secretive longing I decided to become a writer and to have sex with Miss Frost–not necessarily in that order.”
Read MoreThe Strange Case of Mimicry in the New World Coral Snakes: A Review (1985)
This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature of coral snake coloration and examines the plausibility of the various proposed causal mechanisms. Natural selection operating on predators is proposed as the mechanism which is most likely to be responsible for the evolution of and maintenance of coral snake mimicry.
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 MoreReview of Caroline Cossey, My Story (1992)
The fact of Caroline’s gender reassignment was something she quite effectively put behind her, but, alas, her anonymity was not meant to last. A photographer who had known her briefly in the early days, when she was a showgirl, tipped off the British tabloids…
Read MoreTwo Reviews of Gordene MacKenzie, Transgender Nation (1994)
Having transsexual surgery is a political act, but it is not a conformist act. Transsexual persons go against gender norms to exercise their right to modify their bodies as they wish so their bodies reflect their inner visions of themselves.
Read MoreReview, Sheila Kirk, How to Be a Good Medical Consumer (1992)
There is very little material available to educate and train transgendered men and women to make sane and rational decisions. Dr. Kirk’s booklet is a start.
Read MoreReview of Sheila Kirk, Hormones (1991)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Hormones undoubtedly do pose significant health risks. The studies which would clearly show those health risks have, unfortunately, not been done. But remember– until a few decades ago, studies had not conclusively shown the health risks of cigarette smoking.
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 Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests (1992)
Crossdressers tell us about ourselves, and about society and culture by bending the rules of normative behavior and dress. Garber illustrates this point again and again, drawing examples from history, from Elizabethan theater, from rock and roll, from the personal histories of crossdressing men and women.
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 MoreT-Bird: Jerzy Kosinski’s Peculiar Literary Fascination with Transsexual Women (1994)
Kosinski’s male characters see transsexual women, no matter how beautiful and passable on the surface, as altered men.
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
Read MoreReview of Chris Bojalian, Trans-Sister Radio (2000)
Popular author Chris Bohjalian’s mainstream novel Trans-Sister Radio has been getting good press, but I have rather a problem with it.
Read MoreReview of J. Michael Bailey, The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)
My Amazon.com review of Michael Bailey’s “The Man Who Would be Queen.”
Read MoreReview of Joan Roughgarden, Evolution’s Rainbow (2004)
Roughgarden shows us how the limiting beliefs of researchers has resulted in a view of the animal world that is based on human social systems and how in this way the lessons animals can teach us are lost.
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