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Three Great Quarterlies (1994)

Posted on Dec 29, 2013 in AEGIS, Chrysalis Quarterly, Gender, Magazines, Reviews

In which I review three great quarterly trans magazines.

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Psychology as Art; Psychology as Science; Psychology as Pseudoscience (1992)

Posted on Dec 26, 2013 in AEGIS, Chrysalis Quarterly, Gender, Magazines, Research, Reviews

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.

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Rupert Raj’s Review of Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (2001)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 in Gender, Reviews

I was happy to come across this review by FTM clinician Rupert Raj.

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Shifting Paradigms? Making the Move to Transgender Clinical Practices (2004)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 in Book Chapters, Gender, Journals, Reviews

My chapter in the edited text Transsgender Subjectivities rated a paragraph from reviewer Karl Bryant.

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Review of Transgender Emergence (2004)

Posted on Oct 19, 2013 in Gender, Psychology, Reviews

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.

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Review of Tsing Lee, Mother of All She-Boys (2000)

Posted on Oct 5, 2013 in Events, Gender, Magazines, Reviews, Tapestry

“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.

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Interview with David Ebershoff (2000)

Posted on Oct 5, 2013 in Gender, Interviews, Magazines, Reviews, Tapestry

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.

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Beware False Prophets (1997)

Posted on Oct 5, 2013 in AEGIS, Gender, Reviews

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,

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Crushes On the Wrong People: A Review (2012)

Posted on Aug 13, 2013 in Columns, Gender, Magazines, Newsletters, Reviews, TG Forum

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.”

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The Strange Case of Mimicry in the New World Coral Snakes: A Review (1985)

Posted on Apr 25, 2013 in Ethology, Reviews, School Papers

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.

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Rachel and Me (2000)

Posted on Nov 5, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

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.

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Review of Caroline Cossey, My Story (1992)

Posted on Oct 1, 2011 in Gender, Magazines, Reviews, Tapestry

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…

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Two Reviews of Gordene MacKenzie, Transgender Nation (1994)

Posted on Oct 1, 2011 in AEGIS, AEGIS News, Gender, Magazines, Newsletters, Reviews

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.

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Review, Sheila Kirk, How to Be a Good Medical Consumer (1992)

Posted on Oct 1, 2011 in AEGIS, Chrysalis Quarterly, Gender, Magazines, Reviews

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.

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Review of Sheila Kirk, Hormones (1991)

Posted on Oct 1, 2011 in AEGIS, Chrysalis Quarterly, Gender, Magazines, Reviews

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.

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Review, Two Transsexual Autobiographies (1993-1994)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

…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.

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Review of Stephanie Castle, Feelings (1991)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

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.

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Review of Claudine Griggs, Passage Through Trinidad (1995)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

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.

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Review of Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests (1992)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 in Gender, Newspapers, Reviews

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.

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Review of Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed (2002)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

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.

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T-Bird: Jerzy Kosinski’s Peculiar Literary Fascination with Transsexual Women (1994)

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 in Gender, Magazines, Reviews

Kosinski’s male characters see transsexual women, no matter how beautiful and passable on the surface, as altered men.

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Review of Jason Cromwell, Transmen & FTMs (1999)

Posted on Sep 29, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

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.

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Review of Tracie O’Keefe & Katrina Fox (Eds.), Finding the Real Me (2004)

Posted on Sep 29, 2011 in Gender, Journals, Reviews

A Chorus of Transgender Voices

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Review of Chris Bojalian, Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

Posted on Sep 29, 2011 in Gender, Magazines, Reviews, Tapestry

Popular author Chris Bohjalian’s mainstream novel Trans-Sister Radio has been getting good press, but I have rather a problem with it.

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Review of J. Michael Bailey, The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)

Posted on Sep 29, 2011 in Gender, Online, Reviews

My Amazon.com review of Michael Bailey’s “The Man Who Would be Queen.”

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Review of Joan Roughgarden, Evolution’s Rainbow (2004)

Posted on Sep 16, 2011 in Gender, Magazines, Reviews, Tapestry

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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