Abstract: Representing the best popular and scholarly contributions to transgender/ sex studies, and with their mutual concern with female-to-male sex and gender crossing (among other topics), these three books mark an important shift in scholarship on gender and sexuality. Trans studies has reached a level of autonomy and sophistication that firmly establishes it as a field with its own theoretical and political questions. Of course, connections to feminist and queer theory are still very apparent in these texts, and all three authors are committed-to varying degrees-to reading trans identities against the backdrop of male dominance and heteronormativity. It's no longer enough, however, for feminist readers to dismiss the projects of trans theorists and activists as epiphenomenal to feminist discourses or even queer theory, or to view trans studies as an optional extra in discussions of sex and gender. These books represent the best arguments against this position, and thus offer a new challenge to the inclusivity, scope, and terms of women's studies. Transsexual and transgender are essentially contested terms within and outside trans communities, and part of what is at stake in these texts is the relation between established sex, gender, and sexuality labels on the one hand, and these emergent categories on the other. Trans- terms capture various kinds of sex and gender crossing, and various levels of permanence to these transitions: from medical technologies that transform sexed bodies, to cross-dressing, to passing, to a certain kind of lifeplot, to being legible as one's birth sex but with a contradictory gender inflection. For some, the adjective transsexed captures the specific project of changing one's sexed body through surgery and hormones, while for others it more broadly describes a distinctive form of narrative. Transgendered might describe any project of gender crossing or blend-
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 33
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