SEX CHANGES: The Politics of TransgenderismWhat would it be like to grow up in a society where gender was truly consensual? If the rite of passage was to name your own gender at adolescence, or upon your transition into adulthood? What would it be like to walk down the street, go to work, or attend a party and take it for granted that the gender of the people you met would not be the first thing you ascertained about them? If you could change your sex as effortlessly in reality as you can in virtual reality, and change it back again, wouldn't you like to try it at least once? What would it be like to live in a society where you could take a vacation from gender? Or, even more importantly, from other people's gender? What if we all helped each other to manifest our most beautiful, sexy, intelligent, creative, and adventurous inner selves, instead of cooperating to suppress them?
If these questions frighten, offend, or annoy you, you are one of the people who stand to benefit from transactivism--although it probably doesn't feel like your benefactor. And if these questions amuse, engage, and challenge you, you're probably a transactivist already. Welcome to the genderevolution.-- Pat CalifiaSex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism is Pat Califia's meticulously researched analysis of the contemporary history of transsexuality. Based on in-depth interviews with gender transgressors who "opened their lives, minds, hearts, and bedrooms to the gaze of strangers," Sex Changes demonstrates Pat Califia's hallmark candor and insight.
Writing about both male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals, Califia examines the lives of early transgender pioneers like Christine Jorgenson, Jan Morris, Renee Richards and Mark Rees; partners of transgendered people like Minnie Bruce Pratt; and contemporary transgender activists like Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein. Includes bibliography, resources, index.
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"...only Califia writes with such explicitness and honesty as to make gays and lesbians as well as straights squirm in their chairs. But while Califia can make you embarrassed, angry, indignant, afraid, or aroused, it is not without higher purpose... Highly recommended." -- LIBRARY JOURNAL"Always intelligent, but never academic, Califia takes bold, unpopular stances on censorship and sexual freedom ... No aspect of sex is too forbidden or too undignified to merit Califia's critical attention..." -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY