Transsexualism—Autobiographies
Copyright
© 2009 by James Leonard Park
reviewed by James Park,
existential philosopher and reader of sexology
The paragraphs in red are the
opinions of this reviewer.
1. Tracie O'Keefe & Katrina Fox, editors
Trans People in Love
(New York: Routledge: www.routledge.com,
2008) 275 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-7890-3571-4; hardcover)
(ISBN: 978-0-7890-3572-1; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.7.T736 2007)
25 transsexual persons from several cultures
tell their stories of changing from men-to-women or women-to-men
and how this affected their closest sexual relationships.
All had problems in making the change,
but all who are represented in this collection
are examples of basically successful
transitions
from one sex to the other.
Each author tells his or her own story in his or her
own words.
So there is no attempt to create a unified theory of transsexualism.
A few of the contributors have also included their pictures,
often with their partners.
What makes their love-lives especially challenging
is the fact that their sex-partners know their former sex,
even if the rest of the world has no clue.
In their sexual encounters, the authors and their sex-partners
must maintain the belief that the transsexual is really the new sex now.
Some relationships ended because of this problem.
Especially when one partner had sex-change surgery,
the sexual dynamics usually changed.
(How would you feel if your
regular sex-partner changed sex?)
Most of the authors are active
in the 'transgender' communities where they live.
They have not faded into the general population
as their chosen sexes.
And many think of themselves as having
unconventional sexual relationships after transition
such as gay or lesbian.
Each life-story is different in this respect.
For example, careful reading and thinking is
required for the reader
to understand two male-to-female transsexuals
who now think of themselves as having a lesbian relationship.
One is even called a "trans-lesbian" relationship.
Because the
editors gathered stories
from the open 'transgender'
communities all around the world,
all of the authors are known to
have changed sex
to one degree or another.
This omits a significant
portion of the transsexual population,
namely the people who changed sex
and then entered conventional
male-female relationships
as their new sex, often getting
married and adopting children
to make the family even more
traditional.
These people who have changed sex
are not part of the gay, lesbian,
transgender, queer, etc. world.
Rather, they want to be known as
ordinary men and women.
In fact, in the early days of sex-change surgery,
when the practice was more main-stream
and often controlled by sex-change clinics in academic settings,
it was commonly assumed that anyone who wanted to change sex
would be heterosexual in the sex of choice.
Academic sex-change clinics did not take clients
who declared that they wanted to become homosexual in their new sex.
Male-to-female clients had to show that they were able to live as
conventional women,
which included having heterosexual relationships with ordinary men,
often adopting children to create a conventional family.
Female-to-male clients had to show that they could live as ordinary
men,
holding male-identified jobs
and having heterosexual relationship with ordinary women.
If either kind of sex-change candidate
wanted to have sex with members of the same-sex after change,
then that was not sufficient
reason for changing sex.
After all, they could already have sex with people of the chosen sex.
And it would be called heterosexual by observers.
Almost all of
the transsexual people represented in this book
would not have passed this test
of wanting to be conventional,
heterosexual men or woman after transition.
Thus they have either had little
surgery,
have gone to foreign countries for
sex-change surgery,
or just lived as
their chosen sex with only
some hormonal help.
A remarkable number of the authors
began their relationship-lives as butch lesbians,
even living several years as lesbians
before they began to live as men.
The couple with the largest picture on the front cover
is one example of such a story.
They are pictured on their wedding day
as a wife and husband.
But both remain active in lesbian writing and publishing.
Almost all of the transsexuals represented in this
book
have sexual relationships with other transexuals.
Only rarely do they describe relationships with born-males or
born-females
who are still living and loving as their original sex.
Perhaps largely because they understand the same problems
of changing sex, male-to-female transsexuals
have relationships with other MTFs,
often thinking of themselves as lesbians.
And female-to-male transexuals
have relationships with other FTMs,
often thinking of themselves as two gay men.
Some of the authors were married before changing sex.
And some of these have kept something from their marriages
even if the law required them to divorce before changing sex.
Most of the authors have advanced academic degrees.
And thus they are probably more articulate than most people who change
sex
or who live at least part-time as the other sex.
(Or the editors have given the less-articulate writers
lots of help in making themselves clear.)
None of the authors advances any theories to explain
transsexualism.
Rather they just tell their own stories or living and loving
while in some state of changing from one sex to the other.
For the most part, the authors knew their own feelings.
They do not refer to doing much research to understand their
transsexualism.
Scientific analysis of reasons for
changing sex is mostly missing from this book.
Polyamory is a theme of several of the chapters,
often emerging in the context of gay, lesbian, bisexual, &
transgender organizations.
When people belonging to such sexual minorities get together,
they often 'fall in love' and 'get turned on'
in ways that are familiar to everyone.
The sexual encounters described in some chapters
often involve both sex-partners going along with a story
about the sexes of their bodies that does not agree with objective
reality.
This is especially true of 'pre-operative' transsexuals.
When having sex, they get most turned-on
when they imagine they are the sex of their dreams.
This might have
something to do with what this reviewer calls
"imprinted sexual fantasies".
I will not attempt to explain the
sex-script hypothesis here.
But this might be a useful avenue
for the authors represented in
this book to pursue.
Readers of this review who think
they might be transsexual
might also benefit from looking
into my book on this subject:
Imprinted Sexual
Fantasies:
A New Key for Sexology.
Another of my books that might be helpful is called:
Variations of Sex
and Gender:
Six Phenomena Frequently Confused.
And readers of this review who want more theoretical
exploration
should refer to the companion bibliography:
Books on
Transsexualism.
Transsexual readers will find much support
from reading the successful stories of others
who have changed from one sex to the other
and who still have been able to have meaningful loving relationships
in their new sex-and-gender self-designations.
All-in-all,
this book is worth a careful reading
by everyone who is interested in
transsexualism.
It is a remarkable collection of stories as told by the transsexuals
themselves.
2. Kate Bornstein
Gender Outlaw:
On Men, Woman,
and the Rest of Us
(New York: Routledge, 1994)
An inside account of a high-profile
male-to-female transsexual.
Kate says she always knew she was a girl
even tho biologically she was a boy.
And she always found the idea of crossing over
to become a woman sexually exciting.
In 1993, when she wrote this book,
she considered herself a lesbian,
but her female lover was changing to become a
man.
This
reviewer found
it difficult
to believe that the author is a
woman.
Her personality as it come thru in
the writing
still seems to be mostly
'masculine'.
In a later book My Gender
Workbook,
s/he declares her/himself to be
neither sex.
See
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/B-TS.html
.
3. Jennifer Spry
Orlando's Sleep:
An
Autobiography of Gender
(Norwich, VT: New Victoria
Publishers,
1997)
186 pages
(ISBN: 0-934678-80-4)
(Library of Congress call number:
HQ77.8.S695A3 1997)
The author lived forty years as a man,
when changed to a woman, who is a lesbian.
Orlando's
Sleep recounts the
problems she encountered with:
family, friends, work-colleages, doctors, etc.
in the process of making the decision to change
sex—and doing it.
She
presents little theory of wanting to
become a woman,
only her belief that she was a
female from birth—
—despite the fact of living for
more than 40 years known to all as
a man.
Secret dressing as
a woman
was the first manifestation of Spry's "transgenderism".
Later she had hormone treatments
and sex-change surgery to become a woman physically.
This
is a positive and supportive book,
which may be especially of
interest
to others facing the same problems.
4. Loren Cameron
Body Alchemy:
Transsexual
Portraits:
Photographs
(San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press,
1996) 110 pages
(ISBN: 1-57344-063-9; hardcover)
(ISBN: 1-75344-062-0; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number:
HQ77.95.U6C36 1996)
This large-format book contains about 40
full-page pictures,
about half of which include the photographer/author herself/himself.
All of the subjects are female-to-male transsexuals.
Some explanation of their transitions to very
convincing men
are included with their pictures.
There is very little
exploration of the reasons
for deciding to become men, but the results are
shown.
Each picture is a success story of transition from woman to man.
If you would like to know
more about the
scientific and philosophical dimensions of transsexualism,
see the
Transsexualism Bibliography
.
Many more autobiographies of transsexuals
should be reviewed here.
Please send your suggestions to James Park:
PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU
Related Bibliographies
This bibliography is related to several others in
sexology.
Here is the complete list:
Sexology
B-SEXOLO
Sex-Script
Hypothesis
B-SEX-SC
Variations of
Sex and Gender B-V-SG
I. Intersex
B-CRIT
II. Transsexualism
B-TS
Transsexual
Autobiographies B-TS-AB
III. Sex-Roles
B-ROLE
IV. Gender-Personality
B-GEND
V. Sexual
Orientation
B-ORNT
VI. Cross-Dressing
B-TV
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