Trans Books
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Many of these books are now available as Paperback, Kindle and Audiobooks.
Transgender 101: A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue Paperback – Illustrated
by Nicholas Teich (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 353 ratings
Written by a social worker, popular educator, and member of the transgender community, this well-rounded resource combines an accessible portrait of transgenderism with a rich history of transgender life and its unique experiences of discrimination. Chapters introduce transgenderism and its psychological, physical, and social processes. They describe the coming out process and its effect on family and friends, the relationship between sexual orientation, and gender and the differences between transsexualism and lesser-known types of transgenderism. The volume covers the characteristics of Gender Identity Disorder/Gender Dysphoria and the development of the transgender movement. Each chapter explains how transgender individuals handle their gender identity, how others view it within the context of non-transgender society, and how the transitioning of genders is made possible. Featuring men who become women, women who become men, and those who live in between and beyond traditional classifications, this book is written for students, professionals, friends, and family members.
My New Gender Workbook 2nd Edition
by Kate Bornstein (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 155 ratings
“This updated edition of Bornstein’s formative My Gender Workbook (1997) provides an invigorating introduction to contemporary theory around gender, sexuality, and power. The original is a classic of modern transgender theory and literature and, alongside Bornstein’s other work, has influenced an entire generation of trans writers and artists. This revised and expanded edition extends that legacy, offering an accessible foundation for examining gender in the reader’s life and in the broader culture while arguing for the dismantling of all forms of oppression. For fans of the original, Bornstein’s new material merits a fresh read…”–Publishers Weekly, starred review
Cultural theorists have written loads of smart but difficult-to-fathom texts on gender theory, but most fail to provide a hands-on, accessible guide for those trying to sort out their own sexual identities. In My Gender Workbook, transgender activist Kate Bornstein brings theory down to Earth and provides a practical approach to living with or without a gender.
Bornstein starts from the premise that there are not just two genders performed in today’s world, but countless genders lumped under the two-gender framework. Using a unique, deceptively simple and always entertaining workbook format, complete with quizzes, exercises, and puzzles, Bornstein gently but firmly guides readers toward discovering their own unique gender identity.
Since its first publication in 1997, My Gender Workbook has been challenging, encouraging, questioning, and helping those trying to figure out how to become a “real man,” a “real woman,” or “something else entirely.” In this exciting new edition of her classic text, Bornstein re-examines gender in light of issues like race, class, sexuality, and language. With new quizzes, new puzzles, new exercises, and plenty of Kate’s playful and provocative style, My New Gender Workbook promises to help a new generation create their own unique place on the gender spectrum.
FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society Paperback
by Aaron Devor (Author), Aidan Key (Author), Jamison Green (Foreword)
4.4 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
In this ground-breaking study, Aaron Devor provides a compassionate, intimate, and incisive look at the life experiences of forty-five trans men. Emerging into 21st-century political and social conversations, questions persist. Who are they? How do they come to know themselves as men? What do they do about it? How do their families respond? Who are their lovers? What does it mean for everyone else? To answer these and other questions, Devor spent years compiling in-depth interviews and researching the lives of transsexual and transgender people. Here, he traces the everyday and significant events that coalesce into trans identities, culminating in gender and sex transformations. Using trans men’s own words as illustrations, Devor looks at how childhood, adolescence, and adult experiences with family members, peers, and lovers work to shape and clarify their images of themselves as men. With a new introduction, Devor positions the volume in twenty-first century debates of identity politics and community-building and provides a window into his own self-exploration as a result of his research.
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us Paperback – Illustrated
by Kate Bornstein (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 229 ratings
“I know I’m not a man … and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably not a woman, either…. The trouble is, we’re living in a world that insists we be one or the other.” With these words, Kate Bornstein ushers readers on a funny, fearless, and wonderfully scenic journey across the terrains of gender and identity.
On one level, Gender Outlaw details Bornstein’s transformation from heterosexual male to lesbian woman, from a one-time IBM salesperson to a playwright and performance artist. But this particular coming-of-age story is also a provocative investigation into our notions of male and female, from a self-described nonbinary transfeminine diesel femme dyke who never stops questioning our cultural assumptions.
Gender Outlaw was decades ahead of its time when it was first published in 1994. Now, some twenty-odd years later, this book stands as both a classic and a still-revolutionary work—one that continues to push us gently but profoundly to the furthest borders of the gender frontier.
Masculinities without Men?: Female Masculinity in Twentieth-Century Fictions (Sexuality Stud) Paperback
by Jean Bobby Noble (Author)
Conventional ideas about gender and sexuality dictate that people born with male bodies naturally possess both a man’s identity and a man’s right to authority. Recent scholarship in the field of gender studies, however, exposes the complex political technologies that construct gender as a supposedly unchanging biological essence with self-evident links to physicality, identity, and power. In Masculinities without Men? Jean Bobby Noble explores how the construction of gender was thrown into crisis during the twentieth century, resulting in a permanent rupture in the sex/gender system, and how masculinity became an unstable category, altered across time, region, social class, and ethnicity.
Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism Paperback
by Patrick Califia-Rice (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism is Califia’s meticulously researched book based on an astute reading of the available literature and in-depth interviews with gender transgressors who “opened their lives, minds, hearts, and bedrooms to the gaze of strangers.” 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, contemporary transgender activists like Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein, and partners of transgendered people like Minnie Bruce Pratt. Califia scrutinizes feminist resistance to transsexuals occupying women’s space, the Christian Right’s backlash against transsexuals, and the appropriation of the berdache and other differently-gendered by gay historians to prove the universal existance of homosexuality. Finally, Sex Changes explores the future of gender.
Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality Paperback
by Anne Fausto-Sterling (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 79 ratings
Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced.Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms – sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed – and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.
Trans Forming Families Paperback
by Mary Boenke (Author, Editor), Delores Dudley (Illustrator), Lori Bowden (Illustrator)
4.1 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
A collection of positive short stories by parents, families, and friends of transgender people who have come to accept and embrace their transgender loved ones. It includes stories of male to female and female to male transgender sons and daughters of loving parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends who have helped them on their journey. These are invaluable stories intended to help those struggling with misinformation, pain, anger, and fear for their loved ones.
Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue Paperback
by Leslie Feinberg (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 43 ratings
Those who have heard Leslie Feinberg speak in person know how powerful and inspiring s/he can be. In Trans Liberation, Feinberg has gathered a collection of hir speeches on trans liberation and its essential connection to the liberation of all people. This wonderfully immediate, impassioned, and stirring book is for anyone who cares about civil rights and creating a just and equitable society.
True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism–For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals First Edition
by Mildred L. Brown (Author), Chloe Ann Rounsley (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 159 ratings
Combines authoritative information and humanitarian insight into the transsexual experience
Filled with wisdom and understanding, this groundbreaking book paints a vivid portrait of conflicts transsexuals face on a daily basis–and the courage they must summon as they struggle to reveal their true being to themselves and others. True Selves offers valuable guidance for those who are struggling to understand these people and their situations.
Using real life stories, actual letters, and other compelling examples, the authors give a clear understanding of what it means to be transsexual. They also give other useful advice, including how to deal compassionately with these commonly misunderstood individuals–by keeping an open heart, communicating fears, pain and support, respecting choices.
Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy with Families in Transition Hardcover – Illustrated
by Elijah C. Nealy (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars 81 ratings
A comprehensive guide to the medical, emotional, and social issues of trans kids.
These days, it is practically impossible not to hear about some aspect of transgender life. Whether it is the bathroom issue in North Carolina, trans people in the military, or on television, trans life has become front and center after years of marginalization.
And kids are coming out as trans at younger and younger ages, which is a good thing for them.
But what written resources are available to parents, teachers, and mental health professionals who need to support these children?
Elijah C. Nealy, a therapist and former deputy executive director of New York City’s LGBT Community Center, and himself a trans man, has written the first-ever comprehensive guide to understanding, supporting, and welcoming trans kids.
Covering everything from family life to school and mental health issues, as well as the physical, social, and emotional aspects of transition, this book is full of best practices to support trans kids.
An UnSpoken Compromise: A Spiritual Guide for LGBT People of Faith Paperback
by Rizi Xavier Timane Ph.D (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
Rizi Xavier Timane has a message for the world, and for the LGBT community in particular: God loves you just the way you are. For centuries, misguided individuals and indeed entire societies have used religious texts to condemn and persecute minorities and anyone perceived as “different,” and as a transgendered minister and a person of color, Rizi has experienced such discrimination and hatred firsthand. In An Uncommon Compromise-A Spiritual Guide for LGBT People of Faith, he shares the struggles he’s gone through since childhood to find his own identity and his place in the world—and within his parents’ strict Christian religion. What he’s found—and what he shares in this book—is that one person can change the world by telling people the truth about God’s unconditional love for us all. It all begins with loving yourself just as you are. That is God’s way, and it can be—it must be—ours as well.
Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits Paperback
by Loren Cameron (Photographer)
4.9 out of 5 stars 25 ratings
Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits is a unique and extraordinary photographic collection by artist Loren Cameron. Body Alchemy is Loren Cameron’s intensely personal photo documentary of female-to-male transsexuals (FTMs). A transsexual himself, Cameron brings a sensitive, sophisticated insider’s eye to his subject matter. Using documentary style, a series of before-and-after photographs documenting the transformation of a number of FTMs in Cameron’s transsexual community, his own striking self-portraits, and intimate autobiographical text, Loren invites the viewer to experience this transformational rite of passage. Loren Cameron’s work strikes a warm, familiar tone that invites the viewer’s participation – even when the subject matter is quite startling.
Boys Like Her: Transfictions Paperback
by Taste This (Author), Kate Bornstein (Foreword)
4.4 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America
by Will Roscoe (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
The term ‘berdache’ is a little-known, rarely discussed reference to Native American individuals who embodied both genders – what some might classify as ‘the third sex.’ Berdaches were known to combine male and female social roles with traits unique to their status as a third gender, defying and redefining traditional notions of gender-specific behavior. In Changing Ones , William Roscoe opens up and explores the world of berdaches, revealing meaningful differences between Native American culture and contemporary North American culture. Roscoe reveals that rather than being ostracized or forced into obscurity, berdaches were embraced by some 150 tribes, serving as artists, medicine people, religious experts, and tribal leaders. Indeed, Roscoe points out, berdaches sometimes even occupied a holy status within the tribal community. Roscoe begins with case studies of male and female berdaches, blending biography and ethnohistory, and he builds toward theoretical insights into the nature of gender diversity in North America. What results is highly engaging, readable, and illuminating. Changing Ones combines the fields of anthropology, sociology, queer theory, gay and lesbian studies, and gender studies to challenge conventional schools of thought and to expand every reader’s horizons.
The Drag King Anthology Paperback
by Ph.D. Troka, Donna Jean (Editor), Kathleen Lebesco (Editor), & 1 more
5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating