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How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States
 
 
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How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Paperback)
by Joanne Meyerowitz (Author)
Key Phrases: crossgender identification, intersexed conditions, human bisexuality, New York, Harry Benjamin, United States (more...)
  4.7 out of 5 stars 3 customer reviews (3 customer reviews)  

List Price: $19.50
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
When ex-GI George Jorgensen changed his sex and took on a new identity as Christine in 1952, the lurid journalism that followed focused on questions of Jorgensen's genitals, her sexual performance and her sexual availability set the tone for how U.S. media understood and discussed transsexuality. So argues Meyerowitz, professor of history at the Indiana University, at the beginning of this first complete history of American transsexualism. Carefully tracing the next 50 years of science and public attitudes surrounding transsexuality, Meyerowitz charts a number of fascinating historical moments: the complicated relationship between the gay rights movement and transsexuals in the mid-'60s; the deeply negative response that transsexuals had to Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge (Jorgensen thought of suing him); the complex battles to grant transsexuals a different legal sexual identity; how transsexuality became "sexy" through the careers of performers such as Coccinelle. While the book is scholarly in orientation, Meyerowitz's easy, readable style makes her thorough research in a wide range of fields accessible and enjoyable, even when she is detailing such subjects as internecine fighting among psychiatrists over the merits of sex-change operations. Meyerowitz thinks we have a much broader appreciation of gender and much more tolerance of gender variance these days, but she also sees that media visibility as not entirely positive, since most portrayals show transgender people as "freaks" or comic oddballs. On the whole, the book is an invaluable introduction to how ideas about gender and sexuality have evolved.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Christine Jorgenson wasn't the first person to undergo sex-change surgery, but her media-savvy personality and glamorous looks made her a household name in the 1950s. Historian Meyerowitz chronicles the saga of transsexuals themselves, including their struggles for access to sex transformation and their continued problems with discrimination both from the conservative Right and from gays and feminists who saw them as "infiltrators." She also shows how the phenomenon of transsexuality led physicians and academics to make elaborate distinctions between gender and sex and to ponder the origins of both in nature and nurture and how these ideas slowly entered common discourse. Although this book is accessibly written and is the first book to treat transsexuality exclusively, the narrowness of the subjects recommends it primarily for academic and research libraries. Smaller public libraries need a less specialized text such as John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman's Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America.
Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, WA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details
  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press; New Ed edition (April 1, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0674013794
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674013797
  • Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars 3 customer reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #104,739 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #27 in  Books > Gay & Lesbian > Nonfiction > Transgender

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  • Also Available in: Hardcover  |  All Editions

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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
crossgender identification, intersexed conditions, human bisexuality, crossgender behavior, other transgendered people, female transsexualism, transsexual patients, transsexual surgery, other transsexuals, transsexual phenomenon, transsexual activists, sex transmutation, few transsexuals, sexual margins, surgical sex change, word transsexual, other transvestites, legal sex, hair fairies, many transsexuals, psychological sex, sex transformation, liberal doctors, sex variants, bodily sex
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Harry Benjamin, United States, San Francisco, Christine Jorgensen, Johns Hopkins, Los Angeles, Richard Green, Robert Stoller, John Money, American Weekly, Elmer Belt, World War, Louise Lawrence, Lili Elbe, Mario Martino, Christian Hamburger, Erickson Educational Foundation, Magnus Hirschfeld, Suzan Cooke, American Medical Association, Zelda Suplee, Alfred Kinsey, Debbie Mayne, Langley Porter Clinic
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Customer Reviews
3 Reviews
5 star: 66%  (2)
4 star: 33%  (1)
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant social history, June 8, 2003
By David Valentine (Minneapolis, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book is, ostensibly, about the history of transsexuality in the US. But it is, as its title implies, more generally about how the concept of "sex" itself has changed in the US in the past hundred years. Meyerowitz has done an amazing job of putting together activist, scientific, and popular cultural sources to produce a scholarly -- but very readable -- history. Meyerowitz's main point is that it is through a "taxonomic revolution" -- initiated by the possibilities of transsexuality -- that scientists, sexual minorities, and broader US society have come to distinguish between sex, gender, and sexuality, and the kinds of identities that are attached to these concepts. She argues most persuasively that the distinction between these arenas of lived experience were worked out through the debates over transsexuality in the US, drawing on earlier European sexological discourses.

Meyerowitz uses Christine Jorgensen as the central figure in this book, and has gone part of the way to producing something of a biography of CJ. This works really well. Another notable feature of this book is that Meyerowitz is careful to follow the different experiences of transexual men and women, which adds further depth to this book.

This book is very readable -- I intend to teach it in an undergraduate course this year -- while at the same time theoretically sound and clearly very well-researched. It answered many questions that I had, and brought together much of what I have wanted to understand about this field.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in gender and sexuality, both specialists and the general reader.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative , July 8, 2007
By Sabrina Dee Schnur "Sabrina" (Butler, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
A very well written and informative book. A lot of info on Christine Jorgensen and the earlier doctors that fought for the rights of Transexuals. Also, it was nice to read a more "up-to-date" book on the subject too (copyright 2002). The only negative was that some info was overly repetitive and was a little jumpy in a historical time line. But, do not let that stop you from reading it, I highly recommend this book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, February 15, 2006
By Big Jess (Central, MA) - See all my reviews
This is a thoroughly researched and well written book. It places transsexual people in the context of U.S. history and undermines many myths that permeate popular culture about transpeople. Extremely informative and readable.
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