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New Book The Transgender Debate: The Crisis Surrounding Gender identities Stephen
Whittle : This short book is intended to be a resource primarily for non-trans people who wish to get a simple grasp on current transgender issues. Perfect for older high school students, university undergraduates from many fields who need a simple explanation to the back ground of their project work, and for family and friends of trans people who simply want to understand. It addresses the historical, social, legal and medical issues surrounding the new community. The book throws light onto what are complex issues, clarifying them in a way that all those who think they know what gender roles mean, will be called to question the certainties they are no longer about. Transgender has become a cultural obsession. From the high camp of Ru Paul to the working class transsexual icon, Hayley of the UK's longest running soap "Coronation Street", it pervades our lives. Yet for many it remains a freakish interest on the sidelines. For transsexual and transgender people, though, it is a reality bound up in complexities, legal contradictions, family discord, and a desperate need to explain what it means to be a man or a woman, or neither, orb both. [This book is just out – US copies may be difficult to obtain. Contact Stephen Whittle to arrange purchase and shipping from England. <S.T.Whittle@mmu.ac.uk>] |
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Review by Bear If your gender is bent and you enjoy science fiction tales with more than just run of the mill bug hunts, check out Commitment Hour by James Alan Gardner. I have a habit of reading through an author and then moving on, and having devoured two other books by Gardner which were Heinleinesque fare, picked this one up expecting more of the same. By the third page, it was clear that this wasn’t just another space soap when the narrator Fullin laments, "Cappie had also started to ask what sex I was going to Commit to. The laws of the Patriarch expressly prohibited discussing the choice, but that didn’t matter; when Cappie was a woman, she disregarded any law that didn’t make sense to her." Some fifty pages later, my gender bent head was swimming as Fullin tried to explain Commitment to a visitor, "In all the world, our secluded village was the only place where the gods allowed children to switch sex each year…" Sound ideal?Although this is not a novel destined for a Hugo award, it is very thought provoking. What if you could choose your gender/sex? What, if having experienced both sides, you HAD to pick one? What would you choose? Male? Female? Could you choose? What would happen if you went against your culture and wanted to keep both sides of yourself? Sometimes predictable, sometimes truly insightful, Commitment Hour transcends gender, and makes a genderqueer question what Wonderland could really be like…. |
