S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes

Description

Through an examination of the experience of transsexuals, this book enhances understanding of how gender can and does function in powerful, complex and subtle ways. The author, who has herself been surgically reassigned, has conducted extensive interviews with transsexuals from many walks of life. Her personal experiences, which inform this book, have given her an access to her subjects that others would likely be denied. While highlighting how the gender identity of transsexuals relates to hormonal and surgical changes in the body as well as to changes in dress, the book investigates the pressures and motivations to conform to expected gender roles, and the ways in which these are affected by social, educational, and professional status. Differences in the experiences of those who change from male to female and those who change from female to male are also examined. Sex reassignment has been the focus of considerable media attention recently, as increasing numbers of people feel able to talk frankly about their personal experiences with gender dysphoria. Strides with medical technology have given transsexuals new opportunities in their lives. This book provides unique insights into how these changes are seen by those people most affected them.

Claudine Griggs teaches at the University of Massachusetts and Rhode Island College.

'(Griggs') writing is complex, subtle and serious, but the language is never technical or over-academic, with the result that almost anyone could enjoy, and learn something from, this book, from the full-on academic to the just plain interested. And its clear and wide-ranging references to academic sources will guarantee its inclusion on undergraduate reading lists. [...] The book is a reminder that we all, expert and amateur alike, have more to learn. Griggs' perspicacious and nuanced insights on gender are relevant to everyone, male and female, not just to transsexuals and academics ... Due to her personal experiences, she is uniquely placed to explore the tragedy of gender, as well as its comedy, as she has privileged insight into the different way the sexes are treated.' Costume