I really can't be allowed in a bookstore; I have no willpower at all. Was wandering through B&N waiting for the Meetup time, and spotted this on the new-nonfiction table - an anthology of memoirs of transsexuals, from Christine Jorgensen's time to the present day, and with m-to-f and f-to-m represented. Looked interesting - and since the first photo I saw (most of the chapters open with a small black-and-white photo of the author) was of an f-to-m who's now a very well-sculpted bodybuilder I allowed myself to be tempted...

Later: Informative, sometimes encouraging, sometimes horrifying (given the things people had to go through to realize who they were and then to achieve their goals - and, in some cases, to cope with the reactions of others after the fact). Things are improving, but not as fast as I'd like...

[Other books of interest: non-fiction - Genderqueer, and some novels: Trans-sister Radio and Middlesex]

I'm putting this book in my LGBT-themed shrinking bookbox, which will soon be on its way to its first stop with quietorchid in Minnesota. Hope everyone enjoys it!

This looks very interesting. I've read one memoir of a transgendered person, but that was someone surgicaslly assigned by a doctor to the other sex after an accident at a very young age. Boy, did it mess that young boy up, to be surgically assigned to the other sex for his own good during the 'free to be you and me' age. book is http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7203394/ So that was obviously not a true case of transgender. So I am interested in what genuine transgenders might say. Thanks for the book!

The editor talks of tropes in his introduction, while mentioning that M to F transexuals are more common in the wrting. He suggests this because m to f are more open and perhaps more comfortable with attention, in effect saying'look at me!', while the underrepresented f to m transsexuals are saying 'stop looking at me'. An interesting insight, if true. I found the M to F very similar, and odd. Instead of becoming what they always were, I had more a sense of a butterfly chrysalis. With the 2 f to m, it seemed a hard won fight to avoid suicide.

I think that the editor is wrong, f to m transexuals are far more threatening to society at large, m to f can be seen as small numbers of strange people who give it all up to be 'pretty', while the flip side is dangerous; 'you mean being a woman in society isn't all that it's cracked up to be?'. Interesting, something I will have to think on. Still over all an interesting book, with well chosen exerpts from individuals who went to great length to fix something deeply wrong in their lives.

Placing back into GoryDetail's LGBT Themed shrinking Bookbox
Interesting read.



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Taken with thanks from GoryDetails's LGBT shrinking bookbox. This one sounds fascinating.

I'd like to think, as Gory says, that things are improving...but this story about the law in Sweden blew my mind. We still have a long way to go...