The Riddle of Gender
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
When Deborah Rudacille learned that a close friend had decided to transition from female to male, she felt compelled to understand why.
Coming at the controversial subject of transsexualism from several angles–historical, sociological, psychological, medical–Rudacille discovered that gender variance is anything but new, that changing one’s gender has been met with both acceptance and hostility through the years, and that gender identity, like sexual orientation, appears to be inborn, not learned, though in some people the sex of the body does not match the sex of the brain.
Informed not only by meticulous research, but also by the author’s interviews with prominent members of the transgender community, The Riddle of Gender is a sympathetic and wise look at a sexual revolution that calls into question many of our most deeply held assumptions about what it means to be a man, a woman, and a human being.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science writer Rudacille's sympathetic and well-researched elucidation of the threads that make up the tangled issue of gender variance, most visible in transsexuals, is lively enough to be a good introduction for the educated lay reader and documented enough for the scholar. She considers the interplay between the science of gender and the human side of transgender issues, beginning with the story of the Chevalier d' on, who spent the mid-1700s as a man and then lived over three decades as a woman. Her narrative progresses through Magnus Hirschfeld's Berlin Institute for Sexual Science and ends with the possibility that pesticides and synthetic estrogens may be increasing gender variance by affecting human endocrinology. Seven interviews with transsexuals prominent in research or activism articulate both the theory and the practice of transsexualism, giving readers the human face of people who don't fit male and female archetypes. Rudacille adeptly discusses the controversies surrounding transsexuality, delving into the Kafka-esque issues around the psychiatric diagnosis of "gender identity dysphoria," giving time to those who question sexual reassignment surgery and covering the conflicts between transsexuals and homosexuals, especially lesbian feminists in the 1970s. Rudacille's evenhandedness bolsters her final opinion, which is that gender identity, including variance, is probably hardwired and that "culture follow nature's lead and celebrate variety." .
