How sex changed : a history of transsexuality in the United States / Joanne Meyerowitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meyerowitz, Joanne J. (Joanne Jay)

Series:

ACLS Fellows' publications.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Transness--Europe--History.

Transness.

Transness--United States--History.

Gender transition--Europe--History.

Gender transition.

Gender transition--United States--History.

Transgenderism--Europe--History.

Transgenderism--United States--History.

Transgender history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (363 p., [20] p. of plates ) ill., ports.

Edition:

1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed.

Other Title:

History of transsexuality in the United States

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2004, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is a social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the US. It tells a human story about people who had a deep and unshakeable desire to transform their bodily sex. How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class, and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all. From early twentieth-century sex experiments in Europe, to the saga of Christine Jorgensen, whose sex-change surgery made headlines in 1952, to today's growing transgender movement, Meyerowitz gives us the first serious history of transsexuality. She focuses on the stories of transsexual men and women themselves, as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, feminists, and gay liberationists, as they debated the big questions of medical ethics, nature versus nurture, self and society, and the scope of human rights. In this story of transsexuality, Meyerowitz shows how new definitions of sex circulated in popular culture, science, medicine, and the law, and she elucidates the tidal shifts in our social, moral, and medical beliefs over the twentieth century, away from sex as an evident biological certainty and toward an understanding of sex as something malleable and complex. How Sex Changed is an intimate history that illuminates the very changes that shape our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality today.

Contents:

Introduction 1. Sex Change 2. "Ex-Gi Becomes Blonde Beauty" 3. From Sex To Gender 4. A "Fierce And Demanding" Drive 5. Sexual Revolutions 6. The Liberal Moment 7. The Next Generation Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Index

Notes:

Originally published: 2002.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674040960

0674040961

OCLC:

923112462

Publisher Number:

2027/heb30503 hdl