It’s kind of amazing, the idea of Iranian men wearing traditional head scarves to show their allegiance to the insurgence, but that’s what they’re doing.

Thus the new protest also speaks to the societal aspect of Iranian women being forced to accept a dress code, according to Dabashi.

“Proud to wear my late mother’s rusari, the very rusari that was forced on my wife in Iran, the very rusari for which my sisters are humiliated if they choose to wear it in Europe, and the very rusari that the backward banality that now rules Iran thinks will humiliate Majid Tavakoli if it is put on him — He is dearer and nobler to us today than he ever was.”

In a speech before his arrest, Tavakoli played on the theme of the day’s historical significance in light of current anti-government protests.

“We Iranian men are late doing this,” Dabashi said. “If we did this when rusari was forced on those among our sisters who did not wish to wear it 30 years ago, we would have perhaps not been here today.”

(thanks to Jade Catherine for the tip)

Every once in a great while, someone sends me some writing they want me to read. Most of the time I can’t feel the person behind the voice, or, in writer’s parlance, I can’t hear the author’s voice.

But this piece was different, & so I gave the author what feedback I could, & he contacted me again recently because the essay was selected as a finalist in Narrative Magazine’s first-person writing contest and recently published by Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, a literary journal specializing in creative nonfiction published by Michigan State University. You can read it online here (.pdf).

My congratulations to David Torrey Peters: keep writing.

Morehouse College has chosen to have a clothing policy that prohibits crossdressing:

The dress-wearing ban is aimed at a small part of the private college’s 2,700-member student body, said Dr. William Bynum, vice president for Student Services.

“We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men,” he said.

Before the school released the policy, Bynum said, he met with Morehouse Safe Space, the campus’ gay organization.

“We talked about it and then they took a vote,” he said. “Of the 27 people in the room, only three were against it.”

There has been a positive response along with some criticism throughout the campus, he said.

Senior Devon Watson said he disagrees with parts of the new policy, especially those that tell students what they should wear in free time outside of the classroom.

I’m wondering if someone needs to tell them about straight crossdressers, and about pre-transition MTF trans people. Hopefully Morehouse’s Safe Space already does – but I doubt it.

Despite the lack of context or explanation, SF Gate has a nice series of (mostly) rural photos of people who are crossdressed. It’s unclear whether it’s Halloween or some other event, or even if they were taken anywhere near each other, but still, it’s an interesting if not atypical collection of 52 photos. The one pictured is my favorite, as it reminds me of quite a few families I’ve met over the time I’ve been doing research on crossdressing. My guess is that none of these people are crossdressers per se, but of course all I’ve got to go on is the images themselves.

I’ll be speaking at Tri-Ess’ annual “Holiday en Femme” this year, which will happen in Chicago, from November 4th – 8th.

Honestly, I miss crossdressers so I’m sure I’ll have a blast.

I’ve been drinking.

Sadly, it was a lot of the same old same old: cursory interest in parent, partner, & children. The kids were adorable. The wife was determined. The father was exhausted.

• Multiple shots and references to surgery, instead.
• Trans woman discovers surprising, sudden interest in men.
• Expresses longing to be mother while wife is pregnant.
• Voiceover talking about wife meeting her husband for the first time “as a woman” post Thailand, even though the husband had been living in female gender role for a year as per SOC.

Atypical trans documentary bits?

• Added insult to injury for wife, while trans woman wonders – fleetingly – if she’s married her ex-girlriend if she’d have needed to transition. Fleetingly, stressed by Prince, but goddamn do wives of trans women everywhere hate her for that one. Yeah, thanks, it’s our fault you needed to transition. Do you really think we don’t wish, sometimes, that you’d married your ex-girlfriend, too?!
  
• Newly female husband going up telephone pole in gear
• “  “  ” mowing lawn with reference to still “wearing the pants”
• ‘out of the mouths of babes’ testimony that natal female still does all the parenting and housework
• bee stings lead to discovering of IS condition which justifies transition. (the years of crossdressing certainly don’t count for shit, right?)

So yeah, I’m drunk.You?

They all seem like reasonably nice people. I hate documentaries about teh trans. Hate ‘em. I hate the way our lives our distilled into reverse camera angles and earnest questions across kitchen tables. I hate how the beauty of a trans woman admitting that she still sees her wife the way “he” did is degraded by the “sudden interest” in men. I hate the sad, confused, tendentious quality of trans women’s wives who are obviously overwhelmed with the whole business and still in love with their spouses.

* sigh*

Having been someone who has done shite like this, my only excuse is: it was in my contract. Not that that’s much of an excuse, but you do usually have a clause saying that you will in good faith blah blah blah consent to blah blah blah that will help sell the book. I’m not sure there’s any other reason to do these things anymore, but I hope, for Rene’s sake, & the boys’ sake, & the dad’s & Chloe’s, that this one will be forgotten when it’s Sweeps Week next year or in five years. Not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t. There are things I said and wrote at the time of My Husband Betty that embarass me now, as well as plenty that I”m still happy about. But I wrote a book, so when I”m lucky, you can see its brown spine in the LGBT section of bookstores these days. But a show like this is going to be dredged up at 3am for a few years, and every once too often, Rene and Chloe and her boys and dad will be online at the supermarket / drugstore / in the waiting room / at the doctor’s office / showing up for parent teacher night when someone they’ve never met couldn’t sleep and saw them on the TeeVee. And then, well, then is when you wish you could change your name and move to Timbuktu.

My best to all of them. Can we stop making these now?

(spoiler alert for tonight’s episode)

More…

While Darcy was watching a live blog of the E3 press conference by Sony, she noticed that during a demo of a kart racing game where the player can customize their character, they threw in some shame for the crossdressers.

12:44PM “Right now, the two developers are showing off the avatar selection screen. The animation is absolutely adorable. One character has its costume changed to a dress, and it tries to hide, embarrassed.”

As if CDs don’t get it from all sides already.

Dr. Richard Docter announced at dinner last night, here at the Liberty Conference, that Virginia Prince had died at the age of 96. She was in good health and mentally acute until about a month ago when her health began a steep decline. Docter was her biographer as a well as a friend.

I met the grand dame here, in this Philly Airport Hilton hotel, about five years ago, and I am a little surprised by how moved I have been to hear of her passing. She was an imperfect person, as we all are, but rocked where it counted: having the cojones to be an out-transvestite in the 1950s. Her bravery is something we’d be fools, as a community, not to acknowledge.

Imperfect, problematic, heroic. You often don’t get one without the others. We have lost an important pioneer.

This is the text of the talk I gave at the Liberty Conference on May 2nd, 2009:

How We Love You: Let Us Count the Ways

There are partners who are male, female, and trans; there are partners who met their trans person before the trans person knew what was going on; there are partners who married crossdressers who had sworn off crossdressing who purged and then dressed and then purged and then dressed again; there are partners who met their husbands crossdressed; there are partners who met their trans person during transition; there are partners who met their trans person long after transition; there are partners who didn’t know their trans person was trans when they met.

You, the individuals who are in love, were in love, who are seeking companionship and partnership and occasionally a good spanking, are said to be like snowflakes. Flawless Mother Sabrina told me that one night at the now defunct Ina’s Silver Swan, and she was right. Each of your stories is unique, even when there are similarities; each of you realizes your transness, as I like to call it, in a different way: some crossdress, others do drag, others transition. Some do all three, and others – none of these, but you express your genders in some other way. But you have your stories, your characters in movies, even if and when they are comically or tragically or unfairly drawn, but those you love have – well, we’ve got a machete and a spot on the edge of the wood we mean to get through.

More…

Some things you just never expect. NPR recently did a show about a crossdressing husband & father that was about as off the mark as Dr. Phil usually is. Pathologizing, full of the embarassed & shamed comments by the wife and commentary of the narrator, it was rife with ignorance and misunderstanding, and seemed to equate this person’s other mental health issues with his need to crossdress.

Wow. I wish I were more often pleasantly suprrised by the media, but I really never expected this kind of crappy story-telling from NPR. Just one opinion that offset all the negativity would have been nice.

That the story is about someone who is deceased makes it all the more sickening. There is no one to represent Doug/Donna to explain what crossdressing is all about.

You can listen to it here – all of 12 minutes & nothing redeemable! – & narrated by a family “friend.” Feh.

My friend Shirene, who I met while I was researching My Husband Betty, and at a SPICE conference to boot, has contined to work with wives who have just found out their husbands are crossdressers. She wrote this letter recently to one such wife, and I thought it was worth sharing here, for any husband who might want to use it to help come out to his wife, or for any wife who has just found out.

I don’t necessarily agree with how she simplifies certain issues – like the “crossdressers are heterosexual” meme – but a lot of the rest of it is a good “talking down” for a new wife who might be completely panicking.

Dear Jill,

Hi.  I hope you don’t mind receiving a letter like this from a stranger, but my husband is  transgender also and I know that if I could have received a letter such as this when I found out, it would have made it easier on both me and my husband. My name is Shirene, I’m 43, we live in S******, IL and I’ve known about Shayla since ‘98.  We’re at 555 555 5555.

I will admit it’s somewhat of an adapted form letter so please ignore the things that don’t apply to your situation and please excuse the things I’m telling you that you already know. More…

My old blog template couldn’t make use of all the groovy new widgets and functionality of WordPress, so I dove into a site re-design the other day, and I’m still tweaking.

I’ve kept lots of cool stuff, like my flickr badge and extensive blogroll, but here’s the cool new stuff:

• more & newer photos in the random photo header
• a compact category list
• a tag cloud! this one excites me, even if it means going back & tagging 5 years of blog posts. still, it helps locate more of my posts on specific topics, like crossdressing, or the Gwen Araujo trial.
• & most importantly for you, dear reader, is the new “share this” button on every post, so you can put my stuff up on Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, LJ, and Technorati. But you can also email it to a friend! How cool is that? I feel like The New York Times.

So do explore, and if you have any more suggestions, that’s what the comments section is for. In the next months I’m hoping to update both helenboydbooks.com and Trans Group Blog, but for right now, I’ve had my fill of tweaking code.

Kate Bornstein is fired up, and wants our various transgender communities to start working together more, all because she’s dizzily happy about being acknowledged by the Obama campaign. Jillian Weiss is asking similar questions, but more along the “how in hell did this happen?” about the Trans for Obama campaign. I love that she calls me a Transgender Media Empire – that kills me, since I’m really just an underemployed author with a tech-savvy partner. Even on Monday, when I put a lot of energy into Trans for Obama, half the reason was that I had to take the GRE two days later and my best-loved furball was having surgery.

Still, this issue of “community” is one that always frustrates me. Community is about being willing; if you want in, come on in, and if you don’t, please go away. It’s as simple as that, imho: the HBS type are free to do whatever it is they do (and some are active in feminist issues, actually, instead of trans ones), and the homophobic crossdressers, of which there are some, can hang out together by themselves, and – well, you get the idea. I don’t really care, honestly: since my existence as a member of the trans community is always liminal to some people, because I’m a partner & not trans myself, I’m all for defining community by those who want to be there.

But Monica Roberts (in the comments section of Jillian Weiss’ Bilerico post) has brought up the issue of trans POC not being encouraged, or recognized, and I think she’s right that we need to do more. So I’m looking for a trans POC volunteer to take over my blog for a day, to at least raise some awareness.

There’s been a recent thread on the message boards about the relative usefulness & accuracy of the “transgender umbrella” & quite frankly, I’m stumped by people who have a problem with the idea. I don’t see that it’s a complicated idea: that people who “trans” gender in some way – change, permanently or temporarily, their gender, or question the binary, etc. – have something in common. It doesn’t mean you’re all alike. It doesn’t mean you share all causes or issues or complaints. It doesn’t mean anything except that at some point, you question(ed) the assignment of an F or an M on your birth certificate as an accurate description of your gender at all times.

What I expect underlays the complications is an expectation of harmony, or unity, under that umbrella. That’s not going to happen, simply because different types of people under the umbrella have different experiences, identities, and definitely different complications with expressing that identity in the world. The post-op young transitioner who is happily married to a man may pass seamlessly as a woman, but only stealth keeps it that way. The crossdresser needs places to change, & community that isn’t heterocentric or homophobic. The genderqueer person wants to be acknowledge that they do not have a single gender, or any gender, or a consistent gender, or a binary-driven gender, depending on how they express being genderqueer.

There’s a lovely amount of variety.

What I think happens is that some forms of transness are considered “less than.” I can understand why a trans woman might feel her femininity mocked, or made questionable, by a crossdresser’s evocations of feminity. I’ve felt the same way when faced with some crossdressers’ interpretation of feminine. But I can’t imagine disliking crossdressers as a group because of that. After all, as many partners & feminists have experienced, transness in general tends to blow up a cissexual’s notions of gender in the first place, with its emphasis on nature & not nurture. We don’t dislike trans people as a result (well, some people do, of course, but I’m assuming most people reading this think that’s kind of dumb, if not outright prejudice.)

It’s not as if I’m not horrified by the behavior of some white folks, or other women, or writers, or Brooklynites, but I can’t deny I have something in common with them, either.

Felicity Chandelle, pilot and crossdresser, died Monday at the age of 102. She was, as far as I know, the world’s oldest living crossdresser. I interviewed her a few years ago, when she turned 100, and not long after that she donated all of her papers – many of them magazines about crossdressing – to the LGBT Center Library here in New York. Some of them would not be able to be used until after her death, whereupon her male, legal name could be revealed, as if her part of her collection, too, were crossdressed.

Thanks for the gift Felicity. Fly right.

Just in time for Pride month, Lena found this lovely 1st Battalion Transvestite Brigade: Airborne Unit t-shirt. Now before anyone gets upset with me for using the term transvestite (again), this shirt is drawn from an Eddie Izzard routine in Dress to Kill, and Izzard is, of course, a self-identified transvestite himself.

Were you surprised?

I was surprised.

Which are lines that Betty & I use on a regular basis at home.

& Yes, I’ve already ordered one for myself, even if I already missed wearing it to Brooklyn Pride.

The Times of India ran an interesting story about a crossdressing religious tradition:

They are about to take part in the Kottankulangara Sridevi temple festival. The ancient temple in Chavara, Kerala, has a unique tradition. On the last two days of the festival, regular men, common office-going professionals, dress up as women for the chamayavilakku (chamaya is make-up, vilakku is lamp). Bedecked with flowers, lamps in hand, they wait patiently till the wee hours of dawn for the goddess to bless them.

It’s also become a gathering for “feminine men,” or Kothis – which the article identifies as homosexuals and transvestites.

(Thanks to Veronica for the link.)

Out Magazine recently put together a really asinine list of transgender books for their transgender issue. I haven’t seen the issue, but the list doesn’t really inspire me to go buy it, either, since Myra Breckinridge is on it.

For the past years I’ve always mixed my gender / feminism / trans books, but since that Top 10 of Out’s is so lame, and the Lammies recently neglected Whipping Girl, which they shouldn’t have, I thought instead I should post my own Top Ten Recommended Trans Reads for LGBTQ readers. There are a few everyone might not need to read – like Virginia Erhardt’s Head Over Heels, which is about the partners of MTFs – or they might want to substitute Minnie Bruce Pratt’s S/he instead – but mostly this list gives a good “big picture” view of the trans community, including a variety of identities.

I might suggest different books for family & friends who are trying to understand transition but who aren’t big readers, & I’ll have to think about that list, too.

Of course now that I’ve written it I have to say I’d add my own books, My Husband Betty and She’s Not the Man I Married, too.

& Maybe The Drag Queens of New York as well.

1. Butch is a Noun – S. Bear Bergman
   
2. Gender Outlaw – Kate Bornstein
   
3. Crossdressing, Sex & Gender – Bullough & Bullough
   
4. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism – Patrick Califia
   
5. Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals – Virginia Erhardt
   
6. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman – Leslie Feinberg
   
7. Becoming a Visible Man – Jamison Green
   
8. Mom, I Need to be a Girl – Just Evelyn
9. Whipping Girl – Julia Serano
   
10. Transition & Beyond – Reid Vanderbergh

You’ll notice none of them is a YETA (Yet Another Transsexual Autobiography), since after you read Jenny Boylan’s She’s Not There (which I assume everyone has) you don’t need to read any others, and hers is the best-written, in my opinion. You can see the list in context on my Transgender Books page, which has reviews or links to reviews and discussions of them all.

Here’s a list of books I recommend on transgender issues and lives.

The starred (*) listings are books that I reviewed in greater depth in the annotated bibliography of My Husband Betty.

You can read more about most of these books, find reviews and discussions of other books, or post your own book for discussion in our Reader’s Chair Forum.

If you’re brand new to the subject, see Boys Don’t Cry and read Jenny Boylan’s She’s Not There. They’ll get you started, and then you can start reading these, which complicate trans identities in ways that are both essential and necessary if you want to understand transgender lives.

IF YOU ARE A THERAPIST, Lev’s Trangender Care & Vanderbergh’s Transition & Beyond are the books you want.

Here is my Top Ten List of Transgender Books for LGBTQ readers, with these and others reviewed below.

1. Butch is a Noun – S. Bear Bergman
   
2. Gender Outlaw – Kate Bornstein
   
3. Crossdressing, Sex & Gender – Bullough & Bullough
   
4. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism – Patrick Califia
   
5. Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals – Virginia Erhardt
   
6. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman – Leslie Feinberg
   
7. Becoming a Visible Man – Jamison Green
   
8. Mom, I Need to be a Girl – Just Evelyn
9. Whipping Girl – Julia Serano
   
10. Transition & Beyond – Reid Vanderbergh

• Allen, Mariette Pathy. Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them*, & The Gender Frontier. Transformations is a photographic book from the early 80s documenting (mostly) the lives of crossdressers. It was the first book Betty gave me that made any sense. Allen’s second, The Gender Frontier, won the Lambda Lit Award in the transgender category in 2004. There is an interview with Mariette Pathy Allen in my Five Questions With… Archive.

• Beard, Richard. Becoming Drusilla: One Life, Two Friends, Three Genders. Nettie, one of our regulars o nthe MHB Boards, wrote a fantastic review of this book. You can find that review here.

• Bergman, S. Bear. Butch Is A Noun. I’m not sure I can even begin to describe how good Butch Is A Noun is: it’s funny, and charming, and substantial – much as I suspect its author is as well. I found myself wishing that there were 365 of Bear’s stories so that I could read one every day as a kind of meditation, to inform my day. The charm of Butch Is A Noun is that it takes its subject both seriously and with humor, but a gallows kind of humor, one that helps you survive a difficult world. There is no mistaking the undercurrent of sadness and anger, but the humor and love overwhelm both, as they should in any book about being butch. I really can’t recommend this book more highly: it made me laugh first, then cry some, think seriously about the world, and by the end I felt I’d been given a great big Bear hug.

• Boylan, Jennifer Finney. She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders. A required read since it’s probably the best written trans memoirs and makes the many other YETAs (Yet Another Trans Autobiography) redundant.

• Blumenstein, Rosalyn. Branded T. I reviewed this book for Transgender Tapestry, and the review and further discussion can be found in our Reader’s Chair Forum. There is also a Five Questions With… Interview with Rosalyne on my blog.

• Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw.* Kate Bornstein’s thoughtful and revolutionary book about gender. Feel free to comment on or read further discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum.

• Bullough, Vern and Bonnie. Crossdressing, Sex and Gender.* A historical book about crossdressing through the ages; thorough, slightly academic, a great reference. There is also a Five Questions With… interview with Vern Bullough in my blog archives.

• Califia, Patrick. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism. Written when Patrick Califia was still Pat Califia, this book is a good overview of both what it means to live in the gender binary and a discussion of transgender politics of the last 50 or so years. I especially love it for two things: 1) a feminist eye, and 2) accessible writing. S/he doesn’t get bogged down in jargon, and his extensive background as a feminist sex radical informs a lot of the opinions expressed.

• Erhardt, Virginia. Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals. I provided Dr. Erhardt with a blurb for this book, and have put my complete review in the Reader’s Chair Forum of our message boards. ** added 9/5/2006 **

• Feinberg, Leslie. Drag King Dreams. ** added 6/3/06* I’m not sure Leslie Feinberg has an actual fan club, but if there is one, I want in. When I first read Stone Butch Blues, it blew my mind. A lesbian friend – since transitioned – made me read it. Made me, and for good reason: it’s like a sledgehammer of experience for anyone who has ever lived in the world as queer, or working class, and especially for anyone who has lived in the world as both. My friend knew it would speak to me, as it spoke to him.Transgender Warriors was equally great, full of information, rage, inspiration. I remember practically pointing out passages to strangers on the subway when I was reading it. But Drag King Dreams is like something from another world. Leslie Feinberg is not just remarkable as a person, and activist, but as a writer. Or as a radical, righteous soul. When I met hir at TIC (UVM’s trans conference), zie came up to thank me and Betty for what we were doing, and I could have been knocked over with a feather. I’m still astonished. Leslie Feinberg thanking me? For anything? Absurd. But now I know why. Leslie Feinberg was thinking about crossdressers, and zie was thining about crossdressers a lot, and in deep, empathetic ways. Crossdressers: buy this book. You think I’m your friend? Leslie Feinberg is the mensch you want at your back, believe me.The book starts with Max Rabinowitz (transman, drag king, genderqueer, bulldagger – it’s not really clear and doesn’t matter) talking to hir friend Vickie. In a moment of frustration, of ‘transer than thou’ anger, zie says something about how Vickie can take the clothes and the wig off and go back to being normal.The next day Vickie is found brutally murdered. And the rest of the book is Max’s meditation on friends, community, activism, family; it’s an insider’s view into being queer, being outside, being “other” while also being well-loved, deeply loving, and sorry. The book is Max’s apology to Vickie, for that moment of assumption and hierarchy that a crossdresser’s life is somehow “easier” than anyone else’s. Throw in some amazing scenes about being ungendered online, a lovely exchange between a “tough as nails” femme and an “suit and tie bulldagger,” a remarkable speech by Vickie’s communist uncle; a chilling scene of an apartment break-in by mysterious and angry visitors, and one scene – an exchange of sweet, light coffee and flags – that was so touching, so genuine, and so intense that I could taste the coffee and jonesed for a smoke right along with Max. The cast of characters is a veritable melting pot of transness and their empathizers: Estelle’s surviving wife being one. I’ve never seen myself in a novel before, and though I have no interest in living Estelle’s reality, some of her words rang out in ways that were profound to me. I cried a lot just thinking about her, who she is, who she is to me. But it’s the delicacy that this book really thrives on: Feinberg doesn’t say “Max doesn’t feel solidarity with this asshole transman because he’s middle-class” but zie makes the point. Zie shows, not tells: the first lesson in fiction writing, and the one most writers get wrong.Leslie Feinberg, THANK YOU.

• Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues: A Novel. This book was given to me by a friend – a friend who also identified as stone butch, and who now IDs as trans. At the time, many years ago, it was really just a book that was supposed to give me an idea of what her life was like. Although I don’t think the writing is all it could be – Les Feinberg is better at speeches and non-fiction prose, in my humble opinion – the impact this book had on my life can’t be underestimated. It’s one of the only books written not just by a lesbian and butch, but also by someone who lived a working-class life. As a result, so much of the book deals with what I’d call the real world: working in a blue-collar industry, dating women, dealing with family estrangement but also innate homophobia. The one scene that really hangs in my memory is one where the narrator has started taking T and is passing for male, and dating a woman who is straight. At some point, the woman says something deeply homophobic, and the convolutions of thought that go on in the narrator’s head at that time are enlightening. S/he wonders exactly what would happen to hir if that same woman were to really what/who the narrator really was; the fear in that scene is palpable. And practical. And realistic. (When I met Les Feinberg, at UVM last year, zie thanked me for the honesty of My Husband Betty. I was flabbergasted. Utterly flabbergasted. And I told hir: without Stone Butch Blues there would be no MHB. It sets a very high standard for other biographical books, one which most don’t even reach, but one which more writers should keep in mind when they write. For the record: I was not one bit surprised, however, to find out Les Feinberg was as gracious as zie was zealous about gender politics. Zie spent more than an hour after giving hir speech taking pictures with fans.) (Check out this review of SBB, too!)

• Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Leslie Feinberg’s history of trans and gender-variant people thoughout the eras. You can find more discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum.

• Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. An academic book about every aspect of crossdressing – a great reference.

• Green, James. Becoming a Visible Man. So – why Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man? For starters, it’s a good read. James writes to be read, unlike a lot of writers on trans experience or in gender theory. Since my “audience” comes mostly from the MTF end of things, I also think it’s vital for us to educate ourselves as to what the experiences are from those on the other side of the fence. Having run FTM International for a million years, James has more than his own experience to rely upon for this book – he has head the stories of thousands of FTMs, from those that embrace a more genderqueer radical place, to those who wish, simply, to pass well enough so they can marry and mow their lawn on Saturdays. Beyond that, James is a great guy, a good writer, and penned the phrase that Betty and I repeat ad nauseum: There is no right way to be trans. He is also selfless with his time and energy – and has been for quite some time. Becoming a Visible Man was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the CLAGS book award. Feel free to comment or read further discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum. You can find a Five Questions With… interview with James Green on my blog.

• Hirschfield, Magnus. Transvesties: The Erotic Drive to Cross Dress.* Magnus Hirschfield’s 1910 book in which he coined the word “transvestite.”

• Just Evelyn. Mom, I Need to Be a Girl. Evelyn’s Mom I Need to Be a Girl is an unassuming book written by the mother of a transwoman – but a transwoman who realized her transness when she was just a girl. Not only would every transperson benefit from having a mom like Evelyn, but the whole community benefits from this amazing book. It was the first narrrative about transness that I read that I trusted – not just because, like me, Evelyn is an insider/outsider to trans issues, though that was one reason – but because the language of the book is so simple and heartfelt. There is no convolution here: it is a mother and child sorting out a very complicated question when there are no good answers readily available. I highly recommend this as a book to give others to read about transsexualism. For starters, it’s not 300 pages. But it is impossible to doubt this mother’s love for her child, or the seriousness of the problems they were up against. I think this book would soften the hardest of hearts – it is told in such clear terms, empathetically, and because you’re hearing the story from someone who loves a transperson, without the usual convolution of ‘whys and wherefores.’ Lynn Conway has made Mom I Need To Be a Girl available online and for download (with Evelyn’s permission of course) on her website. Feel free to comment on or read more discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum.

• Leigh, Lacey. Out & About: The Emancipated Crossdresser.* Lacey Leigh’s guide for how to be an out crossdresser. There’s a good Five Questions With… Interview with Lacey Leigh on my blog archives as well.

• Lev, Arlene Istar. Transgender Emergence, & The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide. Arlene Istar Lev, wearing one of many hats, answers questions from people about queer parenting in her “Dear Ari” column at www.prideparenting.com, but she also wrote the ground-breaking Transgender Emergence, which makes her one of the first therapists to acknowledge partners’ concerns and therefore a friend of mine. The title of The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide is a slight misnomer – there should be a T in there somewhere – as Lev made a point of bringing up a trans related issue in every chapter of her later tome. Her “Dear Ari” columns show up in our Kids Forum with some discussion, and Transgender Emergence has been reviewed & discussed in our Reader’s Chair forum. ** added 3/2/07 **

• Pratt, Minnie Bruce. S/he. Minnie Bruce Pratt is Leslie Feinberg’s partner of many years, and in this short book, Pratt writes poetically about lesbian and transgender identity and sexuality.

• Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl (Seal Press,2007) Whipping Girl is, to date, the only book to address, theoretically, the uneasy relationship between trans people – specifically MTF transsexual women – and feminism, and that work was long overdue. It addresses sexuality, media representations, the historical pathologization of trans people by psychologists, the fetishization of tans women’s sexualities, the inherent misogyny of a feminist politics that mocks femininity, and then some. It has been personally & politically important to me in confronting what remained of my own “natural attitude” toward my own gender, what Serano calls cissexism (and rightfully so) and proposes the concept of “subconsious sex” which did more to explain transsexualism to me than anything ever has — outside, maybe, of Betty’s “because” model. It’s a real shame that this book was not recognized by the Lambda Literary Foundation. It will be considered a classic, revelatory and ground-breaking book in time; it’s just sad the Foundation’s judges don’t have the foresight to give it its due now. Julia, personally: thank you. I always appreciate when anyone, with their words and logic and anger, can make me a little less of an asshole, and Whipping Girl did that in spades. There’s a Five Questions With… interview with Julia Serano in my blog’s archives, and a thread about Whipping Girl in the mHB forums. ** added 3/17/2008 **

• The Lady Chablis. Hiding My Candy. The memoir of The Lady Chablis, aka “The Doll,” the trans woman who was in Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil. It’s an interestingly-told tale – her optimism and attitude gloss over some very difficult times in her life – and yet there’s a pathos underneath the fabulousness that, at least to me, makes it a perfect drag memoir – of a drag queen who isn’t quite a drag queen: The Lady Chablis is, by her own definition, “a woman with candy.”

• Vanderbergh, Reid. Transition & Beyond. Reid Vanderbergh’s Transition & Beyond is a holistic look at transition; it fills in so many gaps left by the previous literature. His empathy and admiration for partners of trans folk come through loud and clear, and his respect for us is what informs his insight and advice. Reid’s book is one of the few I know that sees the trans person in context, in the light of long-held religious beliefs, relationships, and families. His commentary on substance abuse and post-transition community are especially welcome. Transition & Beyond isn’t just vital reading for therapists but for trans people and their families. ** added 1/4/07 **