transgender research (original) (raw)

transgender research	[Oct. 11th, 2005\|11:50 pm]Feminist and Gender Theory Reading List
I checked out a book from my college's library called Current Concepts in Transgender Identity, published in 1998. It contains research papers about transgender topics. The paper on the historical and mythological points was interesting, but the others... they seem to have this basic assumption that the natural, normal thing is to me M or F, gay or straight, one or the other, whereas I believe that if our society were more open, almost all people would recognize a little mixture in themselves. We wouldn't need to define everything, we could just me ourselves. One guy was came up with 46 ways to define different pairings of 2 people. Not only is that complicated, it leaves out groups of more than 2 people, like those who are polyamorous or people who choose to have 3 or more people in a relationship (like the man and 2 women who got a civil union in the Netherlands not too long ago). I was also annoyed that in tables listing who the different MTFs and FTMs were attracted to, transpeople weren't listed! I think they were listed as an option under "other" on another table. Besides that it was "straight men" and "gay women" etc. Plus, many of the authors seemed to assume that the data they had on transpeople represented all transpeople, even though so many people are't out, or aren't in research studies, or don't get surgery. Surgery was used a lot as a way to tell numbers of transpeople, and that's just inaccurate, esp if it's genital surgery only. So when one author said that he only knew one one or two cases of two transpeople being a couple, I thought, hmm maybe this guy should get an lj and join some communities! I've heard of a lot more than one case of that. There's just so much misinformation. But again, the historical stuff was good... apparently the first colonial governor of New York came over from England wearing woman's clothes and continued to wear them throughout his term in office. A lot of French guys doing that too. And gender changing in native tribes everywhere around the world. Again, if our culture was more open about it, it would be seen a lot more.
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transgender research

[Oct. 11th, 2005|11:50 pm]Feminist and Gender Theory Reading List

I checked out a book from my college's library called Current Concepts in Transgender Identity, published in 1998. It contains research papers about transgender topics. The paper on the historical and mythological points was interesting, but the others... they seem to have this basic assumption that the natural, normal thing is to me M or F, gay or straight, one or the other, whereas I believe that if our society were more open, almost all people would recognize a little mixture in themselves. We wouldn't need to define everything, we could just me ourselves. One guy was came up with 46 ways to define different pairings of 2 people. Not only is that complicated, it leaves out groups of more than 2 people, like those who are polyamorous or people who choose to have 3 or more people in a relationship (like the man and 2 women who got a civil union in the Netherlands not too long ago). I was also annoyed that in tables listing who the different MTFs and FTMs were attracted to, transpeople weren't listed! I think they were listed as an option under "other" on another table. Besides that it was "straight men" and "gay women" etc. Plus, many of the authors seemed to assume that the data they had on transpeople represented all transpeople, even though so many people are't out, or aren't in research studies, or don't get surgery. Surgery was used a lot as a way to tell numbers of transpeople, and that's just inaccurate, esp if it's genital surgery only. So when one author said that he only knew one one or two cases of two transpeople being a couple, I thought, hmm maybe this guy should get an lj and join some communities! I've heard of a lot more than one case of that. There's just so much misinformation. But again, the historical stuff was good... apparently the first colonial governor of New York came over from England wearing woman's clothes and continued to wear them throughout his term in office. A lot of French guys doing that too. And gender changing in native tribes everywhere around the world. Again, if our culture was more open about it, it would be seen a lot more.

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_And gender changing in native tribes everywhere around the world._I wrote a whole paper on gender identities in Native American religions. It's amazing how much material there was to work with. I went from being afraid I'd never find enough stuff to narrowing the scope of my paper drastically. If I can remember the book I used, I'll send the title your way. Fascinating stuff. The berdache was the first historical transgender-like figure I ever read about. The article I mentioned mostly concentrated on native societies, especially in the Americas. It really is interesting. Oooh, if you find the title of that book, please send it my way too -- that sounds very interesting!!

Comments:

_And gender changing in native tribes everywhere around the world._I wrote a whole paper on gender identities in Native American religions. It's amazing how much material there was to work with. I went from being afraid I'd never find enough stuff to narrowing the scope of my paper drastically. If I can remember the book I used, I'll send the title your way. Fascinating stuff. The berdache was the first historical transgender-like figure I ever read about. The article I mentioned mostly concentrated on native societies, especially in the Americas. It really is interesting. Oooh, if you find the title of that book, please send it my way too -- that sounds very interesting!!