S/HE By Claudine Griggs

S/HE:
Changing Sex and Changing Clothes

By Claudine Griggs

1998, Berg

140 Pages plus Notes


From the Cover

Through an examination of the experience of transsexuals, this book enhances understanding of how gender can and does function in powerful, complex, and subtle ways. The author, who has herself been surgically reassigned, has conducted extensive interviews with transsexuals from many walks of life. Her personal experiences, which inform this book, have given her an access to her subjects that others would likely be denied.

Highlighting how the gender identity of transsexuals relates to hormonal and surgical changes in the body as well as to changes in dress, the book investigates the pressures and motivations to conform to expected gender roles, and the ways in which these are affected by social, educational, and professional status. Differences in the experiences of those who change from male to female and those who change from female to male are also examined.

Sex reassignment has been the focus of considerable media attention recently, as increasing numbers of people feel able to talk openly about their personal experiences with gender dysphoria. Strides with medical technology have given transsexuals new opportunities in their lives. This book provides unique insights into how these changes are seen by those people most affect by them.


Table of Contents

1 - Mind, Body, and Attributed Gender - Mind and Body Divided / Hormone Replacement Therapy / Difficulties of Self-Acceptance / Past Attributions in Present Space / The Gendered Voice / My Body, My Enemy / Sensing Attribution / Matching Gender and Sex / Dressing in Extremes / The Costs of Change / Gender Role Endorsement / Becoming a Woman / Ambiguity - Androgyny

2 - Reframing Self - Part-time versus Full-time Femininity / Guidelines for Sex Reassignment / Diagnosis / Referral for Hormonal Therapy / Electrolysis (for MTF Patients) / Cross-living / Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) / Changing Legal Identity

3 - Social Recognition of Gender - Displaying Gender through Dress / Unexpressed Sexuality / Experiencing Gender Stereotypes / Knowing the Inner Person / Emphasizing Gender / Enforcing Gender in Children / Experiences in Being a Woman / Parts of Identity

4 - Sexualities and Genders - Ancillary Attributions / Attributed Sexuality / Fragmented Attributions and Prescriptions / Categories of Sexuality - The Love Test / Sexualities - The Gender Test / Reconstructed Sexualities / Relative Values of Surgery / Prosthetic Comfort / Subjective/Objective Disfigurement / Eliminating Dysphoria Does Not Eliminate Transsexualism / Gender Cross-coding / Theorizing Identity

5 - Shifting Identities - "Real-Life" Dualities / Transient Gender Cross-Coding / Regulated Cross-Coding / Size and Sexism

6 - Trans-Psychosocial Experiences - Optimism / Transsexual Acquiescence / Restructuring Self-Image / "Less Active" Behavior / Reconciling with Transsexualism / Managing Expectations

7 - Post-Transitional Concepts - Redressing Impersonation / Reassessing Physicality / Childhood-Adulthood Incongruence / Familial Identities / Experience as Theory