- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Beacon Press; 1 edition (Jun 30 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0807079413
- ISBN-13: 978-0807079416
- Product Dimensions: 16.5 x 1.5 x 26.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#270,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #50 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Nonfiction > Transgender
- See Complete Table of Contents
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Leslie Feinberg has been a leader in the transgender rights movement as long as such a movement has existed. This book is both deeply personal and widely researched. Feinberg examines perceptions of the body, the status of clothing, and the structures of societies that welcome or are threatened by gender variance. The portrait gallery that closes the book contains photographs and capsule biographies of contemporary transgendered people.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Feinberg, a surgically and hormonally transgendered female-to-male and the author of the novel Stone Butch Blues, here effectively pummels several old saws about gender, such as that there were two or three centuries in ancient Greece that constituted the golden age of gayness ("How happy were the gay slaves?" she asks). She also shows the often frantic and neurotic ways Western society clings to rigid notions of gender, while at the same time she describes (though not fully enough) how these notions shift radically from age to age. But her historical perspective can be sketchy. Feinberg, for example, expends little effort in looking into why a notorious band of male Welsh revolutionaries calling themselves Rebecca and Her Daughters dressed as women to destroy tollbooths in the mid-19th century. Though she draws many conclusions from this and other examples of cross-dressing rebellion through the ages, she fails to consider that the readiest disguise for a married man is his wife's clothing. The book does offer an enlightening album of singular people: a female transvestite who is sexually attracted to gay men; a couple consisting of a female cross-dresser and a male-cross-dresser. But Feinberg ultimately leaves too many gaps, both in history and in reasoning, to make her theories about gender expression and gender oppression solid. Author tour. (May) FYI: Filming of Stone Butch Blues, which won both the ALA Award for Gay and Lesbian Literature and the Lambda Literary Award in 1993, is to begin this spring.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wide-Ranging Informative Work,
By A Customer
This review is from: Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (Paperback)
Leslie Feinberg has created a fascinating compilation of transgender history.This book "works" in that it engages the reader and stimulates thought, questioning and debate. Even the highly negative reviews that appear here reinforce this. The review authors are inflamed by a book of substance, one which presents a consistent theoretical underpinning as it provides a wealth of historical data. A lot of political statements are made on all sides about the natural order of things. Look at the debate over same-sex marriage in which the debate is framed in terms of traditional values. Feinberg, in this work, does the field of gender studies a great service in expanding our awareness of just how much diversity is historically encompassed in our common tradition. Read this book, then reflect, then challenge both it and yourself.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Here's to Feinberg's Transgendering History Quest,
By "md_2003" (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (Paperback)
The Stonewall frontliner offers an engaging expedition back through the past into the present through critical transgender-centering reinterpretations of familiar and unfamiliar stories. Hir re-reading of Joan of Arc from a transgender socialist feminist perspective is intriguing, motivating, and delightful. Feinberg is able to achieve visibility for heterosexistly obscured transgender moments and people across a lengthy span of time and geography.Braiding hir own narrative into the work provides a reflexive empassioned appeal to liberation workers that renews spirits to confront gender, desire, and sexed supremacy with a certain pride in transgender revolutionary work. The blend of freshly unearthed truths, experiential revelations, and proffers for theory work well for a feminist readership.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A history of trans-ness written BY a trans person,
By A Customer
This review is from: Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (Paperback)
Of course this book is personal. Of course it is passionate. It is an important attempt by a recognized trans author and amateur historian to catalyze a larger project of tracing authentic patterns of gender expression that don't conform to the binary that has been forced upon society since the rise of class divisions (i.e., since the collapse of "primitive" or "tribal" collectivism). And the book thereby contributes to efforts to demystify the notion that "two sexes" are a scientific fact and historical truth.Hopefully others will pick up where Feinberg leaves off and apply other methodologies to uncover what has really been going on throughout human history where it comes to gender. What the book lacks in traditional academic rigor it more than makes up for with its first-person self-consciousness, originality and plausibility in the interpretation of historical data. It is richly illustrated, literate, contemporary and very relevant to today's discourse.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Children's Books
- Books > Gay & Lesbian > History
- Books > Gay & Lesbian > Nonfiction > Transgender
- Books > History > Gay & Lesbian
- Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Gender Studies
- Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > Marriage & Family
- Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > Social Groups
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
