This book provides a crucial resource for readers who are investigating trans issues. It takes a diverse and historic approach, focusing on more than one idea or one experience of trans identity or trans history. Transgender: A Reference Handbook is a go-to resource about the transgender experience. The book takes contemporary as well as historic aspects into consideration. It looks at ancient indigenous cultures that honored third, fourth, and fifth gender identities as well as more contemporary ideas of what "transgender" means. Notably, it focuses not only on Western medical ideas of gender affirmation but on cultural diversity surrounding the topic. This book will primarily serve as a reference guide and jumping off point for further research for those seeking information about what it means to be transgender. While a reference book, it contains original work that may be cited in addition to the encyclopedia itself. In particular, the perspectives section of the book includes writings from some of the world's foremost trans writers, activists, artists, and historians. Provides students with outstanding source material and historic material on trans issues Includes writing from some of the most recognized names in trans writing, history, and activism in the world Approaches its subject from a deeply historical background, acknowledging the intersection of identities throughout time Provides resources for further study, including profiles, data and documents, and a chronology of transgender history

Gender Blending examines the social construction of gender and its implications for the lives of gender blending females and for society in general. Aaron Devor constructs a theory which interprets gender as a social distinction related to, but different from, biological sex. Devor defines gender as a status learned by displaying the culturally defined insignia of the gender category with which one identifies. Fifteen women who have to varying degrees rejected traditional femininity, but not their femaleness, discuss their lives with Devor. These women, sometimes mistaken for men, choose to minimize their female vulnerability in a patriarchal world by minimizing their femininity. During childhood, their reaction to their secondary status in society, as potential victims of violence and exploitation, was often to be a tomboy. Now, in adulthood, their gender identity does not fit either of the two roles socially and culturally defined as feminine and masculine. Gender Blending offers a deeper appreciation of the social construction of gender. Any woman who has questioned the value of the concept of femininity will find the experiences of these gender blending females revealing and important to a view of woman's place in the patriarchy.

In this ground-breaking study, Aaron Devor provides a compassionate, intimate, and incisive look at the life experiences of forty-five trans men. Emerging into 21st-century political and social conversations, questions persist. Who are they? How do they come to know themselves as men? What do they do about it? How do their families respond? Who are their lovers? What does it mean for everyone else? To answer these and other questions, Devor spent years compiling in-depth interviews and researching the lives of transsexual and transgender people. Here, he traces the everyday and significant events that coalesce into trans identities, culminating in gender and sex transformations. Using trans men's own words as illustrations, Devor looks at how childhood, adolescence, and adult experiences with family members, peers, and lovers work to shape and clarify their images of themselves as men. With a new introduction, Devor positions the volume in twenty-first century debates of identity politics and community-building and provides a window into his own self-exploration as a result of his research.