The Transgender Phenomenon
- Richard Ekins - University of Ulster, UK
- Dave King - University of Liverpool, UK
"Dave King and Richard Ekins are the leading world sociologists in this field. The book brings together a brilliant synthesis of history, case studies, ideas and positions as they have emerged over the past thirty years, and brings together a rich but always grounded account of this field, providing a state of the art of critical concepts and ideas to take this field further during the twenty first century."
- Ken Plummer, University of Essex"An outstanding survey of the evolution of trans phenomena, splendidly written, highly informative, scholarly at its best, yet easy to read even for those neither trans nor sociologist. Ekins and King, experts in the field, unroll the panoramas of sex, gender, and transgendering that have evloved during the last decades. For everyone wanting to understand the interaction of women and men and of those who cannot or will not identify with either of these two cataegories, reading this book is a must, and a real pleasure."
- Friedmann Pfaefflin, University of ULM
This groundbreaking study sets out a framework for exploring transgender diversity for the new millennium. It sets forth an original and comprehensive research and provides a wealth of vivid illustrative material.
Based on two decades of fieldwork, life history work, qualitative analysis, archival work and contact with several thousand cross-dressers and sex-changers around the world, the authors distinguish a number of contemporary transgendering 'stories' to illustrate:
- The binary male/female divide
- The interrelations betwen sex, sexuality and gender
- The interrelations between the main sub-processes of transgendering.
Wonderfully insightful, The Transgender Phenomenon develops an original and innovative conceptual framkework for understanding the full range of the transgender experience.
"This book is indispensable for anyone working in (trans)gender and sexuality studies and is a vital history of the interrelationships among these various transgendering narratives in Europe and America from the early 1970's to the present. The authors deftly move across disciplines, from early sociologist George Herbert Mead to Michel Foucault and Kate Bornstein, making this book a welcome relief from some of the narrow, discipline-bound work in transgender and sexuality studies. Summing up: Essential Upper-division division undergraduates and above."