- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press; illustrated edition edition (1 Nov 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0674009258
- ISBN-13: 978-0674009257
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.2 x 3.6 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 528,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
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"Examines changing definitions of gender through the prism of transsexuality, that most mysterious of conditions in which a person is born with normal chromosomes and hormones for one sex but is convinced that he or she is a member of the other. Dr. Meyerowitz shows how mutable the words 'male,' 'female,' 'sex,' and 'gender' have become, and how their meanings have evolved through time. Hers is one of several new books on the subject of the transgendered... In terms of the scientific quandary of gender, [this book] is the most important." - Dinitia Smith, New York Times; "A sober, comprehensive cultural history that... is likely to become a standard reference in the field... One of its great strengths is its examination of the intersection and interaction of science and culture." - Julia M. Klein, The Nation"
Product Description
"How Sex Changed" is a fascinating social, cultural and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all. From early 20th-century sex experiments in Europe, to the saga of Christine Jorgensen, whose change surgery made headlines in 1952, to today's growing transgender movement, Meyerowitz gives us the first serious history of transsexuality. She focuses on the stories of transsexual men and women themselves, as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, feminists and gay liberationists, as they debated the big questions of medical ethics, nature versus nurture, self and society, and the scope of human rights. In this story of transsexuality, Meyerowitz shows how new definitions of sex circulated in popular culture, science, medicine and the law, and she elucidates the tidal shifts in our social, moral and medical beliefs over the 20th century, away from sex as an evident biological certainty and toward an understanding of sex as something malleable and complex. "How Sex Changed" is an intimate story that illuminates the very changes that shape our understanding of sex, gender and sexuality today.
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5 reviews
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant social history
8 Jun 2003
Format:Hardcover
This book is, ostensibly, about the history of transsexuality in the US. But it is, as its title implies, more generally about how the concept of "sex" itself has changed in the US in the past hundred years. Meyerowitz has done an amazing job of putting together activist, scientific, and popular cultural sources to produce a scholarly -- but very readable -- history. Meyerowitz's main point is that it is through a "taxonomic revolution" -- initiated by the possibilities of transsexuality -- that scientists, sexual minorities, and broader US society have come to distinguish between sex, gender, and sexuality, and the kinds of identities that are attached to these concepts. She argues most persuasively that the distinction between these arenas of lived experience were worked out through the debates over transsexuality in the US, drawing on earlier European sexological discourses.
Meyerowitz uses Christine Jorgensen as the central figure in this book, and has gone part of the way to producing something of a biography of CJ. This works really well. Another notable feature of this book is that Meyerowitz is careful to follow the different experiences of transexual men and women, which adds further depth to this book.
This book is very readable -- I intend to teach it in an undergraduate course this year -- while at the same time theoretically sound and clearly very well-researched. It answered many questions that I had, and brought together much of what I have wanted to understand about this field.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in gender and sexuality, both specialists and the general reader.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Excellent
15 Feb 2006
Format:Paperback
This is a thoroughly researched and well written book. It places transsexual people in the context of U.S. history and undermines many myths that permeate popular culture about transpeople. Extremely informative and readable.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Very Informative
8 July 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A very well written and informative book. A lot of info on Christine Jorgensen and the earlier doctors that fought for the rights of Transexuals. Also, it was nice to read a more "up-to-date" book on the subject too (copyright 2002). The only negative was that some info was overly repetitive and was a little jumpy in a historical time line. But, do not let that stop you from reading it, I highly recommend this book.
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