Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality (Gender and Culture Series) [Hardcover]

Jay Prosser's book (in addition to being uniquely insightful) occupies a unique place in the growing (trans)gender studies canon: it is the only one that engages seriously with the specificity of transsexual (as distinct from transgender) identification, and critically examines the points of critical divergence between the two (or the several, if you prefer). His readings of the Well of Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, as well as the appended consideration of transsexual photographic self-portrait (which is as moving as it is insightful) are, quite simply, not to be missed. A must.

Jay Prosser
Second Skins:
The Body Narratives of Transsexuality

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) 270 pages
(ISBN: 0-231-10934-2; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0-231-10935-0; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.9.P76 1998)

Jay Prosser was born a female but as an adult lives as a man.
But this review will use the feminine pronouns--she, her, hers--
because her personality and her interests
as they come across in her writing seem to me
more the mind of a woman than the mind of a man.
The books she discusses were mostly written by radical feminists.
Besides advocating the same opportunities for women as granted to men,
Prosser also advocates the freedom to change sex
--or to present oneself as an intermediate sex between female and male.
Thus, her book grew out of her personal and passionate involvement
with the cause of sex-and-gender liberation.

The background research for Second Skins was a reading of some 50
autobiographies of people who have changed from one sex to the other
--and some important works of transsexual fiction.
Jay Prosser is aware of the pressure to fabricate
a standard transsexual story
in order to convince the sex-change psychologists and surgeons.
And later these stories are elaborated into full-blown autobiographies,
but still with the purpose of justifying a sex-change.
Narratives are very important to transsexuals,
first because they must 'remember'
always wanting to be the other sex from childhood.

Prosser avoids exploring the psychological reasons
for wanting to change sex.
And any discussion of the subjects' sexual orientations,
sexual responses, & sexual relationship is mostly absent.
Such an exploration might have revealed that most of the butch lesbians
discussed in this book were trying to understand
why they have sexual fantasies of themselves as male.
Early imprinting of sex-scripts might have been a better explanation
in many cases than 'transsexuality'.
A major gap in the research behind this book is modern scientific sexology.
She does give an account of old-fashioned explanations and some Freud.

Prosser traces the changing models
of these variations of sex and gender:
In the early 1900s, these people were called "inverts"
--meaning that they had "contrary sexual desires";
then they were "homosexuals";
finally some prefer to think of themselves as "transsexuals"
--and even later as "transgender persons".

In the early days of 'transsexuality'--beginning in the middle 1900s--
most transsexuals wanted to become completely the other sex.
When this book was written--at the end of the 1990s--
a new self-concept was emerging:
"Transgender" people want to make
what used to be a transition into an identity.
These persons do not want to fade into the general population.
They want to be known publicly as "transgender"
--somewhere between the two sexes,
perhaps with the freedom to shift back and forth at will.
For a while they called themselves "preoperative transsexuals"
or "nonoperative transsexuals".
And they greatly outnumber the people
who have undergone sex-change surgery.

Transsexual writers might not be the best people to consult
when trying to create a better model for these phenomena.
They might be too passionately involved in justifying their own choices.
But at least such autobiographies
provides lots of raw material for later scientific analysis.

All in all, Second Skins is an important contribution
to the fast-growing literature of transsexualism and transgenderism.

If you would like to read reviews of similar books,
search the Internet for these exact words: "BOOKS ON TRANSSEXUALISM".

I had to read this book for a class at University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin, and I will never, ever recommend this... to anyone. Is he really trying to reach people? Or just other PhD peoples? Gimme a break.