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    Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities
    Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities
    Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities
    Ebook283 pages3 hours

    Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities

    By Jackson Wright Shultz

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Although transgender people are increasingly represented in academic studies and popular culture, they rarely have the opportunity to add their own voices to the conversation. In this remarkable book, Jackson Shultz records the stories of more than thirty Americans who identify as transgender. They range in age from fifteen to seventy-two; come from twenty-five different states and a wide array of racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and identify across a vast spectrum of genders and sexualities. Giving voice to a diverse group of individuals, the book raises questions about gender, acceptance, and unconditional love. From historical descriptions of activism to personal stories of discrimination, love, and community, these touching accounts of gender transition shed light on the uncharted territories that lie beyond the gender binary. Despite encounters with familial rejection, drug addiction, and medical malpractice, each account is imbued with optimism and humor, providing a thoughtful look at the daily joys and struggles of transgender life. With an introduction and explanations from the author, this work will appeal to transgender individuals, their significant others, friends, family, and allies; health-care providers, educators, and legal professionals; and anyone questioning their own gender, considering transition, or setting out on their own transition journey.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDartmouth College Press
    Release dateOct 6, 2015
    ISBN9781611688085
    Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities

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    • 5/5
      Also seduced me from the new non-fiction section of the library.

      I'd been reading some radical feminism critiques of transgender issues online lately that were pissing me off, but also made me realize how little of my gender and orientation reading was about trans-identities, compared to LGB, or especially I. I'd applied a lot of what I'd learned reading about intersex conditions/identities to transgender issues, but how well did that really fit?

      Enter Schultz's timely oral history collection. The diversity of voices collected here is really admirable, and was exactly what I was looking for. There are a lot of celebrity transfolk (especially MTW) biographies grabbing press today, but that reality is just such a small fragment of the spectrum of experience.

      I especially appreciated and got woke by the sections on intersectionality, on how trans-identity is affected by race, gender, disability, medical issues, culture, class, etc.

      I wanted to find all of these people and hug them.

      A very useful and important book. Very difficult to put down.
    • 4/5
      Very enlightening look at the variety of people that can be found in the transgender community. Can get confusing at times, since there is often not entire agreement on gender terms from region to region or across ethnicities. The strength of this book is that it is based on individual experiences of transgender people.

    Book preview

    Trans/Portraits - Jackson Wright Shultz

    terminology.

    INTRODUCTION

    Although we cannot remember them, our first experiences in the world are typically based on our sex. Following the cry of It’s a girl! or It’s a boy! we will be given a pink or blue armband, respectively. From that moment we have been assigned a gender based on our biological sex. Girls will frequently be socialized to play with dolls, to spend time indoors, and to be passive. Boys will often be socialized to play with toy cars, to spend time outdoors, and to be assertive. We will spend the next years of our lives meeting or failing the gendered expectations that friends, family, and society have placed upon us. Most will conform to the gender they have been assigned. The following is an oral history of thirty-four individuals who did not.

    All of these individuals fall into the broad category of transgender. As an umbrella term, trans or transgender describes anyone who feels discomfort with the gender they were assigned at birth. Some trans individuals physically transition, a process wherein a person takes medical steps to bring their body more in line with the gender with which they identify. Others forgo medical procedures and transition socially, taking nonmedical steps to express their genders in the ways that are most in line with the gender with which they identify.

    Whether socially or medically, transitioning from one gender to another is always a complicated process. There are medical and legal difficulties that must be considered, and there are also social barriers that must be crossed. Although many people recognize their transgender feelings at an early age, they are not always presented with the information or resources needed to make an informed decision about transitioning. Increasingly, trans folk are disclosing their trans identities at younger and younger ages, but in older generations there still exist many trans folk who felt forced to suppress their feelings and desires for years in order to better assimilate to a dominant culture that encourages prescribed binary gender roles. There are those who transition neatly from one gender to the next, and there are others whose gender identities are fluid and frequently changing. Of the thirty-four individuals included in this book, none used the same terminology to refer to themselves.

    One of the challenges I faced in writing this book was the inadequacy of the English language for discussing gender. For example, several of the interviewees preferred to use gender-neutral pronouns.¹ These pronouns look and sound unnatural, but that same awkwardness can make a pointed political statement about how ingrained a binary gender paradigm is in the dominant culture of the United States. Adequate terminology likewise failed many of the individuals I interviewed, and they often turned to slang (a form of expression that has unfortunately been delegitimized in many socioeconomic contexts). The breadth of words that trans communities have invented or reclaimed is astounding, political, and poignant. The terminology they use is often critical to conveying their gender identities and expressions, and creating and using these terms is frequently an important part of their daily activism.

    The experiences of each of the interviewees differ greatly based on factors such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, ability, sexuality, HIV status, religion, and a plethora of additional social influences. The characters are so diverse that I often felt they had very few common denominators. However, one of the commonalities I discovered was an overwhelming involvement in activist endeavors. Their definitions of activism were as varied as their gender expressions, but every single interviewee participated regularly in activist pursuits. From large protests to political lobbying and from educational outreach to using a set of pronouns that sparks a conversation—each of the characters told me stories of engaging in activism in their everyday lives.

    This project has been an incredible journey. I have had an amazing opportunity to delve into the stories of dozens of incredible transgender individuals. The accounts they gave me of their lives were both inspiring and heartbreaking as we probed into the uncharted territories that lie beyond the gender binary.

    A Historical Rationale

    While transgender history certainly predates Christine Jorgensen, she was the first trans individual to receive widespread media attention in the United States when she returned from Denmark after having genital-reassignment surgery. A former GI during the Second World War, her stunning transformation caused not only a media explosion but also an upswing in transgender medical research and practice in the United States. She rose to prominence in trans communities along with her physician Harry Benjamin, who would establish international guidelines for providing health care to transgender patients. Much of the scientific and medical research about trans folk occurring at this time was quietly sponsored by Reed Erickson, a transgender millionaire philanthropist and patient of Benjamin’s. This research helped to lay the foundation for medical transition, and the Erickson Educational Fund developed informational leaflets that provided information to trans folk on medical and legal matters relating to

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