Transgcndering: Blurring the Boundaries of Gender 479
478 Part 9 The Gendered Body
WENDY McKENNA AND SUZANNE KESSLER
Transgendering:
are social constructions, inextricably tied to the natural attitude, rather than inde­
Blurring the Boundaries of Gender
pendently existing categories in nature, has come to be known as the social con­
Students recently voted to change the words "she" and "lIe" to
"the students" in the constitution of the student govern mel1t
association of Smith College. The move was instituted by students
to make the document more welcoming to those who, although
biologically felllale, do not idel1tify themselves as womell, said a
representative of the wOl1len's college in Northampton, Mass.
-Tile /ourIlal News, May 26,2003
INTRODUCTION
For many years we have been writing about the social construction of gender and
how transsexuality and intersexuality-eategories that would seem to challenge the
gender dichotomy-are paradoxically used to support it by being filtered through
the natural attitude toward gender (Kessler, 1998; Kessler and McKerma, 1978). The
natural attitude is a phenomenological construct proposed by the philosopher
Edmund Husserl (1931) and later adopted by sociologist Alfred Schutz (1962).
It refers to members' unquestionable axioms about a world that appears to exist
independently of particular perceptions or constructions of it. Within the natural
attitude, gender exists as a quality independent of any particular example of male­
ness or femaleness. Harold Garfinkel (1967), in developing ethnomethodology, an
offshoot of phenomenology, described how the natural attitude forms the foundation
of everyday, as well as scientific, thinking about gender and showed how that
thinking both creates and reflexively supports the categories of female and male.
Ethnomethodology was the theoretical perspective through which we began
our examination of gender. In developing Garfinkel's ideas we detailed eight
beliefs that constitute the natural attitude about gender (Kessler and McKenna,
1978: 113-114):
1. There are two and only two genders.
2. One's gender is invariant.
3. Genitals are the essential sign of gender.
4. Any exceptions to two genders are not to be taken seriously.
5. There are no transfers from one gender to another except for the
ceremonial.
6. Everyone must be classified as a member of one gender or another.
7. The male/female dichotomy is a natural one.
8. Membership in one gender or another is natural.
Wendy McKenna and SllLanne Kessler, "Transgcndering: Blurring the Boundaries of Gender" frorn
Handbook of Gender and W01l/en's Studies, edited by },olar)' S. [vans, K8thy Davis, and Judith Lorber.
Copyright © 2006. Reprinted with the permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
By treating transsexuals and intersexuals as "mistakes" that need to be recti­
fied through various medical treatments and legal remedies, these eight beliefs
about gender are "proved." The assertion that "male," "man," "female," "woman,"
struction orientation. Social construction, as articulated by Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckman (1972), rests on assumptions that absolute claims should not be
made about the world and that social categories like gender have no meaning
until they are put in a human context and interpreted through human eyes
(Gergen, 1994; Hacking, 1999; Handel, 1982). Social construction does 110t imply
that these categories are irrelevant, arbitrary, or easily eradicated. Rather, it is a
critique of essentialism, the assertion that there are objective facts that exist inde­
pendently of history and culture, and that the way to uncover the facts of this
world is through research using the scientific method.
When the term "transgender" was first proposed by Virginia Prince in 1979,
she argued that it should replace the term "transsexual" because people could
never change their essential biological sex, no matter what they did to their bod­
ies. She believes that genital surgery would not change a person's sex, and there­
fore the status of "transsexual" is an impossibility. Prince's usage of "transgender"
reinforces the biological dichotomy of male versus female sex, even if gender
(man versus woman) is seen as not so immutable. In 2004, the meaning of "trans­
gender" bears little resemblance to its earliest proposed usage. It is clear that the
contemporary usage of "transgender" increasingly becoming a challenge to,
rather than a reinforcement of, the natural attitude.
Our goal in this chapter is to consider what transgender has meant and what
it means today, and to give some examples of the theoretical questions that have
emerged from various academic and non-academic discussions, especially as
they suggest directions for feminist inquiry. Although this chapter contains cita­
tions to a number of important writings, we acknowledge that other significant
works may not be referenced here, especially since books, articles, and websites
on transgender seem to be appearing at an increasing rate. In addition, while our
focus is theoretical and academic, we, as authors, and you, as readers, must
always be aware that transgender is not just a subject for analysis, any more than
race or gender is. Those whose experience we draw on in any discussion of
transgender live real lives in real worlds, where their actions and decisions are
not merely theoretical. J We will return to this point at the end of the chapter. In
addition, we must always remember that the origins of feminist, women's, queer,
and gender studies lie in political movements whose goals have not yet been
reached, and, therefore, it is our responsibility to always reflect on the ways in
which our theory might inform and support action.
THE EMERGENCE OF TRANSGENDER
In the late 19705, our assertion that the essentialist dichotomy of biological "sex"
Was not independent of people's methods for creating the dichotomy was
baSically ignored by those engaged in studying gender and ~PYll,,];I·,,2 l\.T~...
•

41;0 Part 9 The Gendered Body
Table 1.
Number of Citations for "Transgender" in Seven Indexes Since 1990
Newspaper
Psyc- Social Wom~1I Gender Source
MEDUNE INFO Science Studies Watch Humanities Index
1990-1994 1 4 1 9 18 0 0
1995-1999 19 50 12 III 257 29
2000-2004 33 111) 37 103 304 30 ],998,382
social construction is a taken-far-granted assumption of gender studies. It is
important to understand some of the parameters of this transformation. In order
to document the emergence of transgender and differences in the term's usage
over time and across disciplines, we searched six academic electronic databases
and one general newspaper database. What the searches shm,,'ed was that some­
thing began to happen around 1995 that led to an explosion by the year 2000 in
theorizing, scientific and legal research, and personal narratives involving trans­
gender. (See Table 1) In addition, these searches provide a general overview of
hO\'v various fields organize and understand gender and transgender.
MEDLlNE archives articles in the field of medicine, including psychiatry.
Although there were fifty-eight citations for "transsexual" between 1991 and
1994, there was only one citation for "transgender." That was in a public health
journal and dealt with phalloplasty for a born female. In the last decade, typical
topics in articles using the term "transgender" include AIDS care in transgender
ommunities and factors that differentiate kinds of transsexuals and transvestites.
For the most part, material indexed by MEDLINE uses transgender as a synonym
for transsexual.
The PsyclNFO database archives articles in the field of psychology. In the
four articles that used the term "transgender" from 1990 to 1994, transgender is a
synonym for "transsexuaL" In the five years following, the number of citations
increased more than twelve-fold and then doubled again from 2000 to 2004. In
the more recent articles, largely from clinical psychology and education disci­
plines, applied issues like treatment and public policy are the main topics. These
writings typically add transgendered people to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as
another discrete population that needs to be served or taught about. Transgender
is not differentiated from transsexual. It is taken for granted that the reader will
understand, at least in general, what is meant by transgender. A smaller subset of
articles from the PsycINFO database deals 'vvith more theoretical issues like defin­
ing transgender and deconstructing identity, and these overlap with citations
from humanities and social science databases.
Social Science Index and the Women Studies International database mirror this
same pattern of few citations before 1995 and a huge increase after that. Gender
Watch Index, a database that archives gay Ilesbian aCZldemic journals as well as
popular I alternative gay-related media, recorded 18 citations between 1990 and
1994,257 from 1995 to 1999, and 304 from 2000 to 2003.
Humanities Abstracts, which includes philosophical and literary analyses (from
which the discipline of queer studies emerged), had no cltations for transgender
l1a,LL.:')o ..... J.L .......... ,L ...... ·o· ..... J.~ .. J. .... Lb ..... ~-- --
before 1995, twenty-nine citations between 1995 and 1999, and thirty between
2000 and 2003. (The relatively low numbers are due to the fact that this database
searches key words only and not the text or title.) Because the articles indexed
are almost always theoretical, the use of the term "transgender" reflects the
expanding interest in transgender as a challenge to essentialism, rather than just
signaling a shift in terminology from transsexual to transgender as in the other
databases.
9
Transgender is also a term that has entered popular culture since 1995. An
unobtrusive measure of the degree to which this has happened is that a Google
search for transgender had no "hits" for 1994, 3,300 "hits" in 1999, and 816,000
"hits" in March, 2004.3 This surge is also reflected in the number of citations in
the Newspaper Source Index (of 194 major newS sources, including The New York
Times and The Los Angeles Times). There were no citations for transgender before
1995,9 between 1995 and 1999, and 1,998,382 between 2000 and 2003! In the last
five years of the twentieth century, with gay and lesbian issues already having a
familiar place in public discourse, with "gender" having replaced "sex" in dis~
cussions of being male and female (Haig, 2004), and with the Internet transform­
ing communication networks and information access, what had been thought of
and treated as a "disorder" was becoming an identity category that both reflects
and shapes changes in theoretical and practical understandings of gender!
In trying to understand the diverse and seemingly contradictory connotations
of transgender, we have found it useful to consider the various meanings of the
prefix "trans" (McKenna and Kessler, 2000). The first meaning of "trans" is change
as in the word "transform." In this sense, transgendered people change their bod­
ies from those they were born with to those matching the genders they feel they
are. They change from male to female or vice versa. Transgender in this sense is
synonymous with "transsexual," and it would be appropriate to refer to someone
as "a transgender" just as it is common to refer to someone as "a transsexua1." As
the term transgender entered academic and popular discourse, this was the most
common meaning of the term. For example, in 1997, the first year that the
International Journal of Transgender was published, seventeen of the articles had
transgender in the title and twenty-two had transsexual in the title. Despite this
distinction, both terms seemed to refer to the transsexual usage, which is still the
meaning implied in much of the medical and psychological literature. Although
much of the professional literature on transsexualism has important practical and
clinical implications, for the rest of this chapter our focus is on two other mean~
ings of trans-crossing (gender) and moving beyond (gender). As we will argue
below, both of those meanings reflect a social construction perspective on gender,
unlike the essentialist perspective implied by changing (gender).
TRANS AS CROSSING: GENDER THEORY
AND ACADEMIC DISCOURSE
Even social construction usages of transgender do not share a uniform meaning·
Many writers who use the term transgender are careful to explain what they
mean (and do not mean) by it, usually in the first endnote. Some provide a

'*02 Yart lJ The Gendered Body
general definition, using words like "crossing," "blending," non conionnity/' or
"discordance." For example, Anne Bolin considers transgender "[T]hat group of
people whose genitals, status, appearance and behaviors are not in congruence
with the Western schema that mandates an essential relationship between sex
and gender" (1994: 590). Other writers list categories of people who can be COn­
sidered transgendered. Here are some typical examples:
Transgenderism ... includes people whose gender expression is non­
conformant with gender role expectations of males and females in a given ter­
ritory or society. Cross-dressers, transvestites, and transsexual are all often
covered under the transgender category. Moreover, people of any sexual orien­
tation whose gender expression remains outside of a rigid or gender conform­
ist system often identify as transgenders ... I use transgender and transsexual
[making no distinction] to refer to individuals who chose to identify with a
gender different from that assigned at birth and who have made strides to
accommodate to that gender construct ... Individual [s \-vho] dress as another
gender for erotic purposes, as well as people who are blending gender, or being
playful about their gender presentation are excluded from this term's use.
(Vidal-Ortiz, 2002: 224-225)
Those who might fall under the umbrella term of transgender ... include trans­
vestites, transsexual, crossdressers, transgenderists, gender blenders, gender
benders, drag queens, bi-genders, feminine men, androgynes, drag kings,
intersexuals, masculine women, passing men, gender dysphorics and others
who might consider themselves a "gender outlaw." (Broad, 2002: 263)
As these definitions point out, there are many categories, identities, and
behaviors associated with transgender that force a confrontation with the natural
attitude toward gender. Specifically, transgender challenges three major beliefs of
the natural attitude: (1) that there are two, and only tvvo, genders; (2) that a per­
son's gender never changes; and (3) that genitals are the essential sign of gender.
Transsexualism, on the other hand, has never created such a challenge because it
has been conceptualized as surgically changing a person's genitals, not changing
their ("real") gender. The assumption that one could be born into the wrong body
supports the belief that there are right bodies and \'\'fong bodies for each of the
two essential genders. Thus, transsexualism, although on the surface a rather
radical concept, is reconcilable with the belief that gender is invariant and there
are no transfers (Kessler and McKenna, 1978). This deep conservatism probably
accounts for transsexualism's relative acceptance.
In the second meaning of "trans," across (as in the word "transcontinental"),
the transgendered person moves across genders, or maybe just certain aspects of
the person crosses from one gender to another. Gender is no longer packaged as a
unity Because this meaning does not imply surgical intervention or even surgical
intent, it has a more fluid connotation than the first meaning of transgender,
which equated it with transsexuaLS Without genital surgery, there is more of a
sense that the crossing does not have to be permanent, although it might be. At
the time of this writing, the connotation of crossing is the most common meaning
of transgender. [t names some deviation from dichotomous gender expectations,
1.1c.U I~Ot'lLUCJ.U'b· ..... ---­
in dress, behavior, bodily changes (other than genital), and choice of sex partner,
but avoidS the language of diagnosis and etiology that suffuses discussions of
transsexuality and transvestism. This meaning of "trans" has added the phrase
IlOn-op or "can't afford" op to what had been the limited choices of pre-op or post-op.
In spite of this more social construction perspective, the transgendered per­
son who crosses genders does not leave the realm of two genders. For example,
some transgender people assert that, although they are the other gender, they do
not need to change their genitals. Such a person might say, "1 want people to
attribute the gender 'female' to me, but I'm not going to get my genitals changed.
I don't mind having my penis. Penises do not only belong to men." Although the
language is still bigendered, there is a radical potential to this stance of not treat­
ing the penis as a sign of maleness or the lack of a penis as a sign of femaleness.
The disentangling of genitals from gender has motivated some writers to
include intersexuals under the transgender umbrella. Intersexuality (previously
known as hermaphroditism) refers to anyone of many conditions characterized by
a lack of concordance among genitals, gonads, and/ or chromosomes or an atypi­
cal form of any of those. In cases where the genitals of an infant are atypical, the
standard medical treatment has been to "correct" them so that they look normal
to the parents and support whatever gender is assigned to the child.
Since 1995, a politicized and organized movement (led by members of the
Intersex Society of North America) has argued for a moratorium on infant genital
surgeries, except for the rare case when the condition is life-threatening (Kessler,
1998). The basis for that argument is not only that the surgeries create more
physical damage than has been acknowledged by medical professionals, but that
people do not need to have perfect-looking genitals. They can be male or female
with genitals that are atypical. Even if they are not damaging, the surgeries
restrict the intersexed person's options because early surgery would make it diffi­
cult to cross from one gender to another as an adult. Many intersexuals see their
diagnostic category as socially constructed and identify as transgendered, but not
all people with an intersexed condition experience themselves that way.
People who cross from one gender category to another, without necessarily
having or wanting the genitals that traditionally signal the crossing, are doing
something new. Havin.g a public gender identity that does not depend on the
matching genital is new. Having serial genders is new. What is not new is that
there is still only male or female, even if one's lived experience combines both in
some way.
TRANS AS BEYOND: QUEERING GENDER
Originally a homophobic slur, the term "queer" was appropriated by young gay
and lesbian activists in the 1990s and became part of intellectual discourse within
the cultural analysis known as queer theory. To "queer" is to render "normal"
sexuality as strange and unsettled (Goldberg, n.d.; Warner, 1993). This challenge
to dichotomouS sexuality asswnes that heterosexuals can be queer and homo­
sexuals are not necessarily queer and that to not feel homosexual does not mean
one must feel hetero- or bisexual. Consistent with this fluid view of sexuality,
 484 Part 9 The Gendered Body
discussions of gender non-conformity began to reflect the concept of queering
gender. Those \·vho queer gender raise the issue of not just what kind of sex
"real" men or women have, but whether there are "real" men or women in the
first place.
By the end of the 1990s, many individuals who had aligned themselves with
queer politics began to identify as members of "the transgender community.'
These were mainly young people, mainly "born women," who did not identify
as either women or men. Many of them made this transition whiJe in college.
within a community of similar and supportive others, referring to themselves as
tranny boys, transmen, FtMs/' or "bois" (ct. Kaldera, n.d.). Their analyses of
gender, which usually come out of their own experiences, have been compelling
and reflect a third meaning of "trans"; beyond or through, as in the word "transcu­
taneous." Many of those who identify as transgender in this third meaning com­
monly display, on a deep level, the understanding that gender is socially
constructed, that it is an action, not a noun or an adjective, and that to not feel
like a female does not mean to feel like a male. Everything is open to analysis,
revision, and rejection. Rather than call them "transgenders," or /ltransgendered
persons," the phrase "transgendering persons" best captures this meaning? This
is a challenge to the natural attitude because within the natural attitude, not only
is moving through (trans) gender impossible, but transgendering is nonsensical,
because gender is not an activity that is implied by the "ing." From the stand­
point of the natural attitude, "gendering" is as nonsensical as "heighting."
In this third sense, a transgendering person is one who has gotten through
gender-is beyond it, although probably never really "over it." That no clear
gender attribution can be made is not seen as problematic. Gender is refused. It
ceases to exist as a cross-situational essential attribute for the person and for
those with whom they interact. This meaning of transgender is the least common
but the one of greatest importance to gender theorists who are interested in the
possibility, both theoretical and real, of eliminating gender oppression.
TRANSGENDERING, FEMINIST THEORY,
Some people argue that only a man and a woman can marry because the
AND WOMEN'S STUDIES
basic purpose of marriage is reproductive. From that argument it would follow,
Feminism, grounded in the axiom that the basis for women's oppression is the
reality created by (White) men, can be troubled by transgender. From almost th
beginning of the women/s movement, some feminists responded very negatively
to the challenge of transsexualism. Their reactions included direct hostility and
exclusion (MacDonald, 1998). Most vehement was Janice Raymond's attack on
male-to-female transsexuals (1980).8 More recently, some feminists have regarded
female-to-male transgendered people with suspicion. The "womanist" perspec­
tive is that M-to-F people, raised with male privilege, cannot ever be women, and
F-to-M people, seduced by the power of patriarchy, have been duped and have
defected to the enemy. This perspective has treated transgender as at best irrele­
vant to feminist causes and at worst a way of deflecting energy from the struggle
for gender equality. The resultant feminist separatist activism has been responsi­
ble for empowering many women and for redefining how to meet our divers
Lransgendenng:'J:jlurrmg- me oounu-anes or \...Jellaer "tlJJ
needs. These needs must be addressed, but the theory that underlies "womanism"
is an essentialist one, and, in excluding the possibility of transgender in any of its
meanings, this type of feminism misses the opportunity to undermine a gender
system \.vhose constitution both creates and sustains the oppression of women.
In the last few decades many postmodern-influenced feminist and queer
theorists have embraced transgender as a way of revealing gender as an activity.
Gender transgression is characterized as liberating. Many of these theorists are
themselves transgendered and have been, with few exceptions, "born women. ,,9
Even those theorists who are not transgendered tend to be "born women."
Although a detailed analysis of why awaits future work, we suggest that those
who de\7eloped their consciousness on the margins are much better positioned
to uncover and analyze what is taken for granted in defining the borders of a
social reality. "If we really want to be free, women must realize that at the end of
the struggle, we will not be women anymore. Or at least we will not be women in
the \·vay that we understand the term today" (Califia-Rice, 1997: 90; see also
Wittig, 1980).
A common misunderstanding of those who reject transgender's relevance to
feminism is that eradicating gender as a meaningful social category is not the
same as asserting that physical bodies do not exist or that bodies do not affect
experience and identity. It is the intractable status hierarchy given to gender
categories by tying them to dichotomous physical attributes like genitals that is
being questioned by feminists like ourselves.
For many years, and in different ways, a case has been made that it is impor­
tant for feminist activism that gender be destabilized. lO One might argue that the
discipline of women's studies is predicated on there being women, but surely
feminist studies is not. What, then, could those involved in feminist studies do to
encourage gender destabilization? We suggest analyzing when and where gen­
der is invoked and then challenging the criteria for determining what "female"
and "male" mean in each particular case. In other words, feminists should be
w1Covering what is revealed by refusing to gloss gender. The following are two
examples.
then, that one member of the pair must produce viable sperm and the other must
have viable eggs. The absurdity of this requirement is highlighted by the fact that
no one has to pass such a test in order to get married, and no one's marriage
license is revoked when they faiJ to reproduce. In this case (as in all cases where
gender is examined rather than glossed), the putative theoretical criteria fail
when confronted with gender-as-lived.
Another example comes from the practical management of transgender in
society. Colleges are grappling ",.lith providing housing for transgender students
(Klein, n.d.). The existence of transgender students creates a problem for room
assignments and forces an examination of assignment rules. Typically, college
students are assigned a "same-sex" roommate. For as long as students have been
assigned roommates, this criterion has gone unexamined. Rarely is it asked,
"What do we mean by 'same-sex' and why do we think roommates should be the
'same-sex'?" If the underlying purpose of assigning same-sex roommates is to
 - --"~~'~-' ~~"J
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avoid sexual tension in close quaTters, clearly this is based on the false assump_
tion that all college students are heterosexual. If L1le assumption is that people
with more similar bodies are more likely to get along well together, then why not
also use criteria of height, weight, and skin, eye, and hair color?
TRANSGENDERJNG: THEORY AND PRACTIC
The insistence that gender is a natural dichotomy is historically grounded in reli­
gion and now also in science; tJ1US, it has been at the core of Western European
intel1ectual inquiry. As gender theorists confront more fluid constructs of gender
within our contemporary cultllJ'e, we should remember and acknowledge that
we are not t.he inventors of gender fluidity. "Transgender" is a complic2\ted and
ontested term whose meaning has considerable cultural, historical, and situa­
tional specificity, not just over many years and lives but also within a single day
and hfe. In fact, when people use the label transgender to refer to themselves
there is no way of knOWing which meaning is being referenced. There is no
assumption that the user even intends a particular (limited) meaning. On the one
hand, this presents a practical problem. Is this a person who intends to become
the other gender-surgically and/or legally-or is this someone who is refusing
to be a particular gender and is challenging the gender system? On the other
hand, the looseness of the meaning forces us to conceptualize transgender (and
by extension, gender) as a fundamentally fluctuating phenomenon.
What does transgendering mean for feminist theorists, researchers, and
clinicians, many of whom are not transgendered? First of all, it provides further
warrant for guestioning an essentialist view of gender. There is a body of
provocative writi.ng by transgendering people for non-transgendering people to
learn fromY Treating this work seriously will help advance gender theory,
improve clinical practice, and suggest social action. The last should not be over­
looked, since our theoretical discussion is taking place at a time when hate crimes
against transgendering pe()ple are at an all-time high (Moser, 2003). Peopl
whose gender is lInconven.tional have real-life concerns, including better trans
"t" is a permanent part of the identity, not a transition.
medicine, clearer legal strategies, and more supportive psychological interven­
7. Richard Ekins' (1997) coinage of the term "male fenlaling" might seem to foreshadow
tions. They need help in order to negotia te meaningful and safe lives in a society
transgendering, but his discussion of the various ways that "genetic mal.es" (his usage)
that is not ready for them. Whether they are changing, crossing, or moving beyond
appropriate female/ feminine properties maintains the sex/ gender distinction.
gender categories, they are objects of "transoppression" (Feinberg, 1998).
8. Richard Ekins and Dave King, writing in the first issue of the International Journal of
'he issues raised by transgendering are not limited to gender alone. Eleanor
MacDonald argues that transgendering raises questions about the issue of iden­
tity itself: "[T)he experience of being transgender problematizes the relationship
of the self to the body, and the self to others ... [TJt problematizes issues of iden­
tity boundaries, stability and coherence" (1998: 5). Additional questions about
physical bodies, social meanings, and individual experience of self are raised in
Bernice Hausman's (2001) analysis of various aspects of transgender in her
review of books on that topic. 12
The social reality of transgendering and the refusal to gloss gender prOVide
many subversive possibilities for those of us engaged in feminist scholarship.
The fact that transgendering threatens something basic is a good indication that
radical social chclnge can result from it. The "warning" in our closing quote, a
quote endorsed by the Traditional Values Coatition, is, from our perspective, a
statement of promising possibility.
The promotion of "sex changes" and the normalization of severe gender iden­
tity disorders by radical fE'minists, pro-same-sex-attraction disorder activists,
and sexual revolutionaries is part of their larger ilgenda-namely, the destabi­
lization of the categories of sex and gender. (O'leary, 2002)
Notes
1. Jacob Hale (n.d.) has written important guidelines for non-transgender people who
write about trans issues, including such directives as not treating transgender as exotic,
giving credence to non-ilcademic voices, and asking what transgender can teach about
everyone's gender. We have tried to hold to these standards and hope we have succeeded.
2. See Judith Gerson (2005) for a review essay bringing this work to contemporary attention.
3. On May 28, 2005, there were 2,710,000 hits on Google for transgender, with a link to a
definition page http://www.answers.com/transgender&r=67 (JL).
4. In this cultural climate, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990) was the right book at the
right time, providing a theoretical framework for a poHticized transgender movement as
well as stimulating the development of gender studies.
5. Bolin (1994) argued that one important factor in this development was the dosing of
university-affiliated gender clinics in the 1980s. The fact that transsexuals were finding it
more difficult to obtain surgery pushed many of them to consider the possibility/ advantage
of crossing genders without genital change. Another related factor was the general politi­
cization of the transgender movement. Grassroots organizations adopted a political
agenda, wanting a voice in their treatment and a desire to define their "condition" for
themselves. They, like gay people before them, wanted to take their name and their
conceptual.ization out of the hands of the medical professionals.
6. The usage of "FtM" is not merely shorthand for "female-to-male." It is, we beheve, an
explicit way of signaling that neither male nor female is "there" any more and that the
Tmnsgenderism, claimed that "the influence of writers such as Janice Raymond effectively
silenced transgenderists for many years" (1997: 9).
9. These few exceptions e.g., Kate Bornstein (1995), Dallas Denny (1992), and Riki Wtlchins
(1997)-have, of course, contributed a great deal to gender theory.
10. See Kessler and McKenna (1978), Judith Shapiro (1982), and Lorbe.r Judith (2000; 2005).
11. Much of this writing is not conventionally published but only available on the Internet,
and feminlst scholars/practitioners must access information from this source in order to
stay knowledgeable.
12. Most of these books have already been referenced 1n this chapter. ll1IeE' important works
that have not are FTM: Female to male transsexuals in society (Devor, 1997); Second Skill: The body
1111rmtives of trallsse.r:lIaiity (Prosser, 1998); and Female Masclilillity (Halberstam, 1998).
 ------ --- -u~. '~b-' ------..0
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