Gender goes beyond chromosomes, a point broadly knowledgeable transgender activist Green makes early in the compelling, immensely readable story of his FTM (female-to-male: Jamie to Jamison) transsexual experience, from which he emerged fortysomething chronologically yet younger than 20 psychosexually as a consequence of biochemical and surgical sex reassignment. In discussing adjustment to a man's body, Green remarks that those whose bodies originally "match their gender identity take their bodies for granted in the process of identity formation"--a luxury "transgendered and transsexual people don't have." Perhaps nontranssexuals may more easily grasp Green's journey from Jamie to Jamison via the concept of realizing personal integrity, and thereby gain immeasurably from his testimony. Meanwhile, they will be educated by Green's detailed descriptions of available transsexual surgeries--he underwent metoidioplasty, the transformation of female genitalia into a male-appearing organ that, sometimes called a micropenis, is significantly smaller than average for penises, though functionally normal--and by his summary of his expenses since 1989 and his comparison of them to the costs of similar procedures today.
Whitney ScottCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Synopsis
Written by a leading activist in the transgender movement, Becoming a Visible Man is an artful and compelling inquiry into the politics of gender. Jamison Green combines candid autobiography with informed analysis to offer unique insight into the multiple challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience, ranging from encounters with prejudice and strained relationships with family to the development of an FTM community and the realities of surgical sex reassignment. For more than a decade, Green has provided educational programs on gender-variance issues for corporations, law-enforcement agencies, social-science conferences and classes, continuing legal education, religious education, and medical venues. His comprehensive knowledge of the processes and problems encountered by transgendered and transsexual people - as well as his legal advocacy work to help ensure that gender-variant people have access to the same rights and opportunities as others - enable him to explain the issues as no transsexual author has previously done.
Brimming with frank and often poignant recollections of Green's own experiences - including his childhood struggles with identity and his years as a lesbian parent prior to his sex-reassignment surgery - the book examines transsexualism as a human condition, and sex reassignment as one of the choices that some people feel compelled to make in order to manage their gender variance. Relating the FTM psyche and experience to the social and political forces at work in American society, Becoming a Visible Man also speaks consciously of universal principles that concern us all, particularly the need to live one's life honestly, openly, and passionately.