The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism and Transgender Rights

by Deborah Rudacille

 

The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism and Transgender Rights

Deborah Rudacille

Pantheon Books, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

 

 

Science writer Deborah Rudacille skillfully interweaves historical, sociological, psychological and medical contexts in The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism and Transgender Rights, taking a penetrating look at the growing community of people whose bodies and psyches fall between the boundaries of male and female.

Rudacille delves into the lives of, among others: Magnus Hirshfeld, a German physician who, in 1919, opened the world’s first institute for sexual sciences, located in Wiemar, Germany, which became a haven for outcasts; Christine Jorgensen, a national obsession in the 1950s, who was the first American to undergo a full sex-change, and Chevalier d’Eon, the 18th century French artistocrat who lived 49 years as a man and 34 as a woman.

In addition, Rudacille interviews Chelsea Goodwin, an activist and founding member of Queer Nation; Tom Kennard, a 51-year old transman who spent many years in the lesbian community prior to his transition; Dana Beyer, M.D., a pre-op transwoman who is an ophthalmologic surgeon; Joanna Clark, a transwoman who served in the United States Navy for 17 years before establishing the Transexual Rights Committee of the Southern California ACLU.

This hardback, 355-page book is a timely, insightful, sympathetic and accessible examination of a sexual revolution that calls into question many of our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a man, a woman, a human being.

(as published in Family & Friends Magazine, April 2005)