Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs

Edited by Jonathan Ames

 

Sexual Metamorphosis:

An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs

Edited by Jonathan Ames

A Vintage Books Original

 

This 319-page paperback is not only fascinating but quite a page-

turner. Editor Jonathan Ames presents high-profile examples of

male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals

beginning with a MTF’s story dating back to 1886. Sexual

Metamorphosis puts both a face and a voice to these individuals

living in their wrong gendered body and making a choice to correct

it.

Presented in chronological order, Ames first presents a reprint of a

chapter from Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing

(1886), the German physician and neurologist who pioneered work

in “sexual pathology” and coined the terms “sadism, masochism and

fetishism.” (By the way, one of his more notable students was

Sigmund Freud.) Ames reprints Case 129, the autobiography of a

patient who “feels like a woman in a man’s form.”

The next installment is a chapter from Man Into Woman, written by

Grete Wegener, a woman whose marriage was dissolved by the King

of Denmark after her husband, Einar Wegener, first underwent what

we would consider today the first attempt at sexual reassignment

surgery, back in 1930.

”Some time afterward he (Professor Wener Kreutz) will operate on

me himself. He wants to remove the dead (and formerly imperfect)

male organs, and to restore the female organs with new and fresh

material. Then it will be Lili (Elbe) who will survive!” - From a letter

written by Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe, Jan. 29, 1930.

Ame’s next chapter is about “Joe” a female-to-male transsexual,

presented in a reprint of a chapter from Herry Benjamin, M.D.’s The

Transsexual Phenomenon, first published in 1966. Benjamin coined

the term “transsexual.” Joe, although always attracted to women,

reveals his feelings of being male in a female body and how he fits

more into the straight world, as opposed to the gay world, especially

post-surgically.

The remaining chapters present reprints about other transsexual

individuals of note, including MTFs Christine Jorgensen (1967), Jan

Morris (1974), Renee Richards, M.D. (1983), Caroline Cossey, a.k.a.

Tula (1991), Diedre Mccloskey (1999), Aleshia Brevard (2001),

Calpernia Sarah Addams (2003), Donna Rose (2003) and Jennifer

Finney Boylan (2003), and FTMs Mario Martino (1978), Loren

Cameron (1996) and Mark Rees (1996).

(as published in Family & Friends Magazine, June 2005, by Anita Moyt, editor)