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Fifteen years ago, when it was first published, The Transsexual Empire challenged the medical psychiatric definition of transsexualism as a disease and sex conversion hormones and surgery as the cure. It exposed the antifeminist stereotyping that requires candidates for transsexual surgery to prove themselves by conforming to subjective, outdated and questionable feminine roles and passing as women. Then as now, defining and treating transsexualism as a medical problem prevents the person show more experiencing so-called gender dissatisfaction from seeing it in a gender-challenging or feminist framework. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This book asks some interesting questions, but it's has a number of serious problems and should NOT be used as an introduction to this topic.
The first problem is that it is written within the theoretical framework of lesbian feminism, where anyone who wasn't a "woman identified woman" was a problem. There was a philosophical gulf in this theoretical stance between the desire to build a better world for everyone and the theoretical necessity of marginalizing men. The author is not only unable to bridge this gulf, but seems to be unaware of it, blithely switching between these two opposite poles as she starts new paragraphs.
Two, it's old and a lot of the data is out-dated or suspect. I wish I could say we had better data, but mostly in show more the last 30 years we've only acquired more reasons to suspect what data we have.
Three, although she interviewed a small sample of trans people, she keeps imposing her theory over their statements, rather than letting their statements inform her theory.
Still, her questions about the ethics of extreme medical intervention in what might be a socio-psychological problem are ones that I haven't seen adequately addressed. show less
The first problem is that it is written within the theoretical framework of lesbian feminism, where anyone who wasn't a "woman identified woman" was a problem. There was a philosophical gulf in this theoretical stance between the desire to build a better world for everyone and the theoretical necessity of marginalizing men. The author is not only unable to bridge this gulf, but seems to be unaware of it, blithely switching between these two opposite poles as she starts new paragraphs.
Two, it's old and a lot of the data is out-dated or suspect. I wish I could say we had better data, but mostly in show more the last 30 years we've only acquired more reasons to suspect what data we have.
Three, although she interviewed a small sample of trans people, she keeps imposing her theory over their statements, rather than letting their statements inform her theory.
Still, her questions about the ethics of extreme medical intervention in what might be a socio-psychological problem are ones that I haven't seen adequately addressed. show less
Un-put-down-able.
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Reading List Amy E. Sousa posted Mar 1, 2026
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Author Information
9 Works 452 Members
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male
- Original title
- The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male
- Original publication date
- 1979
Classifications
- Genres
- Sexuality and Gender Studies, Nonfiction, LGBTQ+, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.3 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity People by gender or sex
- LCC
- RC560 .C4 .R38 — Medicine Internal medicine Internal medicine Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry Psychiatry Psychopathology Personality disorders. Behavior problems
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 120
- Popularity
- 272,287
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (2.67)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
