Best of
Trans

2004

Becoming a Visible Man


Jamison Green - 2004
    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.

Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families


Arlene Istar Lev - 2004
    Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families views assessment and treatment through a nonpathologizing lens that honors human diversity and acknowledges the role of oppression in the developmental process of gender identity formation.Specific sections of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families address the needs of gender-variant people as well as transgender children and youth. The issues facing gender-variant populations who have not been the focus of clinical care, such as intersexed people, female-to-male transgendered people, and those who identify as bigendered, are also addressed.The book examines:the six stages of transgender emergencecoming out transgendered as a normative process of gender identity developmentthinking "outside the box" in the deconstruction of sex and genderthe difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the convergence, overlap, and integration of these parts of the selfthe power of personal narrative in gender identity developmentetiology and typographies of transgenderismtreatment models that emerge from various clinical perspectivesalternative treatment modalities based on gender variance as a normative lifecycle developmental processComplete with fascinating case studies, a critique of diagnostic processes, treatment recommendations, and a helpful glossary of relevant terms, this book is an essential reference for anyone who works with gender-variant people. Handy tables and figures make the information easier to access and understand.Visit the author's Web site at http: //www.choicesconsulting.com

Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is


Abigail Garner - 2004
    Like the millions of children growing up in these families today, she often found herself in the middle of the political and moral debates surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) parenting.Drawing on a decade of community organizing, and interviews with more than fifty grown sons and daughters of LGBT parents, Garner addresses such topics as coming out to children, facing homophobia at school, co-parenting with ex-partners, the impact of AIDS, and the children's own sexuality.Both practical and deeply personal, Families Like Mine provides an invaluable insider's perspective for LGBT parents, their families, and their allies.

Tarot Decoded: Understanding and Using Dignities and Correspondences


Elizabeth Hazel - 2004
    These tarot tools result in fairly standard, mundane readings. But there is another level to tarota level that can turn an ordinary tarot reader into a true adept.Tarot Decoded transforms ordinary tarot readings into readings that are profound and even surprising by explaining the use and significance of tarot dignitaries. Tarot dignitaries are the interaction of the cards with each other in a spread and within a range of correspondences. Tarot author Elizabeth Hazel presents a concise, useable system for working with tarot dignities to add incredible depth to readings. One card placed next to another might not have a readily apparent connectionbut interpreting tarot dignities could make it very clear that one card enhances, or hinders, the meaning of another. The same is true for tarot neighborhoods within a spread as well as the entire reading.Using the Tarot Decoded system for working with tarot dignities can take anyone to the next level of tarot reading. The book offers a progressive look at the cards, their dignities, and their correspondences.With Hazel's advice and clear examplesand a little practicereadings take on a new depth, integration, and power.