Book Review - Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits

The idea of gender is no long as fixed as it once was: Tootsie, La Cage aux Folles, and Milton Berle saw to that. But none of this has prepared us for Loren Cameron's amazing portraits of transsexuals. Beautifully reproduced and complemented with notes and short essays, these portraits of women who are now men may startle, but they will also make you marvel at the genuine complexities of life, sex, and desire. Body Alchemy might have been a curiosity, like Diane Arbus's photographs of those outside the physical and cultural mainstream, but Cameron's art is so empathetic, so precise, that we are left in awe and with a new understanding of the realities of being human.

Book Review - As Nature Made Him : The Boy Who Was Raised as A Girl

Once you begin reading As Nature Made Him, a mesmerizing story of a medical tragedy and its traumatic results, you absolutely won't want to put it down. Following a botched circumcision, a family is convinced to raise their infant son, Bruce, as a girl. They rename the child Brenda and spend the next 14 years trying to transform him into a her. Brenda's childhood reads as one filled with anxiety and loneliness, and her fear and confusion are present on nearly every page concerning her early childhood. Much of her pain is caused by Dr. Money, who is presented as a villainous medical man attempting to coerce an unwilling child to submit to numerous unpleasant treatments.

Reading over interviews and reports of decisions made by this doctor, it's difficult to contain anger at the widespread results of his insistence that natural-born gender can be altered with little more than will power and hormone treatments. The attempts of his parents, twin brother, and extended family to assist Brenda to be happily female are touching--the sense is overwhelmingly of a family wanting to do "right" while being terribly mislead as to what "right" is for her. As Brenda makes the decision to live life as a male (at age 14), she takes the name David and begins the process of reversing the effects of estrogen treatments. David's ultimately successful life--a solid marriage, honest and close family relationships, and his bravery in making his childhood public--bring an uplifting end to his story. Equally fascinating is the latest segment of the longtime nature/nurture controversy, and the interviews of various psychological researchers and practitioners form a larger framework around David's struggle to live as the gender he was meant to be. --Jill Lightner

Book Review - And Then I Became Gay: Young Men's Stories

"...And Then I Became Gay is about the lives of young men who express the complications, adversities, and satisfactions of being a sexual outsider in North America during the 1980s and 1990s. Consisting of narratives which chronicle developmental progression from first memories of being attracted to other males to a subsequent integration of their sexual identity with a personal identity, this book is also unique in its cross-section of men from different ethnic backgrounds. Although each story in this volume has a personal meaning to the individual youth disclosing it, aspects of these narratives can express a normative experience growing up gay or bisexual during the past two decades. For many of the contributors and readers, these stories may prove to be not only ones of coming out, but coming of age.

Book Review - Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender College Students : A Handbook for Faculty and Administrators

This handbook is intended for faculty and administrators who wish to create a welcoming and safe environment for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students on our campuses. It will help readers, even those who may struggle personally with understanding non-heterosexual identities, gain a clearer understanding of the important issues facing these students. While some students arrive on campus with full clarity about their sexual identities, others may just be discovering their orientations while in our institutions. It is difficult to provide the attention LGBT students need if we do not understand the crises affecting them or how to address them. Each chapter analyzes specific issues affecting these students and offers recommendations or suggestions for change. Some of the areas discussed include: identity development theories, residence halls, career planning, health and counseling centers, HIV/AIDS, and student leadership and organizational development. Non-heterosexual faculty and staff may also find this work useful as they attempt to discover themselves in academic and educational literature.