Trans America

Description

Trans seems to be everywhere in American culture. Yet there is little

understanding of how this came about. Are people aware that there were

earlier periods of gender flexibility and contestability in American

history? How well known is it that a previous period of trans visibility in

the 1960s and early 1970s faced a vehement backlash right at the time that

trans, in the form of what was then termed transvestism and transsexuality,

seemed to be so ascendant? Was there transness before transsexuality was

named in the 1950s and transgender emerged in the 1990s? Barry Reay

explores this history: from a time before trans in the nineteenth century

to the transsexual moment of the 1960s and 1970s, the transgender turn of

the 1990s, and the so-called tipping point of current culture. It is a rich

and varied history, where same-sex desires and identities, cross-dressing,

and transsexual and transgender identities jostled for recognition. It is a

history that is not at all flattering to US psychiatric and surgical

practices. Arguing for the complexity of a trans past and present, Trans

America will be a groundbreaking work for the trans community, as well as

anyone interested in the history of medicine, sexuality, psychology and

psychiatry.