Gender Politics

“A highly acclaimed work, and rightly so: countless trans people and others have told me of how Bornstein has changed their perception of gender.  Bornstein’s radical alternative view of gender rigidities really does raise important questions for all of us.” — CMcN

See also a review on this website

Focusing on intersexuality — having physical gender markers that are neither female or male - the author examines the social institutions that are mobilized to maintain the two seemingly objective sexual categories.  She argues that we need to re-think the meaning of gender, genitals and sexuality.

This short book is intended to be a resource primarily for non-trans people who wish to get a simple grasp on current transgender issues.  Perfect for older high school students, university undergraduates from many fields who need a simple explanation to the back ground of their project work, and for family and friends of trans people who simply want to understand.
    It addresses the historical, social, legal and medical issues surrounding the new community.  The book throws light onto what are complex issues, clarifying them in a way that all those who think they know what gender roles mean, will be called to question the certainties they are no longer about.
    Transgender has become a cultural obsession.  From the high camp of Ru Paul to the working class transsexual icon, Hayley of the UK’s longest running soap “Coronation Street”, it pervades our lives.  Yet for many it remaines a freakish interest on the sidelines.  For transsexual and transgender people, though, it is a reality bound up in complexities, legal contradictions, family discord, and a desperate need to explain what it means to be a man or a woman, or neither, or both.
    — Stephen Whittle

“Where were you twenty-five years ago Millie? How many lives could your book have saved? How many families? How much anguish?
    The transgendered world has been crying out for a book like this for more than a quarter of a century. A book which explains what ordinary people need to know about Gender Dysphoria … and how to HELP.” — from a review by Christine Burns