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Title: Male Femaling: A Grounded Theory Approach to Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing by Richard Ekins, Anselm Strauss ISBN: 0-415-10624-9 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: March, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $95.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Gendering as a Social Process
Comment: The term "male femaling" refers to one variant of "transgendering," wherein people adopt aspects of roles (as in appearances, interests, dispositions, and life-styles) associated with people of another gender. Although the topic of males endeavoring to "be female" in one or other respects is one that some people are apt to find disconcerting, this is a unique and valuable study of people's experiences in "gendering" or assuming roles as males and females.
Building on a set of contacts that extend over seventeen years, Richard Ekins has provided a very careful, thoughtful, and insightful account of people's involvements in cross-dressing and sex-changing activities. For people interested in the processes of socialization, identity, relationships, solitary and subcultural involvements, and the like, this is a very worthwhile study. Likewise, those interested in "gender theory" and "the body" as realms of sociological investigation could learn much from this inquiry.
In contrast, too, to those who might approach this subject matter in more prurient manners or with the objective of entertaining others, Ekins approaches this subject matter in academic terms. Thus, he neither promotes nor condemns people's gendering practices, but rather attempts to indicate in direct and open terms just how people actually experience and manage their identities and activities in the process of transgendering. Likewise, while sorting through a variety of medical and psychiatric definitions of transgendering activities, Ekins explicitly adopts a symbolic interactionist (Mead, Blumer) viewpoint. Thus, the emphasis is directly on examining the ways in which people engage particular situations, from their viewpoints. While focusing on those involved in an assortment of transgendering (male femaling) practices, the objective is to learn more about the ways in which human group life is accomplished more generally.
In addition to a careful accounting of people's careers of participation in male femaling activities more specifically, Ekins uses "grounded theory" wherein the emphasis is on comparative analysis (using a method of similarities and differences) to see to what extent and in what ways people's experiences in one setting compares with studies of similar processes (such as developing relationships, acquiring identity, and so forth) in other social arenas. The result is some very astute sociological analysis that addresses matters pertinent to the works of Mead, Blumer, Strauss, Goffman, Lemert, and others in the interactionist community.
This is a clear, very well written book, and an important contribution to the literature. It merits considerable attention on the part of social scientists and others interested in the human condition in all of its manifestations.
Rating: 3
Summary: A long and difficult journey to finish...
Comment: This book is hard-core psychoanalysis stuff. If you are not a therapist, or buying this book for one, you may want to steer clear! I read, identified with, and enjoyed 'True Selves', but I found very little in this book to be considered new information. Other than a course lesson in "grounded theory", which I had no intention of recieving, this book was a snore-fest. I give it a good rating for it's quality as a teaching text, but again, steer clear if you are not into psychoanalytic thoeries.
Kate
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Title: Second Skins by Jay Prosser ISBN: 0231109350 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser by Helen Boyd ISBN: 1560255153 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex and Gender Diversity by Tracie O'Keefe, Katrina Fox ISBN: 0787965472 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender by Riki Wilchins ISBN: 1563410907 Publisher: Firebrand Books Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary by Joan Nestle, Riki Wilchins, Clare Howell ISBN: 1555837301 Publisher: Alyson Pubns Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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