Author Description

Pat Califia needs no introduction for lesbian and gay readers. His writings on sexuality, pornography, censorship, S/M and other controversial topics have earned him the reputation of a fearless defender of the rights of gays and lesbians — and a fearless intellectual adversary. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism is Califia’s meticulously researched analysis of the contemporary history of transsexuality. Based on in-depth interviews with gender transgressors who "opened their lives, minds, hearts, and bedrooms to the gaze of strangers," this book combines a well thought-out chronology with Pat Califia’s hallmark candor and insight. Writing about both male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals, Califia examines the lives of early transgender pioneers like Christine Jorgenson, Jan Morris, Renee Richards and Mark Rees, contemporary transgender activists like Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein, and partners of transgendered people like Minnie Bruce Pratt. Califia scrutinizes feminist resistance to transsexuals, the Christian Right’s backlash, and the appropriation of the berdache and other differently-gendered people by gay historians. Finally, Sex Changes explores the future of gender.