Aaron Devor

Epic study of the lives of trans men. Devor interviewed 45 FTM people about their lives, and divides her findings into chapters such as “school”, “family”, “sex” etc. Devor quotes a lot of the men in their own words, allowing you to read a lot of other experiences.

(New editions of this book give the author's name as Aaron Devor)

Librarian's Review:

This book is very big and has some theoretical sections, which are harder to read. However, if you skip to the interviews, most of the quotes are easy to read. This book is pretty amazing, especially for people who want to “compare” their experiences with others, or learn more about the diversity of our community. Page 600 is particularly fun: she has made a table showing the steps trans men go through to arrive at their identity; working out what stage on the chart you are is irresistable.… (más)

This is an odd book. Written after Sandra Bem's gender schemas but before Judith Butler's discussions of gender performativity, this book surveys 18 women who were consistently mistaken for men but said they identified as women and were not purposely trying to pass as men. The bulk of the book is the data Devor collected from these women about their feeling about gender. The end is theoretical work where she examines many aspects of gender, sex role, gender assignment and other factors that she thinks defines these women's experiences. She does not discuss sexual orientation, which I think is a big gap in the conclusions and made the book not very useful for my purposes.

I also suspect that her methodology is made up and that she had already identified the subjects of the study before the study began.

An interesting side study on gender, but I'm not sure one that adds much to current thinking, especially since I'm sure a large number of her study group would currently identify themselves as genderqueer or trans.… (más)