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Best Transgender Erotica
Best Transgender Erotica brings together twenty stories by writers of every gender. The first book to celebrate exclusively gender-bending, -crossing, and -breaking sexuality through erotic fiction, Best Transgender Erotica includes representations of many forms of 'trans' identity. Whether blurring the line between masculine and feminine, or making the transition from female to male, or vice versa, these characters (and authors) had to put on their sexiest, most alluring, heart-racing show in order to make the cut.Including selections from Thomas Roche, Saachi Green, Todd Belton, Simon Sheppard, M. Christian, and many more of today's best-known erotica writers, Best Transgender Erotica follows on the smashing success of Best Bisexual Erotica, which was released in 2000. Like 'Best Bi, ' 'Best Trans' drew its contributors from within the gender activist community, providing a unique and stimulating look at gender issues from an erotic perspective.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Hanne Blank
16 books124 followersHanne Blank is a writer and historian.
Periodicals which have featured her work include Penthouse, In These Times, Southwest Art, Lilith, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, the Baltimore CityPaper, the Boston Phoenix, Santa Fean Magazine, and others. Her short fiction and essays are frequently anthologized.
Ms. Blank's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, NYLON, Entertainment Weekly , and many other periodicals, and she has been widely interviewed on radio and television in Australia, the US, UK, and Canada, including being featured on National Public Radio, BBC 4, and on the acclaimed Canadian program SexTV. As a public speaker and educator, Ms. Blank has appeared on the campuses of many universities and colleges, as well as at national and regional conferences of various types and centers for adult learning. She has been the Scholar of the Institute at the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, Towson University, Maryland, and has taught at the university level at institutions including Brandeis University, Tufts University, and Whitworth College. Formally trained as a classical musician,as well as an historian, she has been a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, and was the 1991 recipient of the George Whitfield Chadwick medal.
Although Ms. Blank is a dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner, she currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, where she shares a 170-year-old stone house on a dirt road in the middle of the city with her spouse, two cats, and the world’s cutest Japanese Akita.
Periodicals which have featured her work include Penthouse, In These Times, Southwest Art, Lilith, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, the Baltimore CityPaper, the Boston Phoenix, Santa Fean Magazine, and others. Her short fiction and essays are frequently anthologized.
Ms. Blank's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, NYLON, Entertainment Weekly , and many other periodicals, and she has been widely interviewed on radio and television in Australia, the US, UK, and Canada, including being featured on National Public Radio, BBC 4, and on the acclaimed Canadian program SexTV. As a public speaker and educator, Ms. Blank has appeared on the campuses of many universities and colleges, as well as at national and regional conferences of various types and centers for adult learning. She has been the Scholar of the Institute at the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, Towson University, Maryland, and has taught at the university level at institutions including Brandeis University, Tufts University, and Whitworth College. Formally trained as a classical musician,as well as an historian, she has been a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, and was the 1991 recipient of the George Whitfield Chadwick medal.
Although Ms. Blank is a dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner, she currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, where she shares a 170-year-old stone house on a dirt road in the middle of the city with her spouse, two cats, and the world’s cutest Japanese Akita.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 12, 2008
One of the best erotica collections I've ever encountered. I found a good diversity of stories that include queer, genderqueer, kink, non-kink, reality-based, sci-fi... identities and encounters that totally turned me on. This is good erotica.
August 9, 2015
Review Originally published online for my college's erotica magazine.
“If you’re carrying any assumptions about who and what you think is in this book, this is the place to drop them.” This deceptively simple bit of advice can be found in the introduction of this compilation. I believe is serves more as a warning than anything else, because further on, gender and sexuality are spun around in a mad whirlwind in such a way that there’s no way to keep track. Trying to guess which character in a story is the transgender one would be a vain effort, as there is no pattern to it, no “tell-tale sign.” Transgender is in itself a fluid term. It can be used to refer to a person that identifies as the opposite sex to which they were born, as neither of them, or somewhere in between. It means different things for different people, and there are so many definitions that it’s very hard to pin down. That’s what makes this book so wonderful. It doesn’t attempt to. Instead, it accepts them all, and does it with class.
I had only one problem with this book, and it wasn’t the writing. There were actually a number of grammatical errors. I’m not talking about things that could be easily overlooked, either. I mean things like using the word “as” when they meant “and.” It didn’t happen in every story, and it didn’t happen more than a couple of times per story, but it was often enough to throw me off track. These were things that a quick reading should have picked up. Due to the widespread nature of the problem, I would assume this was an issue with the editing rather than errors in the original works. It is, however, a slight problem within an otherwise greatly entertaining book.
My favorite stories were the ones with the most story development. Check out Small Considerations by R. Gay. It’s a touching story, the only one in the whole book that actually brought tears to my eyes. Wild Ride by Raven Gildea isn’t my cup of tea due to the use of “Daddy” in a sexual context (what can I say, it just doesn’t do it for me), but it’s memorable enough and lives up to its name. Teenie Weenies, Inc. by Matthew Kailey brings enough humor to the festivities that I read it more than once. Another one that I read multiple times is Tangaroa by Allison Lonsdale. That story shifts everything around and puts it into a dream-like, futuristic sci-fi world. It’s a real trip for the mind. For a very sweet, loving tale read M. Christian’s Evolution about a couple going through various stages of their lives and genders together. And finally, for a funny, S&M style look into the IRS, read The Audit by Dominic Santi.
I had originally found myself volunteering for the task of reviewing this collection of stories with some trepidation. Being neither a member of the transgender community, nor an avid erotica reader, I wasn’t sure whether it would ultimately appeal to me. I soon found myself reading it whenever I had a spare moment. I carried it with me everywhere and soon I was fully engaged in the lives of characters that blurred and sometimes outright destroyed gender boundaries. I was amazed and aroused by the well-crafted stories of many of the authors, and by the time I closed the book on the twenty-third and final one; I realized that any preconceptions that I went in with were nowhere to be found. I couldn’t always identify the gender of the character I was reading about, but by that point, I didn’t want to.
“If you’re carrying any assumptions about who and what you think is in this book, this is the place to drop them.” This deceptively simple bit of advice can be found in the introduction of this compilation. I believe is serves more as a warning than anything else, because further on, gender and sexuality are spun around in a mad whirlwind in such a way that there’s no way to keep track. Trying to guess which character in a story is the transgender one would be a vain effort, as there is no pattern to it, no “tell-tale sign.” Transgender is in itself a fluid term. It can be used to refer to a person that identifies as the opposite sex to which they were born, as neither of them, or somewhere in between. It means different things for different people, and there are so many definitions that it’s very hard to pin down. That’s what makes this book so wonderful. It doesn’t attempt to. Instead, it accepts them all, and does it with class.
I had only one problem with this book, and it wasn’t the writing. There were actually a number of grammatical errors. I’m not talking about things that could be easily overlooked, either. I mean things like using the word “as” when they meant “and.” It didn’t happen in every story, and it didn’t happen more than a couple of times per story, but it was often enough to throw me off track. These were things that a quick reading should have picked up. Due to the widespread nature of the problem, I would assume this was an issue with the editing rather than errors in the original works. It is, however, a slight problem within an otherwise greatly entertaining book.
My favorite stories were the ones with the most story development. Check out Small Considerations by R. Gay. It’s a touching story, the only one in the whole book that actually brought tears to my eyes. Wild Ride by Raven Gildea isn’t my cup of tea due to the use of “Daddy” in a sexual context (what can I say, it just doesn’t do it for me), but it’s memorable enough and lives up to its name. Teenie Weenies, Inc. by Matthew Kailey brings enough humor to the festivities that I read it more than once. Another one that I read multiple times is Tangaroa by Allison Lonsdale. That story shifts everything around and puts it into a dream-like, futuristic sci-fi world. It’s a real trip for the mind. For a very sweet, loving tale read M. Christian’s Evolution about a couple going through various stages of their lives and genders together. And finally, for a funny, S&M style look into the IRS, read The Audit by Dominic Santi.
I had originally found myself volunteering for the task of reviewing this collection of stories with some trepidation. Being neither a member of the transgender community, nor an avid erotica reader, I wasn’t sure whether it would ultimately appeal to me. I soon found myself reading it whenever I had a spare moment. I carried it with me everywhere and soon I was fully engaged in the lives of characters that blurred and sometimes outright destroyed gender boundaries. I was amazed and aroused by the well-crafted stories of many of the authors, and by the time I closed the book on the twenty-third and final one; I realized that any preconceptions that I went in with were nowhere to be found. I couldn’t always identify the gender of the character I was reading about, but by that point, I didn’t want to.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 9, 2017
Amazing and groundbreaking. Upon re-reading it, some of the stories aren't as good as I had thought. But the good ones really stuck in my mind for years.
May 21, 2019
Great book with a variety of stories. I can't help but mention that this is what largely influenced me to move forward with my transition, and become a successful writer.
September 22, 2008
To start off with, I dislike erotica. It's all so poorly written and cheesy. This book, surprisingly, changed my opinion of the genre. There were many poorly done stories here, but the first and the last stories were amazing. A couple in the middle were pretty good too. The other's were all very similar and very cheesy. There were a lot of the pieces that focus on parental (daddy/son) roles. I disliked the treatment of role playing in this book as a result. The last story is the absolute best though. The writing is beautiful and the emotions that the main character is going through is very accessible/understandable, at least to me.
September 4, 2007
insightful, well-written, creative, informative AND steamy
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews