The New Goddess: Transgender Women in the Twenty-first Century

by Gypsey Teague (Editor)

The New Goddess: Transgender Women in the Twenty-First Century is a special and valuable book because it will be viewed differently in different circles. This quality is its strength. To be clear, it will not necessarily be "all things to all people'" but, rather, will speak to those different audiences associated with transgendered women. The academic, for instance, will have much primary source material in the contributions from transgendered women, whose personal histories are, at once, emotionally honest, at times frightening, and always compelling reading. These personal accounts help throw light on a number of intellectual questions, such as the role of nature and nurture among those interested in explaining transgender, and whether gender is more a process than a property. By contrast, for transgenders, especially those genies who have not escaped from the bottle, and for those professionals who work with them, this book will provide a number of fine-grained, realistic and honest snap shots of the social world. In approaching transition to living as a woman, for example, transgenders will have a clear picture of the difficulties to be faced and their diversity.

Genres: Transgender

172 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2006

Reviews

[Emily Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a solid book for looking at the lives of Transgender women from the late twentieth to the early twenty-first century. At the beginning of the book, you'll read about the history of trans women in the late 1800s and early 1900s. How laws and public opinion were not favorable toward cis-women and trans women, and that there was a lack of equality between the sexes of women and men.

The author talks about Christine Jorgensen and how she was the first trans woman who passed in a society that had negative views on trans women, but they made an exception for Christine because she was a beautiful and famous actress. I knew very little of Christine Jorgensen beforehand, but while reading the book, I was surprised to find out that she's trans. I've watched B&W films in the past, and I've partaken in film discussions, but I didn't know Christine is trans. This brought me lots of joy to find out about that part of her.

The book discusses the politics, public opinion, how trans women survived, trans women in sex work and in the workforce, how they were received in film, and some personal stories of trans women during the late 1900s to early 2000s. The book discusses in detail trans women, drag performers, crossdressers, transsexuals, transgenders, and all the other gender deviants, including the differences between the nouns and identifying descriptions. Personal stories of how passable trans women viewed non-passable trans women and how hard it was to build connections within the community.

My two favorite chapters are "The Gender Difference of Creating Knowledge from Data: An Evolutionary Explanation of the Creation of Knowledge and how Gender Interprets that Explanation", where it discusses how we transition our personal thinking and communications from a gendered male perspective into the perspective of a gendered woman, and "Sarah's Story", where we get a real-life story of a trans woman who lived during the time that the book takes place in.

This book was very informative and contemplative on the topics discussed. The reason why I haven't rated this book 5 stars is that the information is plainly outdated. The book finishes in 2006 and approaches the future and lists some predictions toward a positive note because of a select few policy changes that have happened during this time.

Reading this book 20 years later, we are still fighting for the same human rights, public opinion, respect, and recognition of our livelihoods that we were advocating for during the 1960s social movements. Unfortunately, we've headed backwards in some sectors of our lives.

I still enjoyed this book and recommend others to read it.