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	FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society Holly Devor 1997, Indiana University Press 609 Pages

From the Cover FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society provides a compassionate, intimate, and incisive look at the life experiences of forty-five female-to-male transsexuals. Until now, little has been known about these individuals, and questions persist about them.  Who are they?  How do they come to know themselves as transsexual?  What do they do about it?  How do their families cope?  Who loves them?  What does it mean for the rest of us? To answer these and other questions, Holly Devor spent many years compiling in-depth interviews and researching the lives of transsexual and transgendered people, many of whom became her friends.  She traces the everyday and significant events that coalesce in transsexual identity, culminating in gender and sex transformation.  After an introduction which grounds the discussion in historical and theoretical contexts, the author takes a life course approach to understanding female-to-male transsexualism.   Using her subjects' own words as illustrations, Devor looks at how childhood, adolescent, and adult experiences with family members, peers, and lovers work to shape and clarify female-to-male transsexuals' images of themselves as people w ho should be men. "My first acquaintance with any literature on female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals occurred in 1984 when I was trying to determine what options were available to me as a male-perceived, masculine-identified, female-bodied individual.  What I found then and for the most part since has consisted mainly of critiques of highly dysfunctional families; accounts of 'gender dysphoric' children presented to clinicians by their homophobic parents; dismissive, tut-tut attitudes toward girls who 'refused' to give up their 'tomboy' ways; a great deal of misogyny and sexism; studies that generalize about FTM experience based on one or two interviews; the assumption that the FTM process is the mirror image of the male-to-female (MTF) process; and the constant refrain that 'not enough study has been done.'  At last, here is a book that opens a window on FTM lives without con\descending, either to the reader or to the population it describes. . . . Holly Devor gives readers access to the experience of transsexual men as no clinical treatment-oriented survey could ever do.  She examines her subjects' social relationships, and instead of postulating curative ideologies she accepts the reality of their lives, reporting to you and me about the depth and breadth of their experience, allowing us to see how they have come to accept themselves, how they have worked to manage their transitions, how they perceive the world through transformed eyes."  -   Jamison "James" Green, from the Foreword.

Table of Contents Part I:  First Questions Have Female-to-Male Transsexuals Always Existed? Theories about Transsexualism Part II:  Childhood Years Finding Out about Gender:  Theories of Childhood Gender Acquisition Family Scenes Who Would Want to Be a Girl? Men Rule:  The Men (and Boys) in Participants' Families Lessons Learned at Home:  Summary of Family Relationships Childhood Friends and Foes:  Relationships with Non-Family Members Part III:  Adolescence Adolescence Is about Change Crises at Puberty Adolescent Friendships Women Are Different:  Relationships with Female Relatives Access Denied, Restrictions Apply:  Relationships with Male Relatives Looking for Love, Groping for Identity:  Adolescent Sexuality Concluding Adolescence Part IV:  Pre-Transition Years Finding Identities Part V:  Changing Over A Long Road Making the Decision Making the Changes Coming Out Stories Are We There Yet Part VI:  Life After Transition Nature's Calls:  Toilet Traumas and Medical Necessities The Naked Truth about Sexuality Visions of Genders Lessons from the Journey Part VII: Conclusions Conclusions and Questions

Readers' Comments

Michael Greenspan  M_Greenspan@usa.com

GREAT book! It helped me realize just how diverse and widespread we are. Very informative and helpful...an easy read, not boring at all.

Kevin Kline  godstudent@iwon.com

I found and devoured FTM several months into my own transition. I had been starving for confirmation of my own feelings, and I found it in these pages. FTM remains the leading book on subject. Thank you Holly Devor!