Review by Choice Review
The 19 contributors to this edited book are all transgender activists. After the introductory chapter, the essays are grouped in three sections: law, history, and politics. The appendix contains the full text of the International Bill of Gender Rights (as adopted in the 1996 meeting of the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy). The essays cover a wide range of transgender issues, including the biology of different types of intersex people and arguments pro and con about surgical and medical treatments to make a baby into a "boy" or "girl," when these treatments are possibly dangerous and have no health benefits other than getting the infant or child to conform to cultural binary sex categories. Other topics relate to employment discrimination, the relation between transgender people and gay people, laws about marriage and trans-people, custody rights to the children (and often lack thereof) of trans-parents, the Bogota, Colombia, Constitutional Court's antidiscrimination decision, medical issues in San Francisco, and problems of trans-people in Argentina. An excellent new book for sociology, law, and gender collections. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. R. W. Smith emeritus, California State University, Northridge
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
