The Transgender Debate:

the crisis surrounding gender identity

Stephen Whittle 1999

This work addresses the historical, social, legal and medical issues surrounding the transgender community and throws a light onto the complex issues. This short book is intended to be a resource primarily for non-trans people who wish to get a simple grasp on current transgender issues. Perfect for older high school students, university undergraduates from many fields who need a simple explanation to the back ground of their project work, and for family and friends of trans people who simply want to understand. It addresses the historical, social, legal and medical issues surrounding the new community. The book throws light onto what are complex issues, clarifying them in a way that all those who think they know what gender roles mean, will be called to question the certainties they are no longer about. Transgender has become a cultural obsession. From the high camp of Ru Paul to the working class transsexual icon, Hayley of the UK's longest running soap "Coronation Street", it pervades our lives. Yet for many it remains a freakish interest on the sidelines. For transsexual and transgender people, though, it is a reality bound up in complexities, legal contradictions, family discord, and a desperate need to explain what it means to be a man or a woman, or neither, or both.