The Gender Centre Library

To borrow from our library you will first need to become a member of the library. To join our library you will need to provide identification (perhaps your driver's license or pension card), and a telephone contact. This information will be reviewed every time you borrow a book.

You will be able to borrow one book at a time, for up to two weeks at a time. This is due to the limited number of books available and the high demand from the community. Please take good care of our books, many of our resources have been removed or taken from our service and not returned. This is very unfortunate as they are part of quite a unique resource in New South Wales

Our books are purchased in limited quantities and appear on our Book List when available. If there is a book you feel the Gender Centre should have in our Library, please let us know.

You may request to submit a Lend Request to Borrow a  Book from our Library from the Catalogue below.

We also have a link to buy the Books on Amazon if you would like to.

You may also consider donating a book to the Centre if you feel it may be a valuable resource to others in our community.

Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender

Title:      Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender
Categories:      Gender Diversity / Transgender
ResourceID:      0822316927
Authors:      Bernice L. Hausman
ISBN-10(13):      0822316927
Publisher:      Duke University Press Books
Publication date:      1995-11-06
Number of pages:      264
Language:      Not specified
Price:      USD 19.32
Rating:      0 
Picture:      cover
Description:      Product Description
Changing Sex takes a bold new approach to the study of transsexualism in the twentieth century. By addressing the significance of medical technology to the phenomenon of transsexualism, Bernice L. Hausman transforms current conceptions of transsexuality as a disorder of gender identity by showing how developments in medical knowledge and technology make possible the emergence of new subjectivities.
Hausman’s inquiry into the development of endocrinology and plastic surgery shows how advances in medical knowledge were central to the establishment of the material and discursive conditions necessary to produce the demand for sex change—that is, to both "make" and "think" the transsexual. She also retraces the hidden history of the concept of gender, demonstrating that the semantic distinction between "natural" sex and "social" gender has its roots in the development of medical treatment practices for intersexuality—the condition of having physical characteristics of both sexes— in the 1950s. Her research reveals the medical institution’s desire to make heterosexual subjects out of intersexuals and indicates how gender operates semiotically to maintain heterosexuality as the norm of the human body. In critically examining medical discourses, popularizations of medical theories, and transsexual autobiographies, Hausman details the elaboration of "gender narratives" that not only support the emergence of transsexualism, but also regulate the lives of all contemporary Western subjects. Changing Sex will change the ways we think about the relation between sex and gender, the body and sexual identity, and medical technology and the idea of the human.


Product Description
Changing Sex takes a bold new approach to the study of transsexualism in the twentieth century. By addressing the significance of medical technology to the phenomenon of transsexualism, Bernice L. Hausman transforms current conceptions of transsexuality as a disorder of gender identity by showing how developments in medical knowledge and technology make possible the emergence of new subjectivities.
Hausman’s inquiry into the development of endocrinology and plastic surgery shows how advances in medical knowledge were central to the establishment of the material and discursive conditions necessary to produce the demand for sex change—that is, to both "make" and "think" the transsexual. She also retraces the hidden history of the concept of gender, demonstrating that the semantic distinction between "natural" sex and "social" gender has its roots in the development of medical treatment practices for intersexuality—the condition of having physical characteristics of both sexes— in the 1950s. Her research reveals the medical institution’s desire to make heterosexual subjects out of intersexuals and indicates how gender operates semiotically to maintain heterosexuality as the norm of the human body. In critically examining medical discourses, popularizations of medical theories, and transsexual autobiographies, Hausman details the elaboration of "gender narratives" that not only support the emergence of transsexualism, but also regulate the lives of all contemporary Western subjects. Changing Sex will change the ways we think about the relation between sex and gender, the body and sexual identity, and medical technology and the idea of the human.


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