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Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction 1 -- Notes -- References -- Introduction 2 -- Becoming the transperson -- Activism and the transgender community: becoming (trans)active -- Post-postmodern trans-theory: into the new millennium -- Part One: Becoming Trans -- 1. The Becoming Man: The Law's Ass Brays -- The transsexual? Sex sights/sites -- A legal position(ing) -- Travelling -- Seeing through Justice's blindfold -- Tackling sex site/sight discrimination -- Living in outer space -- See the word for the trees

Disembodiment, community development, & spatial reorganization in cyberspace are discussed with a focus on activism in the particular minority group of transsexuals & cross-dressing people. Cyberspace is a familiar place for this group, long used to living out "virtual identities" & escaping from their bodies. The particular needs & issues confronting transgendered women & men that the Internet has been able to address, eg, "passing" for the other sex, & personal judgments & social hierarchies with the transgendered community. Through the facilities & attributes of cyberspace, this group has promoted the new self-classification "transgendered" that in turn has increased the base & activism of community members. As a result of the Internet, not only has the transgendered community expanded in the US, but internationally, to reshape its sphere of political & legal activism; examples of international activism are given. 19 References. M. Pflum

Certain features of cyberspace have allowed new forms of minority activism in many spheres of influence. This paper looks at how those features have been particularly appropriate to the life experiences of the transsexual and cross-dressing communities. They have enabled a new community identification category, transgender. This new category has enabled transgender people to acknowledge the transgender self as having an experience outside of the conventional binary dichotomies of sex and gender. Through the experience of the virtual self in cyberspace they have been able to acknowledge an experiential self - an actual self, and become aware of the inade quacies of the self they experience in the real world. This has changed the transgender community's understanding of the legal problems they face and their use of law to tackle those problems. This paper looks at two particular areas in which this new understanding has enabled new forms of activism, and considers how the under standing of the actual self has arisen.

Gender transformations are normatively understood as somatic, based on surgical reassignment, where the sexed body is aligned with the gender identity of the individual through genital surgery – hence the common lexicon 'sex change surgery'. We suggest that the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 challenges what constitutes a 'sex change' through the Act's definitions and also the conditions within which legal 'recognition' is permitted. The sex/gender distinction, (where sex normatively refers to the sexed body, and gender, to social identity) is demobilised both literally and legally. This paper discusses the history of medico-socio-legal definitions of sex have been developed through decision making processes when courts have been faced with people with gender variance and, in particular, the implications of the Gender Recognition Act for our contemporary legal understanding of sex. We ask, and attempt to answer, has 'sex' changed?

Intro -- Trans Voices: Becoming Who You Are, Declan Henry -- Interviewees -- Foreword by Professor Stephen Whittle, OBE -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Being Trans -- 2. Transitioning -- 3. Male to Female (MTF) -- 4. Female to Male (FTM) -- 5. Non-Binary -- 6. Cross-Dressers -- 7. Sex and Sexuality -- 8. Health -- 9. Transphobia, Discrimination and Hate Crime -- Afterword by Jane Fae -- Glossary -- References -- Further Reading -- Useful Contacts -- Index.