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The Transsexual Phenomenon defines and describes transsexualism, distinguishing it clearly from transvestitism, which it also discusses with sensitivity and sympathy. The desire for sex change in males and females is viewed from a variety of angles in a series of chapters on human sexuality, conversion operations and the legal aspects of transsexualism and transvestitism, after which the author presents brief autobiographies of transsexuals, a few biographies by the ubiquitous R. E. L. Masters, an essay on the “Complementarity of Human Sexes” by Gobind B. Lal, an essay by Dr. Richard Green on the mythological, historical, and cross-cultural aspects of transsexualism, and a series of photos—some printed in a special, detached supplement “for doctors only” which clearly show the before-and-after genital change through surgery.
The book summarizes Dr. Benjamin's experience with transsexuals in his many years of clinical observation and work. But his purpose is more than just a scientific contribution, as soon becomes apparent, but rather a plea for saner laws and a more tolerant social climate for both transsexuals and transvestites: for example, in two or three places the author actually exhorts the reader, in small capitals centered on the page, “Please read this paragraph again.”
The book is worthy of respect as a thoughtful digest of much work and a compassionate view of a phenomenon peculiarly ignored by most medical and psychoanalytic workers. Regrettably, though, the book must disappoint the latter, although in this respect the author seems not to care. He sounds angry on the subject of analysts, saying that they “seem contemptuous of biological facts and persistently overstate psychological data” and then says “We all know men who lost their fathers at an early age, devoted their lives for years to their mothers, and by all psychoanalytic theories should have become homosexuals, transvestites or transsexuals. But they did not.” This is the oversimplification of t