Body, technology, and gender in transsexual autobiographies

Transsexuals are a notoriously well-read patient population, primarily because their success in obtaining the medical treatments that they seek depends upon their ability to convince doctors that their personal history matches the o> cially sanctioned etiology.4 In a context where telling the right story may confer legitimacy upon one’s demand and the wrong story can foil one’s chances for sex change, the autobiographies of those transsexuals who have successfully maneuvered within the strict protocols of the gender clinics constitute guide-books of no mean proportion. They also serve to assure would-be transsexual readers that they are members of a group and not as isolated as they may feel. This latter function helps individuals who o+ en perceive themselves to be entirely alone and outside the cultural system to authorize themselves as deserving cultural subjects and is instrumental in their assumption of an identity as a transsexual.