Status
Call number
Collection
Publication
Description
Sociologist Arlene Stein takes us into the lives of four strangers who find themselves together in a sun-drenched surgeon's office, having traveled to Florida from across the United States in order to masculinize their chests. Ben, Lucas, Parker, and Nadia wish to feel more comfortable in their bodies; three of them are also taking testosterone so that others recognize them as male. Following them over the course of a year, Stein shows how members of this young transgender generation, along with other gender dissidents, are refashioning their identities and challenging others' conceptions of who they are, despite great personal costs. Stein draws from dozens of interviews with transgender people and their friends and families, as well as with activists and medical and psychological experts. Unbound documents the varied ways younger trans men see themselves, and how they are changing our understanding of what it means to be male and female in America.… (more)
User reviews
The narrative is at its best when Stein lets the individuals involved speak for themselves about what it is like to be a transman today. I wish Stein had found a larger sample size with more variety (her subjects are all twenty-somethings and raised Catholic). The book also includes an interesting final chapter on current trends in gender identity.
It can be hard for those who have never experienced gender dysphoria to understand why one would want to undergo painful and expensive surgery to remove a non-diseased body part. This text goes a long way toward explaining this often misunderstood phenomenon, and more.
Stein's answer: it's different now. We grew up in a context of binary rigid roles, and threw them off. These folks grew up in