Abstract

Recognizing Transsexuals draws on interviews with transsexuals at various stages of transition to offer
an original account of transsexual embodiment and bodily aesthetics. Exploring the reasons for which
transpeople desire to modify their bodies, it moves away from the focus on gender that characterizes
much work on transpeople’s embodiment, to investigate the concept of bodily aesthetics. Recent
legislation allowing transsexuals to apply for gender recognition provides the context in which transpeople challenge the conventional
understandings of what it means to be men and women.
The book examines key approaches to recognizing transsexualism from within a variety of fields
and considers transsexuals’ bodies, body projects and embodiment in relation to personal,
political and medico-legal fields. It explores the ways in which transpeople’s bodily aesthetics
affect social relations – such as sexual relations, acceptance by others and their families –
whilst also considering contemporary political trans community organizations and their public
representation of trans-bodies.
Recognizing Transsexuals is the first sociological examination of how the bodies of transpeople
are figured and reconfigured in socio, politico and medico-legal contexts and considers the
impact of these shifts, and will be of interest to those with interests in embodiment, the
sociology of law, sexology, medical sociology and gender theory.