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By Root 2001 0

discrimination still exists … more and more companies, some that used to fire transitioning transgenders in upper management,… are now giving transgenders a try.” Still, challenges remain, legal and other, she said. One of the most important of these is a matter of language, which reflects outdated perceptions. “A very important change that has yet to be made is the time we transgenders are no longer called ‘sex changes.’ After all, consider this: we are NOT CHANGING anything! Indeed, we are merely CORRECTING pronouns, names, manner of dress, hormones and flesh to MATCH what has always been in our brains…. The law must learn to assimilate the advances of medical science in a quicker manner and not remain legally stuck in the medical thinking of thirty years ago.”

Frye is right about the tendency of the law to lag behind science, and yet science and medicine, too, are inherently conservative endeavors that tend to cleave to old paradigms until forced to do otherwise. Harry Benjamin acknowledged this fact in the introduction to The Transsexual Phenomenon. “Conservatism and caution are most commendable traits in governing the progress of science in general and of medicine in particular. Only when conservatism becomes unchanging and rigid and when caution deteriorates into mere self-interest do they become negative forces, retarding, blocking and preventing progress, neither to the benefit of science nor to that of the patient. More power, therefore, to those brave and true scientists, surgeons, and doctors who let the patient’s interest and their own conscience be their sole guides.”

In researching this book, I have been greatly impressed by the courage exhibited not only by the “true scientists, surgeons, and doctors” who sought to help their gender-variant patients find greater happiness and fulfillment, but also by the incredible bravery of gender-variant people themselves. Presented with a seeming dilemma, they have struggled to create a solution in the face of nearly universal incomprehension and condemnation. “I made a decision a long time ago that when I successfully pushed through a door, metaphorically speaking, that I would never let the door swing shut to block the way of other people, but that I would instead remove the door from its hinges,” Phyllis Frye said at the Georgetown Law School. The same might be said of Christine Jorgensen, Reed Erickson, Sylvia Rivera, and the many other activists, scholars, and citizens who have labored to find an answer to their own personal “riddle of gender,” and in doing so, have opened the door to greater freedom and authenticity for all. In an era in which scientists are being cautioned not to use hot-button words and phrases such as “gay,” “men who sleep with men,” or “transgender” in AIDS grant applications, that may seem a naive conclusion. However, as the history cataloged in this book illustrates, the pendulum of policy may swing from left to right, but it always swings back to the other side eventually, and each time it does, the arc of understanding widens. Will we ever find a definitive solution to the riddle of gender? Maybe not—but as this history indicates, the questions we ask about gender tend to be more liberating than the answers. I would prefer to live in a society that gave me the freedom to ask those questions, rather than one that enforced autocratic conclusions.

As I neared the end of the research for this book, the friend whose journey inspired it asked me if my own gender identity or sexual orientation had changed at all as a result of the things I had learned and the people I had met over the past few years. My answer was no. I am hardwired as a heterosexual woman, and I am comfortable with that identity; it feels authentic. However, I no longer view my sexual orientation and gender identity as “normal,” generic, or “regular.” Instead, I see that my particular expression of gender and sexuality are unique to me. Straight people, like gay or transgendered people, have complex and multifaceted gender identities. My sense of what it is to be a woman, for