(Also posted on the GG Only Site)
Dian and I were at a University bookstore and found the book "The Riddle of Gender (Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights)" by Deborah Rudacille. ISBN 10:0-385-72197-8
This book is not light reading. We had about 6 hours of driving to and from a visit to parents, and I read the book out loud as she drove. We got through about 140 of the 300 pages. It generated a lot of discussion, and re-reading of several passages, trying to straighten out the who was a he and who was a she, etc. We plan on continuing our reading with some more long drives this month.
This book does a good job of describing who/what is transgendered, and defining the continuums of gender, sex and orientation. So far we have covered some of the original research in the United States, and some historical figures that were gay (Oscar Wilde) or transgender (Christine Jorgenson). If you want to read an analytical approach to the topic, this might be a possibility.
The back cover states "When Deborah Radacille learned that a close friend had decided to transition from female to male, she felt compelled to understand why. Coming at the controversial subject of transsexualism from several angles - historical, sociological, psychological, medical - Rudacille discovered that gender variance is anything but new, that changing one's gender has been met with both acceptance and hostility through the years, and that gender identity, like sexual orientation, appears to be inborn, not learned, though in some people the sex of the body does not match the sex of the brain.
Informed not only by meticulous research, but also by the author's interviews with prominent members of the transgender community, The Riddle of Gender is a sympathetic and wise look at a sexual revolution that calls into question many of our most deeply held assumptions about what it means to be a man, a women, and a human being.
