Selling these books is like letting go. Some would call it closure. One of the most liberating things of my life has happened over the last few years since I started this blog. I realized I am old. That I have outlive almost all the people who went through Stanford with me back in the early 1970s. I’ve outlived most of my friends and enemies alike.
In the process I’ve returned to my roots. I was a working class hippie. In the early 1970s the anti-Israel position taken by so many on the left alienated me from the left, but not from the ranks of the blue collar Democratic Party.
I’ll confess I’ve never understood all the gender babble. Being transsexual wasn’t about clothes or roles that much for me. It was about being female bodied. In many ways I no more conform to the gender stereotypes projected upon women than I did to the gender stereotypes projected upon men. Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech has always rung true to me because hard work and competence knows no gender.
Selling off these books and the more that will soon be offered is my way of sharing the knowledge, passing it on to folks young enough and involved enough to carry on with the struggle I was an active part of for so many years.
In many ways I feel like Candide, one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite books.
The struggle is now for others, I am content to tend my garden.
It has been a while in coming. First I declared myself neutral in the endless trans-wars. Then I embraced being post-transsexual. I realized that as an old woman I had no desire to be a trans-activist or for that matter exploit my having been trans for economic benefit.
I’m in the process of simplifying my life as well as starting a new small business.
Some people have been after me to donate my library to various institutions.
The truth is I can’t afford to donate my library to some institution that is probably better off than I am. Therefore I am selling off my library on E-Bay.
While you might be able to find some of the books for less it won’t be much less.
While I can’t afford to contribute them for free to an archive perhaps you might purchase one of these books and donate it.
Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism by Pat Califia
Trans/forming Feminisms: by Krista Scott-Dixon
Transgender History by Susan Stryker
Horsexe
My Story by Caroline Cossy
Hidden in Plain Sight by Leslie D. Townsend (2002, Paperback)…
Lesbians Talk Transgender (Lesbians Talk Issues) by Zachary I Natif…
The Woman I Was Not Born to Be : A Transsexual Journey by Aleshia Brevard
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Blending Genders : Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing
Sex Change, Social Change By Viviane Namaste
Presentations of Gender by Robert Stoller
The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender
Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach
Transgender Nation by Gordene Olga MacKenzie
Lessons from the Intersexed by Suzanne J. Kessler
Suits Me : The Double Life of Billy Tipton by Diane Wood …
This is just the initial offering more will follow.
Women Born Transsexual 
August 7, 2014 at 1:52 pm
[…] Selling off my Trans-Related Library (Part 1) […]
August 14, 2014 at 10:43 pm
Your third paragraph really resonated with me: “I’ll confess I’ve never understood all the gender babble. Being transsexual wasn’t about clothes or roles that much for me. It was about being female bodied. In many ways I no more conform to the gender stereotypes projected upon women than I did to the gender stereotypes projected upon men. . .”
After struggleing with trying to find a way of being authentic to myself within the constraints of the masculine for decades I finally gave in and transitioned. All things considered I am surprised that you continued in trans-activism for so long. It is only fourteen months since I had my surgery, and the whole struggle of transition seems so, SO far in the past.
I wish I’d had the nerve to transition earlier. I knew I was transsexual in the ’70s but whenever I thought about it I shoved it down. Fast & hard, ’cause it was far too dangerous. Add another 40 years of living between malaise and misery before I finally came out to myself, then my psychiatrist and slowly and carefully blossomed from a bearded computer geek to a female martial artist. . .
August 14, 2014 at 10:52 pm
I was lucky. I needed to be a part of the whole hippie trip that was happening. I left home at 20. Fell in with a cadre where it was important to be true to yourself. Really pure LSD was readily available. I took some 100 trips, some very heavy doses and went really deep within myself and saw that no matter how deep I went I couldn’t change that core of who I was. “To thine own self be true, then it shall follow as night follows day that you can be false to no one.”
I trusted my friends with my honesty and they gave me the support I needed back in 1969.