This is my body: Hearing the theology of transgender Christians

Much has been said and written about trans people by theologians and Church leaders, while little has been heard from trans Christians themselves. As a step towards redressing the balance, This Is My Body offers a grounded reflection on people's experience of gender dissonance that involves negotiating the boundaries between one's identity and religious faith, as well as a review of the most up-to-date theological, cultural and scientific literature. The book has been compiled and edited by Christina Beardsley, a priest and hospital chaplain, writer and activist for trans inclusion in the Church, and Michelle O'Brien, who has been involved in advocacy, research, lecturing and writing about intersex and trans issues. It includes contributions from many people associated with the Sibyls, the UK-based confidential spirituality group for transgender people and their allies.

Until recently, the study of sex roles, sexual behavior, and the differences between the sexes came under the aegis of such disciplines as psychiatry, sociology, or medicine. Love and Love Sickness lays the groundwork for an emerging, independent area of study, that of sexology. It is the newest, most provocative work yet from John Money, a medical psychologist whose distinguished contributions to sex research have gained him an international reputation.

Money leads the reader through a fascinating array of topics relating to differences between the sexes, from, as he says, "making a baby to learning mathematics." Among his subjects are the behavior of the sexes as seen throughout history; irreducible, derivative, and arbitrary sex roles; how men and women differ in aggression and dominance, parenting, and in mathematical, verbal, and praxic reasoning ; principles of erotic sexuality; the pathology of love; sexual taboos in Western culture; pornography; and, in an appendix, the treatment of sex offenders.

Drawing upon history, ethnology, psychology, sociology, and law, as well as physiology, endocrinology, embryology, genetics, and host of other fields, Money proposes a new basis for understanding sexual behavior. He rejects the older analytic devices of motivation theory and the dichotomies of mind/body and nature/nurture to offer instead a theory that acknowledges a number of variables contributing to individual and collective behavior.

Professionals and students in sex education, mental health, psychiatry, and clinical psychology, human biology, and counseling will find Love and Love Sickness, like all of John Money's work, necessary reading. It is also a book for the educated layperson, who will find it replete with insights into the realm of human sexuality.

How do men become men and women become women? How does a child establish gender identity? By what processes is the human being directed toward reproductive maturity as either male or female? In Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, John Money and Anke Ehrhardt offer a comprehensive account of sexual differentiation using genetics, embryology, endocrinology and neuro-endocrinology, psychology, and anthropology. Their multidisciplinary approach to gender identity avoids the old arguments over nature versus nurture. Money and Ehrhardt focus instead on the interaction of hereditary endowment and environmental influence. Money and Ehrhardt's work will lead many readers to the conclusion that the differences between man and man, or woman and woman, can be as great as between man and woman. A new model of sexual differentiation emerges from this conclusion. It indicates that the social roles of men and women, rather than being fixed by membership in a sexual caste, should be related to individual biography, achievement, and incentives. Still the most thorough treatment of the subject, this latest printing contains a new preface by John Money.

Money (pediatrics, medical psychology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine) introduced the concept of gender role in 1955. Here, he explains the concept of gendermaps for general readers, exploring the history of gender differentiation and its impact on contemporary, social constructionist explanation How do men become men and women become women? How does a child establish gender identity? Offering a treatment of sexual differentiation, this volume draws upon findings in genetics, embryology, endocrinology, psychology and anthropology. Money narrates the history of the concept of gender in the last fifty years and synthesizes it with the revolutionary idea of the lovemap.