Since 1999, people with gender dysphoria – a condition defined as distress or discomfort experienced because of a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity – have been able to apply for NHS treatment up to and including surgical reassignment. The idea of mutable sexual identity is now officially “accepted”. And as night follows day, so sensation has been a primary media reaction to such stories – whether from outright prejudice, or the feminist argument that transgenderism is an artificial state, supported by a medical system that reinforces stereotypical polarities.
This fraught history only makes Trans a braver book, even though its ambition is to make such a compliment unnecessary. For the moment, Juliet Jacques stands on the front line, and her book, part memoir and part polemic, charts her unsteady progress from male to female; from Morrissey-obsessed schoolboy wearing eyeliner to transgender spokesperson and author of widely read blogs for the Guardian and the New Statesman.
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