Male Femaling: A grounded theory approach to cross-dressing and sex-changing

by Ekins,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415106252
• ISBN10: 0415106257
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1997-01-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Ekins vividly details the innermost desires and the varied practices of males who wear the clothes of women for the pleasure it gives them (cross-dressers), or who wish to change sex and are actively going about it (sex-changers). This unique and fascinating book transforms an area of study previously dominated by clinical models to look instead at cross-dressing and sex-changing as a highly variable social process, tracing the path of the 'male femaler' from 'beginning' to 'consolidating' femaling. Based upon seventeen years of fieldwork, life history work, qualitative analysis, archival work and contact with several thousand cross-dressers and sex-changers, the book develops a theory of 'male femaling' which has major ramifications for both the field of 'transvestism' and 'transexualism', and for the analysis of sex and gender more generally.

Author Biography

Richard Ekins is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Ulster at Coleraine.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xiii
Prologue	p. 1
Introduction	p. 9
The Public and Private Faces of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing	p. 11
Mainly Theory	p. 23
A Review of the Literature from the Standpoint of Grounded Theory	p. 25
The Social Worlds of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing	p. 33
Male Femaling, Masked Awareness Contexts and the Methodology of Grounded Theory	p. 47
Mainly Practice	p. 59
Beginning Male Femaling	p. 61
Fantasying Male Femaling	p. 71
Doing Male Femaling	p. 86
Constituting Male Femaling	p. 107
Consolidating Male Femaling	p. 130
Conclusion	p. 163
Notes	p. 167
Bibliography	p. 168
Index	p. 177
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