books on medical aspects of transition?

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

I was talking to my therapist today - who doesn't know much about transsexuality (I'm trying to switch therapists) - and she said to me that if she were going to get hormones and surgery, she'd want to know everything she could about the medical issues surrounding them. She'd want to know what she was getting into.

I agree.

So - does anybody have any recommendations for books (or web sites, I suppose, though only those written by people who know what they're talking about, please) that cover the medical aspects of transsexuality?

(crossposted to izzycat.)

The loss of David Reimer is o tragedy

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

John Colapinto (the writer of As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl). writing about David Reimer's suicide in an article in the slate webzine states that:
"Anyone familiar with David's life—as a baby, after a botched circumcision, he underwent an operation to change him from boy to girl—would have understood that the real mystery was how he managed to stay alive for 38 years, given the physical and mental torments he suffered in childhood and that haunted him the rest of his life. I'd argue that a less courageous person than David would have put an end to things long ago."

I not denying what David went through but I don’t see what he went through as any different from any other transexual. In fact I consider he had it relatively easy in comparison to other transexuals. He didn’t have to go through multiple psychiatrists, nor face the opprobrium of friends and family, nor even pay the vast sums of money other transexuals have to pay to have their issues corrected.

I'm sorry to say David Reimer was just one of the long litany of transexuals who have ended their lives rather than have to live with the horror they have been forced to go through in their lives. His loss is a tragedy, the bigger tragedy is not to recognise the courage and heroism that is shown by numerous other transexual by fighting on with their lives