Understanding Transgender Diversity presents a fresh and remarkably clear look at the highly individual nature of human sexuality: why a vast spectrum of self-identities-including those we call "transgender"-will always exist. Part I offers a new model of human sexuality that's both logical and intuitive, enhanced by many creative diagrams and the author's personal experience. Part II provides a well-organized overview of the myriad forms of transgender expression, while Part III sheds thought-provoking light on the many kinds of relationships we can have with transgender people and how best to cope with and benefit from these. Though relatively short, this book is rich in content, written in an engaging and often witty style that draws you in from the beginning and keeps you reading with fascination to the end.
About the Author: Claire Ruth Winter was born male, Lawrence Winter, and at the age of 3 began a lifelong struggle with strong and confusing inner feelings that we now recognize as gender dysphoria (at that time thought to be sexual perversion). During childhood his father's medical career took the family to live in such places as American Samoa, Alaska, Hawaii, and the continental U.S., giving him valuable exposure to cultural and racial diversity. He graduated from Whitman College, ranked in the top 50 colleges and universities in the U.S., with a BA degree in music education and a minor in math/physics. He combined these and eventually co-founded a successful commercial audio manufacturing corporation with worldwide distribution, where he developed product design concepts, print ads, brochures, manuals and traveled extensively to provide training and education. Lacking the educational and internet resources of today, he was unable to pinpoint the nature of his lifelong gender struggle until 1986, when television and print media began to more intelligently explore transgender issues. Having discovered her real identity, Claire soon became very active, part-time, in local and national transgender organizations: serving on boards, publishing newsletters, writing educational pamphlets and attending national conferences-by necessity in complete stealth from family, friends and colleagues. She eventually sold her interest in her corporation and began her transition to become legally female, during which she started a new career as a full-time transgender educator and author. Ms. Winter has been an active member of many advocacy organizations including the ACLU, COLAGE, Gender Odyssey, the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE), the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), The Task Force, Trans Youth Family Advocates (TYFA), the Washington Transgender Equality Project (WATEP), and others. She created and maintains the public educational web sites www.LearnAboutTransgender.org and www.TransgenderPortal.com, has written many educational pamphlets and articles, and lectures to college and university undergraduate and graduate classes and transgender conferences.