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The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender
"The Uninvited Dilemma" is different from the autobiographies and clinical studies on transsexuality. It represents two years of research involving carefully structured, in-depth personal interviews with seventy-five transsexuals, consultations with members of the medical and mental health communities, and conversations with loved ones of transsexuals. This book will give you an understanding of the true nature of transsexuality. It is a remarkable reading experience for all who are interested in the human condition and and exploration of the most fundamental aspect of our humanity.
188 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1991
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July 14, 2022
Content warnings are listed at the end of my review!
Contextually, The Uninvited Dilemma fulfilled a noble purpose, Stuart claiming it to be filling a gap in literature to present transsexualism to a mainstream audience. She conducted a survey with a group of 70 trans women and men for this book, wanting to show the human accounts of the trans experience rather than statistics. Including a glossary, and detailed descriptions of hormone replacement therapies, and gender confirming surgeries, Stuart makes her research shown. A major goal was to approach the “dilemma” from a stance showing all angles, the trans people, the people around them, the science, legality, morals, and the opposition. This sets the book up on a wobbly premise as trans identity is a human rights concern, so both sides of the argument isn’t inquisitively harmless.
Concern for this point quickly builds into a crescendo as she argues both sides of a trans parent’s relationship with their child. She claims that a parent transitioning can cause psychological issues, so the child needs to cope by imagining the parent as dead, comparing the trauma it could cause to that of divorce or death. This radically homogenizes and assumes the emotional framework of these families and children. The acknowledgement of that comes in one sentence only at the end of a large paragraph arguing the harm, barely noticing that children when guided properly can happily adapt and retain a strong relationship with their parent after they transition.
This alarming way of perceiving trans people only continues throughout the book on the other end of otherwise alright or good points. It is a rollercoaster of a read because of the deliberate pushed effort to see all sides. Stuart seems to strongly relate the trans experience as something distressing, tragic, disabling, and pitiful, and it’s reflected often. Painful aspects of being transgender like loss of social life and financial hardships are cited as issues stemming from the transgender experience, rather than dissecting the societal causes of these issues that lie out of the control of trans people.
More issues arise such as claiming that genital surgeries should only be a last resort for trans people, and not all trans people should transition due to their physical appearance. Her views on transitioning are very firmly in accordance with the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s Standards Of Care, even deflecting the critical opinions trans people had of it. For trans people who have had surgery, she intensely argues it’s moral fraud for them not to tell their partners they are trans, even though she stated their trans past does not matter and deeply explores how many trans people want to put their pasts behind them. This book even compares people experimenting with gender expression to a white man who took medication to darken his skin and experience what it’s like to be a Black man, indirectly linking that gender experimentation to racism. Shockingly, she even says she would support some method of removing gender dysphoria without transitioning if a method did work, after discussing the absolute failure conversion tactics have been.
She does accomplish explaining the difference between gender and sexuality, informing one on transitioning, and even condemns discrimination by law and religion as it is hypocritical. Good points are made like being trans isn’t a choice and how tomboy behaviors are socially acceptable for girls but feminine behaviors for boys are condemned effect trans people. Care and sympathy is absolutely present, but not consistently from the best, most educated, and well meaning angle. The reliance on summarizing her interviews based on her thoughts rather than displaying more of her direct findings seems to be what made this book fall incredibly short.
Summary:
Readability: ★★☆☆☆, As one can easily see, this book has aged rapidly with time. While it made some progressive and thought provoking arguments for its day, many of its statements are abrasive and incorrectly worded by modern standards. There’s a very binary focus, and the staple inclusion of using incorrect pronouns for someone when referring to a time prior to their transition. Her arguments and analogies become incredibly redundant at times to the point of rereading the same or similar statement three or more times in different parts of the book.
Usefulness: ★★☆☆☆, As a trans resource, this is critically outdated and sloppy, and wouldn’t be useful for cis allies. As a historical glance back, it has a purpose, though not a monumental one. The research supplement to this would likely be more insightful if you can get your hands on it! If anything, it can help show some of the entitlement and fallbacks cis allies can have.
Audience: This wouldn’t be at all a good entry level read for someone interested on the topic nowadays. Trans people wanting a look at trans history, more so the climate for trans ideologies and trans people, you could potentially gain some insight. Only seasoned cis allies who were well aware of modern stances and advances in transgender knowledge would be alright candidates for reading this, though I’d be more inclined for them to pick up Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity instead. It’s an okay read, take it or leave it, but I wouldn’t say it’s a must read.
Content warning: ableism, abusive parents, abusive relationships, bullying, discrimination, divorce, enbyphobia, homophobia, medical gatekeeping, misgendering, racism, sexism, sexual violence, slurs, transphobia, trans racial/blackface mention, violence
Contextually, The Uninvited Dilemma fulfilled a noble purpose, Stuart claiming it to be filling a gap in literature to present transsexualism to a mainstream audience. She conducted a survey with a group of 70 trans women and men for this book, wanting to show the human accounts of the trans experience rather than statistics. Including a glossary, and detailed descriptions of hormone replacement therapies, and gender confirming surgeries, Stuart makes her research shown. A major goal was to approach the “dilemma” from a stance showing all angles, the trans people, the people around them, the science, legality, morals, and the opposition. This sets the book up on a wobbly premise as trans identity is a human rights concern, so both sides of the argument isn’t inquisitively harmless.
Concern for this point quickly builds into a crescendo as she argues both sides of a trans parent’s relationship with their child. She claims that a parent transitioning can cause psychological issues, so the child needs to cope by imagining the parent as dead, comparing the trauma it could cause to that of divorce or death. This radically homogenizes and assumes the emotional framework of these families and children. The acknowledgement of that comes in one sentence only at the end of a large paragraph arguing the harm, barely noticing that children when guided properly can happily adapt and retain a strong relationship with their parent after they transition.
This alarming way of perceiving trans people only continues throughout the book on the other end of otherwise alright or good points. It is a rollercoaster of a read because of the deliberate pushed effort to see all sides. Stuart seems to strongly relate the trans experience as something distressing, tragic, disabling, and pitiful, and it’s reflected often. Painful aspects of being transgender like loss of social life and financial hardships are cited as issues stemming from the transgender experience, rather than dissecting the societal causes of these issues that lie out of the control of trans people.
More issues arise such as claiming that genital surgeries should only be a last resort for trans people, and not all trans people should transition due to their physical appearance. Her views on transitioning are very firmly in accordance with the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s Standards Of Care, even deflecting the critical opinions trans people had of it. For trans people who have had surgery, she intensely argues it’s moral fraud for them not to tell their partners they are trans, even though she stated their trans past does not matter and deeply explores how many trans people want to put their pasts behind them. This book even compares people experimenting with gender expression to a white man who took medication to darken his skin and experience what it’s like to be a Black man, indirectly linking that gender experimentation to racism. Shockingly, she even says she would support some method of removing gender dysphoria without transitioning if a method did work, after discussing the absolute failure conversion tactics have been.
She does accomplish explaining the difference between gender and sexuality, informing one on transitioning, and even condemns discrimination by law and religion as it is hypocritical. Good points are made like being trans isn’t a choice and how tomboy behaviors are socially acceptable for girls but feminine behaviors for boys are condemned effect trans people. Care and sympathy is absolutely present, but not consistently from the best, most educated, and well meaning angle. The reliance on summarizing her interviews based on her thoughts rather than displaying more of her direct findings seems to be what made this book fall incredibly short.
Summary:
Readability: ★★☆☆☆, As one can easily see, this book has aged rapidly with time. While it made some progressive and thought provoking arguments for its day, many of its statements are abrasive and incorrectly worded by modern standards. There’s a very binary focus, and the staple inclusion of using incorrect pronouns for someone when referring to a time prior to their transition. Her arguments and analogies become incredibly redundant at times to the point of rereading the same or similar statement three or more times in different parts of the book.
Usefulness: ★★☆☆☆, As a trans resource, this is critically outdated and sloppy, and wouldn’t be useful for cis allies. As a historical glance back, it has a purpose, though not a monumental one. The research supplement to this would likely be more insightful if you can get your hands on it! If anything, it can help show some of the entitlement and fallbacks cis allies can have.
Audience: This wouldn’t be at all a good entry level read for someone interested on the topic nowadays. Trans people wanting a look at trans history, more so the climate for trans ideologies and trans people, you could potentially gain some insight. Only seasoned cis allies who were well aware of modern stances and advances in transgender knowledge would be alright candidates for reading this, though I’d be more inclined for them to pick up Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity instead. It’s an okay read, take it or leave it, but I wouldn’t say it’s a must read.
Content warning: ableism, abusive parents, abusive relationships, bullying, discrimination, divorce, enbyphobia, homophobia, medical gatekeeping, misgendering, racism, sexism, sexual violence, slurs, transphobia, trans racial/blackface mention, violence
May 31, 2024
I concur heavily with Saturniidead's review below, who says it all better and more concisely than I will:
I did expect highly outdated language and questionable deductions before even opening the book. Several of the beginning chapters were even surprisingly well written and informative! However from about chapter 10 (guesstimating) onward, things began to turn more towards Ms. Stuart's thoughts and feelings, her second-hand agony on behalf of the trans people she interviewed and the ways she thought it was acceptable for a trans person to transition (hormones and top and bottom surgery and any other surgeries necessary to pass, unless there's no way you'll pass in which case it's would be best to try to suffer through life presenting as your assigned gender, a reductive and unsurprising opinion) and behave in society (perfectly slotted into cis society as a man or a woman, plug right into the system and behave accordingly), and the ways she thought the trans interviewees should be grateful for the restrictions they experienced in their medical transition processes, and from there my enjoyment rapidly declined. It was the 80s, we hardly knew any better back then (I guess,) so the transmedicalism al la the Harry Benjamin standards of care is expected. Not a surprise, but certainly not pleasant all the same. Add on the sheer rarity of quotes from her interviewees, the insistence on the transgender identity being a "life-long agony" (not a direct quote) with "many broken and maladjusted persons left behind" (not a direct quote) among many other instances of language and thought that would nowadays be a sizeable faux pas at best, and I can say I'm quite disheartened and left wanting more, and certainly more positive and current takes, than what this book has to offer forty years after its initial publishing date.
For the historically inclined trans reader, I can safely say I can only recommend reading The Uninvited Dilemma after WELL-fortifying yourself in preparation for just how deeply permeated with 1970s politics (and Stuart's personal and retrospectively negative opinions) on trans people and trans medical care beforehand. I can definitely see how in 1983 this could be/was a highly groundbreaking piece of literature coming from a cisgender writer, as it is certainly more positive than the average public sentiment surrounding transgender people at the time compared to other sources I've read from the era, but in 2024 this book's relevance is indeed purely historical in nature and I too wouldn't recommend an ally read it without having been very-very-very-well-informed as to the current needs of trans people and surrounding politics. As someone who *isn't* constantly miserable 24/7 over having a less-than-ideal body, I can say it's done me more harm than good personally, though I do value the historical perspective it has given me. I'm more than my body, regardless of the surgeries I may or may not get in my lifetime and any other steps I may or may not take to change or improve it. And so were Stuart's interviewees, and so is everyone else.
At the end here, I must say I'd really like to have access to the full transcripts of some or all of the individuals Ms. Stuart interviewed, and hear what *they* had to say, in their own words. If the records haven't been destroyed and they're archived somewhere, I hope they can be found and released as a second book, even with the names scrubbed, for a proper trans-voiced trans perspective from the era. *That* is something I think we sorely need, so we can connect directly to our trans and queer elders.
2 stars for the historical value, but I can't guarantee you'll get any positive enjoyment from this at-one-time necessary book.
I did expect highly outdated language and questionable deductions before even opening the book. Several of the beginning chapters were even surprisingly well written and informative! However from about chapter 10 (guesstimating) onward, things began to turn more towards Ms. Stuart's thoughts and feelings, her second-hand agony on behalf of the trans people she interviewed and the ways she thought it was acceptable for a trans person to transition (hormones and top and bottom surgery and any other surgeries necessary to pass, unless there's no way you'll pass in which case it's would be best to try to suffer through life presenting as your assigned gender, a reductive and unsurprising opinion) and behave in society (perfectly slotted into cis society as a man or a woman, plug right into the system and behave accordingly), and the ways she thought the trans interviewees should be grateful for the restrictions they experienced in their medical transition processes, and from there my enjoyment rapidly declined. It was the 80s, we hardly knew any better back then (I guess,) so the transmedicalism al la the Harry Benjamin standards of care is expected. Not a surprise, but certainly not pleasant all the same. Add on the sheer rarity of quotes from her interviewees, the insistence on the transgender identity being a "life-long agony" (not a direct quote) with "many broken and maladjusted persons left behind" (not a direct quote) among many other instances of language and thought that would nowadays be a sizeable faux pas at best, and I can say I'm quite disheartened and left wanting more, and certainly more positive and current takes, than what this book has to offer forty years after its initial publishing date.
For the historically inclined trans reader, I can safely say I can only recommend reading The Uninvited Dilemma after WELL-fortifying yourself in preparation for just how deeply permeated with 1970s politics (and Stuart's personal and retrospectively negative opinions) on trans people and trans medical care beforehand. I can definitely see how in 1983 this could be/was a highly groundbreaking piece of literature coming from a cisgender writer, as it is certainly more positive than the average public sentiment surrounding transgender people at the time compared to other sources I've read from the era, but in 2024 this book's relevance is indeed purely historical in nature and I too wouldn't recommend an ally read it without having been very-very-very-well-informed as to the current needs of trans people and surrounding politics. As someone who *isn't* constantly miserable 24/7 over having a less-than-ideal body, I can say it's done me more harm than good personally, though I do value the historical perspective it has given me. I'm more than my body, regardless of the surgeries I may or may not get in my lifetime and any other steps I may or may not take to change or improve it. And so were Stuart's interviewees, and so is everyone else.
At the end here, I must say I'd really like to have access to the full transcripts of some or all of the individuals Ms. Stuart interviewed, and hear what *they* had to say, in their own words. If the records haven't been destroyed and they're archived somewhere, I hope they can be found and released as a second book, even with the names scrubbed, for a proper trans-voiced trans perspective from the era. *That* is something I think we sorely need, so we can connect directly to our trans and queer elders.
2 stars for the historical value, but I can't guarantee you'll get any positive enjoyment from this at-one-time necessary book.
July 12, 2011
This is a good book on transsexuality, albeit a bit dated.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews