Transgender Care: Recommended Guidelines, Practical Information, and Personal Accounts

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview, not for novices
Review: A great overview of current care standards and practices. Also includes some personal narratives. Directed to professionals in the health and therapeutic fields, but clear and readable by non-professionals, including patients, family and friends. Probably more useful if reader already has some familiarity with the field.

Rating:
Summary: A Basic Self-Contradiction
Review: Israel and Tarver write that they respect the self-determination of transgendered people, yet they propose guidelines that leave decisions about transgendered people's bodies, ultimately, in the hands of mental health professionals. The authors do not address this basic self-contradiction. To their credit, the authors also include essays by other writers, some of whom contest this autonomy-denying aspect of their proposed guidelines.

Rating:
Summary: Gives a most current (1997) view of human sexuality
Review: The authors propose three elements of human sexuality: sex (male, female, or intersexed), gender identity (male, female, androgynous), and sexual orientation (attracted to male, attracted to females, attracted to transexuals, attracted to gay men, attracted to lesbian women, etc.).

I am writing this review from memory, so I am not certain I have the (types) correct. The key thing is that the authors argue that sexual orientation is not the same thing as gender identity.