Cross, Gary S.Kid’s Stuff: Toys and the Changing World
of American Childhood. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1997. A critical analysis of how
advertising and consumerism have changed the
concept of toys and children’s attitudes toward
the world. Illustrated. Bibliography and index.
Jaffé, Deborah.The Histor y of Toys: From Spinning Tops
to Robots. Stroud, England: Sutton, 2006. Beauti-
fully illustrated exploration of toys through the
ages, including the influences of technology,
marketing, education, religion, and new materi-
als. Bibliography and index.
Kent, Steven.The Ultimate Histor y of Video Games: From
Pong to Pokémon—The Stor y Behind the Craze That
Touched Our Lives and Changed the World. New York:
Three Rivers Press, 2001. A fascinating chronicle,
including hundreds of interviews and fun facts. Il-
lustrated.
Miller, G. Wayne.Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between
G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies That Make Them.
New York: Times Books, 1998. A behind-the-
scenes look at the toy industry, including the
chief executive officers, movie moguls, and toy in-
ventors. Illustrated. Bibliography and index.
Oxoby, Marc.The 1990’s. Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Press, 2003. This history of popular culture
includes a chapter on “Fads, Games, Toys, Hob-
bies and Sports.” Illustrated. Bibliography and
index.
Walsh, Tim.Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Play-
makers Who Created Them. Kansas City, Mo.: An-
drews McMeel, 2005. Written by a toy inventor,
this fascinating study contains interviews with in-
dustry leaders, insider stories, and over four hun-
dred color photographs.
Alice Myers
See also Apple Computer; Beanie Babies; Fads;
Hobbies and recreation; Internet; Inventions;Ju-
rassic Park; Pixar; Pogs; Pokémon franchise; Video
games.
Transgender community
Definition A group of persons who define and
present themselves as a different gender
identity from that of their biological birth by
dress and behavior, by surgically altering their
body, or a combinationFor the American transgender population, the 1990’s was a
time of coalescence and increased organization, visibility,
and activism.A highly visible mark of the emerging status of the
transgender community in the 1990’s was the addi-
tion of the letterTto the established and widely
used alphabetic designation for gay men, lesbians,
and bisexuals, resulting in an new acronym, GLBT/
LGBT, which was quickly adopted and put into
general use by both researchers and activists, giving
the transgender community equal status with the
other populations historically associated with the
struggle for civil rights for persons with non-
heterosexual orientations. Controversies attached
to this expansion were often rooted in the degree
to which the organization or study involved ad-
dressed transgender needs adequately (if at all) or
portrayed their characteristics in a realistic and ac-
curate fashion. The debate over the exact limits of
how to define “transgender” begun in the 1980’s
continued, with many transgender people reject-
ing the term “transsexual,” as they had no intention
or desire to utilize surgery in any way. The term in
its current sense of designating all gender-variant
people was first used in Leslie Feinberg’s 1992
pamphletTransgender Liberation: A Movement Whose
Time Has Come.New Organizations The decade opened with the
foundation in Atlanta of the American Educational
Gender Information Service (AEGIS) in 1990,
whose mission was to serve as a transgender informa-
tion and educational body, a goal served from 1991
to 1998 by its publicationChr ysalis Quarterly.The
year 1991 saw the creation of the International Con-
ference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy
by Houston attorney Phyllis Randolph Frye. It’s
Time, America! a grassroots organization focusing
on civil rights, was formed after the Transgender
Law Conference in 1994, taking as its purpose the
monitoring of legislation that might affect trans-
gender people and educating lawmakers on issues ofThe Nineties in America Transgender community 865