Perhaps the most lengthy summary work on the
FTM population yet created, the results of a de-
tailed study done in North America between 1987
and 1991.
Ekins, Richard, and Dave King.The Transgender Phe-
nomenon. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2006. A
useful summary of the wide range of transgender
culture and contexts as they existed in the early
years of the twenty-first century.
Feinberg, Leslie.Stone Butch Blues. Ithaca, N.Y.: Fire-
brand Books, 1993. The groundbreaking work of
fiction that sparked a literary flowering of trans-
gender writing.
.Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue.Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1998. Written by the author of
the basic manifesto of the transgender move-
ment, this volume presents an expanded discus-
sion of what it means to be a transgender person
and the challenges established gender categories
pose.
.Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose
Time Has Come.New York: World View Forum,
- The basic publication of the transgender
civil rights and social liberation movement.
Griggs, Claudine.S/he: Changing Sex and Changing
Clothes. New York: Berg, 1998. The results of a
survey of a group of transgender persons, evenly
balanced between male-to-female and female-to-
male, presents a varied picture of self- and social
recognition and passages to acceptance.
Meyerowitz, Joanne J.How Sex Changed: A Histor y
of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. The first
historical account of the beginnings of transsex-
ual surgery in Europe and the spread of the idea
to the United States, as well as its development
and application during the twentieth century.
Rosser, B. R. Simon, J. Michael Oakes, Walter O.
Bockting, and Michael Miner. “Capturing the So-
cial Demographics of Hidden Sexual Minorities:
An Internet Study of the Transgender Population
in the United States.”Sexuality Research & Social
Policy4, no. 2 (2007): 50-64. A valuable discussion
of the problems facing researchers who wish to lo-
cate and engage the transgender community.
Rudacille, Deborah.The Riddle of Gender: Science, Ac-
tivism, and Transgender Rights. New York: Anchor
Books, 2006. A general work on the transgender
community that intersperses interviews with
transgender people with a discussion of the his-
tory and legal status of this population across the
centuries.
Stryker, Susan, ed.The Transgender Issue. Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998. A collection of
nine essays touching on subjects as varied as
transgender history in the United States, ques-
tions of the intersection of FTM and butch identi-
ties, and where transgender people fit in then-
current political and bioethical structures.
Robert B. RidingerSee also Baker v. Vermont;Egan v. Canada; Hate
crimes; Homosexuality and gay rights; Queer Na-
tion;Romer v. Evans. Travolta, John
Identification American film actor
Born February 18, 1954; Englewood, New Jersey
In the 1990’s, Travolta demonstrated a successful transi-
tion from adolescent roles to mature parts across a wide
range of American film genres.
John Travolta began his performing career as a teen-
ager, first appearing in stage musicals and then be-
coming a teen heartthrob as the swaggering Vinnie
Barbarino in the popular television seriesWelcome
Back, Kotter(1975-1979). He starred in two of the
most financially successful and influential films of
the 1970’s—Saturday Night Fever(1977) andGrease
(1978)—but his career floundered in the 1980’s. It
was revived by Travolta’s transformative perfor-
mance as a disheveled but endearing hitman in
Quentin Tarantino’s startling crime filmPulp Fiction
(1994), which won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm)
at the Cannes Film Festival and took the American
Independent Spirit Awards by storm. The complex,
darkly comic thriller boosted Tarantino’s interna-
tional status and earned Travolta an Academy Award
nomination and new respect as an actor.
In the 1990’s, Travolta became a frequent—
perhaps too frequent—screen presence, featured in
eighteen theatrical films under the direction of
some of the best talent in international filmmaking
(including Costa-Gavras, Terrence Malick, Mike
Nichols, and John Woo). Moving into early middle
age, Travolta convincingly played an impressive
range of characters, among them a confused parent
in the 1989 hit comedyLook Who’s Talkingand its twoThe Nineties in America Travolta, John 867