Transsexuals' sexual stories

Abstract

When viewed through a popular cultural lens, male-to-female transsexuals' sexual biographies can appear to indicate male transvestitism, heterosexuality, or homosexuality rather than transsexuality. How do transsexuals subvert such implications and construct transsexual identities? Drawing on K. Plummer's (1995) approach to sexual stories, we examine how nine male-to-female transsexuals construct their sexual pasts to accomplish what sociologists call "identity work." Interviewees used gendered sexual scripts, cultural discourse on the biological basis of male sexual arousal, and a discourse of therapeutic individualism to narratively defetishize autoerotic crossdressing, queer straight sex, refashion transvestic sex, and straighten out gay sex.