This book explores a range of gender identities and experiences that fall under the broad umbrella of ‘transgender’. The term transgender relates to a diversity of practices that call into question traditional ways of seeing gender and its relationship with sex and sexuality. Used broadly, the concept of transgender is extensive – incorporating practices and identities such as transvestism, transsexuality, intersex, gender queer, female and male drag, cross-dressing and some butch/femme practices. Transgender may refer to individuals who have undergone hormone treatment or surgery to reconstruct their bodies, or to those who cross gender in ways that are less permanent. Transgender has also been referred to as ‘gender blending’, ‘gender mixing’, ‘gender fucking’ and ‘gender crossing’ (Ekins and King, 1996). In this book ‘transgender’ is used as an umbrella term to cover a diversity of practices that involve embodied movements across, between, or beyond the binary categories of male and female. My use of the term ‘transgender’ thus relates to transsexual identities and practices, and those that are articulated from a variety of other (trans) gender positions.

Influenced by transgender community activism and linked to the proliferation of ideas around gender and sexuality from postmodernism and queer theory, transgender gained academic capital in the 1990s. As Whittle comments, this new strand of academic engagement with transgender:

In recent years transgender has also emerged as a subject of increasing social and cultural interest in the UK. Popular representations of transgender are apparent in TV drama, sitcom and reality TV, while the ‘trans confessional’ is a chat-show staple. Tabloid journalists and magazine feature writers increasingly search for trans people for ‘real life’ stories, and television documentary and broadsheet journalism has focused upon the experiences of both female and male trans people. Transgender characters have had central roles in recent mainstream films, and, on stage, cross-dressing performers such as Eddie Izzard, Lily Savage and RuPaul draw large audiences.