1983: The Uninvited Dilemma and “Transgender”

The Uninvited Dilemma was thought of as one of the most important trans books of its time. The Uninvited Dilemma, has been quoted and referenced countless times in trans books, newsletters and magazines.

In the book, Gender reversals and gender cultures: anthropological and historical perspectives,”  Sabrina P. Ramet writes, “The best works on the subject of transsexualism are: Bolin, In Search of Eve (despite occasional lapses); and Kim Elizabeth Stuart, The Uninvited Dilemma… (p 20)

The authors of Transgender Care: Recommended Guidelines, Practical Information, and Personal Accounts refers to Stuart as the “… widely respected author of The Uninvited Dilemma, a guidebook for anyone dealing with transgender issues.” (p 120)

Stuart is credited by Claudine Griggs in S/he: changing sex and changing clothes as being the inventor of the concept of “former Transsexual” (p 91). Stewart defines “former transsexual” as:

Someone who has had surgery to alter his or her genitalia to be more characteristic of personas of  the opposite gender… Transsexuals must make many changes to overcome difficult obsticles. Somehow it is unfair to burden people with labels which no longer seem appropriate when they have made changes, overcome obstacles, made adjustments, ad surgery, and taken their place in society in the roles in which they are comfortable.

Griggs remembers that it was through The Uninvited Dilemma, that she learned that there was such a thing as the Standards of Care: “My first awareness of a formal standards of care came six years ago when I read Kim Stuart’s The Uninvited Dilemma…”

When I went to my first transsexual meeting in the mid-1990s, I was told to buy the book, to read it and to make copies of it for my friends and family because they would want to know what was going on with me. I made a copy of it and gave it to my father with a note telling him that The Uninvited Dilemma would answer the questions he had.

In Chapter 2 I pointed out that gender conditions are quite different from sexual conditions or sexual preferences. The word transsexual is somewhat misleading, because the word sexual is incorporated into the term. Perhaps the word “transgender‘ would have been a more suitable term, but I say that in hindsight.  – page 25

“Lin Fraser, a therapist in San Francisco, California, who specializes in working with transgendered persons, told me that in her entire career she had never met a true transsexual who chose to be one. The only choice involved for transsexuals is what to do about their conditions. ” – page 97