Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

This book shares the stories of six transgender young people. Their stories are told well and are interesting. I found it quite interesting that two of the young people describe how different it is to be treated like the other gender. Jessy describes it as male privilege - that she felt that people treated her more respectfully as a male than as a female and Christine did not want people holding doors for her and found some of the ways that she was treated as a female a bit less respectful than she had been treated as a male. Two of the people portrayed in the book seem deeply unhappy and mentally a bit unbalanced and I think that is sad. One has anger management issues and another has been diagnosed in the past as a bipolar, clinical psychopath with narcissistic tendencies. The other people seem more comfortable and happy with themselves. I also found it interesting that all of the young people claimed that most people are fine with the homosexual label, but much less understanding about being transgender or gender neutral. The young people in this book all have gone to a clinic and take hormones in order to transition to the other gender and the effects of the hormones are described and explained. None of them has had gender reversal surgery though. I received this book free to review from Netgalley.