A short book, lots of information, lots to learn not just about the three "communities" investigated but also about people who consider those ppl unnatural or sick, but covered quickly, concisely.Fortunately, progress has been made. We probably owe a lot of our more loving understandings to some of the people named here, for example Cheryl Chase. I'm queer myself, so nothing here really surprised me. But some things appalled me, for example the prevalence of the attitude among doctors that inter...

I had forgotten about this book. This was one of the books that helped me realize I was trans when I was sixteen. Looking back, it's not a great book from the perspective I have gained since then, but it was an important book for me to read at the time. If you are unfamiliar with or struggle with understanding the things trans men, male cross-dressers, or intersex people deal with, it's not the worst start.

This was not as insightful as I had thought it would be.

There were a lot of passages that had me ready to give this book up, but this was the one that finally did me in: "So you're the writer. Well, I'd say you pass pretty well," Felicity tells me. I smile pleasantly, as if I am not offended, as if I didn't think he intended to offend me. "Well," he says heartily, and then clears his throat twice and stares at my silk pants. "You gals just get to crossdress all the time and no one says boo." He sounds furious that life is so easy for me and so hard f...

Like many of the comments note, this book isn't going to do much for you if you are already well versed/entrenched in the topic of gender queerness. However, not everyone is so lucky, and I picked this up knowing that Bloom is a good writer and that she is approaching the topic as many family members and co-workers are -- from a straight and "othered" prospective. With that prospective, I think Bloom offers a great introduction to the topics of being transgender (one story of a trans male (FTM),...

I liked that Amy Bloom informed through the use of mainly personal stories and interviews. Bloom doesn't overwhelm the reader with facts or scientific jargon, but rather, makes incredibly complicated issues seem, well, "normal." Her style of writing was accessible and easy to read, yet interesting and intriguing. It helped that the book was manageable in size (around 130 pages) and she doesn't waste time belaboring points or reiterating main ideas. By far, what I enjoyed most is that Bloom made

I picked up this book from the library after finding out that a man I know enjoys crossdressing as a woman, hoping to find more information about the phenomenon. The book includes three sections, one on female-to-male transsexuals, one on heterosexual male crossdressers, and one on intersex people. I'd read a lot about the latter already, so Bloom's information and insights weren't so "ah-ha" for me. The transsexual section was of the most interest, although it focused more on the surgical detai...

Having read all of Amy Bloom's fiction, and counting her as one of my favourite writers, it was interesting to read these essays (about interviews she conducted), which explore the myriad definitions of gender. Most fascinating was the long discussion on heterosexual cross-dressers, a sub-group who bother almost everyone - "Gay people regard them with disdain or affectionate incomprehension, transsexuals regards them as men "settling" for cross-dressing because they don't have the courage to act...

For such an interesting topic (it's all in the title), I felt that the author was afraid of really delving deep to portray these people as three dimensional. She kept a little distance, and sometimes seemed a little judgmental.

While I would say that Bloom's conclusions are definitely on the side of supporting rights for gender-variant people, I found this text problematic. It wasn't the terminology - obviously terms like 'transsexual' and 'hermaphrodite' are wildly outdated, but not so much twenty years ago when the book was published. I didn't like how much Bloom's narrative was characterised by a motif of, 'I thought these people were going to be complete weirdos, but actually they turned out to be normal; can you b...

A curious but valuable book. Given all that has changed in our culture since this book was first published, Normal strikes me as perhaps somewhat dated but in its time important argument for such foundational axioms as the difference between gender and sexual orientation, the nature of transsexuality vs. transvestitism, and the importance to not rush to gender assignment surgery at birth. Bloom is a flawless prose stylist, by the way. Just a natural born writer. What most surprised but also int

This book is so terrible, I could not finish it. While I debated reading the rest of it, so that I could say I had finished it, I read the first section, and a bit of the second section, then I was done. The author does make the argument that trans people are people, but she comes at this from a totally transphobic place. (She was told to investigate the thing she found the strangest/hardest to understand in the world.) Definitely a book for gender essentialists. Definitely a book for folks who

Many helpful parts, but the assertion that cross dresser relationships can not be feminine in nature seems more bias than fact. Many men have motherly instincts and attributes, and like women can combine the “Maybelline” aspect with the more intertwined selfless relationship aspect. Her assertion certainly doesn’t fit with the more modern view of both gender and sexual identity being more of a spectrum than neat categories.

Although written 15 years ago, I found it to be educational.

Dated and transphobic with much more of a focus on anatomy than human beings. Very disappointing.

Very insightful book. As I don't have much first-hand knowledge of this world, this book brought me closer to understanding the issues/fears/experiences of this community. I was left feeling a little confused about the crossdressing community - as it seems Bloom was as well. Would love to read an autobiography of someone in that community to help shed more light there.

"People who reveal, or announce, that their gender is variegated, rather than monochromatic or plainly colored in the current custom, have always presented difficulties. Not only is our society distressed by masculine women, feminine men, and the androgynous; even the big man who embroiders, or the wife and mother of three who has a black belt in tae kwon do, a buzz cut, and no makeup in her gym bag, stirs a frisson of discomfort... I sometimes think that our culture is like the Church in the da...

This story is very awesome.

"Isn't there anything you've wondered about and never understood?" Amy Bloom responded to her editor's question with this series of essays that explore the experiences of female to male transsexuals (FTMs), heterosexual male cross dressers, and people who are intersex. If you pick up "Normal" already believing that FTMs are truly men, then you'll have the interesting experience of witnessing Bloom, who doesn't seem to have been very well acquainted with queer communities before writing this book...

I found this informative but not encyclopedic, academic without being dry and all in all, very charming. As someone with an interest in intersex, transexual and transgender issues but without any formal academic study on the subjects, I found this an approachable and personable approach to getting started on the subject. Although Amy Bloom was already one of my favourite writers, I came to this book of case studies after reading Middlesex, the 2002 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides about Cal, an inters...