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dressing. These authors mention that homosexual drag queens, transsexuals
and “true” transvestites cross-dress but that the psychological pattern
associated with dressing is very different in these cases. Prince and
Bentler consider homosexuality as the expression of a sexual variation
whereas cross-dressing is perceived primarily as a role activity.
2. Some epistemological reflections
2.1 Increased knowledge of transgender individuals
In the construction of scientific knowledge about transgender individuals
it is important for researchers to avoid a kind of “us-and-themthinking”
in which some investigators or an “us” are going to generate
knowledge of “them”. We try to avoid that in this narrative research
report (see further Reyes & Kamali 2005; Young 2000). One of many
possible ways of avoiding “us-and-them-thinking” may be to consider
the transgender individuals’ own voices as an important source of
knowledge. Our contention is that the autobiographies and narratives
of transgender individuals, for example, constitute important building
blocks in the creation of knowledge regarding which themes, descriptions
and interpretations should be perceived as central.
In this narrative review we are going to pay particular attention to
the descriptions and analyses that transgender individuals have presented
themselves either through biographies or through narrative descriptions
in which they express how they view their life situations. We shall
attempt to enter a dialogue with the descriptions transgender individuals
give. Transgender individuals, e.g., Virginia Prince (1980) and
transsexual authors, e.g., Morris (1986), Cossey (1992), Wells (1986),
Zander (2003), give important descriptions of how transvestism and
transsexualism can be understood. Considering these kinds of description
more in detail can be one way of doing research which moves
towards analysing the phenomenon under study in dialogue with transgender
individuals’ own descriptions.
When discussing transgender individuals it may be an advantage
not only to focus on transidentities but also to problematize the
norms of gender including the hetero norm. The traditional gender
roles of man and women, including the heterosexual matrix, needs to
42 • summary