ABSTRACT
Until very recently, the medical literature on transsexualism has focused on white, middle-class male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals. Meyer-Bahlburg notes that gender-variant people have been described in cultures around the world. However, most of these accounts are by ethnographers and historians rather than physicians. Since the 1980s, ethnic minority transsexuals (mainly MTF) have been the subject of research in the context of HIV prevention and monitoring. Winter especially highlights the dearth of attention paid to Asian trans people in the past. Trans scholars such as Aizura are helping to remedy this lack of critical attention. As Drescher and Byne point out in a recent collection of articles by leaders in medical research on transgenderism, there is very little literature on gender-variant minors, and treatment approaches for these minors, in contrast to measures for adults, remains heterogeneous and controversial (502). Their collection of eleven articles does not even touch on the intersection of ethnicity and gender variance. Here, I will spotlight the complex life experiences of gender-variant Latino adolescents growing up in Los Angeles.
