Recognizing Transsexuals: Personal, Political and Medicolegal Embodiment (Book Review‪)‬

Recognizing Transsexuals: Personal, Political and Medicolegal Embodiment. 2011. Zowie Davy. Ashgate Publishing Limited. 204 pp. $99.95 (Hardcover) ISBN 9781409405658 (hbk) 9781409405665 (ebk) This book is about transpeople embodiment and, as the title suggests, it focuses on how the phenomenon is understood across personal, political and medicolegal spheres. The text is based on empirical research conducted among twenty-four transpeople in the United Kingdom (UK) of different ages, genders and stages of transition. Davy uses the concept of "bodily aesthetics" to explain how transpeoples' bodies are formed and understood. "Bodily aesthetics refers to the appearance of the body that is subjected to judgements, whether that is personal and/or public". These judgements feed into personal body images, which help to formulate understandings about identity formation (pg 5)'. Davy moves away from trans embodiment writing that focuses on gender identity because "it mistakenly suggests that the (modified) trans body is a result of a particular gender identity rather than the (modified) body is socio-historically situated and constitutes gender identity" (pg. 5).