Product Description

Best Transgender Erotica brings together twenty stories by writers of every gender. The first book to celebrate exclusively gender-bending, -crossing, and -breaking sexuality through erotic fiction, Best Transgender Erotica includes representations of many forms of `trans` identity. Whether blurring the line between masculine and feminine, or making the transition from female to male, or vice versa, these characters (and authors) had to put on their sexiest, most alluring, heart-racing show in order to make the cut.Including selections from Thomas Roche, Saachi Green, Todd Belton, Simon Sheppard, M. Christian, and many more of today`s best-known erotica writers, Best Transgender Erotica follows on the smashing success of Best Bisexual Erotica, which was released in 2000. Like `Best Bi,` `Best Trans` drew its contributors from within the gender activist community, providing a unique and stimulating look at gender issues from an erotic perspective.Contributors: Todd Belton, Saachi Green, S. Naomi Finkelstein, Raven Gildea, Sam Kling, Magdalene Meretrix, Charles Anders, Dominic Santi, Alex Gino, Allison Lonsdale, Thomas Roche, Karen Taylor, Ian Philips, Roxane Gay, Matthew Kailey, Simon Sheppard, M. Christian, Nico Hailey, Stacey Montgomery, Gary Bowen, Raven Kaldera, Hanne Blank

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1504806 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Publisher
Hanne Blank's work as a writer, editor, and sexuality educator includes Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those Who Love Them (Greenery Press), which one reviewer described as "striking the perfect balance between expertise and humor (American sex book-ese at its best)...". She is the editor of several collections of erotica, including Zaftig: Well Rounded Erotica (Cleis Press, 2001), the co- editor of the award-winning sexuality websites Scarlet Letters (scarletletters.com) and Scarleteen (scarleteen.com), and a widely published writer who writes on topics as diverse as music, Judaism, sex, clothes, body image, and food for venues as varied as Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, the Boston Phoenix, BBW, Lilith, and The Elvis Presley Reader.

Customer Reviews

Love and pleasure in all hues of the spectrum
I came to this book with few expectations, partly because it is the first of its kind. What transgendered erotica exists is either somewhat rare and scattered around or exploitative and not very believable to those who actually are transgendered or know those who are. After reading the anthology, I realize that I could have come to it with many expectations and it still would have pleasantly surprised me.

The twenty-three stories in this collection are as diverse as transpeople themselves. We see all varieties of trangender manifestations from the real to the surreal. I was most pleased to see an equal distribution of female-to-male and male-to-female as well as several characters who refused to claim a specific gender, choosing both or neither. The stories were equally diverse: hardboiled detective fiction, science fiction, fantasy, historical romance, comedy, literature.

One initial complaint I had was that the typeface is small, making each page dense with text. I was afraid it would make the stories difficult to read but I found that wasn't the case at all. After comparing the book to mainstream fiction, I see that the typeface and spacing is normal and I was judging it by other erotic fiction which tends to be written in a larger face or with more spacing between lines. This book needs every piece of real estate on the page it can get to fit all the stories into just 270 pages! This book offers a high story-per-dollar ratio.

And, of course, the true test of erotica is the excitement factor. Now what excites me may or may not excite you - erotic tastes can vary greatly. But I found the collection to be very hot and each story, even ones with scenes or characters I wouldn't have expected to be turned on by, left me gasping for air at some point in the telling.

disclaimer: I have to admit that I am one of the authors in this anthology. For the purposes of writing this review, I thought of the other twenty-two stories and left mine out. I'm not trying to sell this book because I'm in it, just give a review of a book that I really enjoyed reading. I vow that my review is unbiased but I felt the need to disclose this information so that readers have a chance to decide for themselves whether this is truly an unbiased review or not.

Body and Soul
This book would have been worth reading just for the editorial comments at the beginning and introducing each story, and the stories themselves make good use of the tension and complexity inherent in the theme. There's plenty of sex, from raunchy to tender and back again; there's also heart and soul, especially in the first and last stories, by Hanne Blank and Stacey Montgomery.

Not just groundbreaking, it's [hot], too!
This is a great, hot... read. It's even better because the stories truly read from the perspective of transfolks or folks who find gender blurring to be exciting. I was originally a little leery that the collection would fall into pangs of "and then s/he found out what was really between my legs and left me" sob stories, but the editors succeeded in bringing us stories that are [exciting] and intriguing, leaving tragic for some other time. The book is also nicely balanced by perspectives: several MTF, several FTM, and also balanced in stories from the perspective of the trans person and the perspective of a non-transexual partner. Stand out for me was Charles Anders "The Gay Science," Matthew Kailey "Teenie Weenies, Inc." and R. Gay's "Small Considerations" Okay, I have a piece in the book, too -- and I'm delighted to be in the company of such great writing.