The Gender Frontier: Mariette Pathy Allen (English and German Edition)

Save your money. It's not inspiring or interesting. And as for seeing people in 'normal' circumstances - nonsense. The photos are from a conference and you see the same faces. I guess you had to be there cause it looks rather boring. I keep tracking down these books and getting burned. People who disappear back into society don't appear in these types of books. People in these books are seeking attention and carry on with their tales of struggle but I think most are their own worst enemies. They start to crave the limelight and do anything to keep it as it fades out. Like reality tv trolls who can't let it go and move on in life.

Mariette Pathy Allen reveals the person inside the persona of gender queer and gender variant individuals. Her images force us to accept and include the outcast. In so doing she humanizes us all.Erica Anderson

Ever since the 1970's there has been a growing literature on the topic of gender, some of it of very high quality, some of it negligible. But Mariette Pathy Allen's new book, "The Gender Frontier"(Kehrer, 2004) stands out from all of the books that have preceded it in its immediate humanity, its depth of insight, its extraordinary drama, its excitement at the birth of a new human community, its emotional pathos and its uninhibited celebration of the lives of some of the most courageous people alive today, those who identify themselves as transgendered. The story that Mariette tells us of the transgendered person who had her throat slit while a group of New York cab drivers stood by and laughed is not fiction. Nor is the story of Robert Eads, a female-to-male transsexual whose transition surgeon told him that a hysterectomy was unnecessary for his change to a man. When Robert contracted ovarian cancer, he was faced with the life-shattering irony that all that was left of his previous existence as a woman was killing him as a man. In a brazen mockery of the Hippocratic Oath, 20 doctors and three hospitals refused to treat him. When he finally found a doctor willing to treat him the cancer had progressed too far to be arrested. The doctors, it seems, were afraid that having "that kind of person" in their waiting rooms would scare away business. Mariette is both a photographer whose work ranks as genuine, lasting art and a writer whose personal and intimate style, free of all the gender jargon, describes for us the daily lives of transgendered people with their families, their children, their hopes, their fears, their dreams, their aspirations and their vocations in life. Through her words and through the lens of her camera we see them as real people dealing with the exigencies of life just like the rest of us and not as the sordid, commercialized, pornographic freaks we all too often meet on the Internet and in the pages of XXXX magazines. For this reason Mariette Pathy Allen will take her rightful place in the history of art, and of human liberation, as the original pioneer who brought the human universe of transgendered people to light and as an activist artist whose unflinching dedication to the truth has brought relief, happiness, dignity, self-esteem and psychological self-acceptance to thousands of transgendered persons. Among professional photographers Mariette is the only one I know of who has dared to document and defend and demonstrate the inherent human beauty of a group of people that to date has been shamefully shunned and hysterically persecuted by society at large. She is not only a superb photographer and an engaging writer, she is also a woman who has been brave enough to go in harm's way for the sake of understanding, tolerance, acceptance and a more truly diverse and human society. "The Gender Frontier" is a truly beautiful, inspirational book in every sense of those words. It is a "keeper" that everyone should have in their library. Please go buy it. Then feel yourself challenged and transformed as you proceed from one page to the next, from one story to the next. And when you arrive at the end you will have come to realize that we human beings are far more fascinating and complex and mysterious and wonderful then we thought we were when we unthinkingly imprisoned our own minds in the claustrophobic confines of the traditional binary concept of gender.

Mariette Pathy Allen's book "The Gender Frontier" is her second into the realm of gender fluidity. Her first book, "Transformations," published in 1989, revealed a sometimes startling array of crossdressers as playful, social anomalies.Her new book witnesses the dynamics of gender-variance as a `new culture' coming of age. What may have begun as playful quirkiness has become a deep and powerful sociopolitical and cultural movement. Here are outspoken, resolute and well organized voices, loudly and collectively shouting the inequities of an uninformed and often callous society. These "gender-warriors," often disenfranchised and marginalized, span a far greater spectrum than her previous work - males to females, females to male, androgynes, and queer youth.Allen's photographs shed in an almost painterly way, light and perspective on a world devoid of gender stereotypes. Only those who live within that world can reveal its mysteries. One must look deeply to extract the message. These are not casual snapshots of confused and pathetic persons in search of acceptance and understanding. Here are glimpses into the lives of dynamic persons who, by their very existence, reflect real evolution and social change. She moves among this gender netherworld community easily without judgment or hesitation, capturing through her lens dynamic moments in time, a chronicler for a new age. It is her ease of manner which allows her to witness her subjects throughout their `process of becoming.' And within that safe haven, and through a camera lens, they allow their most guarded selves to be revealed unabashed - without disapproval or condescending eye. What may easily be missed is the vastness of depth and strength of emerging cultural change hidden, dismissed or ignored completely by mainstream society.Some are soft and intimate portraits; calm, serene and confident. There are couples, families, parents. They are, as all of us, sometimes strained, jubilant, and stoic. Activists offer up gritty, defiant demonstrations on the street as they remember the dead - those murdered by an ignorant and fearful society because of they flouted the binary definition of male and female.The accompanying essays by activist leaders like Jamison Green and Riki Wilchins speak to the fundamental, political rights of individuals, their strong voices ringing brightly. Robert Eads, his body ravaged by cancer, speaks with calm clarity of his journey and his fate. Still others offer personal narratives, sharing tale and tenor, their poignant and provocative moments of loss and rebirth.The gift Mariette Allen's book brings is the opportunity to share her observations of what, to many, may seem fundamentally without question...our gender. And for those of us who dare to ask that question, there are no real and certain answers. There may be, however, a life that is daring, courageous, and far less ordinary.