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Without diminishing the hardships that did exist (restrictions on abortion, contraceptives, pregnancy discrimination, racial discrimination, homophobic bar raids) she shows how these groups responsed with ingenuity and independence. As an added plus, the book confirms dissent was much larger than the mass media or public officials cared to actually admit back to the general public. This false reassurance temporarily fit into the cold-war's emphasis on bland conformity, but it silenced many people's experiences until now.
Progressive actions must have been impossible in the era of McCarthyism's suppression of political and cultural dissent, but perseverance made the women's victories all the more rewarding. Furthermore, many of the same women profiled in Meyerowitz's book used the time to lay critical groundwork essential for the 'revolutionary' 1960's and 1970's. Feminism did not simply reconstitute itself after an 'abscence' following suffrage victory, but was marginalized by an unspoken arrangement between the media and politics.
Buy two copies of this book. One for yourself---and one to give your least favirote far right politican a much needed wakeup call.
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Meyerowitz uses Christine Jorgensen as the central figure in this book, and has gone part of the way to producing something of a biography of CJ. This works really well. Another notable feature of this book is that Meyerowitz is careful to follow the different experiences of transexual men and women, which adds further depth to this book.
This book is very readable -- I intend to teach it in an undergraduate course this year -- while at the same time theoretically sound and clearly very well-researched. It answered many questions that I had, and brought together much of what I have wanted to understand about this field.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in gender and sexuality, both specialists and the general reader.