“…In engaging with these difficulties many authors, utilising a range of social constructionist perspectives within sociology and feminism, tend to dismiss and/or distrust the self-representations and identity narratives of transsexuals. The main argument forwarded is that these are unreliable or always already inauthentic as, in order to both establish their identities and secure medical treatment, transsexuals merely 'mimic' the medical discourses and the hegemonic, normative regimes of gender and sexuality that created the phenomenon of transsexualism in the first place (Hausman, 1995: 143;see also, Raymond, 1994;Billings and Urban, 1996;Shapiro, 1991). Such an argument, however, has increasingly been criticised and challenged, particularly on the grounds that its various social constructionist underpinnings deny agency and, 'overwhelmingly fail to examine how transsexuals are constructing subjects' (Prosser, 1998: 8).…”