In today’s Salon, a nice piece about the failure of Thomas Beattie, and another about the romantic failure of Jennifer Finny Boylan.
Mara Keisling, quoted in the first piece:
Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, resents the way that the Thomas Beatie flap has overshadowed more important developments. “The media hasn’t gotten a message yet that they ought to get a life,” she snaps. Last week, Congress held its first-ever hearing on discrimination against transgender employees, and on June 17, the American Medical Association passed a resolution stating that it “supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder,” but these items have received nowhere near Beatie’s media attention.
& Boylan, quoted in the second:
The women I knew, for their part, liked the fact that I had a feminine streak, that I seemed to be sensitive and caring, that I didn’t know the names of any NFL teams, that I could make a nice risotto. A lot of straight women love a female sensibility in a man, an enthusiasm that goes right up to, but unfortunately does not quite include, his being an actual woman.
The romances didn’t last, of course. Because, let’s face it: I was keeping the basic fact of myself camouflaged. How are you supposed to fall in love when you’re so frequently lying?