I’m not sure if anyone knows how weird it is being a public person, if you’re not. I know there are people on the boards and in the larger trans community who are known in their fields, so I’m sure they have a little bit better of an idea of it.
But Betty and I regularly deal with people feeling they know us better than they do. I don’t mind being out or visible or public. But it is an interesting experience, one that requires you to learn new things about how people relate and to notice when people are communicating in a way that has ‘crossed a line.’ The problem is that writing requires a writer to wear her skin as thin as she can, to bleed on the page, as some authors have put it. Some days it can be a little tricky to be thick-skinned (as a public figure) and completely open (in my writing) – simultaneously.
Having been a devoted fan of more than one band when I was a teenager – and currently being a fan of Rufus Wainwright – I understand how people have a sense of “me.” I also know now that anything I think I “know” about someone public is probably mostly wrong, or a part of the truth.
Anyone who knows me personally knows that I hate having my looks discussed. It’s not because I don’t think I’m pretty or any self-esteem issue like that; it’s just that I don’t think it’s worth discussing. I look like what I look like: nothing more, nothing less. Some people find me attractive, others don’t, but mostly I’m pretty content with my lot in that department. But at the same time it just seems odd for people who don’t know me to talk about what I look like. Talk about my ideas, my writing, my lectures and workshops – of course. Those are things I work on, that I care about, that I actually like feedback about. But my looks? Pah.
But who am I kidding? In a community where both passability and prettiness count for something, I’d be fooling myself to think I’d be left out of the self- and other- scrutiny in the looks department.
And yet – and yet: I would rather be left out, please.
Times Five
Well, it’s official: the fifth printing of My Husband Betty has now been ordered, and will show up in warehouses around the first years of 2006. That’s five printings in two years, pretty much.
Thanks, all.
Five Questions With… Vern Bullough
Vern L. Bullough is a SUNY Distinguished
Professor Emeritus, was a past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, was honored with the Kinsey Award for his research, and is the author of Crossdressing, Sex, and Gender, along with 50+ other books on various subjects, most of them involving sexuality.
< Helen with Vern Bullough at IFGE 2004.
1) In terms of trans and gender subjects, what do you think is the most important piece of your scholarship?
The field of trans research is rapidly changing as it moves more into the mainstream of variant sexual behaviors. I think the best back ground is the book that my late wife Bonnie and I did, entitled Cross Dressing, Sex and Gender. The best survey of the field up to l997 was also one that Bonnie and I edited entitled Gender Blending. The best for female to male transsexuals is that by Holly Devor, entitled FTM. There are more specialized books coming out now but I think these three are the basis for a good understanding.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Vern Bullough”
Old Speeches
As I was writing and re-writing my speech for this Saturday, I found some drafts of other speeches I’ve given.
The irony of course is that I almost never give the speech I wrote, even though I’ve liked the ones I’ve written. Why? I have no ability to memorize. None. So what I tend to do is write and re-write a speech, get the general arcs, and then make an outline of the speech I wrote and speak from it.
Here’s the one I gave at the Glitz, and the one I gave at the COS Banquet Dinner.
TBLG Library Needs Trans Books
I just found out that a library is looking to expand its trans holdings, and since it’s a TBLG library, I thought some of you might want to donate copies of your own – stuff you’ve read and don’t need any longer.
A bit about the library, from CJ (who’s making the request):
The library is located in the Affirmations Gay and Lesbian community center in Ferndale. All the books in this library are TBLG themed (written by TBLG folks, about TBLG folks, etc). They have a transgender section but currently only have 4 books. I would really like to boost this up, as there are a TON of transgender related books out there. All the books in the library have been donated so these books also have to be donated.
Contact me for the mailing address, or the email of CJ if you have further questions.
Obviously, they’ll shortly have a copy of MHB.
Doing What You Do
Recently, a suggestion was made that I quit doing what I do as a moderator on the message boards, or maybe that I do a little less of it, or a little less frequently, or zealously. Or something like that.
Since then, I’ve gotten numerous emails and comments from people that I really should cut back, that it’d be good for my sanity.
Maybe it would.
But the thing is, I moderate the boards the way I do because I like the way they are, the way they’ve attracted intelligent, occasionally captious types who are also funny, creative, and supportive of each other. I mean where else on the trans internet are you going to find a Trans Periodic Table and abstracts to Blanchard articles? There’s a 15 page thread on football (football!), too, and that’s in addition to the empathetic comments from a TG who saw a young child made fun of for wearing nailpolish.
The boards are, in some way, the kind of community I was looking for years ago, before I wrote My Husband Betty, and it’s kind of nice that the book has given me the kind of reach to create that – to fill a void, as it were. I’m proud of them, and pleased to be doing the work that makes them a good place for both support and debate.
Sometimes I can be sensitive to criticisim – precisely because I do spend a lot of time moderating the boards – and it hurts to have someone tell me I should be doing it differently, or could be doing it better – tempting me to say (mostly to myself) “you get what you pay for” on a regular basis. But snarkiness aside, I enjoy the boards, and I’m proud of having built them – so they would come.
Most of the time that’s enough – other times, it’s just nice to hear that others appreciate them and are getting something out of them they can’t find anyplace else. For the nearly 500 of you who are registered users, and the 60 of you who post regularly, and to the lurkers, I’m thankful, not burdened.
Five Questions With… Abigail Garner
Abigail Garner is a writer, speaker and educator
who is dedicated to a future of equality for LGBT families and communities. She speaks from her own experience of having a gay dad who came out to her when she was five years old. Bringing voice to a population of children that is often overlooked, Abigail has been featured on CNN, ABC World News Tonight, and National Public Radio. She is the author of Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is (HarperCollins, 2004).
1) As a child of a GLBT parent, you’ve effectively become a ‘lightning rod’ for others children of GLBT parents. What has that been like?
It’s is really a joy to connect with “my people.” It’s really not what I originally set out to do, because I subscribed to many of the same misperceptions as the general public. Namely, that there are very few adult children of LGBT parents. My advocacy initially was to be a resource for younger children and their parents. In the process, however, I have been contacted by so many peers that I hadn’t let myself believe were out there — adult children in their 20s, 30s and older. I even chatted with a woman born in 1938 who had a lesbian mother and gay father. And despite whatever differences there are between us, when the common experience of having queer parents is reflected in another person, it’s exhilarating.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Abigail Garner”
The Next Book
It just occurred to me that not all of you would know that you were missing some info about my next book by *not* reading Damian McNicholl’s interview with me. The last question he asked was:
DMN: Are you working on anything new?
to which I responded:
HB: I’m working on a book now called Boy Meets Girl, which is about the things I’ve learned about gender in relationships as a result of being with Betty and as a result of meeting a lot of gender variant people since I published My Husband Betty. What I’ve noticed is that until or unless there’s a problem with gender, it’s invisible. We make huge assumptions about who a person is and who they’re supposed to be as a partner and lover based on gender – and I came into this relationship thinking I was pretty smart about gender, and didn’t do any of those things. But when your husband starts wondering if he should transition (that’s the PC term for a ‘sex change’ these days), you have to think a lot harder about gender, and learn a lot more. Boy Meets Girl will be a memoir of my struggle to figure out what it might mean to our romance if my husband became my wife, and how what I learned in the process might help others in relationships of all kinds.
So there you have it.
Damian McNicholl: Banishing Cockroaches
I interviewed Damian McNicholl, author of Lambda-nominated A Son Called Gabriel, and now he’s gone and returned the favor by putting up an interview with me on his blog. He’s also included some of his own thoughts about My Husband Betty, prejudice against crossdressers, and growing up with “inherited” prejudices.
Baby Bear
Tonight it was brought to my attention that a CD in the online group A Crossdresser’s Secret Garden had warned another CD that my book was too heavy on the issues surrounding transition, and so recommended Peggy Rudd’s book My Husband Wears My Clothes, instead. I have to start off by explaining that I don’t have an issue with some people preferring Peggy Rudd’s book over my own; we both have our audiences, and as Dr. Rudd once said to me, ‘it’s not like there isn’t enough room for two of us.’ (She also told me I didn’t have to answer all the email I’d get, which was sound advice I’ve mostly failed to follow.)
It’s funny that this advice should come just now, but not just because my interview with Melanie and Peggy Rudd is the Five Questions With… blog post that precedes this one, but also because – well, transition issues come up in exactly one chapter of My Husband Betty. I told the story I did because it was part of my own experience. When I was trying to reach out to other couples, especially other girlfriends of CDs, I happened to meet Katie, and we had an instant rapport. At the time we became friends, every crosssdressing website emphasized the fact that *crossdressers don’t transition.* I found out otherwise when I watched my friend Katie go through a painful divorce that was caused by her crossdressing partner’s transition.
And while I’m happy to report that Katie and Elle have both gone on to live happy, separate lives, it was precisely because of that experience that I included their story – and how it affected our story – in my book. Because I didn’t want to see even one other Katie get blindsided like that, not ever again.
In the warnings about how “scary” my book is, the CD pointed out once again that CDs rarely transition. Or that a very small percentage do. And the ironic thing is that I know the group, and I know that quite a few of their members were CDs when they joined who later transitioned. Some of them – gasp! – were even married. So it makes me wonder why this information is re-iterated over and over again, when no-one has any idea how many CDs eventually transition.
I certainly don’t know the percentage. I just wonder at what point people think it’s okay to mislead spouses like that. I mean, if you had a 1 in 100 chance of finding out that your marriage was going to be dead in the water in a decade, would that be a high enough risk for you to maybe warn your future partner? 2 in 100? 5 in 100? 10 in 100?
And while I understand the need to help wives who are already married keep their wits about them and not freak out, I cannot abide the idea that anyone is telling a girlfriend or a fiancee of a CD not to worry about it – especially if they’re under the age of 30.
And while I also know there are no guarantees in this life, I also know that plenty of crossdressers said they’d never transition and did. Wives or no wives, children or no children. And I wonder why this urge to reassure wives comes so fast. I know after I found out that all those people who had told me that *crossdressers never transition* were full of it, I held them accountable for having bullshitted me. Because even if the chance is 1 in 1000, a woman deserves to know the truth, especially if she’s about to make a lifetime commitment. Or have children. Or buy a house with her husband. Or work more to put him through school. Or start saving for retirement.
A woman deserves to know – no matter what the situation – that there’s a chance her CD boyfriend may eventually become her ex-wife. I’m tired of no-one wanting to say it outloud. I’m tired of hearing how it’s a negligible percentage. I want to know who gave anyone the right to decide what “negligible” means when it comes to a person’s life. And I want to know too where they get the numbers that have convinced them it’s “negligible.”
Because I’d like to see them. And I know they don’t exist. My best guess why crossdressers think the number is so negligible is because transitioning women leave support groups intended for crossdressers when they transition, so crossdressers stop seeing them – a kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ phenomenon. Either that or they’re going by that whacked Tri-Ess logic, that says a CD who transitions was never a CD, anyway – even if they identified one for a couple of decades.
. . .
The even richer irony for me is that so many married transwomen and partners of transitioning women don’t read my book because the word “crossdresser” is in the title. Isn’t that rich? Sometimes I think I should find myself a small army of terrified CDs to go into the TS community and explain exactly how much My Husband Betty is about transitioning! Yet I had a partner in another group I’m in say – after having read my book – that there is nothing out there for spouses of transitioning people.
Papa Bear on one hand, Mama Bear on the other. Now both of them can’t be right.
It’s actually the partner of the transitioning person who’s right, in my opinion. My Husband Betty is not about transition; the story of Katie and Elle is a cautionary tale, only. It’s there so that others will understand it can happen. And it can happen even when the couple is deeply in love. I am hoping to write about what it’s like to live with someone who is considering transition in my next book, however, and I’ll certainly let you know if/when I do.
What I have always recommended is this: that any wife who is new to having a crossdressing partner read the first four chapters of My Husband Betty first, sit on them, mull over them, discuss them with her therapist and her partner. After a while, when she hits a certain comfort level, and she’s ready for more, she can read (the dreaded, terrifying, all-too-realistic) Chapter Five. She can read Peggy Rudd’s book(s) before or after mine – it’s not like there’s a whole slew of books by wives out there, is there? Some will prefer one over the other. Some will find them complementary in some ways. Others will hate and excoriate one and bless the heavens for the other. That’s not the issue for me; the issue is that sometimes CDs are so freaked out by the fact that I even talk about transition they remember the whole book being about it.
After my experience with Katie, and after doing all the research for My Husband Betty, I became convinced that if there’s anything a crossdresser’s wife needs to know, it’s exactly what crossdressers don’t tell her. You see, I didn’t write the book to scare anyone. I wrote it because I’m a wife, and I wish someone had told me everything I had to find out for myself. I wanted to spare any other wife the pain that Katie went through, and the fear I experienced. I wrote it once in the book, and I’ll write it again here: crossdressers do transition. Not all of them, not most of them, but some of them. And their potential spouses need to know.