Tag: anger

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What It Is

Two threads from a week or so ago got me thinking about what you might call The Big Picture. First, there was one about whether or not the mHB message boards have become a little cheerleader-y when it comes to people transitioning, and the other was Donna’s sad report of an altercation with her son.

I didn’t want to write this at the time, but wanted to give Donna – & the others reading – some time to feel a little better.

But in one particular post, our resident poster buddha pointed out that so many threads are more about the slippery slope than avoiding it, per se. In a few private emails, others pointed out the same thing, & one person in particular said she found the way the boards have changed quite in keeping with what I wrote in My Husband Betty, in (of course) Chapter 5, the Slippery Slope? chapter. When I think about the people who first came to the boards, it doesn’t take long to name quite a lot who used to identify as crossdressers who have recently transitioned, are transitioning or who are about to transition.

Most of those people have also seen their relationships fail, which is where Donna’s thread about her son comes in, because I found myself wanting to say something along the lines of this is exactly what I’m always going on about. We hate it. We don’t know why it’s hard, nearly impossible, to accept a gender change in our loved ones, but we do. And in talking about it with Betty I realized that as much as transness is impossible to understand for someone who isn’t (me included), I think it’s equally impossible for a trans person to understand why it’s so hard to accept a change of gender in someone they love, whether that person is a parent, friend, sibling, child, or partner. We want you to be happy if you change gender, but I think plenty of us who love you never quite are, or maybe, just maybe, it takes much longer for us not to be angry about it, still.

& I don’t know why. I don’t have any huge conclusions, here, except to say that I find myself feeling more precariously lucky when I look at the growing list of transitioned former crossdressers who are no longer with the women they were married to when they first crossed my path.

Sometimes, honestly, I don’t want to do the math. I don’t want to know what kind of statistic I’m up against. I worry that the only reason Betty and I have managed so far is because she hasn’t transitioned, and I still fear she will, and I fear, even more, that a year and a half after she does, or ten years after she does, I will say the same kinds of things Donna’s son said in a fit of anger.

For good reason, that worries me sometimes, sometimes way more than I want it to.

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Jennifer Finney Boylan's Southern Comfort Speech

Thanks to Ms. Boylan for allowing me to reproduce it here; this is the complete & unedited version.
Hi everybody. Gosh, look at you all. You all look fantastic from up here. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room before with so many large women.
(improvised joke #1)
(improvised joke #2)
I notice that some of you look a little tired today. Which is not to say, you don’t look fabulous, I’m just saying that some of you seem like you were up kind of late last night. Did you check out the parties last night? You know the one I mean, the theme party—Come as Your Favorite Nude Author?
(beat)
First time in my life I’ve ever been in a room full of a hundred and fifty nude Kate Bornsteins.
(improvise joke #3)
I have to be honest and say I feel a little bit like a fraud up here today, because I know that there are so many of you who are so much more articulate about these issues than I am. I am an English teacher from Maine, a storyteller— what I’m not is a therapist, or scholar of gender studies, or for that matter, much of an activist. I’ve tried doing some of those things sometimes, because I want to do my part, but I have to say I just so lame at them. I’m grateful that there are people doing all the work around the country that’s being done on behalf of people like us, including the organizers of this conference—our fabulous chairwoman, Kristen, as well as heather O’malley and Cat Turner, and Lola Fleck. I’m just as grateful for all the people who came before me, who blazed the trail that has made my life easier.. I know I would not be here without them, quite literally.
There is an old saying that I find true for me this afternoon—one reason I am able to see so far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
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More About DO '06

What I wrote the other day doesn’t even touch all the other stuff that happened to us, or the people we got to see again, & those we met for the first time, & other experiences we had.
It’s so hard to explain how Dark Odyssey just pulls your skin off and lets you experience things in such a raw, honest way. At one point, during the Cirkus Erotikus, Betty saw that one of the genderqueer types who’d been at the mixer was doing the flogging, and being Betty, stepped right up to be flogged. And she did, and B. and I watched and laughed at the expressions on her face (at least until B. got in line to be next). Internally I felt something in me was about to blow. Not long before I’d run into one of the swingers we’d gotten to know some the previous year, and he told me that he always sees me, in his head, sitting on a golf cart last year watching some kind of sex, and that the expression on my face was “I could use some of that.” It made me sad, and scared, at first. I’m the first one to admit I’m kind of repressed, so when Betty just “stepped right up” to be flogged – I didn’t know she’d met the person at our little genderqueer mixer – something in me just broke.
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Bordering on Misogyny

More thoughts on the MWMF controversy: I find sometimes the anger expressed toward the exclusionary policy-makers at the MWMF bordering on misogyny. Because relatively speaking, lesbians want to keep trans women out of a camp. But when I look around at the world, and what goes on with trans women, I see really horrible things, like rape and horribly brutal murders and cops and media using phrases like “he” or even “it.” & I wonder if sometimes the level of outrage against MWMF isn’t kind of – overamped. I mean they’re just keeping trans women out of a private music festival, not firing them or denying them housing or health treatment or hormones or life.
You know? I don’t think their policy is right, but I also think there are bigger eggs to fry, and using all this energy and rage over MWMF might find people exhausted when something else comes up.
I understand that it’s much easier to be very angry and disappointed with people who should know better, and yes, I think the organizers of the MWMF should know better. But their actions, in terms of comparison, are not as hateful as some of the anger describes it as being. Discriminaton and exclusion is horrible, yes, but it’s a music festival, not the right to live and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I’m just not sure the level of anger is – well, appropriate.
But then I don’t think the level of hate and suspicion being tossed around by MWMFers toward trans women is anything like appropriate, either.
Neither of these reflections, by the way, has anything to do with what people have been saying on our message boards – they’re observations taken from other things I’ve been reading.

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Five Questions With… Kate Bornstein

Kate Bornstein is an author, playwright and performance artist. Her latest book, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, came out last month. Kate’s published works include the books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us; My Gender Workbook; and the cyber-romance-action novel, Nearly Roadkill, written with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Kate’s plays and performance pieces include Strangers in Paradox, Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, and y2kate: gender virus 2000. It was both a pleasure and an honor to get to speak with her.

1. I love that you mention in Hello, Cruel World how trans folk are separating themselves into “male” and “female” by using terms like MTF and the like, because I’ve noticed that those of us who are hot for trans folk seem to like the transness, not the ‘target gender’ (or really even the ‘birth gender’) alone. It’s the chaser’s dirty secret. Do you think trans people will start to enjoy being trans, sexually or otherwise?

There are lots of un-named, unclaimed desires that are free from the male/female gender system. Desire for sex with oneself is a sexual orientation in itself, and you can be any gender or no gender in order to have that desire. My former partner felt the most important component for his desire was that his partner be the same gender as him. When he was a woman, he was with women; when he was gender-exploring he was with someone who was also gender-exploring; now that he’s a man he’s with men. I think what you’ve got is an as-yet-un-named sexual orientation: the desire for sex and romance with someone who’s neither male nor female.

Give your desire for transness a name. Then, speak your desire loudly, and proudly and seductively. I think if people hear that, that you’d like them the way they are, they’d be more encouraged to live that place of neither/nor.

As to using terms like MTF/FTM – yeah, I’ve been complaining about that for years. In this new book, I’m just a little less patient about it. It’s amusing and humiliating to admit it, but I still work hard to pass in public. I’m an old fart, and that’s still important to me. Out in the world, I pass to avoid the shame and the danger. But intimately with friends, community, or our lovers? The not-passing is the dance of love. No need for male or female, what luxury!

kate bornstein & betty crow1b. But I seem to upset some transsexual people when I recognize that Betty’s masculinity turns me on – even if it’s in addition to my being turned on by her femininity.

Upset them! When you go beyond either/or, people think you’re a radical, that you’re less safe because you’re less predictable. Speaking or writing down the truth of your desire unlocks the political and moral shackles of desire.

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Five Questions With… Cynthia & Linda Phillips

Cynthia & Linda Phillips were once a crossdresser & wife who started the famous Texas T Party. They have stayed together despite this crossdresser’s having discovered she was transsexual, and they make their life together as two women.
1) Why did you start the Texas T-Party? Why did the event get retired?
Tlinda phillips & cynthia phillipshe Texas “T” Party was started by the Boulton & Park Society in the late ‘80s, as a form of outreach by several of the members who had been to other functions around the country. None of us ever dreamed it would be the huge success it turned out to be. Cynthia and I joined the club about the time the first “T” started. We had just retired and were looking for some way to help our community.
The reason we finally retired the “T”, after 10 years, was the stress had finally gotten to us. Most of the original organizers of B&P were gone, and we never had much help, in any case. Cynthia, because of her experience with group functions, did the majority of the work, with me tagging along behind. Her blood pressure became dangerously high from the stress of running the “T” and I had to pull her off the job of running the whole thing. It was just a matter of burning out.
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Belligerent Old Ladies?

I had a bad dream about an elephant a couple of weeks ago.* I’ve had a couple of dreams in a row about not being able to keep animals safe (another one involving a calico cat), if anyone feels the need to be Freud – and after this one I woke up haunted by the idea of unhappy, angry elephants. I’ve always liked elephants – they’re peaceful, smart, social, familial. They talk to each other, and they’re otherwise playful and peaceful, even in the most extraordinary circumstances. As a way of purging my bad dream, I started wondering if there was anything I could do, and I came upon www.elephants.com, which is the website of The Elephant Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary takes in old circus elephants. It can only take females (because males don’t socialize with others), but it gives them free range, good food, and a safe warm place to sleep. Plus, friends – the other elephants, dogs and cats, their caretakers.
Elephants occasionally get labeled “dangerous” like Topsy did – usually when they have the good sense to smack down a mean trainer or two – and Winkie was one of the ones who did. At upwards of 7000 lbs., “aggressive” can mean “fatal” in an elephant. But since she’s retired, she’s been entirely peaceful, with no signs of aggressive behavior. There was just something about her story that speaks to me, so I thought I’d share it.
They keep blogs of the doings at the Sanctuary – both African & Asian – and it can be pretty heart-warming reading. I just really love the idea of these formerly cramped, chained-to-a-post, performing animals laying around, taking baths, eating berries, and occasionally chasing dogs (a game for both the dogs and the elephants, apparently). Like there’s some justice in the world, sometimes, for at least a lucky few.
_______
* The dream was a result of my having discovered the sad and unjust execution of Topsy the Elephant. Please don’t read the story at all if you’re fond of elephants, REALLY. I’m warning you. Her story has haunted me for three years, since I first read about the memorial to her at Coney Island. The short, leaving-out-the-gruesome-details part of the story is: badly-treated performing elephant kills three men and is electrocuted by the famous Edison, who was trying to prove that his form of eletricity was safer.

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Review: Leslie Feinberg's Drag King Dreams

Murdered Crossdressers, and Other Facts of Trans Life
review by Helen Boyd
June 3, 2006
Drag King Dreams
Caroll & Graf
by Leslie Feinberg
I’m not sure Leslie Feinberg has an actual fan club, but if there is one, I want in.
When I first read Stone Butch Blues, it blew my mind. A lesbian friend – since transitioned – made me read it. Made me, and for good reason: it’s like a sledgehammer of experience for anyone who has ever lived in the world as queer, or working class, and especially for anyone who has lived in the world as both. My friend knew it would speak to me, as it spoke to him.
Transgender Warriors was equally great, full of information, rage, inspiration. I remember practically pointing out passages to strangers on the subway when I was reading it.
But Drag King Dreams is like something from another world. Leslie Feinberg is not just remarkable as a person, and activist, but as a writer. Or as a radical, righteous soul. When I met hir at TIC (UVM’s trans conference), zie came up to thank me and Betty for what we were doing, and I could have been knocked over with a feather. I’m still astonished. Leslie Feinberg thanking me? For anything? Absurd. But now I know why. Leslie Feinberg was thinking about crossdressers, and zie was thining about crossdressers a lot, and in deep, empathetic ways.
Crossdressers: buy this book. You think I’m your friend? Leslie Feinberg is the mensch you want at your back, believe me.
The book starts with Max Rabinowitz (transman, drag king, genderqueer, bulldagger – it’s not really clear and doesn’t matter) talking to hir friend Vickie. In a moment of frustration, of ‘transer than thou’ anger, zie says something about how Vickie can take the clothes and the wig off and go back to being normal.
The next day Vickie is found brutally murdered.
And the rest of the book is Max’s meditation on friends, community, activism, family; it’s an insider’s view into being queer, being outside, being “other” while also being well-loved, deeply loving, and sorry. The book is Max’s apology to Vickie, for that moment of assumption and hierarchy that a crossdresser’s life is somehow “easier” than anyone else’s.
Throw in some amazing scenes about being ungendered online, a lovely exchange between a “tough as nails” femme and an “suit and tie bulldagger,” a remarkable speech by Vickie’s communist uncle; a chilling scene of an apartment break-in by mysterious and angry visitors, and one scene – an exchange of sweet, light coffee and flags – that was so touching, so genuine, and so intense that I could taste the coffee and jonesed for a smoke right along with Max.
The cast of characters is a veritable melting pot of transness and their empathizers: Estelle’s surviving wife being one. I’ve never seen myself in a novel before, and though I have no interest in living Estelle’s reality, some of her words rang out in ways that were profound to me. I cried a lot just thinking about her, who she is, who she is to me.
But it’s the delicacy that this book really thrives on: Feinberg doesn’t say “Max doesn’t feel solidarity with this asshole transman because he’s middle-class” but zie makes the point. Zie shows, not tells: the first lesson in fiction writing, and the one most writers get wrong.
Leslie Feinberg, THANK YOU.
You can find a discussion about Drag King Dreams, and Leslie Feinberg’s other books, Stone Butch Blues and Transgender Warriors, in our Reader’s Chair Forum. I’ve also got a list of books I recommend on gender/trans issues on my Recommended Reading page.

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Five Questions With… Richard Docter

Dr. Richard Docter is a clinical psychologist and gender researcher from Los Angeles with 20 years of experience in the transgender community. Together with Virginia Prince, he is co-author of the largest survey of cross dressers ever published. In 1988 he published the book Transvestites and Transsexuals. He continues to be a frequent contributor to transgender conventions throughout the nation.
richard docter, christine jorgensen1) Your Transvestites & Transsexuals was one of the only books (other than Mariette Pathy Allen’s Transformations) that actually mentioned spouses when I was looking for information nearly a decade ago. What encouraged you to include spouses?
< Dr. Richard Docter with Christine Jorgensen, 1987. (Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen.)
There were a number of published articles about the concerns of wives published prior to 1988. I was interested in the views of wives because important family dynamics are almost always affected by cross dressing. Few wives were totally rejecting, but few had worked out an accomodation that felt good for both. The wives who seem most interesting to me are people like you, Helen, who defy the societal view that all of this is sick, sick, sick. Instead, some wives, as you point out, not only put shame on the back burner, but find ways to enjoy the joy of cross dressing that means so much to their husband. I hope you will keep collecting their stories so they can be shared with both husbands and wives.
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Humorless Feminist

Like everyone, people frequently forward me dumb jokes that someone has forwarded to them, & on & on.
And often I’m offended by jokes that other people laugh at.
There’s this one, say:

A woman from North Dakota and another from the East coast were seated side by side on an airplane. The woman from North Dakota, being friendly and all, said: “So, where are you from?” The East coast woman said, “From a place where they know better than to use a preposition at the end of a sentence.” The woman from North Dakota sat quietly for a few moments and then replied: “So, where are you from, bitch?”

I understand that the joke is based on the woman’s rudeness, but I’m also tired of jokes about East Coast women, and educated women, etc. They tire me. I’m an educated East Coast woman, you know?
Don’t get me started on blonde jokes.
But what amazes me is that someone would actually send me these jokes. Not a stranger, either. Someone who knows well enough that I’m blonde, from the East Coast, and educated. Shoot, they even know I’ve taught grammar.
And I can’t figure out if this is weird passive-aggressive stuff, or if people just don’t think.
Either way, I get pissed off – probably more pissed off than necessary – and if I say anything about it (to the person, or to someone we both know) I get accused of being “too touchy” or “humorless” or “sensitive.”
Well, yeah, so I am. When people tell jokes that I’m the punchline of, remarkably, I feel offended. So sue me. But either way, it’s very hard for me to like the person who sent it much.