Just a reminder: Tristan Taormino is specifically looking for CDs & their partners who are in non-monogamous relationships. You can read her description of the book she’d be interviewing you for and more about what she’s looking for below the break.
Last Stop: Poughkeepsie
Ironic perhaps that Betty & I should be doing what looks like the last of our “in person” gigs via rental car instead of by train – since there have been times in the past few months that I felt like I lived on the latter. Not that I mind: I really do love trains in nearly an irrational way. It’s something about the sound of a train whistle – all at once so melancholy, so romantic, & so hopeful.
It’s fitting that we should wind down in Poughkeepsie, since the group I’ll be visiting, MHVTA, is one that let me interview them when I was researching My Husband Betty. What I remember best was asking, “What would you want the world to know about crossdressing that they don’t?” and I got a variety of answers that informed my intent when I wrote it.
So thanks to everyone who has let me ask them questions, emailed me with input, and told me their stories.
Killer Shoes
On tonight’s Law & Order:Criminal Intent
“Is crossdressing something people kill for these days?”
and later
“This is a straight guy who can only get excited by wearing women’s clothes. Tranvestism usually goes hand in hand with masochism.”
& Now Goren is interviewing the two prositutes who are explaining forced feminization.
The Riches
The new Eddie Izzard show, “The Riches,” is about to start on F/X.
“A wild new playground for a TV drama,” says Newsweek.
& Apparently the son likes to wear dresses.
“Could be worse,” says the wife.
“He could be on crack,” says Izzard’s character.
But Eddie Izzard as a con man – somehow, it’s perfect. It gives him a chance to be the eight million people he can be – the kind of broodiness I’ve seen him do on Broadway, but then that big used-car salesman schmaltzy guy he does, too – which has nothing to do with him being a transvestite, & everything to do with him being a really good actor.
Not Transitioning
For me, the sign that Betty was kind of transitioning under my nose was when she didn’t want to act as a male anymore. She felt she wasn’t transitioning. I called foul.
Sometimes it’s like trans folk do everything except SAY you’re transitioning.
& Since we just heard from yet another person who formerly identified as a crossdresser who then started using transgender who now worries she’s truly transsexual, I want to see any marriage that ends because of transness end without the kind of bitterness that’s too frequently the case. I’d rather be more optimistic & say my goal is to keep the marriages from ending, but I’ve gotten to a point where containing the damage seems like more than enough to accomplish.
It’s as if there is something built into transness that makes it especially hard on partners: trans people don’t want to be trans, don’t want to hurt their loves ones, don’t want to up-end their own lives. Who would? That part is easy to understand. Trans people don’t want to be trans but are sometimes still actively but subconsciously moving toward transition and even beginning to without saying “I have made up my mind to transition.”
Unfortunately that gives lie to all the hoo-ha about trust & communication that we’re all always hearing about. When the trans person isn’t accurately communicating what we, their partners, see going on right before our eyes, we can’t trust what we’re hearing, and start to judge the situation beyond and despite what the trans person might be saying.
Some of the problem of course is defining what transition is, exactly. As Caprice pointed out in the thread on the boards where we’re discussing this, “Partners may see ‘transition’ differently than the transperson. A TG may think that transitioning is changing to be a woman. A partner may consider transitioning to be becoming anything that is not-man.”
But of course for someone like me, “not man” is entirely acceptable while “woman” is not. For others, “not man” is unacceptable. Judging the difference between the way the trans person defines transition and how the partner does seems like a huge part of this, but it’s not all of it: some of it too is about the trans person recognizing the change.
I remember Betty & I looking at our wedding pictures one day after months of me remarking about how “not male” she’d become, and finally, it registered. She finally saw how much she was male when we got married, and how much she wasn’t anymore.
It was a relief to me, much like when an umpire/referee agrees with your call on a close play. “He must be blind!” fans yell at the TV set. “He must be blind!” partners post in their support groups. It’s knowing that when someone looks in the mirror they are seeing what you’re seeing. It’s about perception itself, wrapped up in how we define gender and in how we recognize it and mark it on ourselves. It’s the no-man’s-land where the line between “feminine” and “female” is gigantic to me, but not so much to Betty.
One of the reasons I wrote Chapter 5 of My Husband Betty despite the myriad protestations of crossdressers was because I don’t think wives leave when they learn that crossdressers sometimes transition. They run when it gets personal, when they start to see their very own crossdresser husband research HRT, or finding out what it takes to legally change names, i.e., doing things that look more to them like transition than crossdressing.
I feel like we, personally, ended up on the brink of transition just by exploring and trying to navigate a middle path. When it comes to trying to find a compromise between closeted crossdressing and medical/legal transition, we are all standing at the edge of the wood, machetes in hand. There are few paths. The people who went before – Virginia Prince comes to mind – thought she was forging a new path, and probably still insists she was. But to her wives? If I were her wife, I’d say she transitioned without GRS. I’d say she did more than live as a “transgenderist” when she took the hormones that gave her breasts and started living full-time as a woman.
Having a trans woman who is long past transition around has been critical for me in even addressing this, or realizing it. Suzy, much to her chagrin perhaps, confirms my worst fears – and thanks to her for doing so. Are trans people who hope to find a middle path fooling themselves? Or are they just putting themselves at greater risk of transitioning without intending to? Do they have an extra burden of being more careful about making decisions without making them?
Is there a reason that partners see the first permanent body mod as a warning sign? Of course there is. I felt petty and unsupportive (and a ton of pressure) when I objected to Betty removing her facial hair permanently. But in retrospect, I was right to protest, because permanent facial hair removal was all she needed to make living fulltime possible. Possible slides into probable slides into done slides into irreversible quite quickly in trans land. For others, possible might happen as a result of taking hormones, or crossdressing fulltime, or even just accepting one’s transness.
Partners aren’t crazy. We are not willfully putting our heads in the sand. For the most part, I think we’re just able to admit what’s going on sooner, and more clearly, than our partners can, the Cassandras of transland. And like the historical Cassandra, we’re often both disbelieved and forced to stand and watch, hopeless and unable to prevent the thing we’ve predicted and feared, come to pass.
His Hotness, Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp on the Actor’s Studio, being asked about playing Ed Wood: James Lipton, the interviewer, asks him if some of the fun of the role wasn’t dressing up in women’s clothes, and Depp responds, “Getting paid to dress like a woman? Yeah. And get away with it? Yeah.”
Or something close to that. Then when asked how he came up with the way he played Ed Wood, he said it was a little bit of the optimism of Ronald Reagan, some of the Tin Man, and – Casey Kasem.
& Only after that does he admit he played Ichabod Crane as “Girl Detective.”
& There’s one more question asked him, by a student, about women, and crossdressing, that my readers would probably appreciate his answer to, which starts with the unlikely phrase, “The most trouble I ever had crossdressing…”
& (ahem) Buster Keaton was a huge influence on Edward Scissorhands.
Overall, a great interview, going over all his major roles, & not to be missed by any Johnny Depp fan.
6th Preview of She’s Not the Man I Married
Excerpt from Chapter 6 – Genitals Are the Least of It
So while I knew that Betty was a little sexually unusual and not your typical guy, I didn’t have any idea early on that his crossdressing meant anything but that he would prefer to be a little prettier than most men when we made love. But that wasn’t the whole story, and after subsequent conversations and discoveries about his transness, we both started to realize that the male sexual role was not his favorite. While some might say that his crossdressing should have been a huge road sign, plenty of crossdressers are very happy with a traditional gender role in the bedroom: They want to be on top, just in panties. Through time, I realized that not only did Betty’s eyes light up when I took the lead in some way—in any way, really—but I was having way better sex, too. It was terrifying. All along I’d thought I was terrifically liberated about this stuff; other boyfriends had preferred nonmissionary positions—who doesn’t?—but I’d never been in a situation before where I had to acknowledge that taking the lead felt good for both me and my partner. That is, I had to own it. If I “ended up†on top, in the dark, in those moments of sexuality when no one talks about what just happened, or is about to happen, it seemed okay. But if I were to say out loud, “Hey, I like this,†all hell would break loose emotionally.
When you cross a taboo in a secret, private way, and you don’t have to talk about what you like, it can just make sex a little sexier.
But when you do have to talk about sex—say, if things aren’t going quite right between you and a partner—then it can be terrifying to admit what feels good. Like just about everyone else, I had messages in my head that being aggressive sexually as a woman made me a slut, or a pervert, or another socially awful thing I wasn’t supposed to be. But for Betty and me, the choice was between acknowledging these feelings and desires and their taboos, or arguing about sex indefinitely and eventually breaking up over it. The latter wasn’t an option.
What was happening in a very private, intimate space between me and Betty involved whole hordes of people: boyfriends who’d called me a nympho, my mother’s implied reminders to be a “Christian lady,†my years of being called or assumed to be lesbian. I was worried about all the labels I wasn’t fitting, and I was even more worried about which ones really could be applied. Betty brought her own horde as well: her guy friends who bedded any woman who was willing, ex-girlfriends who expected her to play the male role, and even one ex who left her for a woman. Then throw in all the cultural voices of religion, morality, and gender correctness. One of the most difficult tasks we had was asking all those people to leave our bedroom and kicking them out when they didn’t want to go.
Happy Halloween!
It’s the International Holiday for Crossdressers and Slutwear, no?
Have a blast, and please assign a designated driver.
Happy Birthday Ed Wood
I was informed yesterday, by mHBer Barbara, that today is Ed Wood‘s birthday. I think that makes it National Crossdressing Day, no?
Or National B-Movie Day?
Or National Angora Sweater Day?
You pick. Have fun. Get yourself ready for tomorrow, which is National Coming Out Day.
Regarding Transgender Tapestry #110
I received my copy of Transgender Tapestry #110 the other day, and so turned immediately to the Book Review section, as I’d been asked to write a review of Richard/Alice Novic’s Alice in Genderland
I had also been told, by Richard Novic and by then-editor Dallas Denny, that Richard Novic didn’t like my review, and had requested TT run a more favorable review instead. Ms. Denny opted to run both reviews, side by side, and told me as much. I was okay with her decision, even though I found Novic’s request somewhat odd, as I wrote what was at worst a mixed review, but by no means a bad one. (I even used the phrase, “highly recommended†which is generally not found in a bad review.)
That was as much as I knew until I received my copy in the mail the other day. It was quite a surprise to see, in addition to my review and the requested 2nd review, a note by Richard Novic effectively rebutting my own review and plainly stating “I was hoping that as a reviewer, she might rise above the way my book affected her personally. . .†In addition, she mentioned how “surprised†she was that TT had chosen me to review her “life story.â€
For the record, then, a few corrections.
(1) Richard Novic specifically requested, by email, that I review Alice in Genderland for TT. Suffice it to say the new editor of TT, Denise LeClair, and the old editor of TT, Dallas Denny, both have a copy of said email.
(2) The review I did submit had been re-written several times after I let Richard Novic read it and before I sent it to TT. She was not happy with my original draft(s), so I softened a good deal of my criticism of it.
(3) I sent Richard Novic my review of her book beforehand only as a personal favor, and in fact re-wrote the piece some only because we had become somewhat friendly over time. He had written to me on previous occasions, having read my book, to ask advice about publishing houses & the like, and I gave her what information I could about the advantage of publishing with a house as opposed to independently. I do not and did not harbor any personal animosity toward Richard Novic, but I have learned my lesson: I will not let someone read a review I’ve written before submitting it for publication again.
(4) Dallas Denny was not responsible for the inclusion of Alice Novic’s “note†about my review, having resigned her post as editor between the time she submitted the two reviews and the actual publication of TT #110. She has said she found the publication of such a rebuttal in TT an embarrassment both to Richard Novic and to TT.
(5) Generally speaking, authors do not rebut their reviews. It’s considered bad form. They may occasionally factually correct a reviewer, if anything.
(6) The announcement in the same issue of TT that Richard Novic is to be one of TT’s regular columnists makes the publication of that note even more unprofessional and smacks of favoritism.
Finally, I want to state that I stand by my review. The idea that my “personal feelings†overwhelmed my professional considerations is laughable; after all, half of what I do professionally is advocate for partners! More than anything, however, I wanted people – crossdressers especially – to understand how rare and highly individual Dr. Novic’s situation is, so that they would not make the tragic mistake of expecting their own wives to accept their having boyfriends on the side. As it is, so many wives are already stretched to the limit in terms of accepting and honoring their husbands’ crossdressing. I will also reiterate that I found Richard Novic’s honesty about his own bisexualism and his journey toward self-acceptance laudable and useful.
If people would like to read more reviews of the book – including some of my more personal feelings about it – do check the thread on our message boards where some of our regular posters chimed in as to their own feelings about the book, too.