Tag: My Husband Betty

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A Kind of Valentine’s Day Present

I just discovered reviews of both My Husband Betty and She’s Not the Man I Married by Samantha Anne Perrin, and they were a lovely reminder of what I do, and honestly, in reading the list of quotes she pulled from She’s Not, I thought to myself “did I take smart drugs when I was writing that, or something?” because I’m always a little surprised since from inside my head, and inside my life, I do not often feel smart — emotionally or otherwise.

I am convinced there is something about the process of writing that creates another mind altogether. When I get to that point where I feel like I’m transcribing and not writing, I know I’m there.

I especially appreciate this little explanation:

One of the criticisms I have read of this book is that it is repetitive. . . If you find yourself thinking that what you are reading is a repeat of something you have read before, you are not reading it! My suggestion would be to re-read, and re-read that passage until you ‘get’ its true meaning. Repetitive? Hell no!

The repetition was in large part intentional. I wanted the book to feel like driving up a mountain on a road that winds its way up there, seeing the same peak, the same view, over & over again, or keeping it in sight, but seeing it in a slightly different way depending on the turn of the road. It’s a hat tip of Didion & Woolf (who both do it so much better than I ever could).

But mostly I put this up today because reading her reviews reminded me of the love that went into the writing of both books, that they are, still, my gift to the lovely woman to whom I’m married.

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My Husband Bitchy

Every once in a while, I will hear that some MTF trans person has vigorously insisted that I am a bitter feminist nightmare and that no married crossdressser or transitioning transsexual should “let” their wives read My Husband Betty.

Really, “let.”

Usually, this charge is on the grounds that I ask people who are MTF trans identified – if they are not living as female & aren’t feminist – to maybe do some research into women’s lives before deciding they will and can live as one (& before expecting absolute, unquestioning acceptance of their trans nature from their female spouse).

Recently I decided to respond:

Asking a trans spouses, especially one born and raised male, to be aware of modern women’s lives isn’t too much to ask, I don’t think, if what the CD/TG is asking for in return is acceptance of their trans nature. In a nutshell, it’s a lot to ask of a spouse or a girlfriend who has just been broadsided by their partner’s trans identity. There is often an expectation that the partner will want to know things, and learn things, and go to support groups, or accompany their spouse to outings. Their gendered feelings may also need to be expressed during sex.

That is, the raised-male spouse is asking his/her wife (depending on how the person identifies) to learn a whole lot about gender variance.

In exchange, I recommend that the person raised male learn something about being a woman, to learn about feminism, discrimination, sexual harassment and violence. Most women know most of these things as a result of living in the world as a woman (and many trans women come to know these things a few years after transition). But while a male-bodied trans person is living in the world as male, they won’t be exposed to these things. (Some MTF trans spectrum individuals, like some males, are feminist and always read about these things. I’m talking about the ones who don’t.)

In a sense, then, you could say I’m asking a lot, if you think asking the trans spouse to learn as much about his/her wife’s experience of life in her body and her gender as s/he is asking her spouse to understand about what it’s like to be trans.

You know, equality, even-steven, a little give and take. It’s a nutty idea, I know.

So crossdressers: read as much about women’s lives as you want your wife to read about crossdressing, and then read some more.

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Alcohol Poisoning

I’ve been drinking.

Sadly, it was a lot of the same old same old: cursory interest in parent, partner, & children. The kids were adorable. The wife was determined. The father was exhausted.

  • Multiple shots and references to surgery, instead.
  • Trans woman discovers surprising, sudden interest in men.
  • Expresses longing to be mother while wife is pregnant.
  • Voiceover talking about wife meeting her husband for the first time “as a woman” post Thailand, even though the husband had been living in female gender role for a year as per SOC.

Atypical trans documentary bits?

  • Added insult to injury for wife, while trans woman wonders – fleetingly – if she’s married her ex-girlriend if she’d have needed to transition. Fleetingly, stressed by Prince, but goddamn do wives of trans women everywhere hate her for that one. Yeah, thanks, it’s our fault you needed to transition. Do you really think we don’t wish, sometimes, that you’d married your ex-girlfriend, too?!
  • Newly female husband going up telephone pole in gear
  • ”  ”  ” mowing lawn with reference to still “wearing the pants”
  • ‘out of the mouths of babes’ testimony that natal female still does all the parenting and housework
  • bee stings lead to discovering of IS condition which justifies transition. (the years of crossdressing certainly don’t count for shit, right?)

So yeah, I’m drunk.You?

They all seem like reasonably nice people. I hate documentaries about teh trans. Hate ’em. I hate the way our lives our distilled into reverse camera angles and earnest questions across kitchen tables. I hate how the beauty of a trans woman admitting that she still sees her wife the way “he” did is degraded by the “sudden interest” in men. I hate the sad, confused, tendentious quality of trans women’s wives who are obviously overwhelmed with the whole business and still in love with their spouses.

* sigh*

Having been someone who has done shite like this, my only excuse is: it was in my contract. Not that that’s much of an excuse, but you do usually have a clause saying that you will in good faith blah blah blah consent to blah blah blah that will help sell the book. I’m not sure there’s any other reason to do these things anymore, but I hope, for Rene’s sake, & the boys’ sake, & the dad’s & Chloe’s, that this one will be forgotten when it’s Sweeps Week next year or in five years. Not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t. There are things I said and wrote at the time of My Husband Betty that embarass me now, as well as plenty that I”m still happy about. But I wrote a book, so when I”m lucky, you can see its brown spine in the LGBT section of bookstores these days. But a show like this is going to be dredged up at 3am for a few years, and every once too often, Rene and Chloe and her boys and dad will be online at the supermarket / drugstore / in the waiting room / at the doctor’s office / showing up for parent teacher night when someone they’ve never met couldn’t sleep and saw them on the TeeVee. And then, well, then is when you wish you could change your name and move to Timbuktu.

My best to all of them. Can we stop making these now?

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Trans Documentary Drinking Game

In light of the documentary about Chloe Prince that will air tomorrow night, I thought we should all be prepared for what looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a predictable documentary.

So, the rules, such as they are, for watching a trans documentary:

  1. Putting on makeup. Two drinks for reverse camera shot into mirror.
  2. Doing anything better done in jeans and sneakers in heels and a skirt. Examples: cleaning the house, shoveling the sidewalk, yard work, walking the dog.
  3. Before picture shown. Two drinks for picture in stereotypical male mode (sports team, facial hair, military, wedding tux)
  4. Camera shot putting on or taking off a bra.
  5. Photo of any wig, breast form, padding, etc.
  6. Surprise disclosure, when a trans woman is introduced and then partway through the piece, her secret is revealed.
  7. Camera focus on masculine body parts: hands, feet, Adam’s apple, height, etc.
  8. Any reference to genital surgery that refers to “becoming a woman” or “finally a woman”
  9. Minor chords played softly on a piano
  10. talk show host saying “you go girl”
  11. any discussion of plumbing or electricity
  12. black and white childhood shots, MTF with cap gun and cowboy hat, FTM as ballerina.
  13. Trans woman saying, “I am not a crossdresser. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
  14. Trans woman clutching large teddy bear in hospital bed.
  15. Birthday balloons after surgery.
  16. Trans woman with new boyfriend (after shot of tearful ex-wife).
  17. Trans woman sitting in chair in above-the-knee skirt, posed so you can see what great gams she has.
  18. Patient wheeled off to surgery …
  19. … lingering shot of the hospital bed with the teddy bear (or wife) left behind.
  20. Shot of protaganist sitting at the computer keyboard, looking at a trans support website or surgeon’s website….
  21. Any helping professional teaching deportment
  22. Camera in the operating room – just drink the whole bottle
  23. Any and all deployments of soft focus = 1 shot
  24. Close up of dotted lines in magic marker on pale fleshy body parts = 1 shot
  25. Earnest surgeon describes his motivation as “to help [girlname] become the woman she’s always really felt herself to be” = 3 shots
  26. Before picture with extreme facial hair – 1 shot
  27. Before picture in uniform – Military, Football, etc… – 2 shots
  28. Video from hair removal session : Laser – 1 shot, electrolysis – 2 shots
  29. Before picture – Last time she wore a dress (F2M) – 1 shots
  30. Breast binding – 2 shots
  31. Taking Hormones – Self-injecting -3 shots, orals – 1 shot
  32. Did anyone mention an arduous and lonely childhood?
  33. Meeting the school bully as “the new me” at the High School reunion?
  34. Looking at the old picture of self and saying something to the effect of “he was a nice guy….” or “Ken was a lot of fun, but his time is over. It’s Ginger’s turn now!”
  35. Trans woman claiming to have IS chromosomal pattern, an affinity for washing dishes, a sudden dislike of sports, etc.

Believe it or not, these are not the most snarky suggestions by some of our mHB board members. Also remember: there are quite a few people who hang out on our boards who have done this kind of media work, including me & Betty, of course, but also Jenny Boylan, amongst others. We need to laugh at ourselves as much as we laugh at the inanity of it all.

Twelve-Steppers should find their own version, of course. Maybe those ice cream poppers? But the point is to feel as physically ill by the end as the drinking crowd.

(Thanks and love to Gwen Smith who wrote her own version of this back in 2005 and to anyone else who has posted their version of this game.)

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High Tech Nerds R Us

In this cool article about Massachusetts’ push for transgender civil rights, the great geek/trans intersection is once again revealed:

In her office down the hall, Zircher, who holds many software patents, has three computer screens and two keyboards. On the bookshelf are titles such as “Advanced Windows Debugging’’ and “Hunting Security Bugs.’’ There’s also: “She’s Not The Man I Married’’ and “My Husband Betty.’’

Our thanks to Bella English and to Dana Zircher for the mention.

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Inconvenient

In response to this last post, I received this short email:

“My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser”

This is where you loose me Helen. You say you don’t use words like “Husband or Wife”….but then you write books using that exact terminology.

Very confusing.

I responded:

I wrote that book 6 years ago. My thinking is surely allowed to change, no?

He responded:

Convenient. No?

& I responded:

Is that how you’d talk to Betty about her decision to transition? That it was “convenient”?

My partner was a self-identified straight drag queen when we met, with a male identity.

She is living as a woman & doing what paperwork she can to reflect that.

One of the reasons I can’t & don’t use “husband” anymore is because people then start using “he” pronouns about my partner. She is not a he. To avoid that, I avoid the gendered terminology that leads to it.

When she had a genderqueer/androgynous presentation, she didn’t mind mixing up the pronouns – as I did in the 2nd book. Now, “he” chafes her, doesn’t fit.

So sue me for having had to make adjustments – especially ones that are entirely out of consideration of my partner’s gender.

Please don’t write back. Your response was rude beyond belief. I shouldn’t be justifying it with a response at all, but I like to give people a fair shake.

If I stop using “husband” then it’s somehow just “convenient” that I’m doing so. Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with my partner’s change in gender! *sigh* I’m having one of those days.

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Amazon Filters Out Queer/Sex Books

Not books about queer sex per se, although I’m sure those are included, but books about sexuality and/or queer topics, have lost their rankings at amazon.com. Mine included.

As Mark Probst reported, they are removing the rankings of these books exactly so they do not appear in “some searches and best seller lists.”

My Husband Betty was often categorized either in sexuality sections or in LGBT sections, but She’s Not the Man I Married is classified as a Gender Studies book.

This is bullshit. Amazon.com already gets crap ratings on the T with HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. When you see a book you like is missing its sales rank, that’s probably why: they’re filtering LGBT books out of their lists. Aside from being a bad business decision, it’s discriminatory and – well, just stupid for booksellers to be censoring their lists.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: When you find a book  that doesn’t have a sales rank, please send Amazon a message using the feedback page provided – scroll down toward the end of the page, & look for a Feedback box shaded light blue.

& GOOGLEBOMB: link to this page that redefines “amazon rank” more accurately.

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RIP Lux

Wow I have been busy, only finding out today, care of Penny on the MHB boards, that Lux Interior died this past week. He was half of the band The Cramps, well-loved punk rock psychedelic rockabilly band.

Yes, that all goes together.

RIP, Lux. & May your heaven be paved in gold lame.

This is them doing “What’s Inside a Girl?” (which was one of my favorite tracks):