Tonight the cable channel WE (Womens Entertainment Network) showed an episode of their regular show Secret Lives of Women – an episode about women who are married to crossdressers. I was interviewed for the show but we decided Betty and I were too “out” to really be classified as “secret” anymore. I was happy to hear that Peggy Rudd would be on, instead.
That said, the show did recommend My Husband Betty (along with Peggy’s books) as further reading. But, it looks like something has gone haywire, since the amazon.com links for My Husband Betty and for Peggy’s books are super-wonky.
If anyone who saw the show found this site as a result, you can still get My Husband Betty at Barnes & Noble online, or at Powells.com, another online bookstore, and I’m sure amazon.com will figure it out shortly.
If you did come here as a result of the show, do look around. There’s a selection of things I’ve written for the blog about relationships vis a vis crossdressing/trans issues, and of course there is a forum just for partners on our message boards.
Ultimatums
I was reading Reid Vanderbergh’s soon-to-be-published book and he mentioned how the wives of MTFs are doing reasonably well when they “were able to wrap their minds around the transition sufficiently that they did not leave the relationship, or deliver an ultimatum (“move forward with this transition and it’s over.”).”
& I was thinking, what difference is there between his example of an ultimatum:
Quote:
| move forward with this transition and it’s over |
and what i’ve said to betty:
Quote:
| i’m pretty sure i won’t be able to love a woman so transitioning may mean the end of our relationship. |
Because I honestly don’t know. Obviously tone and concern and trying to deal, yes, but ultimately, is there any difference? I’m not so sure there is.
More Thank Yous.
I suppose this is giving away the Acknowledgements page of the book, but I don’t think anyone’s planning on buying it for that, are they?
So, more thank yous to:
- Marlena, who read and commented and provided all sorts of references;
- Angus/Andrea, who provided me with useful reading and insights into linguistics issues;
- Megan, who read quite a few chapters early on for me;
- Emilia, who always managed to get me an article about three minutes after I emailed her that I needed it;
- Rhea and her wife who offered me my “writer’s cabin” when I thought I’d need it (I didn’t, after all, but it was a lovely offer);
- Michelle, who told me good stories, one of which turned out to be a very useful introduction for a specific issue I wanted to talk about;
- and Mary and Lucy, who drafted up a very cool idea for the cover that I loved (though sadly it’s not going to be used).
I think that’s everyone, for now, though of course thank you too to all of you who have emailed me or posted on the boards and inspired me to think in new ways about gender and gender roles.
It really is a relief to be done, though right behind the relief is this terrific scary feeling that I don’t get to just put it in a drawer somewhere now that I’m done: kind of the writer equivalent of stage fright, I guess. But of course it will be months till all y’all actually get to read it, so I bet stop worrying about what people are going to think of it till at least February.
I hate you like a sister…
Since I can only use the word companionship so many times, I decided to look up synonyms to vary my word choices.
So as I’m reading the differerent shades of meaning for companionship – like fellowship or hospitality or partnership – I come across this entry for fraternity:
Main Entry: fraternity Part of Speech: noun Definition: brotherhood Synonyms: Greeks, association, camaraderie, circle, clan, club, companionship, company, comradeship, fellowship, frat*, guild, house, kinship, league, letter society, order, organization, set, society, sodality, union
Antonyms: sorority
Source: Roget’s New Millenniumâ„¢ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.2.1) Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
* = informal or slang
and it surprised the hell out of me. Sorority is the opposite of fraternity? I’m a firm believer in the existence of mean girls but I think that’s overstating the case for them, no? Surely sororities are also about camaraderie and companionship, fellowship and society.
I’m not sure if I think this is funny or disturbing. Or both.
Sexism for $200, Alex
Just now on Jeopardy, in the “About the Book” category, the clue was (something like)
Found at the beginning of the book, it can run to several pages, and includes thanks yous to editors, agents, grant-making institutions, and wives.
And people think I’m whining when I say that “author” = “man” in a lot of people’s minds. Saying to yourself, “well that person is just sexist” works sometimes, but it’s the ongoing, subtle, water torture chipping away that really gets to you after a while.
Five Questions With… Jan B.
Jan B. is one of the people who started a trans group in Poughkeepsie called MHVTA. She’s been helping run the group since 2001, and I’ve known her for about that long. I used to call her “perpetual lurker Jan” on my very first yahoo support group, CDOD.
1) MHVTA is a nice group – how did you decide to start it? Do you have rules or guidelines, or are you making it up as you go?
Helen, thanks for the opportunity to answer these 5 questions. This is also a nice way to publicize our group so I want to start with a Shameless Plug:The Mid-Hudson Valley Transgender Association (MHVTA), a chapter of Renaissance, is a fairly new group. It was founded in May 2001 by Nikki and I. MHVTA serves the mid-Hudson Valley area of New York (the area north of New York City and south of Albany, from the Pennsylvania border on the west to Connecticut on the east). It’s an active group with regular monthly meetings near Poughkeepsie.
We were so frustrated that nothing was local. We had to travel forty to seventy miles to find a group, so someone said. “Well, just start it yourself (and they will come).” I had never been to a TG support group before but was pretty used to other types of support groups. We met in homes for four meetings and eventually found [an affordable] place to meet, with discreet off street parking.
It varies but there are around 20 dues-paying members who attend meetings. We have more than 100 members on our list server who are interested but don’t necessarily attend meetings. The membership requirements are that you are a TG interested to know more and we are open to the TG spectrum including family if they want to attend. We currently don’t invite admirers in but they sometimes sneak in when someone brings a friend. The members seem to appreciate the level of confidentiality and the one on one interviews pre visiting the group.
MHVTA’s principal mission is to provide outreach and support for our members, their families, their friends, and to be active in the Transgender Community and the greater community of the Mid-Hudson Valley, New York. MHVTA is a non-discriminatory group which is structured to allow participation by all those who support the transgender community. We respect and support the right of free and open expression and the right to be treated as equals by society. We focus on providing an understanding peer support network for anyone who would like to be a part of it and to assist others who wish to learn more about the Transgender community, acting as a Transgender advocate to other groups and institutions in the Mid-Hudson Valley area. We welcome new people with sensitivity towards their fears and concerns that accompany revealing themselves to others. MHVTA aims to accomplish this through: Regularly scheduled meetings, social events, and frequent and open communication. For more information, you can check MHVTA’s website.
You can also find an interview with some members of MHVTA at www.tgforum.com (but you can go directly to the article if you’re a subscriber).
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Jan B.”
Jeff & Esther
I mentioned Esther Williams to a wife of a crossdresser not long ago and she looked at me blankly – silly me, assuming everyone knows the story of the million-dollar mermaid and her crossdressing movie star boyfriend.
“Jeff Chandler was standing in the middle of the bedroom in a red wig, a flowered chiffon dress, expensive high-heeled shoes and lots of makeup,”
she said about her near-husband, Jeff Chandler, Hollywood hunk.
Here’s a great review that talks about the genderedness of it all that originally appeared in Salon, and I find it interesting the way he ties in her LSD trip, the recognition of her own animus, and how her acid-induced knowledge of her male self makes a crossdressed husband especially horrifying.
I wonder if the acid is required, since otherwise I fall into the same category of being aware of my animus, except I didn’t scream. Not even once.
On the Side
There are times when I think I have achieved the ideal form of monogamy: I spent the day with my husband for our anniversary, and now I’m about to go out to a lesbian club with my girlfriend. (And yes, I prefer thinking of Betty as my girlriend on the side, not as my wife. It’s sexier, no?)
Ben Barres, My New Hero
So someone is finally using transness as the last tool in the feminist toolbox, and I’m pleased as punch. Ben Barres, a PhD in various types of biology at Stanford, has written a response to Larry Summer’s views on women in science and gotten it published in the journal Nature.
Barres is an FTM who is recounting some of the experiences he’s had as a female scientist, and more recently as a male scientist – just to demonstrate the difference to people who don’t seem to get it:
Once (at MIT), he was told that a boyfriend must have solved a hard math problem that he had answered and that had stumped most men in the class. After he began living as a man in 1997, Barres overheard another scientist say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister’s work.”
– but not only that, he’s actively working on getting female scientists more awards and grants:
Last year, Barres convinced the National Institutes of Health to change how it chooses talented young scientists to receive its Director’s Pioneer Award, worth $500,000 per year for five years. In 2004, the 64-person selection panel consisted of 60 men — all nine grants went to men. In 2005, the agency increased the number of women on the panel, and six of the 13 grants went to women. Barres said that he has now set his sights on challenging what he perceives as male bias in the lucrative Howard Hughes Investigator program, an elite scientific award that virtually guarantees long-term research funding.
Quite a few major papers have covered his editorial, and if anyone out there has a copy, I’d love to see the full text.
Thank you, Ben Barres!
2nd Preview of She's Not the Man I Married
This excerpt is from Chapter 2: The Opposite of 49.
And I should mention I’m not going to say for sure the chapter names are going to stay the same either, or even if the chapters will stay in the same order.
It took me a long while to figure out how gender and power were intersecting for Betty and me. I had trained myself to be more submissive, and certainly worried that my natural ability to wear the pants in our relationship was going to screw things up. I always felt worried about being myself with a guy, because everything told me I wasn’t supposed to be the way I was naturally. It was difficult, to come to terms with out-butching Betty by a long shot. (Granted, I actively try to bring out her native tomboy, if there’s one in there, because I won’t have an “I broke a nail†partner.) Interestingly, when I first started experimenting with saying out loud that I was more the husband than the wife, I got nervous giggles and was corrected a lot. Plenty of people said right away, “But you’re not butch,†or “Betty’s still stronger than you,†or some kind of affirmation of my femininity. Some of my characteristics are feminine, and very innately so, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t also wear the pants. Still, I’ve been a little astonished at the ways in which people have effectively said, “Don’t say that out loud†when I talk about being the one in charge. It’s as if I were embarrassing them somehow. This has been one of many experiences over the past couple of years that has made me realize: (1) tomboys are okay as long as they are children; (2) masculinity in women makes people nervous; (3) heterosexuality was no place to figure out how to be who I am; and (4) most people don’t want to talk about how their relationships are gendered.