Lambda Lit Transgender Finalists

But despite the absence of Whipping Girl, I do want to congratulate the finalists:

• Transparent, Cris Beam (Harcourt)
• Male Bodies, Women’s Souls, LeeRay M. Costa, PhD, (Haworth)
• The Marrow’s Telling, Eli Clare (Homofactus Press)
• What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz (University of Nebraska Press)
• Nobody Passes, Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Seal Press)

I have an essay in Mattilda’s Nobody Passes of course, but I especially wanted to congratulate Eli Clare and thank him for all the work he’s done in/for the trans community.

Whipping Girl

The Lambda Literary Foundation’s list of finalists for the 2007 Lammies is out, and She’s Not the Man I Married didn’t make the cut. And I’m okay with that; it can be a little tiring to see how even trans people don’t seem to care, often, about how loved ones see/relate/deal with transness, but I’m getting used to it. Besides, I got my props the first time around, when My Husband Betty made finalist.

That said, Whipping Girl didn’t make the cut and that is absolutely 100% wrong. & I’ll tell you why.

Whipping Girl is, to date, the only book to address, theoretically, the uneasy relationship between trans people - specifically MTF transsexual women - and feminism, and that work was long overdue. It addresses sexuality, media representations, the historical pathologization of trans people by psychologists, the fetishization of tans women’s sexualities, the inherent misogyny of a feminist politics that mocks femininity, and then some.

It has been personally & politically important to me in confronting what remained of my own “natural attitude” toward my own gender, what Serano calls cissexism (and rightfully so) and proposes the concept of “subconsious sex” which did more to explain transsexualism to me than anything ever has — outside, maybe, of Betty’s “because” model.

It’s a real shame that this book was not recognized by the Lambda Literary Foundation. It will be considered a classic, revelatory and ground-breaking book in time; it’s just sad the Foundation’s judges don’t have the foresight to give it its due now.

Julia, personally: thank you. I always appreciate when anyone, with their words and logic and anger, can make me a little less of an asshole, and Whipping Girl did that in spades.

The First Man-Made Man (review)

So I read The First Man-Made Man by Pagan Kennedy not long ago, and I’m going to ‘fess up: this book really bothered me. The research seemed solid. The topic was interesting & book-worthy. But it was also somewhat repetitive, and I felt the plot arch was mis-played; you find out too much of the story upfront, & so there isn’t so much story to keep up the second half of the book.

But that’s not what bothered me so much: the tone of the book was remarkably condescending. The interview with the monk at the end just felt like a dick joke. & A lot of the time, the narration made me so uncomfortable I really just wanted to read the actual manuscript the first trans man wrote, instead. (Although from what I hear, no one seems to know if a copy exists at all anymore, or not.)

Don’t get me wrong: this is a valuable & interesting book & really gets at how remarkably new the tech was; I especially enjoyed the section on the early practitioners of plastic surgery. But it just felt to me that the author never really believed he was a guy at all, which strikes me as a remarkably unsympathetic way to write about not just transness, but about a trans man who was so inexorably alone as a trans person. Michael Dillon strikes me as a remarkable soul who had a tremendous amount of integrity and bravery, and frankly, this book gives you just enough about him to know that the book didn’t do him justice.

"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in black and white terms

If you're wondering why trans folks were/are upset with J. Michael Bailey's "The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism" [emphasis mine], here's an analogy. Imagine a researcher who:

- drew conclusions about the entire population of black women based on a half-dozen women he met in a local bar (because he didn't know how to locate other black women, despite the presence of several organization for black women) and based on that sampling

- argued that white women "aspire (with some success) to be presentable, while [black women] aspire (with equivalent success) to be objects of desire" (Pg. 180)

- argued black women "tend to have a short time horizon with certain pleasure in the present being worth great risks for the future" (Pg. 184)

- argued that black women "might be especially well suited to prostitution" (Pg. 185)

- argued the black women are "especially motivated" to shoplifting (Pg. 185)

- argued those who were black women "are much better looking than most" of those who aren't, and that he can tell the difference between light-skinned black women and dark-skinned white women based on whether he was attracted to them (Pgs 180-182)

- argued if someone said they didn't fit his characterization of them, they were lying

I doubt we'd be debating whether those findings were "politically incorrect" and recognize the shoddy "research" for what it was.

Or you can just listen to Bailey speak for himself -- about his test to tell the autogynephiliac transsexuals (those who Bailey argues are men aroused by the image of themselves as women) from the homosexual transsexuals (those who Baileys says are gay men who are just so effeminate they become women). I should note that Bailey argues these are the only two types of transsexuals who exist and that the many transsexuals who say neither of these descriptions fit their life experiences must be lying.

I have devised a set of rules that should work even for the novice (though admittedly, I have not tested them). Start at zero. Ask each question, and if the answer is "Yes," add the number (+1 or -1) next to the question. If the sum gets to +3, stop; the transsexual you're talking to is autogynephiliac. If the sum gets to -3, she is homosexual.

+1 Have you ever been married to a woman?
+1 As a child, did people think you were about as masculine as other boys?
+1 Are you nearly attracted to women as to men? Or more attracted to women? Or equally uninterested in both? (Add 1 if "Yes to any of these.)
+1 Were you over the age of 40 when you began to live full time as a woman?
+1 Have you worn women's clothing in private, and, during at least three of those times, become so sexually aroused that you masturbated?
+1 Have you ever been in the military or worked as a policeman or truck driver, or been a computer programmers, businessman, lawyer, scientist, engineer or physcian?
-1 Is you ideal partner a straight man?
-1 As a child, did people think you were an unusually feminine boy?
-1 Does this describe you: "I find the idea of having sex with men very sexually exciting, but the idea of having sex with women is not at all appealing?"
-1 Were you under the age of 25 when you began to live full time as a women?
-1 Do you like to look at pictures of really muscular men with their shirts off?
-1 Have you worked as a hairstylist, beautician, female impersonator, lingerie model, or prostitute?

Finally, if the person has been on hormones for at least six months, ask yourself this question:

If you didn't already know that this person was a transsexual, would you still have suspected that she was not a natural-born women?

+1 if you answer is "Yes" (if you would have suspected)
-1 if your answer is "No"

Keep in mind that people don't always tell the truth. This interview could be invalid if the transsexual is really autogynephiliac, but is either (a) worried that you will think badly of her or deny her a sex change if you know the truth, or (b) obsessed with being a "real" woman. [Pgs 192-194]

Scientific indeed...

“Stuff I Supposed After Meeting Some People in a Gay Bar”*

* quote by Mara Keisling, when providing an alternative description of what Bailey’s book could be described as instead of as “science.”

This NPR show out of the Bay Area about the whole Bailey controversy is good listening. Joan Roughgarden (author of Evolution’s Rainbow), Mara Keisling (executive director of NCTE), Alice Dreger (author of Hermaphrodites & The Medical Invention of Sex) & Bailey himself.

& A challenging phone call from Ben Barres, who I love & who does not let Bailey not answer a direct question (with textual backup from Roughgarden), specifically, whether or not Bailey feels trans people are suited to prostitution.

The only thing that no-one said that someone should have said is that Bailey now has a history & a record of turning (at best) weak science into “controversy,” such as with the bisexuality studies that came out a couple of years ago.

I’m upset by the idea of how or if Dreger’s status as a woman - not just as an academic or intersex educator - is coming into play here. That is, is a man not sexist because a woman says he isn’t? (I don’t think so, but I think that’s coloring her defense of Bailey.)

Curve Interview: Helen Boyd & Julia Serano

In Curve magazine’s current issue (Vol. 17, #8), there’s an interview with me and Julia Serano aptly titled “A Queer Three-way.” The interviewer was Curve editor Diane Anderson-Minshall.

Transforming Community Anthology

I'm up at my usual ungodly hour having just finished a piece for an upcoming anthology called TransForming Community: Stories from Merging Trans and Queer Communities which will come out on Suspect Thoughts Press next year and is being edited by Michelle Tea and Julia Serano.

It comes out of a spoken word series Michelle Tea started a while back; Julia Serano recently reported on her experience at one.

My piece is on queer heterosexuals, specifically crossdressers/transvestites and their female partners, and how we do or don't fit into queer community, or straight community, or trans community, depending.

It's also about how to tie your shoes.

When I have a final edit, I'll put an excerpt of it up here.

Justice for JT?

Laura Albert has to pay back $110,000 - + $6500 in damages - that she was paid for the film rights to her book Sarah, because it was supposed to have been written by her alter-ego JT LeRoy, trans prostitute, who of course, does not, & never did, exist.

New Additions

Welcome to S. Bear Bergman (author of Butch is a Noun) & Matt Kailey (author of Just Add Hormones), both of whom have recently signed on to post here.

Are We Transitioning Simply To Marry?

This week there’s an article ( scroll down and follow link to read ) about Diane and I (and our Blind Eye Mystery series) in the Sydney Express News by Katrina Fox, who is, coincidently, the editor of Trans People in Love, a new anthology from Haworth that I have a piece in.

Katrina’ article is nice, nothing like the Catholic Daily News piece last month that seems think I transitioned to get around the rules against same sex marriage. The funny thing is that I’ve had lesbians ask me this too: will lesbians transition so they can gain access to legal marriages.

I can’t really see lesbians rush to become men, even if it would give them the legal privileges of marriage. Most lesbians I know aren’t interested in undergoing the counseling, legally changing their names and years of injecting hormones—and all the side effects like hair and clitoris growth, let alone undergoing surgery to have their breast removed and genitalia altered.

Considering the many couples that break up during transition, it hardly seems like the thing to do in order to commit your lives to each other!

I'd like to know what you think

Intersections of Trans and Lesbian Lit Panel

My wife (Diane Anderson-Minshall) and I just returned from Atlanta where we attended the Golden Crown Literary Society conference. While there, Diane moderated and I sat on a panel about the intersections of trans and lesbian literature. It was interesting to see how lesbian authors deal with trans characters. JD Glass, author of Punk and Zen, introduced a trans character in that book and will be delving into trans issues more in her next book. In Burning Dreams drag king Susan "Smitty” Smith, has a trans character who teaches a bio guy how to be a man.

Although Radcylffe successfully introduced a crossdressing character into her work over a decade ago, lesbian penned trans and genderqueer characters tend to be trans masculine. As our panelist Monica Helms (founder of the Transgender American Veterans Association) pointed out, there are few MTF or trans women characters in lesbian works, though, clearly, trans lesbians--like her—are among the readers.

Still there seems new openness in lesbian literature—by readers and publishers—to address trans issues (at least on the FTM side of the spectrum). When we were first signed to do a series with Bold Strokes, I was originally surprised that I was not asked to assume a pen name. Would lesbian readers pick up a book that was written by man—even if he was trans? I wondered.

At the GCLS panel, Radcylffe (aka Bold Strokes Books Publisher Len Barot) admitted that even 5 years ago I might have been asked by publishers to hide my gender behind a pseudonym, but fortunately, times are changing. Diane jokes that now I’ve become like some kind of exotic fruit or I’m the zebra in the room. I wasn’t the only guy at the GCLS conference—there was one non trans guy who pens lesbian fiction—but I definitely stood out in the crowd.

H&B Converse with Ethan St. Pierre

You can listen to the conversation we had with Ethan St. Pierre the other night by downloading it from his Radicalguy website. It's a long interview, and we talked about things like safety, trans panic defenses, shoes, genitals, bathrooms, and a bunch of other topics.

Our Literature: What's the Future of Our Past and Present?

One of Helen Boyd's recent posts and conversations with Supervillainz author Alicia Goranson have started making me think about the future of transgender publishing. While there are a lot more books out there now, and certainly more planned for the future, the total number of books out there doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the creativity and thought by our community out there. In fact, most of our work shows up online... blogs, livejournal and websites.

And here's the tricky thing; although we like to think that these things are durable, in fact, online publishing and writing is very ephemeral. If Livejournal ever goes out of business, for example, a vast historical archive of trans peoples' lives and thoughts will disappear. And when individual trans people pass on... who will have the password for their journals? Will LJ just delete their posts? That would be tragic.

Books are durable because the medium is durable... and because the institutional structures for long-term archiving and long-term access are well-established.

But the number of publishers gets smaller... and the marketplace for books seems to get smaller (in what way is not always clear... the NEA's Reading at Risk report, while dismal, indicates that reading literature is on the rise for women and ethnic minorities). And funding for libraries is chronically poor.

I'd like to see a greater push in our community to get more books out there. Little books, big books, fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction, good books, even badly written books. And if this means finding ways of subsidizing transgender publishing... maybe that's what should be done.

So the question becomes... how?

________

... this set of thoughts come on top of wondering if our community needs a transgender version of the Lambda awards. Lambda currently lumps all trans books (and all bisexuality books) into a single category. I find this lumping to be... not useful. It would be good if Lambda promoted a range of trans books, in the same they they promote a range of gay and lesbian genres. While an award doesn't do anything directly to help publishing, maybe there's something valuable in creating the kind of infrastructure for transgender publishing that has emerged for LGB and (non-trans) women's literature publishing.

...in the interests of disclosure... Transgender Rights didn't win a Lambda this past week. Sigh.