Comments on: JT LeRoy: Will the Real Tranny Please Stand Up?

By: Mandee522

Mandee522 — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 08:07:06 +0000

As to Felicity Huffman, she is bugging me too Helen. I have watched her when she received the Golden Globe award and also on Larry King live. ( He bugs me too because he reads his questions from a prepared list rather than authentically engaging his guests, too often). Although Felicity praises Trans people as being courageous- she only refers to them obliquely. You know- “This award is dedicated to the people who….” She never said the word “transsexual” or “transgender” once in either place- nor did she name on Larry King’s show- the two transwomen who helped her understand what being a trans- woman was all about- and worked with her on the script as well. Their names slip my mind but one of them was the transwoman whose husband was murdered in the military for his relationship with her- an horrendous event which was made into a movie. (Soldier’s Story?)
I feel it would behoove Miss Huffman if she was more open about transgenderism/transsexuality by name. It’s almost as if she’s afraid to utter the “T” word publicly for fear that she will be too associated with us, or even worse contaminated by it.
Perhaps she’s feels she has to “regain” her womanhood after portraying a trans-woman. However, I feel slightly offended by her “distancing”.
Mandee Fine, Ph.D

By: helenboyd

helenboyd — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 06:58:01 +0000

KofA, write something about Felicity Huffman & why she’s not good for trannies & i’ll “guest author” it here, okay?

I’d like someone to articulate the reasons because she’s been bugging me too, along the lines of “well intentioned straight person” stuff, but i haven’t been able to sit down & write it.

By: miss carolyn

miss carolyn — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 03:29:47 +0000

I never heard of JT LeRoy before this. Good thing I didn’t waste my time on “it”.

By: Donna

Donna — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:19:05 +0000

Gee, thread drift on Helen’s blog comments. That’s a first!

By: kiss of athena

kiss of athena — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:09:46 +0000

Frankly If were to criticize anyone about how they portray transpeople that would be Felicity Hoffman. I really don’t think she is helping trans-people at all with her part or her interviews. That is getting more airplay. Most people don’t know who JT leroy is in the first place.

By: kiss of athena

kiss of athena — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:05:56 +0000

As someone who doesn’t have much interest in this issue I can easily see JT as a femmy, gay FtM. It does give an interesting spin to the book Sarah (the only one of his books I read).

By: Donna

Donna — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:57:00 +0000

FTM, my foot. The real writer is Laura Albert, who’s married to Geoffrey Knoop, and it’s Geoffrey Knoop’s sister Savannah, a model, who’s been posing as JT Leroy in public (and saying she’s “on hormones” when asked why she looks so female). But it was Laura Albert herself who claimed to be JT Leroy at the hotel in Paris when she was there with her husband and son, and claimed she’d had a “sex change” when someone at the hotel said they thought JT Leroy was a man. Besides, as Helen said, the novels and stories and interviews all portray JT Leroy as an mtf tranny — you know, your typical child-tranny-hooker-HIV positive-drug addict-turning tricks at a West Virginia truckstop “narrative.” The whole thing is a repulsive scam designed to make money have entree to celebrity circles, and, you know what, there’ll be people applauding Ms. Albert for how damn clever she is. Some kind of “postmodern peformance art” thing. If all she wanted was to write under a male pseudonym, fine. But don’t invent an entire fake persona to sell your books. This isn’t as reprehensible as what Benjamin Wilkomierski did a number of years ago (and I have to say I was suspicious of *that* book long before it all turned out to be fake, since, sorry, 4-year olds didn’t survive Nazi death camps), but it’s still pretty bad. And there’s no acceptable excuse.

Donna

By: SavoyTruffle

SavoyTruffle — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:31:46 +0000

It’s perhaps a bit of a cliche, but this strikes me as about as offensive as a white man fronting himself as an african american woman in order to sell a book or gain some kind of momentary celebrity. Pah.

By: helenboyd

helenboyd — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:26:12 +0000

“When hotel employees told Ms. Albert they were under the impression that JT Leroy was a man, they said, she told them that she had had a sex-change operation three years before and was now a woman.”

- from the NY Times story

By: helenboyd

helenboyd — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:22:58 +0000

If you read the NYTimes article, you’ll see that as she (the actual writer’s sister-in-law) tried to pass herself off as JT LeRoy, and someone at a hotel thought that JT LeRoy was a man, instead. That was when she said she’d had a sex change, so the indication is that she was passing herself off as an MTF.

The childhood stories are all about a male child, to boot.