Category: books & writing

Five Questions With… Joy Ladin

Posted by helenboyd – June 18, 2013

I had the chance recently to ask Joy Ladin, the author of Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, a few questions. What followed was a conversation about transition, marriage, separation, spirituality and religion.

1)      I was a little surprised that there wasn’t more about theology, and specifically Judaism, in your story. Is there a reason you shied away from addressing the issue of transness & religion head on?

I don’t feel I shied away from talking about transness and religion; I talk quite directly about how Judaism, particularly the Torah, and Jewish communal norms, affected my sense of my gender identity when I was growing up, and the course of my transition after. But my intention in the book was to talk about trans identity and its consequences in very personal terms, rather than to reflect about general issues. As I say in the book, I grew up in a family that barely practiced Judaism; being Jewish was an ethnicity, not a religion, for us. I was religious, but I more or less invented the Judaism I practiced, based on my reading of the Torah and scattershot study of Judaism. I wasn’t interested in theology; I was interested in God, with whom I have had an intense relationship from early childhood to the present. Since the book was finished, I written a number of pieces that are part of the fledgling but growing discourse of trans Jewish theology, but I hadn’t done any of that when I wrote the book. What issues did you want me to address that weren’t in the book? I’d be happy to address them now.

** Fair enough. I guess because your employment was at an Orthodox school, and so many people seem desperate to disprove some of the Torah’s verdicts on gender and sexuality, I expected a specific take. I’d be curious to know what the themes are of the pieces you’re writing now about trans Jewish theology.

Traditional Judaism doesn’t directly address transgender identity. There is the prohibition against cross-dressing in Deuteronomy, which I discuss in my memoir, rabbinic prohibitions against doing anything that would impair male fertility that are taken by many Orthodox rabbis as prohibiting male-to-female transition, and a brief discussion in the Talmud about how to integrate intersex Jews into Jewish law and community. Strikingly, the rabbis WANT to include intersex Jews, and reinterpret the law to make that possible. Yeshiva University made Orthodox Jewish history when it allowed me to return to teaching after transition, but that was clearly in response to secular law rather than a desire to be a trend-setter in terms of Orthodox Judaism. However, there are many trans Jews living in the Orthodox Jews. Most are in hiding, but many are “out” to their rabbis, who are privately empathetic. I have recently heard of one Orthodox community whose rabbi has explicitly welcomed a trans member, and the Orthodox world is in the midst of an intense discussion of how to respond to LGBTQ Jews in their midst who can no longer be quietly ignored or exiled. There are now several organizations, including Eshel and Keshet, of which I am a board member, working toward full inclusion of LGBTQ Jews in the Jewish world.  I think it’s a time of difficult but positive change. My work on trans Jewish theology is still preliminary, but you can hear some of my thinking in this podcast of my talk to rabbinical students and their teachers at the Jewish Theological Society, and read some in this essay, written for the first Jewish Trans Gathering last fall in Berkeley, CA. I discuss the intersection of trans and Jewish identity more generally in this podcast of my conversation with Lilith editor Susan Weidman Schneider at last fall’s  DC JCC Jewish Book Festival.

Also, there is this conversation with Rev. Shay Kearns which took place at the Encountering Sacred Texts panel at the 2012 Philadelphia Trans Health Conference – in conversation with Rev. Shay Kearns: Part 1 and Part 2.

2)      Betty has commented that she thinks she wound up an actor in order to find some kind of man she might be able to be (but didn’t). I’m wondering if the conservative gender roles assigned by religion now seem like a bulwark against your own sense of gender incongruence.

As I discuss in the book, I found in teaching literature as a profession – a vocation – in which I could feel close to people in a way that seemed to me to temporarily transcend gender. As I said in the book, I’m not and have never been an Orthodox Jew, or a practitioner of any conservative or traditional form of Judaism. I commute to the Orthodox world, because I teach at an Orthodox Jewish university, but I don’t live the way my students live, and my gender identity and expression have nothing to do with theirs, or with Orthodox Judaism’s gender roles. I’ve never looked to Judaism for guidance about my gender identity or expression either when living as a man or now that I’m living as myself. More→

Faulkner on Salinger

Posted by helenboyd – June 9, 2013

“I have not read all the work of this present generation of writing. I have not had time yet. So I must speak only of the ones I do know. I am thinking now of what I rate the best one, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, perhaps because this one expresses so completely what I have tried to say. A youth, father to what will — must — someday be a man, more intelligent than some and more sensitive than most, who — he would not even have called it by instinct because he did not know he possessed it because God perhaps had put it there — loved man and wished to be a part of mankind, humanity, who tried to join the human race and failed. To me, his tragedy was not that he was, as he perhaps thought, not tough enough or brave enough or deserving enough to be accepted into humanity. His tragedy was that when he attempted to enter the human race, there was no human race there. There was nothing for him to do save buzz, frantic and inviolate, inside the glass wall of his tumbler, until he either gave up or was himself, by himself, by his own frantic buzzing, destroyed.” – William Faulkner

When he attempted to enter the human race, there was no human race there. My god that’s gorgeous.

Lorde & Baldwin

Posted by helenboyd – June 2, 2013

Here is an amazing thing: a conversation between Audre Lorde and James Baldwin.

The incomparable Audre Lorde says:

There is a larger structure, a society with which we are in total and absolute war. We live in the mouth of a dragon, and we must be able to use each other’s forces to fight it together, because we need each other. I am saying that in our joint battle we have also developed some very real weapons, and when we turn them against each other they are even more bloody, because we know each other in a particular way. When we turn those weapons against each other, the bloodshed is terrible. Even worse, we are doing this in a structure where we are already embattled. I am not denying that. It is a family discussion I’m having now. I’m not laying blame. I do not blame Black men for what they are. I’m asking them to move beyond. I do not blame Black men; what I’m saying is, we have to take a new look at the ways in which we fight our joint oppression because if we don’t, we’re gonna be blowing each other up. We have to begin to redefine the terms of what woman is, what man is, how we relate to each other.

It’s worth reading, and re-reading, and re-reading again.

Five Questions With… The Collection (Pt. 2)

Posted by helenboyd – June 1, 2013

Here’s the second half of that interview with a few authors of the anthology The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, published in 2012 by Topside Press. The Collection is currently a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction and was selected by the American Library Association on their 2012 list of top LGBT books for adult readers.

(Here’s the first half, if you missed it.)

Why is transgender literature important to you?

Casey Plett:  Because I love books and I’m trans! Duh!

Red Durkin:  It’s actually really simple: every culture has stories. That’s one thing that fundamentally distinguishes us as a species, I think. Literature possesses an incredible power to influence the way a group of people sees itself and is seen by others. I think trans people are at a point where they need this validation. We’ve been maligned and mischaracterized for too long. We deserve a change.

Imogen Binnie: Because it sucks never to see people like yourself represented anywhere! I’ve been reading all the time for almost thirty years and a lot of books have resonated with me for a lot of reasons- for example I have been disappointed with the world and found it reassuring to see that reflected in novels. I have been dazed and had trouble feeling feelings, and it has been reassuring to see that reflected in novels. But very few novels- if any at all- have resonated with me in a way that reflected myself as a trans person with a three dimensional life. In other words, whatever pleasure, joy, frustration or reassurance I have felt in a text has been mediated through the fact that I have rarely if ever been able to directly identify with a text: these texts are for cis people, not for trans people, and so I usually the best I can hope for is to identify as best I can with a cis character. Like, has anyone addressed, in fiction, the subtle ways that being trans can complicate the experience of falling in love with a cis person? Where are the class- and gender-conscious bildungsroman about trans women? Where are the stories in which the trans woman characters are different at the end from who they were at the beginning- not counting those where they’re different at the end because they’re dead?

How do you see your work fitting (or not fitting) in with trans literature?

Casey Plett: I really don’t know. I hope it does fit in in some way and I hope that trans people read my stuff. Beyond that, I dunno.

Red Durkin: It’s hard to say, really. I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind that the work I create is trans literature, but I don’t know where that puts me among other writers. I’m not writing for teens, if that makes a difference.

Imogen Binnie: Ideas about being trans among trans people have been evolving really fast for the last, like, ten or maybe twenty years; eighteen-year-olds who grew up on social justice tumblr are a literal generation after of the groundbreaking work of Susan Stryker, Kate Bornstein, and others who put together the original framework for the way we conceptualize ourselves as trans now. It’s amazing and I feel like that body of work- the stuff people are saying about gender and queerness and intersectionality and identity and oppression on tumblr, which seems to have migrated from livejournal, and which also shows up on WordPress and blogspot and places like that- is more relevant to the lives of most of the trans people than, like, John Irving’s last book that probably had a trans woman in it. And while my characters themselves have not tended to be particularly invested in that culture of progressive trans politics, I think my work as a whole, like thematic stuff or whatever, the questions I’m interested in, are very much a part of and in conversation with that body of thought.

What challenges do you see trans writers facing in the writing world? What challenges do you face? Any suggestions to address those issues? More→

Five Questions With… The Collection (Pt. 1)

Posted by helenboyd – May 31, 2013

It sounds a little ominous, but it’s not. The Collection is an anthology of fiction by trans writers edited by Tom Leger and Riley MacLeod. The below interview questions were borrowed from T.T Jax’s article on the Lambda Literary Review. Interviewed below are Casey Plett, Red Durkin, and Imogen Binnie, three trans women authors who contributed to The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, published in 2012 by Topside Press. The Collection is currently a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction and was selected by the American Library Association on their 2012 list of top LGBT books for adult readers.

Do you consider transgender literature to be based on content (trans characters, trans experiences), theme  (transformation/displacement), form (experimental, hybrid), and/or transgender authorship? None, some, or all of the above? Please explain.

Casey Plett: When I think of trans lit, right now, for me personally, I think of trans content by trans authors. And the odd book by a cis person that involves trans people but isn’t stupid and terrible.

Red Durkin:  For me, trans literature is defined by its content. Specifically, trans lit prominently features trans characters, preferably as the protagonist. Everything else follows from that. I’d reject any classification that limits trans literature to a particular genre or theme.

A lot of people think authorship is important. Until recently, I would have agreed. However, I don’t believe that only trans people can create “authentic” trans narratives. Actually, I think that’s incredibly othering. It sets trans people apart as quintessentially unrelatable to cis authors. Admittedly, cis writers have tended to fail to write realistic, fully-developed trans characters, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. What’s more, I’ve seen plenty of flat, lifeless trans characters come from trans authors. Stereotypes and clichés don’t hinge on the identity of the writer.

Imogen Binnie: The term “transgender literature” doesn’t come up in my life that much, maybe in part because there’s so little “literature” that reads to me like it was produced for trans people?  Though I guess I’m answering my question- I consider trans literature to be literature that reads like it was produced for trans people. I mean, even Kate Bornstein’s first couple books were explicitly inclusive of cis people, they weren’t necessarily for trans people.

I think Whipping Girl was an important turning point in transgender literature. While it was written in a way that included cis people, it also popularized some really useful frameworks of understanding trans experience for trans people.

I keep coming back to this quote from Jean Baker Miler’s Toward a New Psychology of Women (it’s here: http://www.keepyourbridgesburning.com/2012/02/toward-a-new-psychology-of-women/) that describes the moment when the writing of an oppressed class stops using the terms created by the oppressor class and starts coming up with its own terms to describe its own experience among its members. I feel like Whipping Girl was a salient instance of that change starting to take place for trans people. I haven’t seen that change happening in fiction very much, but it’s something I tried to do in my novel Nevada. It’s the premise of Red Durkin’s upcoming novel Ready, Amy, Fire. I mean, it’s been going on in zines for forever, as well as on blogs, email lists and message boards, literally for decades at this point–though those things, of course, tend not to be framed as literature.

So I don’t think it has to be by trans people, or about trans people, I don’t think it’s about form, theme, or content. And my answer ultimately isn’t that useful because how do you quantify the audience for whom a book is intended? Is it a “you know it when you see it” kind of thing? I guess so. One thing that I think this understanding of “transgender literature” does do, though, is explain why so many works of fiction by and about trans people end up being so disappointing for trans people: it’s because despite having trans characters or trans authors, these works simply are not for us.

What are some of your favorite works of transgender literature? More→

Jennifer Finney Boylan is Stuck in the Middle with You

Posted by helenboyd – May 16, 2013

Here she is on the Today show, giving a great interview.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just watch.

The new book is called Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders.

Feminist Porn?

Posted by helenboyd – May 15, 2013

The Feminist Porn Book is out. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts, by none other than the amazing Nina Hartley, which I’ve gone and excerpted:

Actress Cornelia Otis Skinner said, Woman’s virtue is man’s greatest invention. That phrase is both true and telling: everyday men and women both carry the heavy load and pay the cost for this retrograde notion of virtue. Female sexual agency remains a contentious subject that sparks fierce debate and displays of moral outrage, bigotry, and murderous violence. Our culture continues to punish women for their sexuality, from woman-on-woman slut shaming, to continuing attempts by local, state, and federal government agencies to limit access to effective family planning. Our country’s honor killings–ranging from the murder of abortion providers to the killing of a partner in a fit of jealous If-I-cant-have-you-then-nobody-can-have-you! rage–are almost always connected to women’s sexual autonomy and/or health.

I love Nina Hartley.

Today’s Haiku

Posted by helenboyd – May 10, 2013

How warm was the sun?

But winter wasn’t over, so

Tulips will shiver.

Fox Cities Book Festival: April 17 – 24

Posted by helenboyd – April 18, 2013

The Fox Cities Book Festival started in earnest yesterday and I saw one author right out of the gate: James Loewen, otherwise famous for Lies My Teacher Told Me, but who spoke yesterday about sundown towns. And he was amazing. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, please do.

Otherwise, there are a ton of other readings and authors and contests and events and all sorts of things. The very last event is with my colleague David McGlynn who will be talking about his memoir A Door in the Ocean – which didn’t start out a memoir – and how it got that way.

There are YA authors, mystery authors, science writers, journalists, poets, comic book collectors; historians, teachers, moms, and survivors.

It’s pretty cool. Go see stuff.

Happy Beckett’s Birthday!

Posted by helenboyd – April 13, 2013

April 13th was his birthday, and somehow, I am not surprised he was born on the 13th too. samuel beckett

from his novel Molloy – by Samuel Beckett. This is one of my very favorite sections.

“I took advantage of being at the seaside to lay in a store of sucking-stones. They were pebbles but I call them stones. Yes, on this occasion I laid in a considerable store. I distributed them equally between my four pockets, and sucked them turn and turn about. This raised a problem which I first solved in the following way. I had say sixteen stones, four in each of my four pockets these being the two pockets of my trousers and the two pockets of my greatcoat. Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced by the stone which was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones. And when the desire to suck took hold of me again, I drew again on the right pocket of my greatcoat, certain of not taking the same stone as the last time. And while I sucked it I rearranged the other stones in the way I have just described. And so on. But this solution did not satisfy me fully. For it did not escape me that, by an extraordinary hazard, the four stones circulating thus might always be the same four. In which case, far from sucking the sixteen stones turn and turn about, I was really only sucking four, always the same, turn and turn about. But I shuffled them well in my pockets, before I began to suck, and again, while I sucked, before transferring them, in the hope of obtaining a more general circulation of the stones from pocket to pocket. But this was only a makeshift that could not long content a man like me. So I began to look for something else …”  (found here)

Five Questions With… Zach Wahls

Posted by helenboyd – March 27, 2013

I was lucky enough to meet Zach Wahls at a recent fundraiser and awards gala for Fair Wisconsin. He gave such an amazing talk and was such a cool guy that I couldn’t help but ask him a few things.

Zach Wahls: My Two Moms(And how can you not love the adorable cover of his book? It’s good, too. )

1)      You are sometimes referred to as an “ally” of the larger LGBTQ communities but I don’t think you see yourself that way. Can you talk a little about what it means for you to be called an ally as opposed to being a community member?

I’m most often referred to as a “straight ally” by both the public and members of the LGBTQ community. And that’s usually fine, I don’t correct people or feel that it’s necessary for me to do so. But personally, I don’t feel as though I’m truly an “ally” because, in my mind, I’m a member of the LGBTQ community even though I’m not, personally, LGBTQ-identified. I know that the last thing any of us want to do is add another letter to the acronym, but the reality is that I do feel as though I’m a member of the community. Like LGBTQ people, I was born into this community. Like LGBTQ people, I have felt the shame and humiliation of being in the closet. Like LGBTQ people, I am regularly stigmatized by those who oppose LGBTQ rights as inferior, defective and sinful. The parallels are not perfect, of course, but as a community, we need to figure out a way to create spaces and community for those of us who have grown up with queer parents. So, to be clear, it’s not that I’m LGBTQ-identified, but that I feel the LGBTQ community includes its children, and that, to the extent that that’s true, kids like me are a part of the community. More→

Pen for Hire

Posted by helenboyd – March 8, 2013

Hey, editor dudes, if you actually want to improve these statistics, I’m available to write with a byline.

Lemme know.

New(ish) Fausto Sterling Book

Posted by helenboyd – March 2, 2013

Somehow, I missed Anne Fausto Sterling’s newest book, Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World, which sounds like a more accessible but still scientific take on the science of gender. Her Sexing the Body is, in my opinion, without peer.

Just recently she spoke at Tufts on early childhood gender development:

Using data from lower middle class families in Rhode Island, Fausto-Sterling has discovered that parents’ differential treatment towards male and female infants tends to result in gendered behaviors.

She played four videos where mothers played with their children, rewarding them for certain behavior more than others. For example, the mothers’ tendency to coddle girls and reward fine motor behavior contrasts with their focus on activity-related attention to boys, she said.

“Infants experience gender from before birth and via the minutiae of everyday care, but they also bring their own individually differentiated physiological systems to the table,” Fausto-Sterling said. “Infants assimilate the world.”

Infants experience gender from before birth. Not surprising, but I’m glad someone said it.

Queer Little Poem

Posted by helenboyd – February 18, 2013

I happened upon this little poem the other day & it struck me as so spare and so shocked with emotion.

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder

by A. E. Housman

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,
And went with half my life about my ways.

It is so spare and yet gets at that thing of love, no?

Hansberry’s Truth

Posted by helenboyd – February 16, 2013

“Eventually it comes to you,” observes Lorraine Hansberry, “the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”

- quoted in Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins

Lynda Barry Talk

Posted by helenboyd – February 8, 2013

Lynda Barry spoke at a recent Lawrence University convocation, & it was one of the best I’ve seen. This is a totally worthwhile hour whether you’re an artist, a fan of Barry’s, or neither.

I’m not sure how she became who she is, but she’s a miracle as far as I’m concerned.

CFP: TSQ

Posted by helenboyd – February 7, 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS: TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.4, “Trans* Cultural Production”, deadline: April 15, 2013

The arts have served as a cultural arena for imagining, creating, and proliferating transgender experiences and communities around the world. As part of its inaugural year TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly will feature a special issue examining trans* cultural production in art, film, dance, design, architecture, literature, and music. We seek papers that critically analyze the current state, history, and significance of these expressive forms as they address, depict, and are mobilized by trans* subjects broadly defined, including people whose gender/sex expression is not informed primarily by contemporary Western constructions and conventions. The issue will feature trans* makers and communities alongside essays exploring cultural production by non-trans* makers as such production impacts trans* lives, trans* politics, and/or trans* theory. We invite submissions exploring the repercussions and resonances of trans* representation in non-trans* contexts as well as work developing trans* interpretations of creative work not originally intended to engage specifically trans* people or concerns.

Rather than a survey of best practices or major figures, the issue aims to offer a forum to examine the wider issues attending to the representation of trans* in the arts and to demonstrate the value of trans* as a heuristic lens for interpreting creative work more generally. While the focus of the issue is scholarly research, we also hope to include a small selection of shorter, less formal essays that engage with critical issues in trans* cultural production from curatorial, marketing, and practitioner perspectives. More→

Writing, Women, & the Web

Posted by helenboyd – February 6, 2013

Chapters are needed for this upcoming book:

Women, Work, and the Web: How the Web Creates Entrepreneurial Opportunities, Book Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Co-editor: Carol SmallwoodCo-ed., Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching (McFarland, 2012) on Poets & Writers Magazine “List of Best Books for Writers.” Writing After Retirement: Tips by Successful Retired Writers forthcoming from Scarecrow Press.

Co-editor: Joan GelfandDevelopment Chair for the Women’s National Book Association, member of the National Book Critics Circle, Joan blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, teaches writing, and is an award winning author.

Seeking chapters of unpublished work from writers in the United States and Canada for an anthology. We are interested in such topicsas: Women Founding Companies Existing Only on the Web; Women Working on the Web With Young Children or Physical Disabilities; Woman’s Studies Resources and Curriculum Development Webmasters; Women as Founding Editors of Webzines and Blogs; Surveys/Interviews of Women on the Web.

Chapters of 3,000-4,000 words (up to 3 co-authors) on how the Internet has opened doors, leveled the playing field and provided new opportunities for women, are all welcome. Practical, how-to-do-it, anecdotal and innovative writing based on experience. We are interested in communicating how women make money on the Web, further their careers and the status of women. One complimentary copy per chapter, discount on additional orders.

Please e-mail two chapter topics each described in two sentences by March 28, 2013, along with a brief bio to smallwood@tm.net  Please place INTERNET/Last Name on the subject line; if co-authored, paste bio sketches for each author.

A Clarification or Eight

Posted by helenboyd – February 1, 2013

I’m aware that publishing a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto has caused some chagrin, and my explanation for why I did so even more.

So I’d like to point out a few things:

  1. I was unaware, when I read Ms. Benvenuto’s book, that her ex was Joy Ladin, who has also written a book about her transition.
  2. I will be reading Ms. Ladin’s book and doing a brief interview with her, in future.
  3. I do not claim to know what “really” happened between them. No one does but them, and they don’t agree, so really: no one does.
  4. I would like to point out the phrase “despite transphobic tendencies” – which I used to describe Ms. Benvenuto’s book. Her transphobia is not lost on me, by any stretch. Some of the most vitriolic transphobia comes from ex spouses, specifically of trans women.
  5. That does provide an interesting problem, doesn’t it? Why is it that the ex partners of trans men don’t similarly explode with transphobia? Some do, no doubt. But not anywhere near the same, at least not from my perspective, and I know plenty of trans men and plenty of people who have been partnered to trans men who aren’t anymore.
  6. Suggesting that people who are going to need to transition, do so YOUNGER than they have historically, is not essentialism. I do not now and have never believed that all trans people need to, want to, or will transition, and many are very happy being something like crossdressers and not transitioned women, either. I respect any choice a person makes when dealing with transness, even the awful ones, to be honest. Transness in a deeply transphobic culture is a really difficult thing to manage.
  7. Do non transitioners need more support? Fuck yes. We all do. Therapists are still pathetically under-educated when it comes to dealing with holistic treatment for trans identities, much less support for partners and families and loved ones. Most gender therapists are only, if ever, prepared to deal with transitioners, and the rest of us are still left out in the cold. Good therapists – Ari Lev and Reid Vanderbergh come to mind – are aware of this sad state of affairs. Most are not.
  8. Finally, at long last, I’m going to reiterate that I found a lot of what Ms. Benventuo had to say about her ex offensive and difficult. It is not my story. Whether or not it is accurate, or The Truth (which is a thing I don’t believe exists, for those of you who are wondering) has nothing to do with it. The experience, as she told it, is very typical, whether or not it was true in her case. A lot of partners and former partners will find some kind of resonance, and so healing, in this book. And that’s again why I’m standing by having blurbed it and having interviewed her.

I’ll leave it there for now. There’s plenty more coming, I’m sure, as these pieces make their way through transland.

Why Trans Partners Should Tell Their Stories

Posted by helenboyd – January 31, 2013

The other day I published a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto, who wrote a book about her marriage to and divorce from a trans woman.

I blurbed her book, let me admit up front.

I blurbed it because despite some transphobic tendencies (not respecting her ex’s change to feminine pronouns, most notably), I think it’s important that partners get their stories out there – as important as it is for trans people to do so. I’ve been enabling the latter for a long time, and I’m proud to have done so. But I see so often that partners who are having a hard time or who are bitter about a divorce or angry about transition are told – in trans community spaces – to STFU, pretty much. And that really sucks, a lot.

The thing is, nothing about her memoir struck me as patently false. I’ve known a lot of trans women and a lot of wives of trans women over the past 13 years. A LOT. And Benvenuto’s story, just as she told it, is pretty goddamned typical. I have seen behavior by trans women that is sexist, misogynist bullshit. I have seen trans women spend their kids’ college money on transition. I have seen 401Ks emptied. I have seen all of that, and more.

I have also seen the wives of transitioning women take out all their rage on their trans spouse – financially, emotionally, even physically. I have seen rage that I didn’t even know was possible in the wives of trans women. And I have seen them be unwilling to let it go.

That is, I have seen a lot of awful behavior on both sides of this coin. Trans people are not excused because they’re trans just as women are not excused because they’re women. We are all faced with loss and betrayal and heartbreak and all of the emotions that accompany those things. How you choose to express them is entirely up to you.

I can buy the argument that now is not the best time to be airing our dirty laundry in public. Maybe it is. Maybe right now is the “let’s put a good face on it so the public grants us our rights” period for trans issues. But I don’t think there ever is that time, to be honest. I think that’s the kind of thinking that results in shaming some members of a community over other members of that community.

Because, I would argue, the crap behavior of some trans women who come from lives of male privilege – & here I’m specifically talking about certain kinds of later transitioning trans women – is a fact. It’s not made up. I can promise you that. And what we want, as a community, is for trans people to be happy. For them to have people to love and who love them. For them to be accepted and loved by their families.

And transition after 20 years of marriage is very, very rarely going to make that happen. It just isn’t.

So if we as a community want trans people to be happy, people need to know what kind of devastation a late transition can cause on families and wives and communities and of course on the trans people themselves. There is so, so much pain, on everyone’s part. People need to know it. People need to transition younger so that some of this can be prevented.

That said: partners deserve to tell their stories because they’re their stories. There are other reasons, but really, that’s the nut of it. There is no saying who is “right” when it comes to he said/she said. There never is. But as far as I could tell, Sex Changes felt real. It felt hard to write. There were parts that made me cry to finally see things I’d felt in print.

So no, it’s not a perfect story. It could have been kinder, but my gut still says it was honest and that is worth having in the world. Honesty can only shed light in dark corners, and transition-fueled divorce is one of the darkest corners I know of.