A Note from the Author:

Just a couple of things I want to say first. As one of the conditions for this is no names, I shall refer to my beloved in boy format as B*. This stands for Beloved. Another major character is X, which refers to the ex-wife. Finally, please excuse any pronoun confusion that may arise. I have tried to use “he” when referring to my dearest in “boy-mode,” and “she” when referring to same in “girlie-mode” (his own terms) but there are still times when I’m not sure which to use when.

Chapter 1: In which Tink sees photos.

I think I first fell in love when I saw her picture. The problem was, he belonged to somebody else- a friend of mine- and so I put it out of my mind.

I had known B* for a couple of years. He was going out with X, who was a friend of mine, and we became good friends ourselves, the kind that sees each in other in the pub, but with occasional deep and meaningful conversations between just the two if us. This was one of those times. Most of our other friends had retired early, and it was just the two of us in one of those dodgy local rock clubs that you seem to find in every city. He was entertaining me with pictures on his mobile phone. They were various models, singers and actresses all looking beautiful. I had the difficult task of putting names to the faces, and my knowledge of popular culture kept letting me down. He selected another image and presented it to me. Again I was clueless. She was slim and beautiful like all the rest, with lovely long, dark hair and dressed in black. I took a wild guess.
“Morticia Addams?” Apparently I was wrong and had to look again. “I have no idea, but whoever she is, she’s very pretty.”
“It’s me.”
“Wow!” I was stunned. I looked again, and I just couldn’t believe it. She was just amazing.
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I’m pleased as punch that I got a chance – right after my keynote at Fantasia Fair – not only to meet the Bearded Lady of Provincetown, but to get her to stretch my previous ear piercings so that I could wear these lovely new omegas I bought in her shop.

She tells me that I can make them bigger in a few months, too. Betty’s starting to worry.

If you’re coming here after Fantasia Fair, do remind me of the resources I said I would post. I know some (a lot) of them are probably about sex, so you might want to start by browsing the posts marked s.e.x. on this blog.

There are not a lot of stories of successful transsexual / non-trans partner marriages. One recurring theme that I see is the need for pacing. Unfortunately too many trans-partners once they have their epiphany rush like a runaway freight train towards transition. Like most runaway freight trains these relationships typically end in destruction.

I’m not going to say that there is any one right way to transition. We all know that those paths are as unique as the individuals who tread them. However, if a couple is going to have any possibility of remaining intact each partner must be willing to recognize that compromises will be an integral part of the process.

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Julia Serano is a Bay Area slam-winning poet, author, performer, activist, & biologist. She organized the GenderEnders event from 2003 until last year; plays guitar, sings & writes lyrics for her band Bitesize, and oh – has a Ph.D. in biochemistry. We got to meet her when she was in town promoting her book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, recently published by Seal Press.

(1) I loved Whipping Girl, for starters. I think it’s a pivotal work for trans communities, especially in building trans pride. But you know I kept waiting for you to actually define “feminine” – maybe if not for all time, but in some way that I could understand what you meant by it specifically. Your “barrette Manifesto” came close, except that I see barrettes as childish, not feminine per se. So can you help the genderblind like myself? What is femininity? Can you be feminine without being girly?

In the next to last chapter of the book, “Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism,” I talk about that a bit, but I’ll try to define it here a little more clearly. I would say that femininity is a heterogeneous set of traits (some of which are cultural in origin, some biological, some psychological, and many are a combination thereof). The only thing that all feminine traits have in common is that they are typically associated with women in our culture. But they certainly aren’t exclusive to women, as many men and MTF spectrum transgender folks also express feminine traits (similarly, many women express masculine rather than feminine traits). I think most of us tend to express some combination of both feminine and masculine traits.

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“Tranny, 24, slim attractive brunette, seeks fun loving friend for laughter and love.”

Hey, every story has to begin somewhere, and this one’s starting with that. It’s the text of a personals ad, submitted to a local free weekly paper. The sort of thing that’s three quarters real estate listings.

I can’t claim sole authorship for the ad. My ex wife and I penned it. We started with the vague notion that it was about time I started seeing people. She, after all, had hooked up with a new guy and was rapidly approaching domestic bliss. I’d been moping around for a while, but was now finally starting to re-emerge into the world; to get my shit together, as it were.

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Marilyn Frank has been sharing her story with wives at Fantasia Fair, IFGE and Tri-Ess seminars since 1982. She married her husband Len in 1954 and didn’t learn about the cross dressing until 1964, 10 years and 3 children later. At that time the only information available to her was Virginia Prince’s book The Transvestite and His Wife (now titled The Cross-dresser and His Wife) which she still finds to be one of the best books written.

1) First, Marilyn, I want to thank you on behalf of all the partners out there, for stepping up at a time when most of us weren’t even in high school yet. Without women like you & Peggy Rudd, the struggle to have partners’ issues recognized would be a lot more difficult. So what caused you to do the educating you did?

In the 1970’s I was a volunteer on a crisis intervention hot line in Morris County, NJ. When I became Director, I questioned some of the professionals in the group, who did not know much about cross dressing, but were able to assist me in finding people who did know. During this time we came upon Tri-Ess, and then in 1980 Len read the article in Playboy about Fantasia Fair and in 1981 we spent a few days at the Fair. I had many discussions with Ariadne Kane about the wives’ needs, and this brought Niela Miller to the Fair and that’s where my true education began. Since it had been a very lonely road not only for Len, but for me, I decided I would reach out to help others, so that’s when I started facilitating a wives group at our local Tri-Ess Chapter, which I did for for over 10 years. I also was instrumental in starting the wives’ program at the first IFGE Convention. My philosophy is that every time I help someone, I help myself. It’s true the marriage had its ups and downs where the cross dressing was concerned, but for us it was a small part of our overall marriage. We have always had good communication, enjoy many of the same things and do have a sense of humor (that helps).

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Eli Clare is the author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (South End Press, 1999) and has been widely published. He has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program and co-organized the first-ever Queerness and Disability Conference. He works for the University of Vermont ’s LGBTQA Services. We were lucky enough to meet him at a Translating Identity Conference at UVM, and I was happy to get the chance to talk to him about his new book, The Marrow’s Telling, which was recently published by HomoFactus Press.

(1) Why poetry?

As a writer, my first love is poetry. I think of it as a thug who grabbed me by the collar many years ago and whispered in my ear, “You’re coming with me.” I went willingly, not having any idea where poetry would take me or what it would demand. Twenty-five years later I find myself writing a mix of poetry and creative nonfiction; my first book, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, is a collection of essays, and my second book, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion, which ought to be rolling off the press at any moment now, is a mix of poems and short prose pieces, not quite essays but more than prose poems.

Audre Lorde in her essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” writes of poetry as a “revelatory distillation of experience.” Poems demand both wildness/revelation–moments where language, sound, and rhythm, rather than thought or idea or analysis, take the lead–and discipline/distillation–the paring down to heart and bone. As a writer, a reader, an activist trying to make sense of the world, I need revelatory distillation.

I also know that in the United States too many of us have been taught to fear or avoid poetry, to feel bored or stupid in its presence. As an activist-poet, I always hope that my poems will be doors held wide open, roller coasters, parachutes opening above you, slow meandering rivers.

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I’m going to tell you the story of me, Adrien an FtM transman, and my partner, Elena a free-spirited, open-minded, adventurous, bi-sexual genetic woman. Y’all get ready, because some parts of it are scandalous. OK, here we go.

When Elena and I first met, I think it was late 1998, we just really hit it off, the way you do. The meeting that stood out was at the state fair, for a friend’s birthday. We were there with lots of friends and acquaintances and between us there was that magnetic energy – we were more interested in each other than anyone else and for reasons soon to be disclosed, this wasn’t entirely appropriate. Soon after that night at the fair, we met again at a party, a lesbian party. At this point on the timeline of my transition, I was just getting into the transgender vocabulary and ideas and was definitely starting to recognize myself as trans, but I was pre-everything with only some glimmerings that chest surgery might be something feasible for me. So, I was still living at home in the bosom of the lesbian community, but starting to scratch the itch that would bring my time there to its end. At present, we still have many gay and lesbian friends, but some have dropped out of our lives as well. Since the beginning of our relationship, we always found that we felt more aligned with our straight couple friends and I definitely do not call myself a lesbian any more. Elena’s relationship and sexual history includes men and women but at the time we met, she was identified as lesbian and had a female partner. But back to the story…

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I was like an addict trying desperately to find love, or even the perfect relationship. But I always fell short and was disappointed. Little did I know it was never the relationship; it was the image in the mirror that made no sense. I was the one that needed to change. I was lost, I felt broken, it wasn’t until I was 38 years old when my life finally took a right turn. I met the most amazing female. She was different, not like the other girls I had known. She was special, something about her allowed me to be myself. She was straight and had lived with men all her life. Yet, she was curious about girls, having had a few encounters in the past, but nothing too serious. More…

Here are a couple of photos from the Borders reading up in Albany:

<<< the first of me with a nice display of She’s Not the Man I Married

& the second of us with a bunch >> of friends (& a Harry Potter poster): from left to right: Betty, me, Hawk Stone, Tristan, & Colten.

My name is Michael, I am a FtM Transsexual. My partner is Natasha, an MtF Transsexual. This is our story….

Depending on where we pick up our story, it all traces back to our high school years. Yes, Natasha and I actually attended the same high school around the same time as each other. Of course back then I was living as female and she was living as male. Natasha is a few years older than me, but our paths did indeed cross during our high school years. As Natasha explains, our lives were meant to cross. She calls our journey of getting together, fate. More…

Here’s a cool photo of the McNally Robinson reading the other night - from left to right: me, Audacia Ray, & Jessica Valenti, each of us behind our own book. (& Yes, we read in alphabetical order, too.)

Here’s a nice photo of us from the event at Bounce, in Cleveland. I really do feel like an idiot for not having brought our (albeit crappy) camera, at least.

Reid Vanderbergh is a therapist in private practice in Portland, Oregon who began his transition in 1995, and started taking hormones in 1997, at the age of 41. He went to Portland State University and then did his MA in Couseling Psychology at John F. Kennedy University. He is a member of the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health, formerly known as HBIGDA), the IFGE, as well as the American Asssociation of Marriage and Family Therapists. He is the author of Transition & Beyond, published by Q Press

(1) As far as I know, you are the only therapist who is also trans to write a book about transness. Do you worry about people assuming you’re biased (in a good or bad way)?

As far as I know, no other trans therapists have published books about working with trans clients. I have had the experience of people assuming I am biased in the direction of transition; usually, those who make this assumption are related in some way to a client considering transition. However, when this comes up, I explain to them that I am not biased toward transition, precisely because I DO know how difficult and life-changing this process is. Therefore I don’t approach it lightly.

Now that my book is out there, I expect this question to come up among people who don’t know me, and also don’t know any clients who have worked with me. I hope people will ask me the question directly, rather than making the assumption that because I’m trans and did choose physical transition, that I automatically assume that’s the path for all my trans clients.

The one arena which worries me somewhat around this question of bias is academia. I’m hoping my book will be used as a text; my fear is, if I am seen as a community member writing about my own community, my book may be “suspect” because it may not be considered objective enough for academic credibility. Being subjective has been considered the ultimate faux pas within academia. Not that I think this as a valid view – I think the ultimate experts on a lived experience are those who undertake it – but I do fear this attitude may affect acceptance of my book within academia.

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<< My favorite photo from the launch party, of me with MichelleNYC. You can see more on my flickr photo page.

(If anyone else took any, it’d be lovely if you sent them to me!)

Virginia Erhardt, Ph.D. is a licensed therapist, a founding member of the American Gender Institute, and the author of Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals. She published her first article concerning the partners of trans people back in 1999 after publishing a workbook for lesbian couples called Journey Toward Intimacy. She is a regular at trans conferences like the upcoming IFGE Conference.

(1) How long did it take you to compile the stories in Head Over Heels? Where did you find partners who were willing to talk about their experiences?

It was about two and a half years from the point at which I began soliciting participation in 2002 and then sent out questionnaires, until the time when I had created “stories” from the SOs’ responses to my questions. During that time I also worked on my substantive, didactic chapters. It took another two years and a few months from the time when I completed the project and signed a contract with The Haworth Press until Head Over Heels was in print.

I put out a Call for Participants to every online listserve and transgender print publication I could think of. I also requested participation from people at trans conferences at which I presented. More…

top row, left to right: Brigitte, Jenny Boylan, Andy Marra, Eden “Bianca” Riegel, & Betty.

Bottom row, left to right: Tommy, Jeffrey “Zarf/Zoe” Carlson, June, & David Harrison.

& Here’s the GLAAD newsclip about it.

S. Bear Bergman is the author of Butch is a Noun, a writer, theatre artist, and educator who tours regularly. Zie’s book, Butch is a Noun, is one of my favorites of the past year because it’s funny, self-ironic, but full of a kind of combination of sadness and love that I found meditative and energizing.

1) I have to say that it was the title of your book, Butch is a Noun, that first caught my attention. Tell me how you came up with it, and why you chose it.

It’s both one of my talents and one of my, er, little problems that I’m a huge language geek. I love words, I love language, and I am always deeply satisfied when I can talk about something well, with good words. But I had a hard time, talking about butch. I would say I’m a butch, and people would hear I’m a butch woman or I’m a butch lesbian. Neither of which is comfortable, or accurate. I kept saying No, listen, I mean that I am a butch, as a noun, all by itself – not a modifier but a thing to them be further described.

For a while, I referred to it as The Butch Book, but I never really liked that as a title, it was just sort of a characterization – an internal shorthand. Then one day, I was applying for some time at a writers’ residency to finish it and when it asked for the project title I somehow just knew: Butch Is a Noun. More…

Mattilda a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore is an insomniac with dreams. She is the editor, most recently of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. She’s also the author of a novel, Pulling Taffy. Mattilda lives for feedback, so contact her or check up on her various projects via her website or her blog.

1) I love the way you use the word “assimilation” – it always reminds me of the Borg episodes of Star Trek – but I wonder how that term plays in different audiences – say a gay male audience as compared to a trans one. How do people respond to your use of that term, and its sinister connotations?

Generally I’m talking about the way an assimilated gay elite has hijacked queer struggle, and positioned their desires as everyone’s needs. In this way, we see the dominant signs of straight conformity reimagined as the ultimate goals of gay (or that fake acronym “LGBT”) success, i.e. marriage, monogamy, adoption, gentrification, military service, etc. We can see this fundamental absurdity where housing and healthcare and fighting police brutality and challenging US imperialism are no longer seen as “LGBT” issues, but access to Tiffany wedding bands and participatory patriarchy is seen as the bedrock.

So when I articulate these politics, it’s generally the people I’m holding accountable — gay men and lesbians with power and privilege — who are the most scared. Most gay men wouldn’t know Feminism 101 if it hit them over the head, so it’s not surprising that they see getting rid of homeless people and people of color and sex workers from the neighborhoods they’ve gentrified as a wonderful service to the “community.”

Generally it’s more marginalized queers, and especially trans, genderqueer and gender defiant freaks and outlaws and misfits — as well as feminists of various formations — who are ready to challenge the cultural erasure that assimilation represents.

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Although Richard M. Juang is an otherwise studious English professor, I came to know him through my participation with the NCTE Board of Advisors, and increasingly found him to be gentle and smart as a whip. We got to sit down and talk recently at First Event, where he agreed to answer my Five Questions.

(1) Tell me about the impetus that lead to writing Transgender Rights. Why now? Why you, Paisley Currah, and Shannon Price Minter?
Transgender Rights helps create a discussion of the concrete issues faced by transgender people and communities. Our contributors have all written in an accessible way, while also respecting the need for complex in-depth thought, whether the topic is employment, family law, health care, poverty, or hate crimes. We also provide two important primary documents and commentaries on them: the International Bill of Gender Rights and an important decision from the Colombian Constitutional Court concerning an intersex child. Both have important implications for thinking about how one articulates the right of gender self-determination in law. We wanted to create a single volume that would let students, activists, attorneys, and policy-makers think about transgender civil rights issues, history, and political activism well beyond Transgender 101.

One of the things the book doesn’t do is get bogged down in a lot of debate about how to define “transgender” or about what transgender identity “means”; we wanted to break sharply away from that tendency in scholarly writing. Instead, we wanted to make available a well-informed overview about the legal and political reality that transgender people live in.

Oddly enough, Shannon, Paisley and I each did graduate work in a different field at Cornell University in Ithaca NY. (Apparently, a small town in upstate New York is a good place to create transgender activists!) The book represents a cross-disciplinary collaboration where, although we had common goals for the book, we also had different perspectives. The result was that, as editors, we were able to stay alert to the fact that the transgender movement is diverse and has many different priorities and types of activism.

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