At the TransOhio “Fabulously Fluid” performance night, I got to see Adam Apple do a fantastic performance based on Dylan’s signs that was intense & personal, & made a whole bunch of us in the audience cry.
This series of gorgeous photos asking questions about gender by L. Weingarten reminded me of Adam Apple’s performance, which I found on YouTube (even if the video/audio quality is crap, it gives you an idea).
Kumar is an Indian drag queen who works & lives in Singapore. A documentary about hir was broadcast in 2006 that’s found its way to YouTube.
and you can see hir do a bit of stand-up that’s also in three parts
but may be harder to understand without subtitles – and as zie points out, zie talks fast, on top of the regional humor about the first family of Singapore, Malaysia, and the Chinese in Singapore, but I think the joke about rooster eggs translates okay.
In response to this last post, I received this short email:
“My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser”
This is where you loose me Helen. You say you don’t use words like “Husband or Wife”….but then you write books using that exact terminology.
Very confusing.
I responded:
I wrote that book 6 years ago. My thinking is surely allowed to change, no?
He responded:
Convenient. No?
& I responded:
Is that how you’d talk to Betty about her decision to transition? That it was “convenient�
My partner was a self-identified straight drag queen when we met, with a male identity.
She is living as a woman & doing what paperwork she can to reflect that.
One of the reasons I can’t & don’t use “husband†anymore is because people then start using “he†pronouns about my partner. She is not a he. To avoid that, I avoid the gendered terminology that leads to it.
When she had a genderqueer/androgynous presentation, she didn’t mind mixing up the pronouns – as I did in the 2nd book. Now, “he†chafes her, doesn’t fit.
So sue me for having had to make adjustments – especially ones that are entirely out of consideration of my partner’s gender.
Please don’t write back. Your response was rude beyond belief. I shouldn’t be justifying it with a response at all, but I like to give people a fair shake.
If I stop using “husband” then it’s somehow just “convenient” that I’m doing so. Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with my partner’s change in gender! *sigh* I’m having one of those days.
Fairfax High School elected a male student Prom Queen.
Tom Ackerman, a gay man, has vowed to call his friends’ wives their girlfriends, because he’s decided his religious views don’t allow him to recognize opposite-sex marriage.
The New Scientist tells you everything you ever wanted to know about female ejaculation (& maybe a few things you didn’t want to know).
A woman named Brenda Lee got dragged bodily off of Air Force One when she tried to give President Obama a letter asking him to stand up for heterosexual marriage.
Publishers Weekly reports from the BEA that US Publishers have vowed to fight digitized piracy.
This is the text of the talk I gave at the Liberty Conference on May 2nd, 2009:
How We Love You: Let Us Count the Ways
There are partners who are male, female, and trans; there are partners who met their trans person before the trans person knew what was going on; there are partners who married crossdressers who had sworn off crossdressing who purged and then dressed and then purged and then dressed again; there are partners who met their husbands crossdressed; there are partners who met their trans person during transition; there are partners who met their trans person long after transition; there are partners who didn’t know their trans person was trans when they met.
You, the individuals who are in love, were in love, who are seeking companionship and partnership and occasionally a good spanking, are said to be like snowflakes. Flawless Mother Sabrina told me that one night at the now defunct Ina’s Silver Swan, and she was right. Each of your stories is unique, even when there are similarities; each of you realizes your transness, as I like to call it, in a different way: some crossdress, others do drag, others transition. Some do all three, and others – none of these, but you express your genders in some other way. But you have your stories, your characters in movies, even if and when they are comically or tragically or unfairly drawn, but those you love have – well, we’ve got a machete and a spot on the edge of the wood we mean to get through.
via Susan Stryker:
Michelle Lawler is producing a documentary film about Vicki Marlane, a 74-year-old transsexual woman who is an amazing drag performer, and who still puts on two shows a week at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Drag performance, particularly the traditional “record pantomime” style that Vicki does, is a joyous, subversive, heart-warming art form. Vicki has been doing professional theatrical drag for 50 years. She is a total inspiration to me, and an honored elder of my community.
Michelle and her editor Monica Nolan have completed a final cut of the film, titled “Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight,” (so-called after a line in Vicki’s signature number, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”). We expect the film to premiere at Frameline’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival in June 2009–look for the official press release on May 19!
We’re still trying to raise the last few thousand dollars we need to pay for music rights and the final audio mix to finish the film. I’m writing to ask you to make a donation that will help us complete this important film.
You can watch a short clip from the film at our page on the BAVC web site (our fiscal sponsor). Check out Vicki’s performance, too, while you’re at it.
You can make a tax-deductible contribution online from that page or you can make a non-tax deductible donation by sending a check made out to the film’s Executive Producer, Kim Klausner, at 1541 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.
All donations — $5, $25, $100, $500 or whatever — will help. Feel free to forward this email to people who might be interested in supporting this project.
Just got this cool press release which makes me wish I was anywhere near West Hollywood:
Grrrl, boi, lezbo, butch, femme, lipstick, drag king, trans, dyke, bulldagger, tomboy, genderqueer, one-way, kiki, power femme …
Each generation of lesbians uses new and different terms to describe how we present ourselves and what attracts us. GenderPlay in Lesbian Culture is the first ever Los Angeles exhibit to talk about labels and explore gender and its boundaries.
The OPENING EVENT, at the One Museum on Saturday March 14, will feature singer Phranc, emcee Marie Cartier and performance art from Latina trio, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan. More…
Today is the 1st annual Drag Day at Lawence University. Okay, it’s just the first, but I’m hoping it’s not the last. The students in my Trans Lives course expressed a desire to play with gender, and I thought it’d be safest on a day that’s already a little nuts: Mardi Gras.
So laissez les bon temps rouler & have a good Drag Day!
My friend Shirene, who I met while I was researching My Husband Betty, and at a SPICE conference to boot, has contined to work with wives who have just found out their husbands are crossdressers. She wrote this letter recently to one such wife, and I thought it was worth sharing here, for any husband who might want to use it to help come out to his wife, or for any wife who has just found out.
I don’t necessarily agree with how she simplifies certain issues – like the “crossdressers are heterosexual” meme – but a lot of the rest of it is a good “talking down” for a new wife who might be completely panicking.
Dear Jill,
Hi. I hope you don’t mind receiving a letter like this from a stranger, but my husband is transgender also and I know that if I could have received a letter such as this when I found out, it would have made it easier on both me and my husband. My name is Shirene, I’m 43, we live in S******, IL and I’ve known about Shayla since ‘98. We’re at 555 555 5555.
I will admit it’s somewhat of an adapted form letter so please ignore the things that don’t apply to your situation and please excuse the things I’m telling you that you already know. More…
An old friend of mine is in town, and she was asked to guest drum at a bellydance performance tonight. As I’ve rarely gotten to see her drum, I went, & dragged my sister with me. (Betty, sadly, is not very mobile). I’ve seen bellydance performed before, but tonight, on top of my usual introverted discomfort, I kept thinking about how I was supposed to be in that room.
The dancers were all lovely. The first act, Sri Devi, was (I’m guessing) still pretty young to dancing, but she was fabulously talented and funny and fun in her performance. She seems like the type of performer who has a real star in her.
The final performance, by Hannah Nour, was really a hit out of the park. She had what I call “sea legs” for a performer – the way sailors are more comfortable on a boat than on land, some people are more comfortable performing than not. (Betty was that kind of actor.) She showed no self-concsiousness, seemed like she was really engaged and enjoying herself, and was technically stellar. And her clothes! Like a Hindu Love Goddess, all light blues and greens and whites and pinks – like a female version of the traditional representation of Rama.
Because on one level bellydance is a seductive art, sexual, exhibitionist, and yet it’s also social. It’s not burlesque. And I couldn’t figure out how to watch, at all. Most of the guys sit there just kind of ga-ga (in a more or less sexualized gaze) and a lot of the women were other dancers who were there to cheer on their friends or learn or just to appreciate the art.
But I was just there, looking like a dyke in the corner, and now that I’m aware people see me as a lesbian, it’s all I think about. I suppose if I actually desired women, I’d sit there like most of the guys, enjoying the sensuality & beauty of the ladies dancing without feeling weird about it. But because my desire, per se, is not engaged, I just sit there wondering how to watch, because it’s still titillating – dance is innately seductive, no?. I find myself tied up in knots, and kind of uncomfortable despite the performers being very comfortable with themselves and the dance form.
(I know, I know; I’m self-conscious & I think too much. Tell me something I don’t know.)
But despite my own silliness, DO GO see bellydance if you can! It’s a cool art form. The night I saw tonight happens every Sunday (thought with different performers, I think).
I was reading over at feministing.com about casual sex, & read a recent bulletin from GenderPAC about the increase in Purity Balls, & then was mourning over the loss of another trans woman who got beaten to death by a guy who she’d previously given a blowjob to, & it got me thinking.
See, I wasn’t comfortable being a nubile when I was younger. I wasn’t comfortable ever being a nubile, & am still only wont to dress in sexier ways in very safe spaces – like DO, or certain queer/drag/fetish events, or the like. As much as I know it’s never a woman’s fault if she is hurt because of the way she’s dressed, I also had enough contact with non-sexual street violence to be twice as cautious about leaving myself open to any kind of sexual abuse or harassment, much less violence.
Which probably makes me painfully Second Wave, but there you go. I just don’t get it, & I’m never going to get it. I never had good sex that was casual; a long-standing “booty call” type relationship was a little closer to my experience of having good, non-committed sex, and maybe here we’re just defining “casual” in different ways, and the folks over at feministing are talking about the same kind of relationship. More…
A gay bar, and its gay bar owner, have decided to ban drag queens and trans women from their “Trashy Tuesday” night – exactly because the bar night is so crowded that they don’t have time to babysit the bad apples of their crowd.
“How do I separate one draq queen that is being bad from others?†Moore said. “We don’t have the time on Tuesday nights with all the people in here to sit there and tell them apart from one another. If a drag queen misbehaves one week and then the next comes back in a different outfit I wouldn’t be able to recognize them. That’s why I don’t want any of them in here on Tuesdays.â€
Wow, now that IS tricky! How about you just ban the person who does the bad stuff?
(from The Dallas Voice. More at their blog. Thanks to Ben for the tip.)
A great rant about Pride by Joe.My.God, which he wrote back in 2005 after watching a NYC Pride Parade:
Because even if Pride doesn’t change many minds in the outside world, it’s our PARTY, darlings. It’s our Christmas, our New Year’s, our Carnival. It’s the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other “Happy Pride!” Saying “Happy Pride!” is really just a shorter, easier way of saying “Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!”
I’m not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It’s OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our “debauched” celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.
It seemed a great way to end Pride Month.
There was quite an inflammatory thread on our boards recently about drag queens and crossdressers who dress in over-the-top ways, and it’s gotten me thinking. I’ve often heard that feminists hate drag queens because they mock women, which has always baffled me, for two reasons: (1) I don’t think all DQs are mocking women, and my guess is that most are not, and (2) I think there’s about a million feminist issues to deal with and that the relative powerlessness of your average DQ is hardly a major problem.
But the trans woman who brought this up was very upset by the way DQs mock women and in some way “misrepresent” transness – or at least her variety.
So what I’ve been thinking is that, ironically, I have found the one place where a lot of radical feminists and trans women might agree: in their dislike of DQs. So maybe MWMF should have an “anti-DQ” rally so that they can find the common ground that’s been so sorely lacking.
I’m kidding, of course. Still, the anger of the trans woman who had the courage to post her feelings about DQs surprised me, and usually things that surprise me make me pay attention. I just didn’t expect it. I just can’t see DQs as threatening of anyone. & Yet it was very clear she was threatened and angered, so I’d love to hear other input from people here. Do you other trans women resent drag queens? Why?
(Here’s an article from the Orlando Sentinel about the DQ pageant scene, which comes with some interesting terminology. Thanks to Donna T for finding it.)
Out Magazine recently put together a really asinine list of transgender books for their transgender issue. I haven’t seen the issue, but the list doesn’t really inspire me to go buy it, either, since Myra Breckinridge is on it.
For the past years I’ve always mixed my gender / feminism / trans books, but since that Top 10 of Out’s is so lame, and the Lammies recently neglected Whipping Girl, which they shouldn’t have, I thought instead I should post my own Top Ten Recommended Trans Reads for LGBTQ readers. There are a few everyone might not need to read – like Virginia Erhardt’s Head Over Heels, which is about the partners of MTFs – or they might want to substitute Minnie Bruce Pratt’s S/he
I might suggest different books for family & friends who are trying to understand transition but who aren’t big readers, & I’ll have to think about that list, too.
Of course now that I’ve written it I have to say I’d add my own books, My Husband Betty
& Maybe The Drag Queens of New York as well.
– S. Bear Bergman – Kate Bornstein – Bullough & Bullough: The Politics of Transgenderism – Patrick Califia: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals – Virginia Erhardt: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman – Leslie Feinberg – Jamison Green – Just Evelyn – Julia Serano – Reid VanderberghYou’ll notice none of them is a YETA (Yet Another Transsexual Autobiography), since after you read Jenny Boylan’s She’s Not There
Here’s a list of books I recommend on transgender issues and lives.
The starred (*) listings are books that I reviewed in greater depth in the annotated bibliography of My Husband Betty
You can read more about most of these books, find reviews and discussions of other books, or post your own book for discussion in our Reader’s Chair Forum.
If you’re brand new to the subject, see Boys Don’t Cry and read Jenny Boylan’s She’s Not There. They’ll get you started, and then you can start reading these, which complicate trans identities in ways that are both essential and necessary if you want to understand transgender lives.
IF YOU ARE A THERAPIST, Lev’s Trangender Care & Vanderbergh’s Transition & Beyond are the books you want.
Here is my Top Ten List of Transgender Books for LGBTQ readers, with these and others reviewed below.
– S. Bear Bergman – Kate Bornstein – Bullough & Bullough: The Politics of Transgenderism – Patrick Califia: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals – Virginia Erhardt: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman – Leslie Feinberg – Jamison Green – Just Evelyn – Julia Serano – Reid Vanderbergh
Transformations is a photographic book from the early 80s documenting (mostly) the lives of crossdressers. It was the first book Betty gave me that made any sense. Allen’s second, The Gender Frontier, won the Lambda Lit Award in the transgender category in 2004. There is an interview with Mariette Pathy Allen in my Five Questions With… Archive. : One Life, Two Friends, Three Genders. Nettie, one of our regulars o nthe MHB Boards, wrote a fantastic review of this book. You can find that review here. I reviewed this book for Transgender Tapestry, and the review and further discussion can be found in our Reader’s Chair Forum. There is also a Five Questions With… Interview with Rosalyne on my blog.* Kate Bornstein’s thoughtful and revolutionary book about gender. Feel free to comment on or read further discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum.* A historical book about crossdressing through the ages; thorough, slightly academic, a great reference. There is also a Five Questions With… interview with Vern Bullough in my blog archives. Written when Patrick Califia was still Pat Califia, this book is a good overview of both what it means to live in the gender binary and a discussion of transgender politics of the last 50 or so years. I especially love it for two things: 1) a feminist eye, and 2) accessible writing. S/he doesn’t get bogged down in jargon, and his extensive background as a feminist sex radical informs a lot of the opinions expressed.. ** added 6/3/06* I’m not sure Leslie Feinberg has an actual fan club, but if there is one, I want in. When I first read Stone Butch Blues, it blew my mind. A lesbian friend – since transitioned – made me read it. Made me, and for good reason: it’s like a sledgehammer of experience for anyone who has ever lived in the world as queer, or working class, and especially for anyone who has lived in the world as both. My friend knew it would speak to me, as it spoke to him.Transgender Warriors was equally great, full of information, rage, inspiration. I remember practically pointing out passages to strangers on the subway when I was reading it. But Drag King Dreams is like something from another world. Leslie Feinberg is not just remarkable as a person, and activist, but as a writer. Or as a radical, righteous soul. When I met hir at TIC (UVM’s trans conference), zie came up to thank me and Betty for what we were doing, and I could have been knocked over with a feather. I’m still astonished. Leslie Feinberg thanking me? For anything? Absurd. But now I know why. Leslie Feinberg was thinking about crossdressers, and zie was thining about crossdressers a lot, and in deep, empathetic ways. Crossdressers: buy this book. You think I’m your friend? Leslie Feinberg is the mensch you want at your back, believe me.The book starts with Max Rabinowitz (transman, drag king, genderqueer, bulldagger – it’s not really clear and doesn’t matter) talking to hir friend Vickie. In a moment of frustration, of ‘transer than thou’ anger, zie says something about how Vickie can take the clothes and the wig off and go back to being normal.The next day Vickie is found brutally murdered. And the rest of the book is Max’s meditation on friends, community, activism, family; it’s an insider’s view into being queer, being outside, being “other†while also being well-loved, deeply loving, and sorry. The book is Max’s apology to Vickie, for that moment of assumption and hierarchy that a crossdresser’s life is somehow “easier†than anyone else’s. Throw in some amazing scenes about being ungendered online, a lovely exchange between a “tough as nails†femme and an “suit and tie bulldagger,†a remarkable speech by Vickie’s communist uncle; a chilling scene of an apartment break-in by mysterious and angry visitors, and one scene – an exchange of sweet, light coffee and flags – that was so touching, so genuine, and so intense that I could taste the coffee and jonesed for a smoke right along with Max. The cast of characters is a veritable melting pot of transness and their empathizers: Estelle’s surviving wife being one. I’ve never seen myself in a novel before, and though I have no interest in living Estelle’s reality, some of her words rang out in ways that were profound to me. I cried a lot just thinking about her, who she is, who she is to me. But it’s the delicacy that this book really thrives on: Feinberg doesn’t say “Max doesn’t feel solidarity with this asshole transman because he’s middle-class†but zie makes the point. Zie shows, not tells: the first lesson in fiction writing, and the one most writers get wrong.Leslie Feinberg, THANK YOU. This book was given to me by a friend – a friend who also identified as stone butch, and who now IDs as trans. At the time, many years ago, it was really just a book that was supposed to give me an idea of what her life was like. Although I don’t think the writing is all it could be – Les Feinberg is better at speeches and non-fiction prose, in my humble opinion – the impact this book had on my life can’t be underestimated. It’s one of the only books written not just by a lesbian and butch, but also by someone who lived a working-class life. As a result, so much of the book deals with what I’d call the real world: working in a blue-collar industry, dating women, dealing with family estrangement but also innate homophobia. The one scene that really hangs in my memory is one where the narrator has started taking T and is passing for male, and dating a woman who is straight. At some point, the woman says something deeply homophobic, and the convolutions of thought that go on in the narrator’s head at that time are enlightening. S/he wonders exactly what would happen to hir if that same woman were to really what/who the narrator really was; the fear in that scene is palpable. And practical. And realistic. (When I met Les Feinberg, at UVM last year, zie thanked me for the honesty of My Husband Betty. I was flabbergasted. Utterly flabbergasted. And I told hir: without Stone Butch Blues there would be no MHB. It sets a very high standard for other biographical books, one which most don’t even reach, but one which more writers should keep in mind when they write. For the record: I was not one bit surprised, however, to find out Les Feinberg was as gracious as zie was zealous about gender politics. Zie spent more than an hour after giving hir speech taking pictures with fans.) (Check out this review of SBB, too!) Leslie Feinberg’s history of trans and gender-variant people thoughout the eras. You can find more discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum. An academic book about every aspect of crossdressing – a great reference. So – why Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man? For starters, it’s a good read. James writes to be read, unlike a lot of writers on trans experience or in gender theory. Since my “audience” comes mostly from the MTF end of things, I also think it’s vital for us to educate ourselves as to what the experiences are from those on the other side of the fence. Having run FTM International for a million years, James has more than his own experience to rely upon for this book – he has head the stories of thousands of FTMs, from those that embrace a more genderqueer radical place, to those who wish, simply, to pass well enough so they can marry and mow their lawn on Saturdays. Beyond that, James is a great guy, a good writer, and penned the phrase that Betty and I repeat ad nauseum: There is no right way to be trans. He is also selfless with his time and energy – and has been for quite some time. Becoming a Visible Man was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the CLAGS book award. Feel free to comment or read further discussion about this book in our Reader’s Chair Forum. You can find a Five Questions With… interview with James Green on my blog.* Magnus Hirschfield’s 1910 book in which he coined the word “transvestite.”* Lacey Leigh’s guide for how to be an out crossdresser. There’s a good Five Questions With… Interview with Lacey Leigh on my blog archives as well. Arlene Istar Lev, wearing one of many hats, answers questions from people about queer parenting in her “Dear Ari” column at www.prideparenting.com, but she also wrote the ground-breaking Transgender Emergence, which makes her one of the first therapists to acknowledge partners’ concerns and therefore a friend of mine. The title of The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide is a slight misnomer – there should be a T in there somewhere – as Lev made a point of bringing up a trans related issue in every chapter of her later tome. Her “Dear Ari” columns show up in our Kids Forum with some discussion, and Transgender Emergence has been reviewed & discussed in our Reader’s Chair forum. ** added 3/2/07 **Surely it can’t be true that a neighborhood association in one of the gayest neighborhoods of the US is taking issue with a local club’s drag show? Surely not. There must be more to it.
(Or there might not. Via feministing.)
Charles Busch’s current production of Die Mommy Die! was reviewed in The New York Times today:
Directed by Carl Andress, “Die Mommie Die!,†which runs a peppy 90 minutes, is infused with the good-natured comic brio that has made Mr. Busch a drag artist whom middle America can embrace. Even theatergoers who don’t catch the copious old-movie quotations, verbal and physical, should enjoy Mr. Busch’s hair-trigger comic timing and rubbery mugging, which brings to mind vintage Lucille Ball. (The association is underscored by Mr. Busch’s choice of red wigs, designed by Katherine Carr.)
I’ve seen a bunch of Charles Busch’s shows over the years – including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Lady in Question, Shanghai Moon and Times Square Angel – and always find them smart and fun. I even met Joan Jett in the bathroom at one production! So do go if you get a chance, or rather: make the chance.
This is the text of the talk I gave in Denver on Tuesday. It probably won’t surprise anyone that I’ve been busting at the seams wanting to have a say in all of the dialogue going on about ENDA. At least I don’t think it should surprise anyone, not by now.
**
First, let me thank Ed and Jordan and all the students who asked them to bring me here. It’s a pleasure to be here in celebration of National Coming Out Day, a pleasure to see all of you gathered, celebrating who you are. Thanks to all the crossdressers, the gays, the lesbians, the genderqueers, the trans men & women, MTF and FTM, & to their partners. Thanks to all of you who are family, or friends, or allies, for being here.
Betty and I have been on tour a lot this year because I had a book published in March, and we’ve gotten a chance, once again, to meet a lot of people and to talk to a lot of trans people and partners, and this year, we’ve met more gay and lesbian people who aren’t trans than we did before. And it’s been a pleasure all around in hearing people’s stories of their own gender variance, or the stories of how they came out to loved ones, or of their first big crush or the moment when they realized they were trans or gay or lesbian or how they came to understand the first identity they understood themselves to be was not quite accurate in the long run. What I love to hear the most is about how queer people find one identity fits for a while and then not at all; like Oliver Wendell Holmes’ chambered nautilus, queer people build themselves bigger chambers, bigger categories, labels that are not so confining, over time.
That’s how it’s been for us, certainly. By the time people get used to what we’re calling ourselves our identities have shifted a little, changed usually by experiences we never expected and wouldn’t trade for anything. More…
So I’m still thinking about the 20/20 show that was on a few weeks ago about young kids coming out as trans.
& The thing I can’t quite get past is how many people who are gender variant grow up to be gender variant but okay with the sex they were born. A gay friend of mine called after the show was over & asked, “So what’s the difference between them & me?” because he went through most, if not all, of what one of the young MTF expressed. He did drag for most of his childhood, expressed the desire to be a girl as a child, and had a hard time dating guys who didn’t want to date a queen. I didn’t have an answer for him. I don’t know what makes some of us gender variant & some of us trans. More…
