Erica Foley, a blogger on TGB, recently decided to do a photo shoot that was inspired by the first few pages of My Husband Betty. If you remember it, it’s about why a woman wearing her husband’s shirt is considered sexy, while a man who’d put on his wife’s slip, isn’t.
So here he is being the girl enjoying her guy’s clothes- though of course the girl & the guy are one & the same:
Just love genderfuck like this. Love it.
I wrote most of My Husband Betty
She’s Not the Man I Married
But now, this novel — which I started writing when I was first listening to a lot of Smiths
Recently, someone from Brazil inquired as to whether or not a Portuguese translation of My Husband Betty existed. Sadly, the answer is no. Neither is there a Spanish or Japanese version — which are the ones I’m most often asked about.
Seal Press owns the translation rights for My Husband Betty, but I’m pretty sure I own them for She’s Not the Man I Married. Not 100% sure, but nearly. So if you - or someone you know - is interested in publishing a different translation of either, do let me know, or contact Seal Press. Likewise for Audio versions. Personally I’d like to see all of these happen, but so far, no luck.
Congratulations to Tristan Taormino on her 200th “Pucker Up” column for The Village Voice. She’s been writing that column since 1999, and even mentions the column about The Queer Heterosexual that I cited in My Husband Betty. (She also wrote a column about My Husband Betty, which did the book a world of good).
So congrats Tristan, and keep on putting your nose (or whichever parts you choose) into other people’s sex lives - with their consent, of course.
After Avalon was bought by Perseus and Perseus eliminated the Thunder’s Mouth Press imprint altogether, I was wondering - and worried - as to what would happen to My Husband Betty, since it was published by Thunder’s Mouth. Lo & behold, I got the news that MHB is going to be moved to Seal Press, who published She’s Not the Man I Married.
I’m very pleased, since MHB has continued selling - not in giant ways, but more like The Little Engine that Could. But more than that, I feel like I have a home as a writer (& from what they tell me, the folks at Seal feel similarly.)
It turns out I’m listed as a Park Slope writer (under Notable Residents, even) in the Wiki entry for Park Slope, which is kind of funny, only because our local Barnes & Noble will not put my books in the Local Authors section.
Maybe I should send them a copy of the Wiki entry.
My Husband Betty has an entry, too, though the actual biographical entry for me is blank. (Wiki contributors, feel free to complete it!)
Today, as if to reassure my confidence for the show we’ll be taping tomorrow, both of my books are much higher in their amazon.com rankings than usual, with My Husband Betty clocking in at #10,060 and She’s Not the Man I Married at #12,122.
(They usually float around 40,000 or so.)
I knew it was on its way, but I got the official word today: the 6th printing of My Husband Betty has been ordered, which means there are now more than 10k copies in print.
Lisa Jackson was born in Fayetteville, Georgia, and her first
venture into rock n roll was as a Christian rocker. But at the age of 21 she followed her star to New York, where she formed the Steve Friday band. In 2000, she did her first gig in drag, and eventually began to transition in a very public kind of way. With the support of several downtown notables, like Jayne County,
Lisa has gone on to not only become a fantastic role model for the trans community but a fantastic rock n roller in her own right. Her band, Lisa Jackson + Girl Friday, regularly play gigs in New York and beyond, and her CDs rock. Her “Fabulously Done is also the endpage of My Husband Betty. If you’re in New York City during May, you can catch them on Monday nights at Arlene’s Grocery.
1) As a fellow 80s kid, which were your bands? Which band did you love that might surprise people the most? Were you Punk or New Wave?
Well the band that tops my list from that era would be Van Halen and that would be the David Lee Roth era only! But I was also a big fan of Men at Work, Till Tuesday, and even Journey.
Tonight it was brought to my attention that a CD in the online group A Crossdresser’s Secret Garden had warned another CD that my book was too heavy on the issues surrounding transition, and so recommended Peggy Rudd’s book My Husband Wears My Clothes, instead. I have to start off by explaining that I don’t have an issue with some people preferring Peggy Rudd’s book over my own; we both have our audiences, and as Dr. Rudd once said to me, ‘it’s not like there isn’t enough room for two of us.’ (She also told me I didn’t have to answer all the email I’d get, which was sound advice I’ve mostly failed to follow.)
It’s funny that this advice should come just now, but not just because my interview with Melanie and Peggy Rudd is the Five Questions With… blog post that precedes this one, but also because - well, transition issues come up in exactly one chapter of My Husband Betty. I told the story I did because it was part of my own experience. When I was trying to reach out to other couples, especially other girlfriends of CDs, I happened to meet Katie, and we had an instant rapport. At the time we became friends, every crosssdressing website emphasized the fact that *crossdressers don’t transition.* I found out otherwise when I watched my friend Katie go through a painful divorce that was caused by her crossdressing partner’s transition.
And while I’m happy to report that Katie and Elle have both gone on to live happy, separate lives, it was precisely because of that experience that I included their story - and how it affected our story - in my book. Because I didn’t want to see even one other Katie get blindsided like that, not ever again.
In the warnings about how “scary” my book is, the CD pointed out once again that CDs rarely transition. Or that a very small percentage do. And the ironic thing is that I know the group, and I know that quite a few of their members were CDs when they joined who later transitioned. Some of them - gasp! - were even married. So it makes me wonder why this information is re-iterated over and over again, when no-one has any idea how many CDs eventually transition.
I certainly don’t know the percentage. I just wonder at what point people think it’s okay to mislead spouses like that. I mean, if you had a 1 in 100 chance of finding out that your marriage was going to be dead in the water in a decade, would that be a high enough risk for you to maybe warn your future partner? 2 in 100? 5 in 100? 10 in 100?
And while I understand the need to help wives who are already married keep their wits about them and not freak out, I cannot abide the idea that anyone is telling a girlfriend or a fiancee of a CD not to worry about it - especially if they’re under the age of 30.
And while I also know there are no guarantees in this life, I also know that plenty of crossdressers said they’d never transition and did. Wives or no wives, children or no children. And I wonder why this urge to reassure wives comes so fast. I know after I found out that all those people who had told me that *crossdressers never transition* were full of it, I held them accountable for having bullshitted me. Because even if the chance is 1 in 1000, a woman deserves to know the truth, especially if she’s about to make a lifetime commitment. Or have children. Or buy a house with her husband. Or work more to put him through school. Or start saving for retirement.
A woman deserves to know - no matter what the situation - that there’s a chance her CD boyfriend may eventually become her ex-wife. I’m tired of no-one wanting to say it outloud. I’m tired of hearing how it’s a negligible percentage. I want to know who gave anyone the right to decide what “negligible” means when it comes to a person’s life. And I want to know too where they get the numbers that have convinced them it’s “negligible.”
Because I’d like to see them. And I know they don’t exist. My best guess why crossdressers think the number is so negligible is because transitioning women leave support groups intended for crossdressers when they transition, so crossdressers stop seeing them - a kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ phenomenon. Either that or they’re going by that whacked Tri-Ess logic, that says a CD who transitions was never a CD, anyway - even if they identified one for a couple of decades.
. . .
The even richer irony for me is that so many married transwomen and partners of transitioning women don’t read my book because the word “crossdresser” is in the title. Isn’t that rich? Sometimes I think I should find myself a small army of terrified CDs to go into the TS community and explain exactly how much My Husband Betty is about transitioning! Yet I had a partner in another group I’m in say - after having read my book - that there is nothing out there for spouses of transitioning people.
Papa Bear on one hand, Mama Bear on the other. Now both of them can’t be right.
It’s actually the partner of the transitioning person who’s right, in my opinion. My Husband Betty is not about transition; the story of Katie and Elle is a cautionary tale, only. It’s there so that others will understand it can happen. And it can happen even when the couple is deeply in love. I am hoping to write about what it’s like to live with someone who is considering transition in my next book, however, and I’ll certainly let you know if/when I do.
What I have always recommended is this: that any wife who is new to having a crossdressing partner read the first four chapters of My Husband Betty first, sit on them, mull over them, discuss them with her therapist and her partner. After a while, when she hits a certain comfort level, and she’s ready for more, she can read (the dreaded, terrifying, all-too-realistic) Chapter Five. She can read Peggy Rudd’s book(s) before or after mine - it’s not like there’s a whole slew of books by wives out there, is there? Some will prefer one over the other. Some will find them complementary in some ways. Others will hate and excoriate one and bless the heavens for the other. That’s not the issue for me; the issue is that sometimes CDs are so freaked out by the fact that I even talk about transition they remember the whole book being about it.
After my experience with Katie, and after doing all the research for My Husband Betty, I became convinced that if there’s anything a crossdresser’s wife needs to know, it’s exactly what crossdressers don’t tell her. You see, I didn’t write the book to scare anyone. I wrote it because I’m a wife, and I wish someone had told me everything I had to find out for myself. I wanted to spare any other wife the pain that Katie went through, and the fear I experienced. I wrote it once in the book, and I’ll write it again here: crossdressers do transition. Not all of them, not most of them, but some of them. And their potential spouses need to know.
It occurred to me that around this time last year, emails and T newsgroups and mailing lists and blogs were inundated with protests about the nomination of Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen for a Lambda Literary Award. I was against the nomination as were so many of us, and the driving force behind the protest was pretty remarkable, if not always polite.
However, not one trans website I’ve found has actually posted anything about this year’s nominees. I noticed, of course, because I’m one of the people whose book has been nominated, in the transgender category, along with the likes of Morty Diamond, Mariette Pathy Allen, Jamison Green and Julie Anne Peters. There are some other trans writers up for awards in other categories, and yet I haven’t really read anything about it.
Did the Bailey controversy end up nullifying the awards for the trans community? Or are we just way better at protesting than supporting the writers and educators who are doing good work?
So here, without further ado, are a few of the book award nominees for the Lambda Lit Award:
In the Nonfiction Anthology category:
That’s Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation edited by Mattilda, a.k.a Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Soft Skull Press
In the Children’s/Young Adult category:
Luna by Julie Anne Peters, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (which was also a finalist for the National Book Award this year)
In the Drama/Theatre category:
I am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (which has won so many other awards, like the Pulitzer and the Tony, you’ll have to check the website for the entire list)
In the Transgender/GenderQueer category:
Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green, Vanderbilt University Press (which also won CLAGS’ Sylvia Rivera award)
From The Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond edited by Morty Diamond, Manic D Press
Luna by Julie Anne Peters, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
My Husband Betty: Love, Sex and Life with a Crossdresser by Helen Boyd, Thunder’s Mouth Press
The Gender Frontier by Mariette Pathy Allen, Kehrer Verlag
Betty & I filmed a short clip for a Canadian television show called Richler Ink which showed on Book Television, which is an entire channel dedicated to books & authors (so you know it’s not American). They themed their shows “Naughty Librarian Month” for January and so focused on sexual topics. (Whether or not we all think crossdressing is a sexual topic is beside the point, since 1) the point is outreach and education, as long as it’s done respectfully, and 2) the rest of the world still thinks it is, and they’re not going to understand otherwise until they hear about and maybe read a book like mine).
I hadn’t seen the show ever before, but it was explained to me that there would be in-studio guests, and Betty & I would be a segment. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the two books used as segments (My Husband Betty and another on women’s orgasm called She Comes First) would be commented on by the in-studio guest. It was as if Daniel Richler (the host) and the in-studio guest - who was in our case Josey Vogels - were watching the video clip of us with the audience, and when it finished, they chatted about it.
I was pretty upset when Daniel Richler couldn’t seem to keep a smirk off his face, and started muttering things about “kinky” & the like. But Josey Vogels, I’m happy to say, is not only well-informed but a pro. She’s apparently talked to straight, nervous, vanilla guys about sex before! And she talked a little bit about the transgender movement, and otherwise made sure Daniel Richler didn’t get to go anywhere with his nudge, nudge, wink, wink crap.
I’ve already thanked Josey Vogels, of course, for being a first-class act, and for not allowing the show to sink into Springer-esque insinuations, and she’ll hopefully be writing one of her columns about My Husband Betty as a result of our correspondence.
And though I certainly don’t mind spending time praising Josey Vogels (who was on promoting her current book Bedside Manners), that’s not why I sat down to write this: I write this because I was suddenly reminded that the world still thinks crossdressers are funny, or kinky, or both. In more than a year of going to trans-conferences and the like, you start to believe that everyone is tuned into the finer debates about passing, or other standard fare that’s dicussed within the trans community, until you realize - maybe because of a nervous talk show host or because of something someone shouts from the street - that we’ve got a long way to go.
Going that long way is going to take working with the media where and when we can. Betty and I have had to turn down other television shows on advice from friends here in NYC who have been burned themselves or seen firsthand how disrespectful most of the talk shows are of their guests: from “surprise guests” to telling people the shows are themed other than they are, they actually trick people into coming on. Of course all the invitations seem respectful; none of them write to ask me if I’d be willing to portray a wife who’s been victimized by her crazy tranny husband.
And while I don’t even have cable TV because of the schlock that is American television, I’m well aware that most of America is informed via TV - depressing but true. Doing innumerable events like Trans-Week at Yale or speaking to a class at UVM are wonderful: talking to people who are intelligent and willing to learn and listen means a new generation aren’t going to become adults with the same uninformed notions in their heads as their parents.
The question is: what about the rest? How do we get to the rest of the people out there?
Doing publicity with a mainstream book helps. Knowing my book is in libraries where it can be found (not only by T-people and their partners but by any average, interested, curious reader) is something. People ask me all the time why we haven’t been on Oprah. After I ask them if they know anyone who works on the show who might get us on (no takers yet), I ask: why aren’t there more shows like Oprah?
Maybe those of us in the GLBT community can start pressuring networks not necessarily for more shows about us - but just for more intelligent shows, in general. We need to write to our local and cable stations and tell them we’re tired of schlock. The Jerry Springer-type shows wouldn’t hurt half so much if we had something to offset it. I was pretty amazed to find that when we did PBS’ In the Life, none of my friends in the red states could see it. Why? Their local PBS affiliate simply didn’t carry it.
But I’m sure that had nothing to do with why eleven states voted for banning gay marriage, or why we’re teaching Creationism in schools as if it’s science, or why no one seemed to notice that we’ve hung the whole of the guilt for the Abu Ghraib horror on guys who were following orders.
I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with it. It doesn’t, does it?
My Husband Betty has just been nominated for the 17th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, in two categories: Memoir/Autobiography, and Transgender/GenderQueer.
You can see all the nominated books and categories at Lambda’s website.
I’m thrilled and honored and really, really excited - what a Christmas present! As it turns out, it was just the needed push for the book to hit its 4th printing, too!
I’ve gotten the good news today that the first class (that I know of) will be using MHB as a text for an undergraduate class.
The class is called “Social Organization” and it’s being taught at the University of Vermont.
MHB will be used as part of the section on “kinship & identity” re: families.
Maybe it’s fall, or maybe it’s because I spoke with my mother today, or still yet it may be that I’m facing the ‘wrap-up’ of the so-called “tour” for My Husband Betty, but I’ve been somewhat circumspect about the experience of the last (nearly) two years.
[A brief timeline: I started writing MHB in January '03, saw the reading copies about a year ago, and although the official publication date was Jan '04, the book started shipping by early December '03. A full year for writing, printing, & distribution. 2004 was entirely about publicity and outreach.]
I never intended to write non-fiction. I’ve got a couple of unpublished novels tucked away into drawers (along with the requisite rejection letters from agents & editors), so it was kind of a surprise to be offered the chance to write a book at all. And non-fiction? Other than keeping a journal since I was nine years old, and papers for school, I didn’t have much experience. But how could I resist?
Two years later, I have several hundred emails in my inbox - some answered and some not - and I’ve met innumerable people. Some I know only via computer and this wonderful thing our President refers to as “the Internets,” but others I’ve had a chance to meet in person. There have been movers and shakers among them, yes, but I think it’s the quiet CD who comes up to me at a conference and stands in line at a book-signing to tell me how much MHB helped his relationship with his wife that means the most to me. There have been other remarkable stories people have emailed or told me in person: the gay rabbi who got in touch to tell me that upon cleaning up his father’s apt after his death, he’d found pictures there of someone named “Fiona” and only then realized his father was a CD; the septegenarian living in Africa who was first crossdressed by whores in Singapore while he was serving in WWII as a young man. The stories are remarkable - not even because they are fascinating and all preciously singular - but rather because people have come to tell them to me.
I love stories. I love lives lived. I love the great inconsistencies and frustrations and triumphs and even the failures of actual people. And the most incredible - and unexpected - thing about having written a book about crossdressing is to have had people come up to me just to tell me their own.
I joked with my mother today that when I announced I wanted to be a priest at age nine neither of us ever expected that I would be - at least not in such an unusual way. But that’s what I feel like. Whenever a crossdresser comes to me and says “I never believed I was okay until I read your book” what can I say in response except “You are!”? What is that except absolution?
I have days when I am absolutely crushed by how hard it is to get a book published, to get paid as a writer, to live and pay the rent. Other days I’m reminded more clearly: this is what I do, what I should be doing. The cheers of support I get from all of you are at least equal to the disappointment of what it means to live as a writer. But more than the support, it’s the help I’ve been able to give - via the book, or email, or when I go to conferences - that means the most at the end of the day.
You get so many chances to laugh at yourself as a writer, mostly for your own unabashed pretentiousness! This little apologia is what I get to laugh at myself for today: this Preface to the Fourth Printing, as it were. But it is something I have been meaning to say for a long while: thank you.
Helen Boyd
As you may have noticed, Betty & I have been updating the website. Mostly Betty does the work, for which I am eternally thankful.
Here are some new changes/section of the site:
Press Kit (lists my publications, events we’ve been to, print/radio/tv media we’ve appeared in, etc)
Praise for the book from the TG community, the publishing industry, & other assorted places
AND what you’ve all really been waiting for, photos!
Enjoy!
Helen
**
4/18/06 Update: Helen Boyd’s Press Kit has been moved, as have the reviews of My Husband Betty.
UK & European Readers,
I’ve added a PayPal button for signed copies of MHB for you! Cost is $26, which includes speedy (airmail) shipping.
Helen
Hi everybody! I wanted to tell you that the story “My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser” will be airing on Citytv’s Sextv on July 10th and July 11th (at 11:30 p.m.) in Toronto and throughout the province of Ontario.
From there it will air nationally (in most major cities across Canada) and then it will be sent out to international markets (via the Trio channel in the US). I’ll get more information as I receive it.
We’re joined by two other couples, friends of ours: Minerva & Christine, Zoe & Kat.
INTRAA (Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance) ran a review of My Husband Betty that inspired me to get in touch with them, and the author of the review, for the interesting points about feminism it brought up.
What resulted was an interview that ran in their July/August newsletter, which proved for me as interesting as the intial review.
I’m pleased to report that My Husband Betty is now in its third printing!
