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
Nettie, one of our regulars on the MHB Boards, wrote a fantastic review of this book, and I thought more people should see it.
My sister is frustrated, she tells me, because she feels as though she’s the only one struggling with somebody else’s transness. When she goes to her oracles of emotional support (Oprah and Dr Phil), their trans families are in some polished, effortless space where they can say polished, effortless things about their support for their trans relative or friend.
Imagine that: inarticulate struggle doesn’t play well on television. Not a lot of room for “hmm” and squirm and “I don’t really know”.
Now, two weeks spent walking in the rain … there’s a place for a lot of hmming and squirming and “I don’t really know”. Two weeks in which the rain is too loud on the hood of your anorak to hear the other person talk. Two weeks being with somebody, but mostly thinking and reminiscing rather than talking. It’s the antithesis of television.
Becoming Drusilla is as close to the antithesis of television as any book I’ve read. It’s a piece of travel writing, really. Travel writing and a bit of biographic exposition. Because Beard is a very open, clear and entertaining writer the result is a book which is a pleasure to read. More
Those poor young women of that Eldorado sect – more than half of them are pregnant or are mothers.
This case made me think of two things – the argument than trans women are the same as women raised female – which is obviously not true. That doesn’t mean that a gender variant kid wouldn’t have been treated worse by this sect – but a young MTF couldn’t have been used as a breeder, either. That doesn’t mean trans women are “less than.” Just that all kinds of women – trans & otherwise – face oppressions and discrimination specific to the type of women they are. Blurring difference doesn’t help us address these kinds of problems, imho.
The second thing it made me think of is an ongoing argument about Danica Patrick that’s been happening on the MHB Boards. The debate is about whether or not it’s messed up that a winning racecar driver – the 1st to win a significant race, from what I understand – isn’t somehow degrading herself by also posing suggestively on car hoods. (I think it is.) These young women of Eldorado remind me of that argument because it’s been thousands of years where women’s bodies have been used – to bear children, to bring pleasure (both physical & visual), to men with power. So the assertion that Danica Patrick is somehow blazing some new trail of “feminine empowerment” by taking her clothes off is like – um. yeah. no. Women have always done that to curry favor with the kind of assholes like the guys down in Eldorado, kings, senators, and drug lords, boyfriend and bubbas. And I just don’t see a woman doing that today as any different than it ever was.
(But I’m sure someone can jump up & tell me those women in Eldorado are somehow empowered by getting pregnant with the children of those fucknuts, too.)
A guest post by Quetzalli Cold Thunder, who is a regular on our message boards and trans and Native American, on the use of the term berdache.
During the IFGE Conference, I heard the term ‘berdache’ mentioned A LOT. In fact, at a session regarding transgenderism and Native People, folks continued to use the term after the presenter said that among Native People it is derogatory, that he respected their opinion and that he would prefer that the term not be used. (In that audience, a fine, gender counseling Dr. uttered the term that caused the presenter to give his statement. He continued using the term and had he mentioned the expression one more time, I fear I would have made a spectacle of myself, and gone home with a scalp.) The term is my nigger and yes, I also understand its usage among blacks, but I know of no Native People that use this term in any ‘endearing’ form among themselves. Quite the contrary, it is much more demeaning when directed at a skin from a skin. More
Just so people know, we’re aware the mHB forums are acting in wonky ways today. Tech is informed, as is our host. Hold tight.
Lena Dahlstrom posted a video on the mHB message boards made by the Feminist Majority Foundation called “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” and the women in it reminded me, once again, that I don’t feel femme-y enough in either style or presentation and reminded me as well that I’m offended by this PR campaign to convince people that feminists aren’t awful, ugly, fat, hairy women. So when another partner commented about being the resident “big hairy dyke” I thought, “me too.”
I’m aware that others see me as smaller than I see myself, or at least tell me they do, and of course I wax or hide most of my hairiness. Most people wouldn’t think of me as a dyke but I have for a while now, even if I’m still cautious about adopting a lesbian identity out of respect for those who are lesbian-identified and who might see me as something of an interloper. But dyke is an identity I’ve become comfortable with since I think it suits me (no pun intended) & in a lot of ways frees me. (I use ‘het dyke’, too, when it seems right.)
You all know the joke about what women would be like in a world without men, right?
Answer: Fat, hairy, and happy. More
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
The Lambda Literary Foundation’s list of finalists for the 2007 Lammies is out, and She’s Not the Man I Married didn’t make the cut. And I’m okay with that; it can be a little tiring to see how even trans people don’t seem to care, often, about how loved ones see/relate/deal with transness, but I’m getting used to it. Besides, I got my props the first time around, when My Husband Betty made finalist.
That said, Whipping Girl didn’t make the cut and that is absolutely 100% wrong. & I’ll tell you why.
Whipping Girl is, to date, the only book to address, theoretically, the uneasy relationship between trans people – specifically MTF transsexual women – and feminism, and that work was long overdue. It addresses sexuality, media representations, the historical pathologization of trans people by psychologists, the fetishization of tans women’s sexualities, the inherent misogyny of a feminist politics that mocks femininity, and then some.
It has been personally & politically important to me in confronting what remained of my own “natural attitude” toward my own gender, what Serano calls cissexism (and rightfully so) and proposes the concept of “subconsious sex” which did more to explain transsexualism to me than anything ever has — outside, maybe, of Betty’s “because” model.
It’s a real shame that this book was not recognized by the Lambda Literary Foundation. It will be considered a classic, revelatory and ground-breaking book in time; it’s just sad the Foundation’s judges don’t have the foresight to give it its due now.
Julia, personally: thank you. I always appreciate when anyone, with their words and logic and anger, can make me a little less of an asshole, and Whipping Girl did that in spades.
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.
Seal Press rocks so hard it’s ridiculous. Not only has word come that the first reprint of My Husband Betty has come out with Seal’s imprint, but they’ve apologized for the situation that lead to me being left off the Transgender category nominees’ list for the Lambda Literary Awards.
Buy Seal’s books, people. They are a great press, & do good work.
I’ve already team-taught my first class in Gender Studies 101, and later today I get to teach my first session of Transgender Lives. It’s a 200-level course, and I opted to allow trans people to speak about their own lives instead of focusing on what other people have said about trans lives. How? I used books written by trans people: Jenny Boylan’s, James Green’s, Kate Bornstein’s, some of Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl, Leslie Feinberg, and… a lovely little book by The Lady Chablis called Hiding My Candy. Plus a few chapters from my own My Husband Betty in order to represent the crossdressers.
I figure as a non-trans person teaching trans, I’ll already be there as a kind of lens, so getting as much primary reporting from trans people themselves was important.
It’s the day Betty and I have been waiting for: the first day that isn’t 2007, at long last. We’re hoping 2008 will be a little kinder, maybe a little more amenable, which looks a little ironic from where I’m standing: amidst all the bags I have packed for Wisconsin. I am looking forward to teaching, to meeting various professors and students and even MHB readers, but there is also a part of me that doesn’t want to travel at all anymore; I just want a job, teaching most likely, somewhere I could live, and live with Betty, and have a home big enough for three cats and way too many books. As a result of the commute to North Andover this past fall, this trip to Wisconsin seems like the final test of my resources, or rather, if I ever had any slight bit of agoraphobia after 9/11, this trip is my proof that it’s all gone.
So, off we go. Tomorrow, Betty and I drive to Wisconsin, and we’re planning on arriving on Friday. If we can post from the road we will, but we might not be able to. Or we might not want to. Who knows? In either case, I’m on my way, and so is the new year.
Aurora is not very interested in the mHB boards, though she does allow me to view them while she’s sleeping on my desk. Sometimes. Unless I’m typing or moving the mouse, for which I get swatted. Or she starts in with what I call The Tail of Annoyance and flicks items on my desk to the floor.
& A very happy birthday to Ian (& his mom) today!
For more reading about ENDA than you might ever want, I’ve put together a bunch of the articles, essays, & blog posts on the topic since it was introduced in April, below the break:
& Now The NY Times has published an article about the whole Dreger/Bailey fiasco. It’s reasonably objective, even if the title of the article is ridiculously overblown.
Moreover, based on her own reading of federal regulations, Dr. Dreger. . . argued that the book did not qualify as scientific research. The federal definition describes “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation.â€
Dr. Bailey used the people in his book as anecdotes, not as the subjects of a systematic investigation, she reported.
Which makes it not scientific at all. Either that or someone owes me a Ph.D. for My Husband Betty.
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.)
Ironic perhaps that Betty & I should be doing what looks like the last of our “in person” gigs via rental car instead of by train – since there have been times in the past few months that I felt like I lived on the latter. Not that I mind: I really do love trains in nearly an irrational way. It’s something about the sound of a train whistle – all at once so melancholy, so romantic, & so hopeful.
It’s fitting that we should wind down in Poughkeepsie, since the group I’ll be visiting, MHVTA, is one that let me interview them when I was researching My Husband Betty. What I remember best was asking, “What would you want the world to know about crossdressing that they don’t?” and I got a variety of answers that informed my intent when I wrote it.
So thanks to everyone who has let me ask them questions, emailed me with input, and told me their stories.
An interesting article from The Village Voice about fundraiser party for top surgery for masculine spectrum types. Interestingly, this is about someone who’s removing hir breasts in order to have a more androgynous body, not a male one, per se.
I read at one of these years ago when My Husband Betty was just published, and it was very cleverly called Take My Breasts Away.
We did.
