Guest Author: Betty

Betty posted this to her blog, but I wanted everyone to see it.

The Wolves, The Pit & The Play

In which I try to formulate some kind of rational response to the last few months of being intimately involved with old family (adopted) and complete strangers in the context of doing a really cool play in New York City.

…as a – drumroll – transperson. A tranny. A T in the LGB.
Cheers! Well done! You’re so brave!
Slow down.
I didn’t think any of it through. I never imagined just how weird it would be on a level I hadn’t even remotely imagined. And believe me, I liked the script so much I’d already done a great deal of imagining, just not enough.
I just really liked the play and the part. And I was right. It was a really great play. And I’d never worked with a playwright before.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a more, gulp, acting-as-religion, put-your-fist-in-the-air, let-your-eyes-weep, imagination-rocks!!!, moment in all my years doing theatre. There are a couple of moments I shared with people that just defy explanation. And yes, one of them was with a lovely woman who happened to go from hardcore-green to faded greenish-yellow, to well, “normal” colored – whatever that means. The acting, for me, was really quite rewarding.
I did my first scene shirtless, covered in dirt, a loose bag made out of fishnet over one shoulder, a wicker basket for holding water creatures over the other, hair pulled back in a disheveled ponytail, wearing big giant rubber boots and pants that were this close to falling apart.
Shirtless.
See! I wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t on hormones!
And yes, that’s a weird thing to type. It’s weird to be very much trans but have to tell people I’m not on hormones. Not because I don’t think about it – I do – but that people already think I am. Weird also because it means I have to ask myself, “Just what are people seeing?” And, “Have I changed that much already?”
I sometimes feel like if I was more invested in the common stories – the myths – of the transexperience I wouldn’t even be writing this. You know, “People already think I’m a girl! WhaaHoo!!!”
Grr.
Because you’re just you, you know? Jason, the actor at the Cocteau who had a nifty little run for a while there. Right. Him. Right, yes, well you know he’s also known as Betty and is a transwhatchamacalit and well folks should know that because it’s just a reality and he’s also a really good actor and well, don’t worry about it. Wait ’til you meet him.
Which, actually, I’m kind of OK with. People know you for how you were when you were around them and it’s like kicking yourself in the mental nuts to pretend anything different. I tend to think that you earn the words that people call you and arbitrarily saying, “Hi, I used to be Jason but now I want to be called Fucknut” doesn’t tend to endear you to people who are already predisposed to like you. I’m not wrong on this, really. I say “Fucknot” partly because as far as I know, I made it up, and because when you tell someone with your baritone acting voice, “Call me Betty” you might as well have said, “Call me Fucknut.”
So yeah, to my acting family I’m Jason.
Jason, who’s also known as Betty and will answer all of your emails using that name as well. Betty.
And they’re really quite lovely, decent people who are like, “Yeah, cool. We like and treasure you, you can call yourself whatever you want, it’s ok. It’s cool.”
And you’re playing a poor fisherman who sees something wondrous and believes in it. But in the world that is the play, he really needs to be a man. Because, um, the character is one. And no matter what everyone else knows about you, on the stage, for the purposes of this play: you really must be a man.
Man. Grr.
How ’bout just drawing on all the years of my existence? That’s easy. And yes, it is. I’m good at some of the guy stuff. Quite good, actually. Most of it I never asked for, but I’d be an idiot to deny the fact that it’s there and has been for a goodly long time.
But I’m so out about my transness and my, sigh, life as Betty and it’s all become so utterly intertwined with who I am in the world – not in my head, in the world (that’s what happens when you appear on the cover of a book: be warned) – that in a very real way, I am Betty.
And doing art with people you’ve known for so long you consider them as family – one of them presided over your marriage! – the shift from Jason to Jason/Betty (or Jasabeth as a wise person coined me a few years ago) is jarring. Well it is to me.
I’ll explain more. Promise.

"Foreign" Chemicals

For various reasons of my own, I was doing some light reading on sex differentiation and H-Y antigens and I came upon a wiki article about fraternal birth order, which says:

“It is hypothesized that the fraternal birth order effect may be caused by increasing levels of antibodies produced by the mother to the HY antigen with each son. The HY antigen (histocompatibility Y-antigen) is found on the surface of the cells of male mammals. The presence of this foreign chemical when bearing a son could trigger the mother’s immune response, which may then lead to different brain development patterns in later male children.”

Which got my head going in all kinds of gyne-utopian scifi kinds of directions, because doesn’t it sound like the mother’s body is actively preventing too much macho in the world? The “different brain development patterns” being obliquely referred to is of course gender variance and/or homosexuality in males.
Dunno: it just sounds like Charles Wallace and his mitochondria, in a way, doesn’t it?

The Wolfpit Surprise (Revealed)

I didn’t want to give it away until Wolfpit closed, but I can finally explain, because it’s closing night: the big surprise Betty didn’t tell me about is that (s)he is bare-chested for the first act of Wolfpit.
Imagine my surprise – I mean, I hardly get to see that chest at home! But I suppose this puts an end to the hormones rumors, at last.
& Of course I couldn’t help but think, damn, my husband is hot! Betty even said I don’t have to feel guilty. Whew.

Hirschfeld Revival

I’ve seen the revivals of a couple of people whose work I love: first, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who had stopped being recognized in academia for a few decades before interest in her returned; before that, Buster Keaton, who now gets mentioned in documentaries on Bob Newhart and in various conversatons with film people.
But the revival of Magnus Hirschfeld really thrills me. I’ve often wondered how different the world might be if his work at the Institute of Sexuality had continued all those years ago. He circulated a petition to make homosexuality legal in Berlin; he personally testified on the part of transsexuals in order to get their gender identity changed on ID cards, and he is, of course, the person who coined both the terms ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’ (though the latter was popularized by Dr. Harry Benjamin).
There’s a reason I dedicated My Husband Betty to him, and much thanks to Vern Bullough for “introducing” me to Hirschfeld’s work (in his Crossdressing, Sex, and Gender) and to Donna for posting the Gay City News article, and to Benjamin Weinthal for writing it.

More Detente

more detente
If Aurora were the one on the couch, & Aeneas the one on the floor, Aurora would promptly smack Aeneas for walking by.
Aeneas is much calmer, being a few years older and so much more mature. Not half so bitchy, either.

Guest Author: Gracie

Gracie wrote this piece in response to Donna’s question about internal gender identity, and I really liked it.
I don’t feel that I’ll ever be a woman or know what it’s like to feel like a woman because I wasn’t born with a woman’s body parts at birth. I think being a woman has many meanings, but when I hear other women say it to each other very rarely is it about is it about the social stuff when a serious point is being made. Hmmm.. ok, that’s not true. Ok.. not that it’s very rare, but when I hear women talk about things that are serious and refer to womanhood it’s about growing up a woman and the bond they have because of growing up a female which leads to womanhood. It feels like the describe a right of passage. The bond I pick up on is when they share the memories of doing things they had to do as girls that boys didn’t. Their experiences being young and their bodies maturing and the bond they formed then, then being looked at by boys as girls who had something the boys wanted versus just being girls with cooties they all have that in common. Then as they matured and men started treating them as objects instead of the girls they had once been (may be the wrong wording). Some women share the bond of knowing that their bodies can create life. Even if they don’t have children they know together what that bond is like. Then there’s “a mother’s love”. I’m not sure about this one and as women get older, to me they seem to diversify.
I feel as women get older (20’s and up) there’s not as much or less of a commonality between them that forces that womanly bond anymore. The body has finished developing and so it’s more about personality and life experience. One of the last things I think is HUGE (a big bonding thing) is pregnancy. Women hold that high and proud as a badge of womanhood. I don’t think any women rejoice when menopause comes along, but again women share in that bonding moment as well.
As a TS woman I missed all of that. I may be a female, but I’ll never have those experiences that women have. Can I define that as being the end all of womanhood? No. I can just tell those women who feel like they are a woman, I feel like I’m on the outside of that chain link fence looking in at womanhood. Though I can climb that fence and be in there and some men can’t figure out how to get in there at all or would be embarrassed to be seen in there. (most women would revolt and throw them out if they tried anyway) I had to climb in to the womanhood enclosed by the chain link fence I use as symbolism here. Women were given access inside the chain link fence by birth and walked in through a gate. They didn’t have to climb in like me. So I won’t ever know what it’s like to have that feeling of right of passage. I climbed in and will always feel like an outsider when they discuss womanhood.
I feel I relate with women who can’t have children, women who don’t want to have children, women who developed late in life, and women who never really felt like they truly identified with women. There’s not many of the latter I bet, but those are the women that after I climbed the fence and got in I’d seek out. Those are more likely the women who I’ll share a lot of “me too!!” moments with.
I’m not a woman because I wasn’t born one, but I am a TS woman because like women a lot of us grew up with the same kind of bonding. We knew at a young age we were girls. We were raised boys and knew that it didn’t feel right. We tried to be the boys we were told we were and like girls who are told “be a girl or else” we didn’t listen to those threats, but there were times when most of us had to. As a gal who likes women it was easier for me to fake that part, but for the ladies out there who have always craved men and shoved it to the back of their minds until after SRS or those who knew upfront they only wanted to be with a man they had it tougher, but they were still like me because they were born the wrong sex and forced to live as the wrong gender. We have a bond that others will not ever feel. It’s our right of passage too.
I think being a TS woman is just as profound as being a woman who was born in the right body, but it’s different and I won’t ever relate with women who, as girls, were raised to be women. I feel I can understand what it felt like, but I.. well.. I’ve said the same thing over and over so I think you know what I was going to say.
Whoa… I just remembered how in 8th grade I felt my sex was wrong (another of the billion times, but this one was reinforced every weekday). I just remembered when it was time for physical education (PE) and I wanted to go in the girls locker room like the rest of the girls, but I had to go to the boys locker room. That always sucked the most. I remember there were two ways to get to the locker rooms. There was sidewalk from one way and there was a sidewalk that if you went that way you walked to the boys locker room. I can remember hearing the girls chattering and walking by and seeing the entrance to the boys locker room. Wow.. the feeling of it sucking is still there! lol.. that’s deep and weird to me.
Ok.. my rambling alert just sounded so I better stop here. I love this topic and thanks because that’s the first time I’ve written my feelings down where I hear my own thoughts about this. It makes me even more sure that I haven’t lost anything by not feeling like a woman in the traditional sense because I share a bond with other TS women that others can’t understand, just like with womanhood for those who were born in the right body. *sorry I said that so much. I was trying to avoid GG.

Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

My parents are celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary today. Congrats mom & dad, & thanks for the good example.
momndad
Cute, aren’t they? So do I look more like mom or dad?

Alas, Miss Emma…

Miss Emma didn’t make it through the night.
I feel like an idiot crying over a fish, but still, we had her for about seven years, longer than we’ve had the boys. I was just so used to her being there. She was always such a cheerful fish, and always said hello (unlike the sharks, who don’t seem to know we exist).
Oh, Miss Emma. We will miss you.
Now I have to figure out what exactly you do with a deceased fish – or what exactly we will do. She deserves some ceremony, no matter how small.

Our Other Animals

As many of you know, Betty and I not only have two grey cats & one orange, we also have two gray fish and & one orange. It was all quite an accident, but it was still kind of Twilight Zone eerie when we realized it.
But the fish were once two grey fish (well really they’re silver & black sharks) and two orange, but we lost Eugene of the black stripes when we were on our honeymoon. We were novice fish owners then, and lost him out of ignorance.
But now our Miss Emma is sick, upside down sick, and it doesn’t look very good for her. We’re doing everything we can – including trying to manually feed her green peas – but so far no luck. She’s still fighting, though – she tries to wrestle herself to an upright position for a while, then gets tired and rests, and then goes back to trying to right herself.
It may seem silly to be worried about a fish, especially when you have three cats you feed salmon and tuna to almost daily. But Emma is part of the family. We’ve had her longer than the cats, and we’re very used to walking into our orange bedroom to see the little patch of orange in the tank wave her silky orange fins at us. I call her our Disney fish, because she really does just need eyelashes to look like an orange femme fatale.
So while Betty is out at a Phoenix Theatre Ensemble fundraiser, I watch the hospital tank we have Emma in, and hope for the best.