Posted on

Bearded Lady

How cool is this?

Wheeler’s facial fuzz had appeared at birth with an inch and a half of light hair covering her cheeks and chin. She says her mother wanted a daughter, and doctors were instructed to remove the male parts.

Wheeler claimed her father was humiliated by his bearded little girl, but it didn’t prevent him from capitalizing on her condition. She began working in sideshows at an early age, earning money to send home to her family.

Between tours, she would return home and reach for a razor.

“My dad said to shave because people wouldn’t understand why I had facial hair, saying, ‘This is what you’ll have to do to fit into society,'” Wheeler told AOL News.

As she grew older, she would shave sometimes to placate the men she dated, “because of their low self-esteem. It didn’t bother me.”

The boldface is mine. How amazing is that?

(Thanks to Patricia on our boards.)

Posted on

Park Slope Tornado

Apparently I made a deal with the tornado gods, because last night, what looks like a tornado touched down in Park Slope. These are photos from about a block away from our brownstone.

Hope you all are okay. You NYers may understand now why these things freak me out.  For the record, a tornado did touch down in Brooklyn before, only as recently as 2007, but before that, not for 57 years.

(If anyone happens to go down our particular block, tell me about the tree in front of our place. We love it. We miss it. We hope it’s okay.)

Posted on

Homophobes

For the record, if you are a straight person, and have never been in a same sex relationship, identified as queer, or been visibly queer, you do not know for sure that your friends, family or colleagues are not homophobic. Nor do you know if local businesses are, or are not, gay friendly.

I would like to apologize right here & now if I ever thought I knew those things before being half of a same sex couple.

Posted on

FTM’s Partner in the NYT

I wish the NYT had been this hip when my books came out – either of them! Still, it’s good to see they’re catching on.

About a year after my partner’s surgery, we moved to a city in the Midwest where he’d been accepted to graduate school. Largely unknown there, we easily passed for a straight couple, no longer having to explain anything about our identities. Our home was in a lesbian-friendly neighborhood, and when we encountered lesbian couples on the street, they didn’t seem to notice us.

I wasn’t sure I minded. I cycled through feelings of relief and guilt over how we now fit into the straight world. My best friend visited and noted that I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable in queer groups; I hid behind the privilege that being straight afforded me.

Although my partner and I made friends in the local queer community, I realized I was reluctant to be seen with friends who looked “different” when I was around my straight co-workers. I grew my hair long and wore makeup. I waxed my eyebrows. I couldn’t have told you what was happening to me. I had my first girlfriend at 16, and when I told my parents, they rolled with it. Coming out then was one of the only times I had explicitly proclaimed my sexuality. I was completely unprepared at 26 to come out again.

This woman has lived pretty much the reverse of what I’ve been through, and yet, there it is: the way that your own gender, as a partner, is changed and emphasized and underlined by your partner’s transition, which seems to me, from so many partners I speak to, to be the one issue that’s a surprise, whether the person’s gender was unchanged and unquestioned or heavily investigated and fluid.

Posted on

Mad About the Boy: Yul Brynner in Drag

No one ever believes me that Yul Brynner did drag, so here’s proof. He was Jean Cocteau’s opium runner, after all; it’s not like he was squeaky clean.

I think he did this just to prove he was the sexiest person who ever lived, entirely independent of gender.

Posted on

Miles to Miles

An FTM transition story on NPR:


“We have had this tumultuous year of all the emotions, and as you said, the mourning,” Vicky says. “And then to finally get you here. And by this time, now we’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to see you and meet you and say, oh, here’s Miles. And there you were, and it was like. oh, your shoulders are bigger. And the hug. You appear to me to be happy in your own skin.

“But you said you lost a daughter,” Miles says. “I’m here you know, it’s not like I died.”

Nice bit of wisdom there from Miles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people blithely talk about how “Michael died – now it’s Martha’s turn!” or something similar. Oh, the drama! No one dies when someone transitions. No one dies when someone transitions. No one dies when someone transitions. Rinse & repeat.

(For those who are FTM spectrum & now confused, this is the kind of language that can be really popular in MTF circles.)