Soldier's Girl

A review of Showtime’s Soldier’s Girl showed up in a local NY newspaper, Newsday:
Soldier’s Girl (Showtime Entertainment, $27) is an astonishing piece of work that might have hit theatrical 10-best lists if it hadn’t been made for Showtime. This heartwrenching true-life tale topped my 2003 TV list, and the American Film Institute named it one of the tube’s 10 best (full disclosure: I was on the institute’s jury). The filmmakers could have gone wrong in so many ways with the story of an ingenuous GI who falls for a transgender woman, then is murdered by fellow soldiers for his unconditional love. But this film goes right every step of the way, focusing into its characters’ hearts and minds rather than on a “message” behind it all.
Director Frank Pierson talks in bonus interview footage about the “difficult and dangerous material.” The actors add insight into defining the simple but not simplistic GI (Troy Garity) and the woman/man he let his heart love (male actor Lee Pace, now on “Wonderfalls”) despite his brain’s bewilderment. Even the man behind the murder (Shawn Hatosy) is given depth and compassion. Other DVD extras reveal Pace’s gender-changing make- up routine, and trace the real-life tale as told by murdered soldier Barry Winchell’s mother, lover Calpernia Addams and the crew that put the project together. Addams joins Pierson, Garrity and scripter Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”) on an emotional commentary track that captures how affecting it was to depict, as Nyswaner puts it, “a love that stepped outside the labels.”

COS Banquet Speech

This is the speech I wrote for the COS banquet.
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Thank you Staci, the board of COS, and all its members for inviting me here tonight to speak. I want to thank all of you who keep COS going for your time and energy and patience; without people willing to update the website and answer the phone, we’d all be sitting at home in our little black dresses, instead. That really wouldn’t be very fun. Besides, you all look too lovely not to be seen. The internet may be great for support, and chat, and swapping pictures, but if there’s anything I’ve learned about all of those on the TG spectrum, the real goal is going out and being seen. It’s good to be able to put faces to names and email addresses. It’s nice to be able to look out and see people who have said, “I’m going OUT.” Some of you are out for the first time; others of you have been out hundreds of times. For those of you who are out for the first time, or nearly the first time – try to breathe. It really does get easier. And I mean that for you partners, too, who are looking around this room thinking, “how on earth did I get myself into this?” I love that there are partners here. I really, really love it. Thank you. I get to feel very alone sometimes when I’m out with my husband.
I’ve been wondering how I ended up being married to a transgendered person long before I wrote a book and ended up speaking at an event like this, but believe me, I wonder it more and more all the time. Me? Talking about transgenderedness? I’m not even TG. I’m not even sure I understand what my husband and most of you go through.
I’m still trying to work that one out. I had a reviewer recently comment that I had no right to complain since I knew my husband was a crossdresser before I married him. Ah, so naïve, I thought, and cynical: are there people who really think you pick who you fall in love with? Call me a romantic, but there was no one in the world I could have married but my husband. No, I didn’t plan on marrying someone who crossdressed. I certainly didn’t plan on marrying someone who is transgendered. I didn’t really plan on getting married at all, really. But then again I didn’t plan on writing a book and I certainly didn’t ever plan on speaking in front of such a large group, ever. I mean, I’m a writer – and writers tend to prefer the company of cats and computers. But life sometimes has a way of throwing you curveballs, and if there’s any group in the world who would understand that, it’s you. I’m sure none of you planned to be transgendered, thinking as kids, “well when I grow up, I want to be completely misunderstood by the majority of the world, detested by some, condescended to by others, and otherwise terrified nearly every single second lest someone find out my secret.” No, you didn’t. So if you can sit there in the gender identity that makes you feel right, I suppose I can quit wondering what it is that compelled me to leave my desk and stand in front of you all.
I ended up writing My Husband Betty because a friend who worked in the publishing industry happened to call me right after the infamous Dr. Phil show, and after listening to me rant and rave for a full 20 minutes about how little people understand crossdressing, and how so much of the advice that’s bandied about is based on incomplete and very very outdated information, her publicist’s brain came to a conclusion: hey, you have a lot to say – you should write a book! Which others had told me before but had no way to help me do so; this friend, however, happened to be the chief publicist at Avalon books, and was very much in a position to help.
I found myself not long after writing a brief essay for Avalon’s editor on the mistaken assumptions about crossdressers, how they so often take a backseat to their transsexual sisters in terms of the public understanding and the media, and how the only crossdresser anyone can ever name is J. Edgar Hoover, who we’re not really sure was a crossdresser after all. (No one, it turns out, has ever actually seen the photos of him in women’s clothes.) As I wrote, I found myself getting more and more frustrated; like most of you, I had found online resources, and as the then-girlfriend of a CD, had learned the lingo and found the community I could talk to. I’d completely lost track of the fact that no-one outside the TG community knew anything about us at all. And then I read Amy Bloom’s book, and her smarmy attack on both CDs and their partners, and thought, “Well what about the rest of us? Surely the Rudds and the Fairfaxes do not represent ALL crossdressers and their wives!”
It was like being between pillar and post, with Dr. Phil on one side saying “leave your husband,” and Amy Bloom on the other writing, “what hypocrites.”
But don’t get me wrong. I’m at heart a very practical person, and I appreciated hearing or seeing any reflection of crossdressers and their partners no matter where or how, much like my husband, as a young boy, found the definition of the word “transvestite” in a public library and thought “at least there’s a word for it.” I thought, well at least some people do seem to realize we’re out there, that we EXIST, but why is it, I thought, that we get such an unfair shake?
It took me a long time to come up with that answer, and I’ll get around to telling you what I came up with. At the time, though, I had my hands and head full already with learning the alphabet soup (TG, TS, DQ, SO, CD, etc) of this so-called subculture I found myself in, and alternately wondering where on earth my husband had left my new lipstick. It took me an extra 20 minutes to clean our apt for visitors, because I had to make sure the transvestite refrigerator magnet, given to us by a lesbian friend, was put away. Had to hide Miss Vera’s Crossdress for Success, make sure the breast forms were in a drawer, – and where to hide size 10 pumps? Wigs and wigheads, away. Clothes my friends would know weren’t mine, away. I was starting to feel like I might as well be dealing drugs out of my apt with the kind of front operation we were living in. And by then we already had a dozen friends who knew, most of whom were gay or lesbian. We went out to dinner with one couple one night. One of them was job hunting. She told me the story of an interview she’d gone on, and couldn’t find the exact address as she was about to leave. She called her contact at the company and left a message on the person’s voicemail, and then called her own apt when she got near the place. Her girlfriend told her someone had called with the room #. Relieved, she made it to the interview on time.
All was going swimmingly until the interviewer quite casually mentioned speaking to my friend’s “roommate.”
She told me from that moment on she could hardly listen or answer questions as she was plagued with doubt. Should she tell the interviewer her “roommate” was her girlfriend? Did she have to? Would it be important? If she got the job, would she clarify then, or only when she’d been invited to the first office party? Did she have to stop the whole interview to announce she was a lesbian, and if she did, would that mean she was being too strident? Or should she just let it slide so that if she didn’t get the job she didn’t have to wonder forever if the reason she didn’t get the job was because she was a lesbian?
I don’t remember what my friend decided to do. I don’t even remember if she got the job or not. But I do remember how her story plagued me afterwards. It had honestly never occurred to me that a lesbian doesn’t have to be out. She could pass as a straight woman quite easily. There wasn’t any need for her to be a lesbian at work – honestly, it didn’t have anything whatsoever to do with her being capable of doing a certain job. It got me wondering. Why are gay and lesbian people out? I started asking other gay friends why they were. “It’s nice,” one told me, “to go to my boyfriend’s family’s wedding and be able to hold his hand.” Despite what Michael Bailey has to say, you can’t tell if someone’s gay by his voice or his mannerisms. Some, perhaps. Sometimes if you’re already in gay spaces where gay men and lesbians are free to be themselves. But the reality is, it wouldn’t take too much work for your average gay man or woman to pass for straight. Believe me, they did it for centuries, and lots still do.
So what does that have to do with us? My husband and I were lucky enough to know gay men and lesbians. One lesbian friend gave my husband an out of print copy of Mariette Pathy Allen’s book Transformations, which I read about a dozen times after he told me he liked to wear women’s clothes. Another sent me a copy of Leslie Steinberg’s Stone Butch Blues. And being a reader, I read. I read anything I could get my hands on. I think I’ve started the Brooklyn chapter of the International TG Library, at this point. But the point is – it was our gay and lesbian friends who tried to help. When I called them concerned about our safety, it was a butch lesbian who told me you never get a cab right outside of a lesbian bar; you walk a block first, and then get the cab. You never knew who is friend or foe, and it paid to be careful.
And I took anything and everything I learned and tried to share it with the people I was meeting online. And I kept trying to figure out why it is that a lesbian has a talk show while no one knows I exist. Why is it crossdressers are still completely invisible in an era when men can kiss on television? Why was it that Dr. Phil was so wrong? And why did Amy Bloom make all us partners look like long-suffering 1950s housewives?
One of the conclusions – the more historical one – I came to is that a long time ago, some crossdressers were so worried about being assumed to be gay that they distanced themselves from the gay and lesbian community. And look where that got us! Gays and lesbians are out, respected, demanding equal rights in all ways. And where are crossdressers? In the closet, for the most part. Imagine – we might already be out if we hadn’t isolated ourselves so early on.
But the more important answer as to why a man in a dress is still funny is because we’re not out. Tonight, we are – and that is absolutely something to celebrate. But to shut down the ignorance of the Dr. Phils of the world, we’re going to need to be out a lot more than one night a year.
But I’m not here to tell anyone to throw caution to the wind. Helen Boyd is a pseudonym, after all, which I started to use because my husband’s ex-girlfriend had started blackmailing us around the same time I went online to get more information about crossdressing. I had already learned to hide, because of her. Ironically perhaps, it’s because of her that I’m here tonight – a fact she’d probably find pretty frustrating!. An experience like that plants a seed that grows and grows inside you, like a vine. It grows till it fills your heart and your soul. We didn’t even think we were hiding anything; as I said, we already had friends who knew. But did we really want Betty’s parents to find out about their son from the vicious words of a hurt ex? No. Did we really enjoy telling his sister because we needed her to check their mom’s mail for anything incriminating? No. Did I enjoy worrying about running into my boss, or a co-worker, or a friend, when we went out? No. There were ways around it. We could simply not go out. We could use tricks CDs taught us, like if we were walking together and saw someone we knew, I could say hello while my en femme husband would keep walking. We could find our way around it.
But that seed his ex had planted grew. And neither of us liked it. That seed was all about fear, and lying, and hiding. And fortunately or unfortunately, my parents were both children of alcoholics. And in AA, they have a metaphor for alcoholism – it’s the elephant in the living room that everyone pretends isn’t there. Oh, you can walk around it, you can get under it, you can paint the room grey so you don’t notice it as much – but it’s still there. For me, my husband’s crossdressing was starting to feel a lot like that elephant. We went to meetings with others who had elephants in their living rooms, and people gave us great ideas for how to continue ignoring it. But as I said, I’d been warned. It’s really just not healthy to pretend there is no elephant in your living room. It was the blackmail that we endured that made that point very, very clearly.
The first step, of course, is saying it out loud. It’s admitting it. People I’ve met doing the research for this book have found way to admit it in many ways. A lot of them admit it online. Others tell a close friend. For many, many crossdressers, they finally find the courage to tell their life partners. Others are discovered by a photo, a hidden pair of shoes, a tattered copy of Transgender Tapestry. Others find marriages ending in divorce, and have their crossdressing exposed to the courts and their community in vicious custody battles. One crossdresser in my book decided to come out when his wife said he’d tell everyone they knew if he didn’t fork over $100,000, so he told everyone they knew first. He saved himself humiliation and a hundred grand. No matter how horrible the reasons someone came out, I’ve yet to meet anyone who regrets being out.
We found that telling one more person – another friend, actors at my husband’s theatre – weakened the fear. No one we talked to – including our gay and lesbian friends – really understood what transgenderedness was about. But none of them stopped being our friends, either. When it came down to finding community and support, I still had to go online to find other partners to talk to about sex and sharing clothes and the um, interesting ideas my husband had about femininity. The real nuts and bolts stuff – like how to shop for three on a budget built for two, or where to find a gender therapist – required the kind of networking and support the Internet and groups like COS provides. It meant realizing that some people we knew would see us very differently than they had before. It meant I had to have a few long talks with girlfriends who were worried my husband was gay. It meant explaining to gay friends that my husband wasn’t gay. It meant people assuming I was a lesbian sometimes, and having to explain I wasn’t. It meant a LOT of talking, to each other, and to others. Every time we went out strangers asked us personal questions, and still do.
But let me stop a minute and clarify: my husband and I just don’t care anymore if anyone thinks we’re gay or lesbian. Unfortunately for gender variant people the world over, any variation from traditional gender roles – or presentation – immediately results in relegation to being gay or lesbian. But as many of you can attest, we know that’s just not the case. But does it matter? I’ll tell you when it matters: when your mother worries your marriage isn’t happy or won’t last because she thinks your husband might be gay because he wears a dress – which is when you can tell her he just loves women in a way most straight guys can’t imagine. It matters when gay men or lesbians assume we’re gay because we’re both closeted and ashamed of ourselves. It matters to me when the wives of crossdressers assume I must be lesbian or bi because I can enjoy my husband’s femme self emotionally and sexually, and so dismiss anything I have to say about how I got my head around being with someone who is transgendered. (I’m not sure how they work out the little problem of how a lesbian ended up married to a man, but I digress…) And it matters when my husband asks to try on pumps and the clerk immediately assumes I’m his friend and not his wife, because I am proud of our relationship and want it recognized by others.
But despite all of the questions we are asked, and the curiosity people have about who we are and why we are and what we are, the reality is – coming out to our friends and family meant that we didn’t have to be scared anymore, and that we could start to speak up for others in the same situation who couldn’t take the same risks. We are a writer and an actor living in New York City, after all, and we don’t have children and don’t work for giant corporations. Not everyone has the same luxury. We knew our only risk was to ourselves, and we took the risk because for us, not taking the risk meant being in the hands of someone who sought to hurt us.
Since the book, we’ve told just about everyone else we know – including my 70 something Catholic parents. And my father, who is a devout and private man, said simply, “don’t ever let anyone treat you like a 2nd class citizen.” When my parents met Betty en femme for the first time, my mother ended up wiping Betty’s lipstick off my father’s cheek, and the both of them laughed about as hard as I’d ever seen. They laughed – and then they asked me when I’m going to publish a book under my real name.
But more importantly is that since the book came out, I get emails – wow, do I get emails – from all sorts of people. Husbands who have realized they are TS and don’t know how to tell their wives. Wives who don’t know why their husbands are so angry. Girlfriends who want to know if TG is more about sex or identity. Young CDs who have decided to be honest with girlfriends and find themselves single again after telling. And the one thing I can tell you – if you’re not sure of this by now – is that there are a LOT of us out there. TG people and loving partners. Parents, friends, and children. P-Flag (the organization of parents and families of GLBT people) estimates that if 1 in 10 people are GLBT, then 1 person in 4 knows or is related to someone who is GLBT. One in FOUR. That’s the kind of thing it’s useful to keep in mind. Next time you’re in church, or stuck in traffic, or listening to President Bush talk about the Federal Marriage Amendment, remember – one in four people out there is related to someone who is GLBT. One in FOUR.
Now imagine what would happen if all the stealth transsexual women and men, and all the closeted crossdressers stood up to be counted.
Imagine what would happen if all of us came out to a family member or close friend. Imagine if we all decided to do that this coming Tuesday. Imagine, by Wednesday, how many more people would then know someone who was GLBT. Imagine. And then imagine what would happen if we organized for protection against discrimination. If we fought for inclusion of transgendered education for all. Imagine what it would be like not to have to start a conversation with a friend or boss or co-worker with what “transgendered” means the same way that no-one has to explain what “gay” or “lesbian” means.
Imagine boys and girls who could grow up without spending so many years in the closet. Imagine husbands who could marry women who knew long beforehand what having a crossdressing husband meant. Imagine what it would be like if your mom could have bought you a doll instead of a car for your 12th birthday.
Shoot, imagine how many more brands of shoes would come in size 11, if that’s what you need.
Right now, the gay and lesbian community barely knows who we are, or what we do, or what problems we face. They are – maybe by default – our closest allies, only because they’re the most recent group to fight the discrimination against them. We can learn from them. They need to know who we are, and we need to tell them. But if they don’t know us – if they’re only beginning to get an idea of how many of us there are – imagine how invisible we are to the rest of the world. The media may be catching on to transsexual experiencess – the recent shows on CBS and NBC and HBO have proved that – but where are the rest of us? Where are the people who identify as TG, because they’re in the middle or unsure exactly as to where they fit? Where are the crossdressers? We’re not on TV, and I’m sure Eddie Izzard is really, really tired of being the only out there.
But like I said, I’m not here to tell people to throw caution to the wind. We all know there is danger out there – danger of job loss, child custody, blackmail, and even to our own physical safety – danger to our very lives. I don’t want anyone to be unsafe, or to throw the work of a lifetime away. But I do think many of us can find a way to take it up a notch. How?
First, admit to the elephant in the living room. Use whichever words or labels you like. “I’m a crossdresser,” or “My husband is transgendered.” Admit it, first, to yourself. Get used to it. Find a therapist if you need to.
Then, tell someone else. An old friend, a hairdresser, a clerk in a store you’ll never see again. I remember one Valentine’s Day shopping for my husband’s present, and having the clerk look me over and tell me the size I was holding would be fine for me. “Oh, but they’re not for me,” I said, “they’re for my husband.” She was embarrassed for me, and a few other customers swiveled their heads. “He’s transgendered,” I added. I’m sure I was blushing from my shoulders to the top of my head, but I’d said it. And then I did the same thing with the florist. And at the card shop. I outed myself and my husband all over the West Village that Valentine’s Day. And you know what? I’ve never seen any of those people again. And you know what? They didn’t care. I didn’t care. But it made it a lot easier down the road when I needed to tell my mother.
Then find a group like the CT outreach society, or a group online. The NTAC. GenderPac. Tri-Ess, even. P-Flag. The HRC. Use your femme name to join if you need to, and get a PO Box for the mail. But Join. Join one local and one national group. We need to be countable. And give those organizations money. Volunteer. Make sure you get the newsletters and emails that will keep you up to date on what’s going on with GLBT-friendly legislation.
Once you know what’s going on, you can get involved. Vote. Vote as a GLBT person, however you need to do it. Write to the President using your femme name if you need to. Tell your story. Tell it to anyone who will listen. Know who your elected officials are, and make sure they know there is a GLBT person – you – who votes in their district. The more local the rep, the more likely that one of their staff will actually read the letter.
I hope, for the most part, I’m preaching to the converted here. My real message – for all of us, myself included – is that those of you who can’t be out for the million reasons not to be, you can still be heard and seen and counted. For those of you who are out, spend a little more time on issues and outreach and education. Get outside of our community and its alphabet soup and insular battles and tell someone who doesn’t know we exist who we are. And be patient. Don’t scream when someone uses the wrong pronoun. Explain. Remember that they have not read the message boards and the books, and they don’t know the fine distinctions to be made between a crossdresser and a transvestite. Half the time we don’t even agree to definitions like that amongst ourselves.
In closing, let me say this. As a partner, I’ve seen firsthand how hard this is for my husband. He shook with fear the first time he let me see him en femme, and he shook with fear the first time we went to a club, and the first time we went to a restaurant, and two months ago he had to meet my parents en femme, and he was terrified then, too. Sometimes I think it’s been easier for me because I’m not TG, and I haven’t built up a lifetime of hiding and shame that I have to get past. That might be one of the best reasons it’s vital for us partners to get involved, and another reason I’m so happy to see other partners here – we are part of this community, the source of strength and love for so many of you. One of the things I learned publishing the book is that people might be willing to listen to me and ask me questions when they felt embarrassed to ask the TG person – because they didn’t want to offend, or pry, or upset them. But they know I’m an insider and an outsider, and I’ve learned how to live as one of you. The entire TG community needs to put more effort into making us feel welcome. Years ago my husband showed me TG forum, and I remember looking at it and quickly coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me – it was only for the trans people themselves. But if women and men are going to decide to be with trans people, we need to feel welcomed – not everyone is going to be as stubborn as I am. And while you’re at it, read a book about women’s lives – it is National Women’s History Month in March, after all.
This life isn’t easy on any of us, and although we have differences – partners’ worries are different from the TG person’s, transitioning people have different worries than CDs, and the T part of the GLBT has different issues that the rest of the GLB – we can only work for common goals if we can see past our differences, and focus on the issues that concern all of us. Right now, the choice is quite simple: we need to work on visibility. And as I said at the start, you are all too lovely NOT to be seen.
Thank you.
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Anna Quindlen on Jennifer Finney Boylan

Outside the Bright Lines
by Anna Quindlen
Newsweek, Aug. 11 issue
The most dispiriting moment in Jenny Boylan�s book is when she realizes that talking like a girl means sounding uncertain about your own name, like this: �Hello? I�m Jenny Boylan?�
THE FUNNIEST MOMENT is when her doctor tells her that gay men and lesbians don�t really have much in common with transsexuals. �Yeah,� Boylan replies, �except for the fact that we get beaten up by the same people.�
And one of the most telling moments in the book is when she goes to the credit union to have the name on her account changed from James Finney Boylan to Jennifer Finney Boylan. �You were named James?� the manager asks.
�I used to be a boy. Now I�m female. I had my name changed,� Boylan tells the manager.
�Huh,� she replies. �Okay, well this is simple enough. We�ll just change your name in the data field here.�
Boylan�s new book, “She�s Not There,” is a very funny memoir of growing up confused and a very smart consideration of what it means to be a woman. (Yeah, hormones make a difference.) It�s also the story of a writer and college professor who winds up married, living in Maine with two kids, all the while knowing that his true gender doesn�t match his body. It�s about becoming who you really are, which in this case meant becoming a woman.
But it is also about how good people can be. Because Boylan�s book is not about being shunned by her colleagues, losing her job, having her family ditch her. A good bit of it is merely about changing the data field. Even the woman who married Jim and wound up with Jenny responded with love, leavened with anger and pain, too. (�I want what I had,� she says at one point.) Boylan�s sons decided to call her �Maddy,� merging the titles of Mommy and Daddy. Her students still loved her��damn, girl, you look good!� one writes�and her colleagues rolled with it, the professors at Colby and the musicians with whom she plays in a bar band. (Although her friend Curly was chagrined when he asked what it was like to have breasts and she responded that the world doesn�t revolve around breasts. �I wish you could hear yourself,� he sighed sadly.) �As far as I�m concerned, you�re you, no matter what,� one friend said.
Tolerance is the rice pudding of modern behavior; it tastes sweeter than bigotry, but no one would confuse it with a parfait. What Boylan�s book represents is something deeper and more important than tolerance. The way in which people insisted on valuing her on the basis of who she was and not their confusion about what she had done represents the best of human behavior.
Doing that is hard. The old bright lines used to make things so simple. White was different from black. Male was different from female. Straight was better than gay. Gay was bad. So was sex, unless it had been sanctified by Alencon lace and a catering hall. Sanctified by God, some would say, or �natural moral law,� which is what the Vatican cited in its statement last week against gay marriage, the theological version of �because I said so.�
The God who suggested we love one another seemed strangely absent from all this. Look at the bright lines in the new movie �The Magdalene Sisters.� It�s a devastating drama based on the true story of unmarried Roman Catholic girls who got pregnant and were essentially imprisoned in Irish laundries called the Magdalene Asylums, sent there by their own parents for no crime other than sexuality. Who cares about compassion when you can have never-darken-my-doorstep certainty?
In his afterword to Boylan�s book her best friend, the writer Richard Russo, refers to a line in �The Great Gatsby�: he says his first reaction was to want �the world to be �uniform and at a sort of moral attention�.� That�s natural when the unexpected barrels around the corner. But for many years that feeling was the bedrock of a morality that was essentially immoral because it reduced human interaction to mathematics, without understanding or empathy. To have learned to think �you�re you, no matter what� about those we love and even those we don�t know has alleviated an enormous amount of unnecessary pain.
As for Jenny, she�s now the woman outside that she always felt she was within. The same salesman who tried to sell Jim a car and focused on the spark plugs tried to sell her one for $1,000 more and talked about the cup holders. She started ordering diet soda and salads, a cave to cultural stereotypes that made her nuts. She was cool about the demands her situation made on others: �If you�ve read this far in this note, it�s quite possible that you feel that the top of your head is about to blow off,� she wrote in a letter to colleagues explaining it all. One night at dinner her mother raised her glass and said, �I am so proud of my beautiful daughter.� Maybe there are those who feel she should disapprove, or hide it from her friends, or cut off contact with her own kid. After all, that�s what people did in the old days, to a pregnant daughter, to a gay son, to anyone outside the bright lines. But that�s just wrong.

October 11th: National Coming Out Day

I read an FAQ at the Human Rights’ Campaign’s website yesterday about Nat’l Coming Out Day, and was quite pleased to see that ‘transvestite’ made their short list of transgender categories.
http://www.hrc.org/ncop/faqs.asp
What occurred to me is that it would be great if crossdressers could really rally to coming out to someone this year: a wife, if she doesn’t know yet; children or parents, or more likely, a friend. Even if you’re not ready for that, you could come out to a stranger: go buy those size 11 pumps and tell the clerk at Payless (or Kenneth Cole) they’re for you!
Of course there are a million reasons to come out (a bunch of them are in the FAQ above) but I think the best reason is it can make YOU feel better. In the long run, of course, every crossdresser who comes out makes some other crossdresser’s life a little bit easier. (Shoot, look at how liberating Eddie Izzard’s being out has been for so many of us! But more on him some other time.)
So what do you think? Will you come out to someone this October 11th?

How To Tell Your Wife

I was recently asked by a CD how he should tell his wife on a mailing list I’m on, & since this is definitely one my most “Frequently Asked Questions” I thought I’d post the ’10 Guidelines For Telling Your Wife or Girlfriend” here. It always makes me so happy to know a CD wants to tell his wife. I know the urge is a little bit selfish on the part of the CDer, but it’s also a great sign of the respect & love he has for his wife.
After that, there is no simple answer. There is no guarantee she’ll deal well with the new info, or accept you. That said, I still think it’s worth it.
The things I’ve learned in doing the research are that:
1) The sooner a man tells his wife the better. Before marriage is best, but still – the sooner the better.
2) Know what your CDing means to you, so you can talk to her about it in some intelligent, sensitive way. If after you tell her, every answer afterward is “I don’t know” she’ll freak out. Be prepared for the ‘Are you gay?’ and ‘Do you want to be a woman?’ questions, & don’t get upset when she asks them.
3) Does she know gay & lesbian people? Any close friends or family members? Does she have any firsthand experience of discrimination or feeling ‘different’? How does she feel about being a woman, herself (ie is she a feminist, traditionally feminine, tomboyish, etc?) But keep in mind her general open-mindedness or political liberalness might go right out the window on this issue.
4) I’d recommend not hitting her with all of it at once – that is, tell her a story about yourself as a kid, putting on your mom’s nylons or whatever your first childhood experience was. Make sure you bring this up in a quiet time between you, conversationally, & you give her time to tell some childhood stories of her own. (In general, the ‘announcement’ method isn’t very good, it has to be more of a conversation, as unconfrontational as it can be.) Or, you can say you’ve been thinking about doing some female character for Halloween (please not a hooker or slut! Wonder Woman, an Amazon, some cool woman or heroine is usually better!) & see how she reacts. If she wants to play Charlie Chaplin to your Louise Brooks… you know she can ‘play’.
That doesn’t mean you can stop there. She needs to know the whole of it. I’m just saying it might be a good conversation starter. Eventually you will have to explain why you didn’t tell her sooner, apologize for not having done so, and be clear that you understand you screwed up.
5) This one’s personal: letting your fear & vulnerability about how scared you are of her acceptance worked like a charm in our case! All women differ, though – sometimes a woman might freak out if you come off as too feminine, or ‘soft’ – it depends on her. If she thinks it’s great you can cry at sad movies, then she might appreciate how much it means to you/hard hard it is for you to tell her. Not in a ‘woe is me’ kind of way – but just so she knows you’re sharing something about yourself that you wouldn’t trust most people to know.
6) After you tell her, don’t bring it up again until SHE does. In the meantime, read some books about women (not glamor magazines, biographies of famous women, or gender theory, or whatever. I just read “Am I A Woman?” by Cynthia Eller & recommend that.)
7) If she is accepting, make sure it’s fun for her and not all about you! Let her take the lead in figuring out how it can be. That is, if you suggest she be Charlie Chaplin for Halloween, she’ll just feel bad – but if she decides to, it might be totally empowering for her! Alternately, I’ve now heard of three happy younger couples who all went, for their first Halloween together, as “starlets.” You both get to glam up & feel sexy –
8) If she’s freaked out by it, drop the subject & wait wait wait to bring it up again. Don’t wait forever, but do give her time to sort out her own emotions about it. Be sensitive – if she seems like she needs to talk, ask her if she wants to. But don’t start the conversation with “So have you made up your mind about my crossdressing?” but more with something like “Do you have any questions?” Don’t assume crossdressing is what she wants to talk about. She may be wanting to discuss your little problem with leaving your dirty clothes outside the hamper.
9) Know your wife, make sure you keep up all the other romantic things you do for/with her. Bring her flowers, buy her gifts, & be less inhibited about telling her how much she means to you. Don’t lay it on too thick – just tell her how you feel about her, honestly. You CDs are all romantics, imho, so let it out!! Re-emphasize your non-CD life together, even if she is totally accepting! (as I like to put it, I don’t mind having a girlfriend, too, but I still always want my husband!)
10) Listen until your ears bleed. You have “known” a CD all your life – but this is probably the first time she’s met one! So it will take her time to get the idea wrapped around her head. In fact, when you first tell her, what you’re telling her may not even ‘register’ at some level. She won’t have any idea in the beginning that this is a permanent thing. Expect phases of anger, sadness, fury,disappointment. Try to remember that if you, as a CD, sometimes wish you weren’t a CD, she’ll have similar feelings.
P.S. If the husband needs to stay in the closet, so that she can’t tell anyone either, make sure she knows there are other wives of CDs who she can get to know & let off some steam with.

National Coming Out Day – Oct 11th

I read an FAQ at the Human Rights’ Campaign’s website yesterday about Nat’l Coming Out Day, and was quite pleased to see that ‘transvestite’ made their short list of transgender categories.
http://www.hrc.org/ncop/faqs.asp
What occurred to me is that it would be great if crossdressers could really rally to coming out to someone this year: a wife, if she doesn’t know yet; children or parents, or more likely, a friend. Even if you’re not ready for that, you could come out to a stranger: go buy those size 11 pumps and tell the clerk at Payless (or Kenneth Cole) they’re for you!
Of course there are a million reasons to come out (a bunch of them are in the FAQ above) but I think the best reason is it can make YOU feel better. In the long run, of course, every crossdresser who comes out makes some other crossdresser’s life a little bit easier. (Shoot, look at how liberating Eddie Izzard’s being out has been for so many of us! But more on him some other time.)
So what do you think? Will you come out to someone this October 11th?