On this page, I hope to give to you, an insight into the transgender world. I will share with you, outstanding articles, stories, and links to similar pages. I don't profess to be an expert in this field, but I have always been a good listener and helped many understand their feelings. Welcome, to you who seek ways to find happiness in this form of physical expression.
DENVER - The American Psychiatric Association's board voted unanimously Friday to reject therapy aimed solely at turning gays into heterosexuals, saying it can cause depression, anxiety and self destructive behavior.
"All the evidence would indicate this is the way people are born. We treat disease, not the way people are." said Dr. Nada Stotland, head of the association's joint committee on public affairs. The American Psychological Association made a similar decision.
Era of the Gender Crosser Buoyed by the success of gay liberation and freed by medical advances, the transgender community has found a voice. Still, life often remains complicated. By MARY McNAMARA, Times Staff Writer
Once upon a time in San Francisco, two people fell in
love, broke up, got back together, joined their names and
had a baby. A conventional love story, except for one detail: When Patrick and Matt Califia-Rice met 10 years ago, they were women. Women who had felt, from the time they were small, that they should be men. Matt was the first to exchange desire for reality. On the day the two broke up, he began taking testosterone. He grew a beard, had his breasts removed. They got back together five years later, and though they could not legally marry, they took each other's names. Patrick, who was still living as a woman, began thinking that he too would become a man.
Then things got complicated. The couple decided they wanted to have a child. With their unusual history, adoption would be difficult if not impossible, and
Patrick had undergone a hysterectomy for medical reasons years before. The only option, they felt, was for Matt to conceive. Plagued by hormone-induced migraines, he had already stopped taking testosterone and had begun to menstruate again; his doctor had advised a hysterectomy.
Instead, they found several sperm donors, and the handsome, bearded 37-year-old computer network analyst entered the world of morning sickness and water retention. During Matt's third trimester, Patrick began taking testosterone and contemplating chest surgery. A year ago, their son was born, into a family of two male parents and a world that 10 years ago did not even exist.
Since the story of Christine Jorgenson hit the New York tabloids in 1952, transsexuals have hovered on the edge of public imagination, stock characters in a myth that went something like this: Due to a mistake in nature or biology, a woman is born trapped in a man's body. After years of denial and mental torture, he has a sex change operation and goes on to live life as a traditional heterosexual
woman, revealing her past only as the result of a medical emergency or as a guest on "Jerry Springer."
But in 2001, that scenario is outdated, if not obsolete.
Gender identity disorder, as defined in medical manuals, is
characterized by a "persistent discomfort about one's assigned sex." It has no known cause. Numbers are hard to come by in a still-mostly closeted population, but those who are "out" make up an exceedingly diverse group. There are as many female-to-male transsexuals as male-to-female, and they come from every race, religion and cultural background.
Some transsexuals are straight, some are gay and some are bisexual. Some have children before they make the change, some have children after. Many have sexual reassignment surgery, many do not; many take hormones to change their secondary sex characteristics, some do not; many dress and live as close to the traditional definition of male and female as possible; others are androgynous.
In fact, transsexual, with its historical implications of surgery, is being replaced by the broader term "transgender," which includes cross-dressers, people who identify themselves as stone butch lesbians or flaming queens and anyone who feels or acts outside the traditional gender norms. Within the transgender community, the
word "transition" has become a verb to describe what used to be called a "sex change."
Buoyed by the success of the gay and lesbian liberation
movement, freed from enforced isolation by changes in the medical and psychiatric establishment, and brought together by the Internet, the transgender community has emerged in the last five years as a new voice in social activism. This voice suggests that, although gender is an identity we are
born with, an identity that no amount of social influence can sway, it is too great and varied a force to shoehorn into those ubiquitous boxes marked F and M. While human desires--for love, passion, work, respect, friends, family--remain constant, the way those desires are felt and expressed cannot always be categorized at the moment of birth. Anatomy, as feminists have long argued, is not destiny.
"This is the last phase of the sexual identity movement," says Vern Bullough, a USC adjunct professor of nursing who has written extensively on sexuality in America. "The community is much more organized than it was five years ago. It's learning to live with its own
differences, and becoming more mainstream. The long-term effect will be interesting. Certainly, it will blur gender lines even further." It seems a natural extension of arguments made by feminists, gays and lesbians--and transgender people have found solace, aid and allies in both those communities. But they have also encountered
rejection and hostility. Change is difficult, even for revolutionaries.
"Many mixed-race people are saying that race, as a means of categorizing people, no longer works," says Robert Dawidoff, a history professor at Claremont Graduate University. "Transgender people are showing us that gender, as a similar construct, has no meaning either. Which is, of course, very frightening to many people."
A Difficult Pregnancy for Matt and Patrick
For Matt and Patrick, that was clear right away. It was a difficult pregnancy, physically and emotionally. Tasks most couples take for granted--finding a doctor and a birthing class, telling family and friends--became dramatic events.
To strangers, Matt looked like a man trying to hide a beer belly with bigger and bigger overalls. His appearance at a birthing class caused a stir. "We had found an instructor whose partner was transgender," says Patrick, a psychotherapist and the author of several books,including "Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism" (Cleis
Press, 1997), "so that was no problem. But the class was pretty frosty." "Matt was very clearly a man when he walked in," says midwife Kim Touevs, whose classes are geared toward lesbian families. "And he was also very clearly pregnant. Everyone was very respectful, but they were waiting to hear what Pat and Matt had to say in the introduction circle."
The two were very open, says Touevs, who has since had
two other transgender parents in her class, and by the end of the session, everyone seemed comfortable, or as comfortable as a room full of expectant couples can be.
"We had to buy a lot of chocolate," Patrick says. "I
have always found that it's kind of hard for people to say nasty things after you've fed them."
A man, however, cannot have a baby without someone
taking umbrage, and to the couple's dismay, the most
hurtful criticism came from some of their friends.
In San Francisco, they were part of one of the largest and most visible transgender communities in the world. But
within that world, they were a scandal.
"A lot of [female-to-male transsexuals] are very invested in seeing themselves as 'real men,' " says Patrick. "And they said 'real men' don't have babies. But Matt said 'real men' don't have hysterectomies either. He refused to be shamed."
Support Groups Emerge Across U.S.
"I know I'm not a man," wrote transgender activist and playwright Kate Bornstein in her book "Gender Outlaw," "and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people's rules on this sort of thing." Bornstein transitioned from male to female almost 20 years ago, and when she wrote her book in 1994, she reported seeing the beginnings of a "transgender revolution."
Since then, across the country, organizations providing
information and support for transgender people, their spouses, children and relatives have emerged, with members in the thousands. Many gay and lesbian organizations also offer transgender services. Late last year, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center added the transgender community to its mission statement, reflecting a trend among national organizations as well.
But more than anything else, the Internet, with hundreds of sites devoted to the subject, has helped transgender people break their silence and isolation.
"There is an inherent problem with trying to define a transgender community--it covers so many different people, from casual cross-dressers to transsexuals. But there have been some positive changes in the last few years," says Sara Herwig, director of operations at the International Foundation for Gender Education, publisher of Transgender Tapestry magazine, which has a circulation of several thousand. "I think it's in the process of becoming a social
force."
Many transgender men and women have stories about how things have gotten better in the last five years. Some point to the decision Feb. 8 by San Francisco to expand health benefits to include psychotherapy, hormones and surgery for city transgender employees, or to a recent court decision in Brockton, Mass., that allowed a transgender female to wear women's clothing to high school, or to the growing number of people able to transition on the job.
Others refer to the mainstream adulation of the Oscar-winning film "Boys Don't Cry" and "Ma Vie en Rose," or to the recent change in the Associated Press guidelines to require that a transgender person be referred to by the pronoun of his or her choice.
But as with any liberation movement, the catalyst for the community's activism is the overwhelming sense of injustice. Every transgender person also has a story of fear and loss and often physical abuse. The well-publicized murder of Brandon Teena (the inspiration for "Boys Don't Cry") symbolized for many the problem of violence against transgender people.
Although national health care plans in many European countries pay for sex reassignment, there is little coverage in the U.S. Obtaining new ID remains a problem, and partnership benefits are almost always out of reach.
And many institutions refuse to acknowledge that a person can change from one gender to the other. The Texas Supreme Court recently nullified a transgender woman's legal marriage when she attempted to file a wrongful death suit against the hospital where her husband died. Although her birth certificate and driver's license had been legally changed to identify her as female, the court found that
male chromosomes do not change with either hormonal treatment or sex reassignment surgery. "Biologically," wrote Chief Justice Phil Hardberger in the deciding opinion, "a post-operative female transsexual is still a male."
(Ironically, some same-sex couples in which one partner is transgender have turned the laws to their advantage by using their pretransition genders to marry, which can result in a perfectly legal same-sex union.) Unlike race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, gender expression has no protection under antidiscrimination law. Attempts
to explicitly include transgender people among those protected by a proposed employment nondiscrimination act have failed thus far. Transgender people may be denied housing, fired from their jobs, expelled from schools, banned from social clubs or businesses--simply because their boss, landlord or principal does not feel comfortable around them.
In a highly publicized case two years ago, a Sacramento school board voted to fire teacher Dana Rivers after several parents complained that she had discussed her transition with her students. Many students, teachers and parents protested, and Rivers sued. The case was settled out of court--she agreed to resign and received a
$150,000 settlement. "Seeing a man in a dress would be a distraction," one of the students who supported Rivers' dismissal told this newspaper at the time. Regarding gender, she added: "God doesn't make mistakes."
But where before there was silence at such treatment, there is now a growing chorus of protest, and with it signs of change.
Several years ago, Richard Odenthal, then a Sheriff's Department captain in West Hollywood, realized that his deputies were having trouble dealing with the growing transgender population of the city. Working with several support groups, he created a briefing program to answer questions such as how to address a transgender person and what makes a person want to change gender.
"Like anything else," says Odenthal, now West Hollywood's director of public safety, "there were some people who got it right away, some who need a bit more information, and some who still did not like the idea at all. But they know that they are expected to behave professionally and with sensitivity, and I think things have improved."
In fact, the city of West Hollywood recently appointed a
seven-member task force to study the needs of the growing
transgender population. "There have been major strides in the last five or six years," says Richard Horowitz, a Los Angeles internist and nephrologist (kidney specialist), who has worked with hundreds of transgender patients for more than 12 years. "In the mainstream, and in the medical
community, there is much more acceptance."
Gary Alter, a surgeon at Century City Hospital who has
performed sexual reassignment operations for seven years, is more blunt: "It used to be people looked at transsexuals as freaks. Now they realize these are just normal people trapped in bodies that don't suit them."
Both doctors say they are seeing more transgender patients than ever. Medically, a transition begins with hormone treatments, which cause the development of secondary sex characteristics, such as the development of breasts or facial hair. After that, several surgeries may be involved. Male-to-females usually have breast implants.
Many have genital surgery. This can cost $10,000 or more. There is often electrolysis to remove facial and body hair, and some undergo surgeries to feminize the face--to make the nose smaller or the brow less prominent, to remove the Adam's apple.
Most female-to-males take testosterone and many have mastectomies. Fewer have genital surgery. At $70,000 and up, it’s often prohibitively expensive, and far less successful. Part of the myth of the transsexual was that the process began and ended with surgery and that success was judged by how much of a woman or a man one resembled, how well one "passed." Lately, however, some are rejecting these criteria, arguing that transgender, rather than man or woman, is an end in itself.
"The problem with the traditional model," says Patrick Califia-Rice, "is that it . . . doesn't reflect the reality that many of us are never going to pass." Before transition, his was an hourglass figure with D-cup breasts,
and although hormones have shrunk his breasts and hips, he says he looks neither like a traditional man nor a traditional woman.
He is still debating whether or not to have his breasts removed. "I don't know if fitting into my Brooks Brothers shirts is worth such an invasive procedure, with possible loss of sensation," he says.
Influencing his decision is the knowledge that within the transgender community there is a perceived surgical hierarchy. "People on top are those who've had all the surgery; under those, partial surgery; under those, people who pass with just hormones; under those no hormones; under those, those who just don't pass." Having lived outside the boundaries of traditional conformity, he says, he doesn't relish the idea of capitulating to transgender conformity.
Many 'Standards of Care' Are Loosened
In 1966, New York endocrinologist Harry Benjamin published "The Transsexual Phenomenon," thereby giving a name to a syndrome and establishing a list of "standards of care" by which it should be treated. As recently as 10 years ago, the standards required, among other things, that before transitioning, the patient quit his or her job, move and live for at least a year, without benefit of surgery or hormones, as the desired gender. This included taking a new, "gender appropriate" job, which could mean for a prospective male-to-female, exchanging a law practice for a secretarial post. After surgery, the patient was evaluated regularly, encouraged to keep the reality of his, or her life a secret and discouraged from associating with other transgender people.
"Which flies in the face of mental health," says Michelle Kammerer, co-director of the Center for Gender Sanity, a resource and support group. "You were supposed to cut off all communication with your support group at a time when you needed the most support, supposed to quit your job at a time when you needed lots of money."
Kammerer transitioned rather famously more than 10 years ago while a station commander with the Los Angeles Fire Department. Although her bosses were supportive, many members of her crew were not. She eventually transferred; she is now a station commander in West Hollywood.
She and her spouse, Janis Walworth, a nontransgender woman, founded the center six years ago. Walworth has written two guides, one for employers and one for employees, that are used across the country.
From the couple's home in Westchester, they try to explain the realities of transition to anyone who would like to know--the novelist attempting a transgender character, the mother who doesn't understand what her child is talking about, the woman who cannot live one more day in a man's body.
In the last decade, many of the "standards of care" have been relaxed. As the number of transgender people increased, it became clear that most were not suicidal or pathological. A diagnosis of gender identification disorder is required before hormone therapy or surgery can take place, and people are generally still required by their doctors to live for at least a year as the gender to which they aspire. But the expectations are more realistic--a prospective male-to-female patient will not be denied surgery if she eschews makeup or wears slacks rather than skirts. And whereas once doctors and psychiatrists would refuse someone not planning to live as heterosexual after transition, now most do not.
Even the trial year has many critics--after all, by the time most people make their way to a doctor's office, they have been questioning and denying and fighting their desires for decades. "Most of us have tried everything else," says Kammerer. Everything else includes being straight, being gay, being celibate, getting married, having kids, getting divorced, joining the Armed Forces, moving across the country, abusing drugs and alcohol, spending years in psychotherapy, even taking religious vows. Most transsexuals say they knew they wanted to have surgery, or at least live as the other gender, at a very early age but were simply too afraid.
In most states, one's gender on a driver's license can be changed, and in some states even on birth certificates. Passports can be changed as well. But all require a letter from a doctor and/or psychiatrist stating that the individual has had reassignment surgery or has been living as the requested gender for at least a year. For those who do not have surgery or hormone treatments, getting a new driver's license or passport can be impossible. This is one reason it is difficult to find an accurate count of transgender Americans. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Assn. says that one in 30,000 men and one in 100,000 women suffer from gender identity disorder, but this is based only on those who seek psychiatric help. A number that is commonly used--that about 1,000 Americans have sexual reassignment surgeries each year--does not take into account the many who go to Europe or Mexico for their surgeries, or those who do not have any surgery at all. But numbers are important politically, and so the relatively small community has sought various alliances. Many people coming to terms with their gender issues turn to the gay and lesbian community, says Marie Keller, director of the Gender Center in Los Angeles, because there really hasn't been anywhere else to go.
Some of the issues the two groups face are similar, she says--how to cope with the often-traumatic effects of coming out, how to learn to be honest about who you are--but the diverse nature of both groups has made the alliance an often-uneasy one, with each side having to confront its own bigotry.
Last year Norah Vincent, a columnist for the gay-oriented periodical the Advocate, took issue with the transgender community's use of language, winding up her argument by asking why "transsexuals mutilate their bodies in order to make them conform to the fashionable version of the opposite sex and gender" instead of living "with all the polymorphy God gave you, body and soul."
In the big coastal cities, Kate Bornstein says, gays and lesbians have become so accepted they're almost chic. "But," she says, "it's still OK to laugh at trannies." Bornstein says she used to feel bitter about the lack of what she sees as real inclusion from the gay and lesbian movement, but now she's not so sure it is a natural alliance. "Gays and lesbians are more about fixed identities--they have a lot more in common with heterosexuals," she says. Gwenn Baldwin, executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, says she became convinced that the organization should specifically include transgender men and women after hearing someone use the term "gender nonconformity." "We had been serving the transgender community for years," she says, "but we hadn't really been talking about it. But then I realized that we are all gender nonconformists in one way or another."
The phobia exists on both sides, says James Green, co-director of Gender Education and Advocacy, a support group with offices in Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Decatur, Ga. Many straight transgender people do not want to be allied with gays and lesbians, often because they have been mistakenly dubbed homosexual during their pre-transition lives. But the alliance is a necessary one, he says, because "the reason people are getting bashed is because of gender signals."
Many female-to-males who lived for years in the lesbian community or as radical feminists say their decision to transition was seen by many as a betrayal. "I had to overcome the attitude that the good people are women, which I had bought into for so long," says Patrick Califia-Rice. "Although, after taking testosterone, I have to admit most men are pretty well behaved, if they're experiencing what I'm experiencing." "I lost some friends," says Mike Hernandez, a lawyer living outside Los Angeles who transitioned 10 years ago. "When you go from being a lesbian separatist to being a man, well, there are going to be some problems."
Many transgender people say they wish they had simply been born in the "right" body, but that is not what happened. Instead their lives followed unmarked paths in the darkness beyond the pale, paths of fight or flight and then surrender--to a transformation that neither begins nor ends with the traditional definition of man or woman. "One of my girlfriends said during an argument, 'I can't believe you were ever a woman,' " says Green. "And I said, 'I wasn't. That's the whole point. I was something else.' " How does he think of himself now? "I am a man," he says, "with an unusual history." NEW YORK - Two genes lock in a tug-of-war to determine whether a mammal embryo will become a boy or a girl, a new study suggests. One of the genes, called Sry, has long been known as the master switch that makes an embtyo become male. The new work suggests that a second gene, Dax1, tries to block it's effect. It almost always fails. So embryos with one Y chromosome, which carries the Sry gene, and one X chromosome, which carries Dax1, normally develop as males. But in rare cases, the new study suggests, such embryos get an extra copy of the Dax1 gene. And when two Dax1 genes gang up on the single Sry gene, the competition goes the other way, and the embryo becomes a female. Dr. Michael Weiss, who studies the genetics of sex determination at the University of Chicago, called the study an important step toward understanding how genes work together to produce either a male or female. Many Halloweens ago in a city thousands of miles from here, two dear friends who are gay took me to see the show. You know, the SHOW - the unofficial Halloween street parade of men in drag, strutting their stuff in a part of the city known for it's gay bars. During the course of one crisp, giddy evening, a display of slink and silliness unfolded in front of us. True, some of the men teetered sadly on their high heels, a guick coat of foundation smeared into their 5 o'clock shadows. But many more men knew exactly what they were doing - they were beautifully made-up, long-legged creatures, preening like exoptic birds. We saw men dressed as gaudy prom queens, men as Maralyn Monroe, men as the young Jackie Kennedy, in her pillbox hat, as waitresses, with towering beehives and powder pink uniforms, as brides dripping white lace, as cheerleaders swishing their pom-poms, and as Miss America By the end of the evening, this is what occured to me: If you make a young man shave his legs, teach him to walk in high heels, pad his chest, paint his face and throw a blond wig on his head, he'll look more like Anmerica's busty, slim-hipped ideal of feminine beauty than almost any real woman I've ever known. She's long-legged and glamourous, strong and sultry, unworried about cellulite, unlikely to sag after the children are born, She's the impossible standard for all women. She's a he. I mention this because somehow the 1990's have become the decade of drag - a time in which we seem fascinated by the spectacle of men dressing as women. They're everywhere, in movies, from "Mrs Doubtfire" to "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," "Ed Wood," "Just Like a Woman," the upcoming "To Wong Foo, with Love Julie Newmar" and the classic early 90's "Paris is Burning." On TV, from crossdressing eldest brother, in "On our Own," to the two drag Queens on "The John Larroquette Show," to the coach who was revealed to be a transvestite on "Wings." In music, as well, with the late Kurt Cobain's performances in an evening gown, and various Red Hot Chili Peppers dressed up in skirts. "There IS a trend." says Angela Gardner. "I don't know why, I wish we did. Maybe the script writers and movie producers are transvestites." Maybe so, Angela is. Angela is a 44 year old man who is the outreach director for the Renaissance Education Association, a transgender support group based outside Philadelphia. Angela wants to take the opportunity to let people know that transvestites aren't drag queens, transsexuals or, usually gay. They're men who find that it relieves stress to dress in women's clothes. That's all, and they tend to appreciate the publicity that movies and TV shows provide. But I remain puzzled by the trend of transvestite chic in all it's forms - from sypathetic portrayals to outrightly hostile parodies of femininity, from the daring and the eccentric to the funny and sweet. Transvestite chic could be a sign of progress and understanding between the genders, or a continued confusion. It could signal an era in which frilliness, softness and girliness have become accepted, providing relief from a mean, competitive world - or it could indicate the continued notion of femininity as the ultimate taboo, the source of every schoolyard bully's taunts. Sissy. "We're going through a new era of awareness in the media." Angela tells me. How optimistic. People must be free to be themselves Men in dresses. The very idea makes people laugh and squirm. It jostles assumptions and turns expectations upside down. That may begin to explain
why the American Film Institute recently ranked "Some Like It Hot" and "Tootsie" as the best comedies of all time. In those celluloid worlds, Jack Lemmon and Dustin Hoffman show some whistle fetching leg. And in the process, they loosen us up and encourage us to question our ideas about gender roles and identity. More recently, the Academy Award winning "Boys Don't Cry" told the gut wrenching story of Brendon Teena, a transgendered youth whose unshakable faith in himself partially freed him from the female body that felt like a prison. These films trigger conflicting emotions in most of us. We don't want
anyone shoving us into a narrow pigeonhole, yet we like the comfort of thinking the rest of the world fits into clear-cut categories. Gender-bending forces us to live with ambiguity, whether we like it or not. Living with ambiguity -- or celebrating it -- defines a civil rights movement that is boldly shaking up assumptions in families, friendships and workplaces to encourage acceptance of people who don't conform to standard
gender categories. Now in its third decade of organized activity, the transgendered civil rights movement has only recently hit its stride. It has much to teach the rest of us.
"The goal is to let people be productive, to be safe and to be contribute to this society -- and not be held back or hurt because of their gender identity or gender expression," says Shannon Minter, an attorney who aligned his body with his male identity through medical procedures. "Transgendered" is an umbrella term that covers transsexuals (whose sense of
themselves clashes with their original biological sex), cross-dressers and others whose appearance is at odds with traditional gender expectations. As in the rest of society, some trans people are gay while others aren't. Being transgendered puts men and women at extreme risk of being ridiculed
and humiliated, being fired without cause, being kicked out of restaurants and stores, being denied housing and being refused medical treatment. Male-to-female transsexuals are especially likely to be victims of brutal hate crimes. "This is a community of extremely wounded people." Says writer Jamison
Green, a female-to-male transsexual. Yet trans people are making real progress as more of the rest of us come to
see them as kindred spirits battling fierce versions of old familiar enemies -- sexism, rigid gender roles and violent hatred. As Minter reminds gay people, "You can't really fight back against homophobia without dealing with gender stereotyping and sexism." Striking a special cord with those of us who're gay, Minter adds, "I don't want to have to hide who I am in order to be safe." Trans people scored their first legislative victory in 1975, when Minneapolis protected them from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. Now four states and 26 localities include them in anti-bias or hate crime laws, according to "Transgendered Equality," which maps out the movement's history and ways to build on its successes.
California included transgendered youth in its 1999 "safe schools" law. Lucent Technologies took the lead in the private sector, declaring in 1997 that it won't discriminate.
The recent breakthroughs of recent years are going to multiply because major employers and society are becoming more familiar with -- and thus less threatened by -- trans people. "We're at a critical point. So many more people are willing to be relaxed and allow others to be who they are." Green says. People in rewarding lives. Isn't that the universal goal? Deb Price
Columnist for the Detroit News
Every year cross-dressers migrate to my hometown like hundreds of brightly plumed birds to attend Esprit, a cross-dressers' convention. Why they choose tiny Port Angeles, a Washington state mill town with little tolerance for men in lipstick, is anyone’s guess. But once a year, groups of tall, well-dressed ”women” stroll around, enjoying the sights and spending money. Which means it’s time for any self-respecting female to dress a bit better and sport makeup when she leaves the house. Otherwise, a bunch of men will show her up. “I wish I looked like that in a pair of slacks,” a girlfriend of mine mutters into her drink as we sit in the hotel lounge. A cross-dresser with a pert butt, loads of blonde curls and a Coach bag sashays out of the bar.
These men dressed as women attend the Esprit convention to
network, party, and take classes on everything from sexual
reconstructive surgery to “how to move like a woman.” I ask to
sit in on some of the ”girlie” classes. Since no one ever taught
me how to wear makeup or walk in a womanly fashion, I wanted to find out how guys learn to be girls. “Honestly, sometimes I go to the mall and watch women and girls go by, and I say to myself ‘American women just do not know how to take care of themselves,’” says Harriet Stites, one of the convention’s organizers. I instantly regret wearing chinos and a striped T-shirt. I could use some lipstick too. Harriet is a well coiffed middle-aged man in a white blouse with shoulder pads. I notice this because I touch his shoulder as we’re trying to figure out how to fit me into the busy schedule for the seven-day conference. That’s my first brush with cross-dresser confusion. I would never touch a middle-aged man this way, but I treat Harriet like a fellow female instantly. “You never know what a woman goes through till you walk a mile in her shoes,” sighs Charlotte as he’s having eyeliner applied by Domonique, a genetic gal (G.G. in cross-dresser parlance), in the makeup seminar. Charlotte has strawberry-blonde hair and bushy eyebrows. He sits with his legs gaping open, stretching a red wool skirt in directions it was never meant to go. All 10 ”gals” at Domonique’s daytime makeup class have brought their makeup kits. One ”lady” has a purple tackle box labeled “Kat’s bag of tricks,” carrying everything from Clinique to Wet ‘N’ Wild. Jane, trim in size 6 Guess jeans, leans into every bit of advice Domonique utters, then tries applying lipstick with a shaky hand. Remember the subversive thrill of early makeup use? Sneaking mom’s blue eye shadow in fourth grade? That feeling fills the room.
“You’ve gotta be bold to buy makeup” says Stephanie, who’s
showing off a jar of $80 Christian Dior rejuvenation cream.
Stephanie talks proudly about the time he walked right up to
an Estee Lauder counter in a department store and requested
a makeover. I relate more to Jane, who flashes a bottle of
Clinique’s Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion, then
tucks it quickly back into his purse, as if he’s showing me a
gram of coke. Or a secret. Cosmetics always seemed a forbidden pleasure to me, attractive but girly. And girly was never how I wanted to be perceived. The smell of my favorite perfume, Thierry Mugler’s Angel, wafts through the room. I’m not the one wearing it. Later on I attend a movement class, taught by Domonique
again. This time I’m working it a bit more. Lipstick, platforms,
and tight black bellbottoms. Proud to be a woman even though my butt will never be as good as that ”gal’s” I saw in the bar.
Domonique tells the packed classroom, “Real women never show their armpits, inner thighs or palms.” Then she has everybody practice entering a crowded room. Enter. Pause. See where you want to go, then move slowly toward that place. Back up to the chair ‘til it brushes the back of your legs. Slowly lower yourself. Cross legs at knees, arrange at angle to lengthen look. Done. I watch man-in-skirt after man-in-skirt enter the room, pause, and go through the motions. They’re good listeners, entering the room regally and sitting gracefully. Everyone has gone but me, and the ”ladies” clamor to see how a real girl will handle the assignment. I am Frankenstein. I really try, but I do my usual clump and plop. What’s worse, I hold my hands up, limp-wristed, in an attempt to look feminine. I look like a clumsy woman trying to impersonate a gay male. Domonique shrieks, “What’s with those hands?” and one of the cross-dressers declares, “See? It isn’t as easy as it looks, is it?” I am humbled. The ”ladies” are vindicated. These men live for this weeklong convention. They change outfits five times a day, get manicures and talk endlessly about favorite shopping places. (Ross Dress for Less is a favorite, but they call it Cross Dress for Less.) The end of the Esprit convention is emotionally tough for the closeted cross-dressers, because it represents an end to the freedom to be feminine they’ve enjoyed all week. The ”ladies” pack up their high heels and sequined gowns, put on their guy clothes and go back to their guy lives. It’s a shame when it comes to an end. I ask Harriet Stites what makes a cross-dresser’s take on femininity different from a woman’s. “We never, ever take it for granted,” he says. As I clump to my car, I make a mental note to dig that perfume out of the depths of my medicine cabinet when I get home.
Anne Erickson is a freelance writer and TV producer in Port Angeles, Wash. She also wrote “Susan Powter: Whoa! She’s got strong opinions.”
Hi, I am a gay man and my name is Warren Blumenfeld, or as my friends affectionately like to call me, “Estelle Abrams”— honorary Jewish bisexual woman from Brooklyn. Seriously, though, Estelle embodies the feminine side of my soul—my joyous, playful self, the creative, spontaneous, sensitive spirit that I have come to treasure and genuinely love. But this wasn’t always the case.
When I was quite young, long before I learned what was considered the “proper” rules of conduct, I naively introduced Estelle to the world. Others, I was quick to discover, feared and even despised her. Children called her names like “queer,” “sissy,” “fairy,” “pansy,” “faggot,” "little girl," with an incredible vehemence and malice that I did not understand.
Adults hated her too. Soon after I introduced Estelle to my parents, they sent me to a child psychiatrist when I was only five years old and continuing over the next eight years, in their attempt to kill Estelle, to exorcise her in the hope of forever eliminating all contact, all vestiges, all memory of her ever being a part of me.
All this taught me to cloak her from the sun’s exposing rays, to keep her well concealed deep within my consciousness, to summons her only during those rare but precious moments of tranquil and safe solitude.
The forces that set out to kill Estelle—those societal battalions bent on destroying all signs of femininity in every male—nearly succeeded in coercing me into denouncing her, but through some power more potent than they, Estelle was victorious in fending off their attacks. Being mightier and more willful, she stayed with me through times of torment and times of treatment. Even when I began to loose trust and to doubt her, she never gave up on me.
The good news is that Estelle not only survived, but she thrives in me today. Each day I am alive, I thank her for the extraordinary gifts she gives to me. Her presence not only enriches me, but also gives special meaning to my life, and for that I am truly lucky.
Some have asked me, “What was that energy, that force empowering Estelle to repel her would-be executioners?” Quite simply, it was a vision—a vision of social transformation articulated by feminists and later by early gay liberationists during Estelle’s youth.
Earlier—much earlier—in the Middle Ages, the fairies— those men accused of same-sex eroticism—were rounded up, bound, tossed on the ground as if kindling, and set ablaze igniting women accused of witchcraft who were secured above. Later, the reverse would be true. Catching the spark of feminist thought and theory, fairies joined together exploding conventional notions of gender, most notably definitions of masculinity.
In 1993, during the National March for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Rights in Washington, D.C., I attended a reunion of the Gay Liberation Front, D.C., which—over twenty-three years prior—formed the leading edge of a movement rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the Stonewall Inn in New York City.
We held early meetings at Grace Church, the Washington Free Clinic in Georgetown, and All Souls Church on 16th Street, until we rented a brownstone on S Street, in Northwest for the establishment of a Gay Liberation Front living collective.
Meetings provided a space for gays, lesbians, and bisexual women and men to come together and put into practice what feminists had taught us—that the “personal is indeed the political.”
We laughed and we cried together. We shared our ideas and our most intimate secrets. We dreamed our dreams and laid our plans for a world free from all the deadly forms of oppression, and as we went along, invented new ways of relating.
For the men, we came to consciousness of how we had been stifled as males growing up in a culture that taught us to hate the woman within, that taught us that if we were to be considered worthy, we must be athletic, independent, assertive, domineering, competitive, that we must bury our emotions deep within the recesses of our souls.
Looking back over the years, as our visibility has increased, as our place within the culture has become somewhat more assured, much certainly has been gained, but also, something very precious has been lost. That early excitement, that desire— though by no means the ability—to fully _restructure_ the culture, as distinguished from mere reform, seems now to lay dormant in many sectors of, at least, the gay male community.
I do remain hopeful, however, for I believe that bisexual women and men and transgenderists today are on the cutting edge of the discourse on gender, having the greatest potential to bring us back into the future—a future in which the Estelles (and the Butches) everywhere will live freely, unencumbered by other’s notions of behavior, one in which the “feminine” and “masculine”—as well as all the qualities on the continuum in between—can live and prosper in us all.
So therefore I say, let us not work only toward lifting the ban against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in the military, but let us also work toward lifting the ban against our transcending and obliterating the gender status quo.
Let us not limit our efforts to defeating homophobia, heterosexism, biphobia, and the many other categories of oppression, but let us also work toward conquering personal, institutional, and societal forms of transphobia and its offshoot, what some of us have labeled “effemiphobia”—that insidious and dehumanizing fear and hatred of anything even hinting at the feminine in males, which is, as we all know, basically the fear and hatred of females.
Let us continue to work on issues around same-sex marriage and domestic partnership, but let us not fail to put efforts into strengthening a partnership between our masculine and feminine qualities making us all whole, integrated human beings.
If indeed it is true, as the old saying goes, that the fish is the last to see the water because it is so pervasive, then from our vantage point at the margins, we have a special opportunity, indeed a responsibility, to serve as social commentators, as critics, exposing and highlighting the rigid gender roles that dampen and saturate our environment, and to challenge the culture to move forever forward and to grow.
This is my view of true and lasting liberation. I hope it is part of yours too.
Warren J. Blumenfeld
Editor, _Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price_
Editor, _International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies_
Co-Author with Diane Raymond, _Looking at Gay and Lesbian Life_
P.O. Box 929
Northampton, MA 01061-0929
blumenfeld@educ.umass.edu
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Refugees from the great Irish famine poured into the mining areas of Pennsylvania in search of a better life only to find the same English/Welsh power structure they thought they'd left behind. (In Ireland, 50 years before, the original Mollies got the name because they sometimes disquised themselves as women)."
