Gender-no, baby

A couple in Sweden has decided to raise their child gender free. The child, whom the article refers to as Pop, has "normal" sex organs, but the parents have decided not to reveal this information to the public. They say so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female. Yes, but...

This experiment in and of itself is interesting on a number of levels. Even more fascinating is peoples responses to it. Slate's new spin-off site Double X made mention of this story here with a follow up post here (and a nice and much more interesting personal antidote with follow up comments here.) The Slate articles make some interesting points but the follow up comments are a great read. People seem to be getting very hung up on the nature vs. nurture debate that's been raging for years. As a trans person I have a very definite and final answer to the question "Is gender biological or socially determined?" The answer is most decidedly yes.


More interesting and relevant, I think, is not what this will ultimately do to Pop's gender once it is reveled but what it means for the idea of a genderless society. This is a point of contention within the transexual and transgendered community. Some want to transition and assimilate into their chosen gender and some want to get rid of gender altogether. Either way, living genderless in a gendered society brings up obvious real-life issues: using the bathroom, medical care and all those little things that are so much bigger than trucks vs. dolls. These are all the things that non-trans people don't have to think about but become huge when you're transitioning.

Although I think the Utopian ideal of a genderless society is perhaps interesting, I don't think it sounds like a society I'd like to live in. I like gender, I just don't like the amount of meaning we attach to it. What if gender carried no more meaning than color. What if I wore masculinity today in the same way I wore the color green. Gender is a wonderful, amazing, colorful world and worth exploring and exploding--much too interesting to get rid of altogether.

One day perhaps we'll be able to let children choose their gender. We'll be able to raise boys, girls and everyone else the exact same way. I applaud Pop's parents and think perhaps their experiment will push us in the right direction. Will Pop experience some awkward situations? Of course. We all do as children. I only hope that if Pop decides that Pop is a totally gender conforming girl or boy that Pop's parents will be OK. Sometimes parents get to struggle and push boundaries and sometimes parents have to settle for the fact that their children are decidedly and painfully normal and love them in spite of it.

Old lesbians who look like men who look like old lesbians...

I was walking behind this couple today. The person on the left looked like a pretty normal straight woman. On the right was someone with short but thick wavy hair, white sneakers, Dad jeans pulled up a little too high and a navy polo shirt. I immediately thought of one of my favorite websites, Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Thinking for sure this man walking in front of me was going to bear a striking resemblance to Billy Jean King, I passed this couple, turned and realized that this man in front of me actually was an old lesbian. An old lesbian that had no doubt been mistaken for a man at some point in her life. An old lesbian that was probably made fun of as a child for being a tom-boy. An old lesbian who, well, looked like an old lesbian. Here I am preparing myself to have a chuckle about the fact that this woman looks exactly like what she is. The irony is fantastic.

Every day gender blurs a little more. Girls look like boys who look like girls. I don't and never have advocated for a gender free society. I think the distinctions between the genders are important and wonderful. However, I'm all for the freedom to take on all those traits at once. Now that I am a man I feel much more comfortable taking on more womanly traits, traits that would have made me ashamed and uncomfortable in a world that saw me as a woman. Sometimes taking our genders full circle is what we need for everything to make sense.

Whoa, Baby

The appearance of Thomas Beatie on the cover of the Philadelphia Weekly's "Queer Issue" a couple weeks ago sparked a whole new wave of feelings, many of which I've been struggling for the past couple weeks to explain. As far as pregnant trans men go, I don't feel so black and white about it as many people I know do. In general I say do what you want to do. Live and let Live. Unfortunately it's so much more complicated than that.

I would personally love to have a baby, but there are concerns beyond just simply wanting to have a child. For one thing, I'm concerned about what the effects of incubating a baby in eggs that have been pickling in testosterone would be. Medical issues aside, however, I don't think that wanting to have a child is an intrinsically female thing. I think more men would choose to have babies if it were genetically possible. In many cases it has been women that have had the strongest reaction to the Pregnant Man story. For some it is a mental misunderstanding of the difference between Gender Identity and Sex making some wonder why he would transition if he wanted to have a baby. I can explain this away with some clarity, but I can't explain away the feelings and resentments that seem to linger.

I do have major issues that go much deeper and are much more complicated than simple medical concerns. Thomas Beatie was all over the news. GLBT groups, many at a loss for how to respond, issued statements criticising the sensationalization in the media, but it can't be ignored that Beatie was the one that put his story out there. Although seemingly mild mannered and "shy," this level of attention can be very addictive. He doesn't seem to have considered the needs of the greater community nor is he conscious of the effect his actions have with regards to social and legal matters. I struggle because I don't want to say that if you don't fit the mainstream queer you should shut up. The mainstream becomes a bigger and bigger stream everyday and a stream I didn't fit in not too long ago.

However, I think it is every queer persons responsibility to manage their visibility responsibly and be conscious of the greater community. I personally got really nervous when he showed up on the cover of the Philly Weekly as I'm waiting for my court date for my legal name and gender change. The Advocate--the first to break the Beatie story--also offered an article on it's potential aftermath for trans advocates. Here's an excerpt, but check out the rest of the article here.

"Some trans activists also note that this story has a high “ick” factor for the general population. The first reactions [author Jamison] Green read online were discouraging. “They wrote ‘disgusting’ or asked, ‘How can someone do that to themselves and think he is a man?’ and worse,” he recalls. “I worry that for the uneducated and less accepting, this brings back the whole ‘freak’ label to transgender people.” When she saw the teaser for the Oprah show, alarm bells went off for Cathy Renna, managing partner of Renna Communications, a New York City–based firm that develops communications strategies for LGBT organizations. “My sense is that this story has all the hallmarks of one that could be easily sensationalized—one that could easily set back some of the improvements that have been made by transgender people,” she says. “Beatie’s article opened the Pandora’s box.”

Think about what happened in 2003 after the Massachusetts supreme judicial court ruled that the state had to allow marriage as an option for gay couples. Other state governments panicked. Twenty-three states amended their constitutions to limit marriage to one man and one woman, joining three that had done so earlier. Some states, such as Michigan, even went further—using their amendment to justify denying health benefits to the gay partners of state employees.

“Generally, with the public and mainstream media we’re still doing Trans 101,” says Renna. “I worry this kind of story will create a whole new level of regulation. Anti-trans groups will use this as ammunition to influence politics to make laws that won’t let trans people make decisions about their own body. I so hope I’m wrong.”

That’s not just negative thinking. In Japan it’s illegal to transition if you’ve already given birth or fathered a child. So far no such law exists in this country, although three states—Idaho, Ohio, and Tennessee—will not allow their transgender citizens to legally change their gender on birth certificates."

It was his appearance on Oprah that partially got me jammed up in Michigan with the Department of Vital Records pointing to his story as a reason I could not change my birth certificate. Still, my court date is probably a couple months away and if Oprah couldn't keep him in the spotlight I doubt PW will. The story already seems to have waned.

But even in its waning, the existence of more and more pregnant men can't be ignored and I know it's an issue many transmen struggle with. I asked one friend about his issues. "I don't know. I guess because it's sooo not something I would want to do and I consider being pregnant very female, in fact. [Also,}] I guess because I've struggled so long to be "accepted" as a "real live boy" that [FTM's getting pregnant] just make it harder for me with the rest of society because automatically people then assume I'm the same as so and so....I don't know. It's not a feeling/thought process I'm particularly proud of but...there it is."

I think most everyone considers being pregnant to be a very female thing, but would we if it didn't have to be that way? I don't know?

I understand why he feels that way and I don't think it's something he needs to be ashamed of. Beatie and others are making it difficult for other trans guys if not simply giving us one more thing in an already long list of things that we, as FTMs, need to explain. For a while I was bombarded with questions about Beatie simply because I am FTM. In many ways, these pregnant men are putting the quotation marks back around the "man" in transman.

However, I can't help but recall butch dykes not being asked to participate in early gay rights marches because they would make the "just like you" approach that lady-like lesbians were going for less effective. It's true that butches upset the mainstream appeal of white collar gays, but the "just like you" approach also doesn't really work in the long run.

I also think there's a definite pendulum swing to transitioning. It's necessary to overswing to really masculine and then you kind of swing back a bit. I don't know if i would have felt differently about Beatie's story in year one of my transition than I do now. I know I am different. I'm a different kind of guy. Lately I have been thinking a lot about reconciling all that makes me a man with everything that makes me different. Trying to be OK with that difference is really hard. It's hard not being in the same queer community, it's hard feeling different, and sometimes jealous, than other guys, it's hard figuring out how to have sex with my parts and not loose that masculinity. I feel like I'm in a back swing right now and it's really disorienting.

Ultimately, masculine is different for everyone--trans and biological guys alike. It doesn't have to be macho. A masculine swing could be whatever your version of masculinity is. If being a man for you always meant not having to wear a shirt in the summer than maybe you never wear your shirt in the summer. Then you eventually realize that all guys have to wear a shirt sometimes in the summer. Topless on the subway is not very classy as I was totally disappointed to learn.

I'm sure the Beatie stuff will all shake out in the wash and ultimately be good for the movement. I'm also sure that some people will be hurt in the process. I'm more interested in the internal dialogue that this could spark for the trans community. When so much of transitioning is about feeling "normal" for the first time in our lives, any threat to that can be really unsettling. Still, it's the freaks and outsiders that have changed the world. Personally I really wish Thomas Beatie would just shut up and go away, but publicly I'll defend his right to exist no matter how much I cringe while doing so.

Memories, cornered in my mind...

I spent the evening last night remembering my transition. I told all the great stories that had become lodged in my psyche, moments of awkward humor or brilliant awakening. In some ways I had meticulously recorded my transition, but, like all records, it was a record of things I wanted to remember. As the evening wore on, however, I began to recall moments that has just slipped away. I began to wonder about those moments that I simply didn’t want to recall. Moments that were so defeating and heartbreaking at the time that I didn’t think I would ever want to go back to them. We all remember those times when we begin to pass, but what about all the times we don’t.

Here I am years later being asked questions by two people that, together, provide my perfect combination of feigned confidence and total anxiety. I see myself in both of them so clearly that anxieties and fears I totally forgotten come rushing back. Some stories I’m learning are somewhat universal, moments that many if not all transmen share. Others are stories I keep hearing, stories that seem to be universal to everyone but me. Seemingly more common are the feelings--feelings of guilt, shame, awkwardness, annoyance, anger, fear, pride and bravado.

So, in the interest of full disclosure, here are some memories that at the time I probably preferred to forget…

I had decided to transition, I had decided to make art about it and that seemed to be the end of it. Nothing was happening. I didn’t know what to make work on, I didn’t look any different, but I went from a confident dyke to a terrified and nervous nothing. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe if I only put a little effort into it something would begin to happen. If you knew me then you knew I had D breasts. I didn’t bind. It wasn’t because it was uncomfortable or hot or suffocating, though it certainly was all those things, it was that it didn’t work. I would have gladly turned my breasts into deflated pancakes if I though it would make me look like a man. It turns out that I passed more often when I didn’t bind. The minute I put on a binder my stomach turned into knots and any eye contact I made with the world took on a dear in headlights terror. This fear took away any masculinity I may have gained by a flat chest. Still, I kept going back to it. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I woke up that morning and decided to bind. Anna and I were going into Manhattan and I was going to be a man. I got out of the shower and with Anna’s help, began wrapping more and more fabric around my chest. A sports bra, ace bandages, another sports bra, an undershirt and then a sweater. It was the tightest I’d ever gotten things and I thought I looked good. I couldn’t breath, sit normally, walk normally or really talk, but surely I must look like a man. The entire subway ride into the city I was feeling alright. My eyes darted from face to face looking for any acknowledgement of my masculinity. The next stop was lunch—my first interaction with another human. The first words out of his mouth—“can I help you, ma’am?” I wanted to cry. I didn’t say anything trying to decide in that split second if I should correct him, trying to force myself to say “actually, it’s sir.” Instead all I could choke out through my constricted chest was “one slice of plain.”


I hoped the old wives tale was actually true—that when you shaved a hair a darker one grew back in its place. Before I took a drop of testosterone I was going to try to coax a beard out of my fair skin with shaving cream and a disposable razor. I went to the dollar store by my house in Brooklyn. I picked out some shaving cream from the shelf, but the razors were behind the counter. I gathered all my courage and asked for a bag of razors. The Dominican man behind the counter looked closely at me and then said “for your face?” Yes, I told him, thinking I had finally passed. “You don’t look Puerto Rican,” he tells me as he turns and grabbed a pink bag from the wall. I wrinkled my brow, not following. As he tossed the razors on the counter he explained that these were the best for ladies faces. Easy on the skin. All his customers prefer them. He didn’t think I was a man but a Puerto Rican lady trying to get rid of my feminine mustache. “I’m not Puerto Rican,” I said, affecting the lowest voice I could muster. I left before he could recommend a woman’s shaving cream.


And finally (for today)…
You know how annoying 13 year old boys can be? I Was That Annoying. The great thing for these kids is that they have no idea just how obnoxious they are, but when you have the mind of an adult and the hormone levels of a child you unfortunately know better. Even worse, there is nothing you can do to stop it. I was passing most of the time so I no longer had this look of terror frozen on my face. I was no longer spending all my energy trying to be a man, but belong. It was non-stop over compensation. This need to be a man, need for the approval of my peers, approval of girls, approval of adult men and although I saw myself as a train wreck in slow motion, there was nothing I could do to stop my hormonal wrangling not for king of the hill, but for a spot somewhere along the side of it. I would push a bit too hard, talk a bit too loud, and my jokes were a bit too inappropriate. I totally wanted to pee on things. I got drunk and spray-painted something (I have no idea what) on the side of a bodega. If I thought I could get away with body checking everyone on the subway I would have. I wanted to be a man, but as annoying as I was, I had to be a boy first.

Who am I?

I am a twenty-five year old white, queer, transperson, artist in a female body with a desire for a flat chest and facial hair.

I want to look more like a man but not loose everything I've learned being a woman.

I want to be able to live my life as both a man and a woman, or neither a man or a woman.

I want to learn what it is like to be a man so I can understand what its like to be myself.

I want to be a feminist and a sensitive man like my father and not loose my understanding of womanhood that goes above and beyond what anyone born male could have.

I want to change the way gender is experienced and interpreted.

I want to be true to every important issue of my identity, my life and my world.

I want to live with integrity and authenticity.

Now how do I do that? The first aspect of masculinity every trans guy I know takes on is male privilege, or so I've been told. What does this mean? What is this thing of male privilege and as I begin taking testosterone how do I avoid it? How do I avoid spending the rest of my life thinking of myself in male terms when I know that this is in no way who I am or what is authentic to me. To be perfectly honest, although I know taking T is the right decision, I'm terrified. I'm terrified not of the drugs, and not of the changes, I'm terrified of being honest with the world for the first time about who I am. I've never done that before. I've never let the world be able to see me at first glance. What will it be like being both male and female in everyday life? What will it be like being living gender theory, something that's usually reserved for college level women's studies classes. Here I am trying to become something that the world has no place for. The unfortunate thing about transgenderism is that it both undermines and reinforces the ultimate supremacy of gender as an inherent way we categorize our lives. I grew up a feminist. I knew the words to "I am Woman, Hear Me Roar" before I knew what they meant. I listened to "Free to Be You and Me" and knew all the words to every song. There was one song about mommies and daddies. "Mommies are women, women with children; some mommies drive taxis or sing on TV, yes, mommies can be anything that they want to be." Then the male voice comes on and says, "but they cant be grandpas or daddies." Here I am proving them wrong. My parents' daughter is becoming their son, sort of, and if I had children I would suddenly change from their mommy to their daddy. Biological determinism reigns supreme, even now.


Our mothers fought for so much that we take as fact, but no one ever fought for my right to be a grandpa or daddy. Our sex determines so much. If one wants to take on cross sex behaviors that is fine. Cross-sex identities are a bit more stigmatized, but allowed, assuming that the person once they cross the great divide of the sexes assimilates back into male or female. To do anything else would be a failure in transitioning. So what of me? I'm not a woman. I knew that from an early age. It had nothing to do with my interests, my attire, my friends. It was as inherent as anyone else's identity is. I never felt like I was in the wrong body then. And even now, as I am preparing to begin testosterone treatments in less than a week, I don't feel like I'm becoming a man. How would this be possible when I've had 25 years of the world reinforcing my femininity?

So where does this leave gender politics? Trans is the new queer. Tranny-boys are all over. It leaves one to ask, is this a personal gender identity or is it the new queer identity. Genderfuck and gender subversion have been around in queer circles for ever, but suddenly the word trans is being attached at an ever more rapid rate. On a personal level I sometimes find this disconcerting. Maybe I'm being selfish. Maybe I'm doing to these tranny-boys what lesbians did to bisexual women 30 years ago. I don't know. I don't know what kind of introspective personal journey these people have had to go on to arrive at that label. I only know my journey, where simply saying tranny-boy isn't enough, calling myself a man isn't authentic and being a woman is completely out of my frame of reference.

I grew up believing wholeheartedly in my boyhood. I took off my shirt when my dad did, I abhorred dresses and pink, and wanted a boys haircut as soon as I was old enough to know that hair was a signifier for gender. When I finally did get this haircut at six it was just in time, but almost too late. Adults started calling me young man and sir. I was so proud and confident, but the people around me that knew I didn't have the biological seal of maleness grew increasingly uncomfortable. My parents worried about my feelings being hurt, I worried about hurting theirs. I learned to operate in a world where every feeling I had was second-guessed. I learned to never trust myself. I was a boy where everyone around me expected me to grow out of my tomboy phase, and I did, I guess. I grew my hair long and became a feminist.

As a senior in high school I wrote an article for the school newspaper that took a paper known for such hard-hitting stories as doors on the stalls in the boys bathroom and got it pulled from distribution and locked in the safe. Barrages of calls by angry parents were made to the school. Perhaps this is first when I learned that identity and truth are powerful. My identity and truth, however, are more complex than being a feminist. What does it do to the feminist identity if I say I am not a woman? Sure I've estrogen pumping through my body right now. I menstruate with the full moon. I'm carrying around D-cup breasts and childbearing hips, but all that is going to change.

Will I no longer be a woman? Will I become a man? I can't be a man if gender is a social construction as many theorists are so fond of saying. I've been socialized as a woman. But if gender is a social construction and womanhood is what everyone has been socializing me towards for the past 25 years why is it that I remained convinced throughout it all that I wasn't a woman. If that's the case, why can't I extend the definitions of woman or even extend the possibilities of gender as a whole. I carry around so many agendas with me that I find it difficult to trust the instincts that everyone has to know to a certain extent who and what they are.

So lets go ahead and let the personal be political. I am not a woman. I've never felt comfortable with that. Everyone naturally assumes that that would make me a man, and I can't blame them. I saw that as my only other option as well even though that wasn't the truth either. I'm going to start taking testosterone. I'm going to have my breasts removed. I'll grow facial hair. My voice will drop. My body fat will redistribute. I'll probably look a lot like a man. I don't think that makes me a man anymore than looking like I do now makes me a woman. So I keep asking myself what am I? Identities, for being as natural and instinctive as they are, are more complex than we give them credit for, especially when were trying to figure out words to attach to them.

I'll let you all in on a little stream of thought. Trying to figure out this next sentence and act like I know what the hell I'm doing and becoming makes tears begin to stand in my eyes, tears welling up make me feel like a girl, feeling like a girl when I want to cry makes me angry that I can't cry as who I am. It makes me angry that I can't cry in front of anyone except my girlfriend. If I let the tears flow, will the answer come with them? There's so much pain in trying to prove yourself everyday and even as I try to explain it to you I get angry that you don't understand. I get even angrier that I don't understand. Most of all I'm angry that anything needs explaining at all.

Little kids aren't allowed to just be and let that develop. Even a four year old, for whom gender consistency shouldn't have set in yet, has trouble understanding that I'm not really a girl like his mom and I don't really know how to explain it to him. Sometimes I look like a boy, I tell him, and sometimes I don't. People can be either boys or girls if they want to. Its their decision. He nods as he looks at a picture of me with sideburns. He understands now, so why don't I?