I just finished both She’s Not There, the memoir of a Colby College professor who transitioned from male to female, and Luna, a YA novel about a high school boy who wants to do the same thing.
She’s Not There, Jennifer Finney Boylan – Boylan transitioned a few years ago, and tells her story from childhood through a year or so post-op. I know transgendered people and am sympathetic to anyone who feels they don’t fit and has the courage to do something about it. So I didn’t expect to be as angry at Boylan and heartbroken by her wife’s situation as I was. It’s testament to Boylan’s strong writing and empathy for her wife that I identified with Grace as much as I did, of course; I still saw her through Boylan’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I want,” she said. “Every choice I have sucks.” It’s easy to think, “Well, if you love someone, their shape shouldn’t matter.” But of course it does. I can’t really explain my identification with Grace, I guess, except to say that the thing I’ve always wanted most in my life is a love like Grace and Jim had, and so nothing breaks my heart more than the thought of finding that and losing it.
I had also hoped to understand a bit more about transsexuality by the end of the book, and I don’t. What does it mean to “feel like a woman”? Do I feel like a woman? Would I feel like a woman if I were in a man’s body? I mean, I like pretty clothes and jewelry and crap, but being transgendered isn’t about the clothes. I like men’s bodies, but being transgendered isn’t about sexual orientation. So what is it about? What makes me Sam-as-a-woman that would be different if I were Sam-as-a-man? We live in a society with a pretty wide range of possible gender identities; it’s not like “being a woman” means you have to wear dresses and heels and make jell-o molds. So if I could be a man who cries at movies and gossips with my friends and enjoys men’s bodies and…whatever the hell else I do or am that “makes me a woman” (not to create a stereotype of flaming gayness here, just to try to characterize my “feminine” traits), then how is that different? How is a feminine guy different from a transgendered man? I guess I will never understand, because (thank goodness) I was born in a body that most of the time makes sense to me. I just have to accept.
Luna, Julie Anne Peters – Jade made the awesome point last night that this is your classic “problem novel”: girl’s brother has a problem; that problem infringes on her ability to have a normal life, but he’s still her brother so she goes on loving and helping him; she meets a boy who draws her out of her isolation; there’s some resolution to her brother’s problem. In this case the problem happens to be that the brother is transgendered, because that’s what it takes to be shocking now (the other characters keep saying, “Is Liam gay? Please, just tell me he’s gay”), but you could plug anything else in and have effectively the same book.
Also, the parents are two-dimensional, which is my biggest pet peeve in YA lit. Just because they’re The Parents doesn’t mean you don’t have to fill them out as characters, author people! This version was chauvinist-yet-loving dad and brittle-and-oblivious career mom. Not exactly central casting, which is why I upgraded them from one- to two-dimensional, but still. Of course, none of the characters get much more than two dimensions. This is an okay book, but probably not worth reading unless you have a thing about either this topic or YA problem novels.
Guess I need to go see Transamerica now, to round out the trilogy! (Anybody know of any books or movies about F-to-M’s?)
Q: Do you “feel” like the gender you are? What does that mean to you?
10 responses so far ↓
1 Jaime // Feb 26, 2006 at 7:18 pm
I have had the exact same questions about transgenderedness and so when my friend E came out I went with her to a lecture on it. My question was, why don’t you just crossdress? And I don’t remember a lot, but I remember that basically, it seemed like people who dress in drag. for example, feel happy when in drag. And then some people really only feel happy when they dress in drag, so they want to do that all the time. And then for some people, they don’t want to dress in drag, they want to be treated as a man or woman all the time- they just want to actually, y’know, BE a woman (or man) because that’s the only time they feel right. And that is a good sign that they’re transgendered. That may not have helped. Also, I’m not saying transgendered people are just dressing in drag, for the record.
I have never had the faintest interest in perfume or, um, geez, I can’t even come up with something else girly, um, shoes, yeah, but I’ve also never felt like ‘wow, I really wish people would treat me like Ben. ‘ I’m pretty sure that means I’m cool with my gender role, despite the fact that I AM attracted to women.
OK, clearly I have never taken a gender studies class. I understand Fiscal Policy better than Foucalt. My fellow Brunonians: bring it on!
Also, I want to borrow How I paid for college, which I’ve now read 1000 reviews of.
2 ny // Feb 26, 2006 at 9:39 pm
your book reviews are great. i’ll have to read vicariously through them while in grad school :)
3 anna // Feb 26, 2006 at 9:59 pm
films about f-m’s:
venus boyz is deeply awesome. i want to see it again. soon.
even better, enough man, a documentary about transmen by luke woodward, who happened to be in my class at brown (and was about the first person i met there, at a stargazers party). i’m so impressed that he’s created this (reportedly amazing) film and i’m dying to see it! unlike venus boyz, though, it’s expensive/very hard to find. maybe your library could order it? educational? and cover the kids’ eyes during the (supposedly super hot) sex?
4 Martini-Corona // Feb 26, 2006 at 10:02 pm
So having just seen “Transamerica,” MPS and I were discussing how weird it would be to have a hole inserted in you that hadn’t been there before, and how that could possibly feel “natural.” (No offense to E! Actually I’m kind of interested to talk to her about this topic.) In books, I would recommend “Normal” by Amy Bloom — it’s a pretty short nonfiction read, with one chapter about F-to-M transsexuals, one about transvestites, and one about the intersexed (hermaphrodites). But maybe I’ll re-read it first. :)
Regarding feeling “wrong” in your body’s gender, I have to say I can identify. Since I was a little kid I’ve always screamed and yelled at having to wear skirts or dresses, because they feel wrong. I also sometimes feel like I move (walk, sit, gesture) in a fairly masculine way. And I believe (?) you know my dream to one day open Dykey-Dyke-Dyke, the store that sells clothing masculine enough for a man but designed to fit a woman. But I do like boys, and I have no wish to grow facial hair or pee standing up, so I guess it’s fortunate that I’m a lady…
5 Sam // Feb 26, 2006 at 10:24 pm
The more I think about it, I think Jaime hit on the key: it makes more sense to me if I think about being treated as a man or a woman rather than feeling like a man or a woman. The way society reacts to a femmie guy is very different from how it reacts to a woman. It makes sense that someone could want to be treated as a man even though he was born a woman, and vice versa.
Not that it matters whether it makes sense to me, obviously. It’s your body and your life; you shouldn’t need anyone’s approval, least of all mine. (Which was what was so interesting to me about what Boylan wrote about Grace, actually – it wasn’t just his life when he made the decision to transition, it was his wife’s and his family’s, too. I’m not a Wiccan, but I am a firm believer in “an it harm none, do as thou wilt”…but in this case, it was going to harm someone. Not because she was intolerant, but because she was going to lose the man she married. So what is the right thing to do?)
6 Martini-Corona // Feb 26, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Oh, P.S.A. for anyone who shares my love of masculine clothing (I went to the mall yesterday in search of more Oxford shirts): Express (of all places) currently has a number of knee-length cargo shorts options. Unfortunately they’re $50 or so, and it is WAY too cold to be in a shorts-buyin’ mood. But maybe by the time it gets warm they’ll be on sale? Sorry. Knee-lenght cargo shorts for women always get me really excited.
7 Zix // Feb 7, 2009 at 9:16 pm
What does it mean to “feel like a woman”? Do I feel like a woman? Would I feel like a woman if I were in a man’s body?
Irritatingly enough, it seems that this is one of those questions where the answer is, “Well, that’s different for everyone.” What is means to you to feel like a however-gendered person isn’t necessarily what it feels like for anyone else. On a certain level it just becomes a matter of feeling better, more wholly present and more wholly oneself while living as one’s target gender, but that’s annoyingly vague, and what that means (and how much “better,” or “more wholly oneself”) varies from person to person, and I’ve never known anyone (or any book for that matter, and I’ve been looking) that could adequately describe why ze felt that way.
…At least, that’s what seems to make sense to me right now.
Thanks for the review of “Luna,” by the way: I’ll strike it from my to-read list for now, I think. I’m not in the mood for it right now if it’s not great. Have you heard anything about “Parrotfish”? I’ve yet to find a decent review of it.
8 Sam // Feb 9, 2009 at 8:53 am
Zix: Thanks for the thoughts! I imagine you’re right, that the answer is too different for everyone to able to be explained to someone who feels “right” in their body. Which I’m sure makes acceptance so much harder — how do you find a good analogy to explain to a “normally-gendered” (?) person who’s never thought about transgendered people as anything but freaks? I’ve seen the “well, how did you first know you were heterosexual?” argument work, but this seems trickier.
I haven’t read Parrotfish yet, but I’ll bump it up on my list! I can’t promise a *decent* review, but at least it’ll maybe be entertaining? :)
9 Zix // Feb 9, 2009 at 11:11 am
I believe the term you’re looking for there is “cisgendered.” :) And yeah, I really don’t know an answer to that. At least not a short, generalised, accurate one. Something of those always has to be sacrificed, it seems.
I think I’m going to pick up “Parrotfish” myself shortly. I’ve been hesitant because the only descriptions I’ve found tend to read like back-cover blurbs, and I don’t trust that sort of writing to give me an accurate idea of what the book really is.
10 Parrotfish, by Ellen Wittlinger // Mar 2, 2009 at 5:08 pm
[...] was a request from Zix, who wanted to know what I thought of this after reading Luna. (I do take requests, btw — if [...]
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