Helen Boyd on the T’s with Knives Controversy
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Helen Boyd, Author of MY HUSBAND BETTY and other works
Some of you know that GLADD has called for a boycott of the film “Ticked Off Trannies with Knives,” slated for screening at the Tribecca Film Festival. It’s meant to be camp, I imagine, but the trailer acknowledges the real-life murder of a number of trans women, including Angie Zapata. The filmmaker is a gay man who encourages everyone to relax–it’s all a big joke! Ha! Ha! Still, many folks have pointed out, reasonably enough, that the same festival might be unlikely to show a film called “Angry F—-‘s With Uzi’s”, for instance. GLAAD–and others– call for the film to be withdrawn.
I’ve been talking about the film–and the boycott movement–with friends recently. As a writer, it’s hard for me to get behind censorship, which is what pulling the film amounts to, I believe. So I don’t join the movement to pull the film– but I do encourage folks to NOT go, to picket it (if they’re in NYC), and to generally try to call attention to the fact that trans people are kind of tired of being the punch line of films and other works, especially ones made by folks who don’t seem to really understand our community or its issues.
Helen Boyd, over at en/gender, has posted a really smart screed on this issue, which she’s given me permission to cross-post here. Take it away, HB:
ONGOING GLAAD BATTLE
I can’t say I’m surprised, but people are upset with GLAAD for starting a petition that asks Tribeca Film Fest not to show Ticked off Trannies With Knives. There are a couple of objections being made in various corners of the comments sections of the blogosphere:
1) The free speech argument: this is art, a film, and GLAAD shouldn’t be trying to censor it.
2) This is a camp film, and earnest people (trans or otherwise) obviously don’t get it.
3) Earnest trannies need to get over themselves.So here’s my response.
1) Free speech goes both ways. One group has the right to make a film; the other has a right to protest it. I’m not big on censorship; in fact, I hate it. But there are days and times when the sheer violence committed against a community is enough to make you want to shut down one more bad joke calling itself art.
2) Camp is only funny when you’re making it about your own gang.
3) Fuck you. Honestly, does it ever work to tell someone that the real problem is their lack of a sense of humor? Um, no.As I said elsewhere, when you work in the trans community, it is a relief to hear that someone you know has died of cancer because they didn’t die of violent means. That is the reality of trans life.
It’s true that not all trans people ‘get’ camp, just like all gay men don’t. It’s an acquired taste, like drag. Assuming that camp is readily understood and appreciated is a huge mistake to make. It is very apparent that the makers of this film don’t seem to know the difference between drag queens and trans women, or only know a subset who identify as both. While I agree that the title of the flick –Ticked Off Trannies With Knives – does signal camp, the trailer actually used images of actual trans people who have actually died of violent crimes. That is not camp. That’s not even bad taste. That’s exploitation – and not the cool, hipster variety – of others’ suffering. If that is only the fault of whoever made the trailer, then they need to fix that. But honestly, I doubt it’s just the trailer.
I have been working in and with the trans community for something like 10 years now. I am beginningto understand the incredible variety of lived trans identities. So if you think you’re hip to trans identities and trans lives, you probably aren’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t be an ally. That doesn’t mean you don’t care about the trans community. But what it might mean, and often does mean, is that when you have an entire community reeling in horror from a phrase (“hot tranny mess”) or a film (like this one), then maybe, just maybe, you need to shut up & listen & not pull this patriarchal bullshit. Being gay (or a member of whatever other oppressed group) does not give a person instant knowledge of and deep compassion with other people’s suffering. What it gives you is a chance to empathize — a chance that you will waste entirely if you always think you’re right.
It may be that people with friends who call each other tranny – and there’s plenty of trans people who do use the term tranny – doesn’t mean it’s acceptable in the public realm. It may be that your trans friends have already decided that you are so beyond the pale that there is no point in trying to explain. It may be that the trans people you know are simply exhausted from dealing with this bullshit ALL THE TIME.
I know I am. So maybe, for once, we can let the people who the joke is about decide if it’s funny or not. In this case: that joke isn’t funny anymore. (& Neither was Dan Savage, btw, of whom I expect far better, and who posted this piece, as if penance.)
Really, is it worth the joke? Is a movie like this really such great art that an entire community – a community that gets more than its fair share of violence, discrimination, and general shite – be reminded that even people who are their supposed allies don’t get it?
Sign the petition. And please, STFU about how unfair it all is.
A P.S. for my gender communities: some of the people who say transphobic shit are gay, and some of them aren’t. Some of them are cis, & some of them aren’t. Please try to avoid the sweeping generalizations about who is saying transphobic things, and instead name the actual people who are doing so, or call out actual comments that have been posted. Generalizing that “gay men / cis people are transphobic” is counter-productive and, oh, totally false.
Back to JFB: And yeah, I was going to link to the trailer, which is available if you fish around on youtube, but after watching exactly 35 seconds of it I felt my brain beginning to explode.
JB at Ursinus College 3/18!
-hey you all. Hope philadelphians will join me at Ursinus College on Thursday night. Come All Ye.
Announcing the Falcon Quinn web site
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Dearly beloved. Please check out the new site for the new book series.The link is www.falconquinn.com. It’s full of delightful stuff which I hope will get you all juiced up for the first book, FALCON QUINN AND THE BLACK MIRROR, coming out on May 11.
Monster up!
Jenny B. at Kendall Square Cinema this Saturday, March 13
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I’ll be introducing the film PRODIGAL SONS this Saturday night at the Kendall Square Cinema in Boston at 7 PM. After the film I’ll interview one of its subjects, Kimberly Reed, who will also be on hand to talk about the film. Kimberly was the subject of an Oprah Winfrey program last month. The film is a lovely indie that’s been getting all sorts of press. Hope anyone in the Boston area who’s interested will come on out.
New appearances for 2010…
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A few dates for 2010 are becoming firmer, including three or four this very month of March.March 4: Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT appearing in an Anthropology class (not open to public)
March 5: Portland, ME: TransForming Wellness Conference, keynote speaker (University of Southern Maine), Payson Hall– 4:30 PM
March 13: Kendall Square Cinema, will introduce the film, Prodigal Sons, and afterwards interview its subject, Kimberly Reed, 7 PM.
March 18: Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA. A sneak peak at FALCON QUINN AND THE BLACK MIRROR, and also readings of “gendered memoir.” Free and open to all!
More information on the appearances page at Jenniferboylan.net
James Boylan Live at Wesleyan University, April 1980
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In April of 1980, young James Boylan played the West College Coffeehouse at Wesleyan University. The evening consisted of a bunch of original tunes, a couple of Fairport Convention covers, and a wide range of strange jams, non-sequiters, and complete nonsense. Boylan performed on piano, concertina, and electric autoharp.Now, thirty years later, the original tape of the event has been unearthed by Ed Roseman, a composer and musician now living in Massachusetts. Edly has cleaned up the recording (slightly) and posted it up on his web site.
It’s not to be mistaken for a high-grade anything.
But the concert, for me, is full of humor and sentiment. Interestingly, it’s the quiet, melancholy tunes, with the audience momentarily hushed, that touch me the most now. Still, “Mr. Rogers Does the Puppets Voices” and “New Jersey” and “Just a Bunch of Assholes from Outer Space” are a really nice portrait of where I was, at that time, then.
You can download the concert here. This will put a folder on your laptop that contains all the tunes, which you can then play right on your iTunes player, or whatever other application you use. The download will take about five minutes, plus or minus, depending on your connection speed. Hope you enjoy.
On Salinger, and the public life of writers
-This piece of mine, written Friday, appears on today’s (Monday) op/ed page of the New York Times.
Raise High the P.R. Blitz
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
THE national bereavement over the death of J. D. Salinger provided a strangely public moment in the career of a writer who’d become best known, in recent years, for his reclusiveness. There are other American writers famous for shunning the public eye — Thomas Pynchon leaps to mind — but Mr. Salinger’s seclusion was unique. By the end of his life, he may have become better known for his solitude than for his imagination.
In a way, nothing succeeds like invisibility. In America, we revere artists who won’t do the thing they’re famous for. We revere Glenn Gould, who gave up performing; Greta Garbo, who gave up acting; and Michael Jordan, who not only gave up basketball (at which he was gifted), but then, perversely, took up baseball (at which he was not).
The more steadfastly they refuse us, the more infuriatingly desirable they become, like that boy we just know loves us but who cannot bring himself to call. How can the satirist Tom Lehrer, who long ago gave up performing music for teaching mathematics, not miss writing songs like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”? (Whenever he’s asked when he will return to his musical career, Mr. Lehrer likes to reply, “Oh, did hell freeze over?”)
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” Mr. Salinger told The Times in 1974. “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy…. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”
As a teacher of writing, I frequently hear young authors echo Mr. Salinger’s words, that they’re writing primarily to satisfy themselves. It’s hard to disagree with that on the surface; writing can be great fun. But to create fiction — or nonfiction, for that matter — without any thought of a reader seems creepy to me, the ultimate exercise in self-indulgence.
Of course, we all yearn to live in that kind of self-contained world, now and again. There is plenty to envy about an imaginative universe detached from the world of commerce. Writing just for oneself and one’s own pleasure? Nice work if you can get it.
What I suspect, though, is that fame through invisibility may well belong to a generation that is passing, or passed.
In contemporary America, a writer’s life is more than just the endless, thankless task of writing itself, which E. B. White is said to have called “hard work and bad for the health.” There is also the humiliating, cringe-inducing necessity of becoming a public person, of book tours and radio interviews and, if you’re extremely lucky (as I was), a trip to Oprah’s couch (or in my case, four).
There were a lot of things on my mind when I wrote “She’s Not There,” my memoir of being transgender, during a particularly cold Maine winter, but the green room of the “Today” Show wasn’t one of them. Yet there I was, a year or two later, with the actress Lucy Liu looking over at me and saying: “I have a new movie. What are you on for?”
“Sex change,” I said, and wondered how it was that I had wound up in this situation. Was this what it means now, to be a person of letters? Discussing one’s genitalia with an actress from “Charlie’s Angels”?
When J. D. Salinger disappeared, invisibility was still a perfectly viable — if enigmatic — way to be a successful literary figure in America. But now that the desperate economics of publishing more or less demand that “public relations” become part of a writer’s professional toolkit, being a recluse is a harder stunt to pull off. In order to sustain their careers, plenty of shy, awkward authors — people who chose this profession for the very reason that it’s fundamentally a private activity — have sacrificed their solitude for Web sites, blogs, Twitter accounts and videos of themselves on YouTube. Somehow, these items weren’t on the syllabus in John Barth’s class at Johns Hopkins.
I’ve always thought of encountering readers — of having any readers at all — as an unbelievable gift. Giving lectures, signing books, sitting hopefully behind a table at a bookstore in Wichita Falls: these rituals may be humbling, but I’ve never forgotten the fact that thousands of unpublished writers in this country would give anything to be humiliated in exactly this way. Of all the mortifications to be found in an author’s life, probably none hurts as much as the kind you get from not being able to share your work with another soul.
In “The Catcher in the Rye,” Holden Caulfield famously observes, “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours.” What was sad and strange about J. D. Salinger is not that he didn’t want to be our terrific friend. It’s that, at the pinnacle of his fame, he yearned for the very thing many writers fear most — a world without readers.
On heading north, from Stuart Little by E.B. White
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“Which direction are you headed? [the repairman] asked.
“North,” said Stuart.
“North is nice,” said the repairman. “I’ve always enjoyed going north. Of course, south-west is a fine direction, too.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Stuart, thoughtfully.
“And there’s east,” continued the repairman. “I once had an interesting experience on an easterly course. Do you want me to tell you about it?”
“No thanks,” said Stuart.
The repairman seemed disappointed, but he kept right on talking. “There’s something about north,” he said, “something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion.”
“That’s the way I look at it,” said Stuart. “I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days.”
“Worse things than that could happen to a person,” said the repairman.
“Yes, I know,” answered Stuart.
“Following a broken telephone line north, I have come upon some wonderful places,” continued the repairman. “Swamps where cedars grow and turtles wait on logs but not for anything in particular; fields bordered by crooked fences broken by years of standing still; orchards so old they have forgotten where the farmhouse is. In the north I have eaten my lunch in pastures rank with ferns and junipers, all under fair skies with a wind blowing. My business has taken me into spruce woods on winter nights where the snow lay deep and soft, a perfect place for a carnival of rabbits. I have sat at peace on the freight platforms of railroad junctions in the north, in the warm hours and with the warm smells. I know fresh lakes in the north, undisturbed except by fish and hawk and, of course, by the Telephone Company, which has to follow its nose. I know all these places well. They are a long way from here–don’t forget that. And a person who is looking for something doesn’t travel very fast.”
“That’s perfectly true,” said Stuart. “Well, I guess I’d better get going. Thank you for your friendly remarks.”
“Not at all,” said the repairman. “I hope you find that bird.”
Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north. The sun was just coming up over the hills on his right. As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and somehow he felt he was headed in the right direction.”Health Care Bills: Explained by Adorable Puppy.
-Found on Andrew Sullivan’s blog at the Atlantic. An adorable puppy explains what the Health Care Bills actually do.
The Naked and the Confused by Kate Roiphe
-Kate Roiphe writes about changing attitudes about sex in the new generation of male writers. From the NYT Sunday Book Review, January 3, 2010.
For a literary culture that fears it is on the brink of total annihilation, we are awfully cavalier about the Great Male Novelists of the last century. It has become popular to denounce those authors, and more particularly to deride the sex scenes in their novels. Even the young male writers who, in the scope of their ambition, would appear to be the heirs apparent have repudiated the aggressive virility of their predecessors.After reading a sex scene in Philip Roth’s latest novel, “The Humbling,” someone I know threw the book into the trash on a subway platform. It was not exactly feminist rage that motivated her. We have internalized the feminist critique pioneered by Kate Millett in “Sexual Politics” so completely that, as one of my students put it, “we can do the math ourselves.” Instead my acquaintance threw the book away on the grounds that the scene was disgusting, dated, redundant. But why, I kept wondering, did she have to throw it out? Did it perhaps retain a little of the provocative fire its author might have hoped for? Dovetailing with this private and admittedly limited anecdote, there is a punitive, vituperative quality in the published reviews that is always revealing of something larger in the culture, something beyond one aging writer’s failure to produce fine enough sentences. All of which is to say: How is it possible that Philip Roth’s sex scenes are still enraging us?Jon Stewart and George Carlin
-Saw this posted on Andrew Sullivan’s blog at the Atlantic. A much younger Stewart, and an immortal Carlin:
Mary Karr’s LIT
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I received Mary Karr’s LIT for Xmas and fell deeply into it over the course of the next several days. And when I was done I had that wonderful, awful sense of completion and bereavement, knowing that there was no more. So immediately started re-reading it. One of the best books I’ve read this year.On the unlikely chance that anyone’s missed THE LIARS CLUB, or CHERRY, Mary Karr is the best memoirist in the country, period. LIT is harrowing and amazing, and very different from the earlier two; this story is about the descent into alcoholism and the search for god. Both of which feel new in Karr’s hands, and which inspired me to think a great deal about my own search. I’ll keep this brief, but one of the things LIT made me think about was this: that I really ought to stop stalking the world looking for forgiveness for everything I have befouled, because the only person who can forgive me is me.
Mary has a lovely line in one of her poems (in the collection, “Viper Rum”). Empty your self of self/Kneel down and listen.
LIT also made me think about my own ethos as a memoirist– her search for truth is her great north star. Whereas for me, I always knew the truth, but feared that no one would believe me. Also, if you say “I’m searching for god’s love,” or “I”m an alcoholic,” people know what you’re talking about. But if you say, “I’m transgender,” lots of people will say, “What’s that?” or even, “No you’re not. You’re crazy.” So as a writer I have had to walk a tightrope, being comic about things that are deadly serious, in order to win folks over. I am very proud of my two nonfiction books, but writing them was grueling. I have more stories to tell, but I don’t think I can write any more memoir; I can’t imagine going back to that raw and vulnerable place again in order to do the writing… and then the subsequent public spectacles in order to sell the book, having to be so vulnerable while the television lights shine down. It all makes me exhausted.
The coolest twist about reading LIT, for me, was coming home (we’d been at my mom’s house) after Xmas to find a package waiting for me on the front step. And there was a signed copy of the book, sent to me by a fellow who’s a mutual friend of mine and the author’s– a lovely man whose father plays a part in the book, a professor who managed, in part, to save Mary’s life when she was young and lost. On the title page, she’d written, To Jenny Boylan. STAY LIT.
I will.
History Channel Episode on JB to air 12/30
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There will be a History Channel episode on Dec. 30, at 11 PM that addresses the life of one Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan. The series is “Strange Rituals” and the episode is “Beyond Sex.” This was taped two years ago– but I remember the producer, Deborah Blum, being very smart and thoughtful. Here’s the description from the History Channel web site:
The line that separates male from female is blurred. In India, the Hijra are a two-thousand-year-old religious sect; their ranks filled with boys who have been–or desire to be–castrated. We meet a Hijra who’s in love with a married man, and who fears that she’ll soon be abandoned and forced into a life of prostitution. In Maine, a male English Professor changed his name to Jennifer, and then struggled to keep her job and her place in her family with a wife and two kids. And in Atlanta, a man makes performance art based on his transition from female to male.Holiday greetings from the boylans
-(Postscript: thirteen has been a kind of amazing year for sean, my accompanist in this piece. By way of contrast, you could check out what he looked and sounded like only one year ago, in the same piece of argle-bargle generated for xmas 08. And Zach, seated to my left in the video below, is now, at age 15, too cool to be in the video. By this time next year it’s just going to be me all by myself, unless I too am too cool for this, in which case the holiday video will have to be done by, and star, the dogs.)
On Anxiety & Writing: from Dani Shapiro
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Dani Shapiro ‘s blog about writing, “Moments of Being,” is one of the smartest destinations in the blogoverse. Here’s the opening of a piece about Anxiety, and how it is the enemy of good work:“Of all the mental states one might find oneself in when sitting down to write, anxiety may very well be the worst of them. Of course we can’t always approach the page with a sense of inner calm, of ease, of a mind ironed clean. Sometimes we’re agitated–though a little agitation goes a long way. Rage, grief, longing, joy, frustration–all these have their place, though it’s best not to write from the center of these feelings, but rather, from the recollection of them. But anxiety is, as far as I’m concerned, the enemy. It makes us write too fast, or too prolifically, or too self-consciously. I’ve seen more writers, over the years, felled by their own anxiety, by which I mean a very particular kind of anxiety: I need to get published, I need recognition, I need it now, or I will die.”
Click here for the whole post.
Dani’s new book, Devotion, comes out in February.
An Xmas Memory: The Night Visitor
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By Christmas 1966—the year of the great snowstorm–my Uncle Al had disappeared. No one knew what had become of him– whether he’d finally fallen in love, or if he’d been overwhelmed by one of the deep despairs that plagued him throughout his life, or if he’d finally run into trouble during his endless travels throughout the country, riding in boxcars.By this time, our basic family unit was my sister and me, my parents, my dipsomaniac grandmother, “Gammie,” her stone-deaf friend, Hilda Watson, and my Aunt Nora, who often thought she heard music that wasn’t there.
The blizzard that year started in the afternoon, Christmas Eve. By nightfall, the plows could no longer keep up. Valley Forge, Pennsylvania—no stranger to hard winters—had shut down.
That night my mother served chicken a la king for dinner. We ate it around the big table and then my sister and I were sent off to bed. As we fell asleep, we heard the voice of my grandmother, singing a song called “The Animal Fair,” late into the night.
I woke up at 3 AM to the sound of Santa Claus walking around in the living room. I snuck downstairs to gaze at the saint, to see, with my own eyes, that mysterious bag that contained every toy in the universe.
But it wasn’t Santa. Instead, a tall, bald man with sad eyes was warming himself by the fire. All around him were the presents that Santa had apparently left, hours earlier.
“Uncle Al?” I said, stepping into the room. He was wearing a thin raincoat, and his shoulders were covered with snow.
It was clear enough: this year, in addition to all the other gifts we’d received, Santa Claus had brought us my uncle.
He said he’d walked all the way from the bus station, which was incredible, because the bus station was in the next town over. He’d walked through the blizzard, in that thin jacket, to our house, all night long.
I was so excited to have him there I wanted to keep him secret. So instead of waking up my parents and sister, I hauled Uncle Al into the kitchen, where I found the chicken a la king in the refrigerator. I was going to warm it up, but Uncle Al said that was okay. He’d eat it cold.
So I sat at the kitchen table and watched Uncle Al eat cold chicken a la king with a wooden spoon. As he ate he talked about the things he’d seen, traveling around the country. He said he’d seen the Great Salt Lake, which was in a place called Utah. He’d seen the Grand Canyon. He’d even been all the way up to Maine, where he’d seen a log drive on a river. I said it sounded wonderful, but it all just seemed to make my uncle sad.
Then he pulled a harmonica out of his pocket, and he played the blues—quietly, so as not to wake everyone up. It was the first time I’d ever heard the blues. It was such sad music, and it made me feel so happy.
He went to sleep on the couch in the living room, next to the Christmas Tree. I put a blanket on him. He just smiled at me, and he said, “You should always be glad you have a family. You should always be glad you have a roof over your head.”
I wished him Merry Christmas, and then I headed back to my room.
In the morning, I woke to find the world covered in snow. It was years and years later—after I moved to Belgrade—before I ever saw that much snow again.
I went out into the living room to find my mother and aunt Nora with their arms around their little brother. Uncle Al looked about as happy as I’ve ever seen anybody.
I told him I was sorry we didn’t have any presents for him.
“I already got my gift,” he said. “I got you.”
Then he got out his harmonica and played “Silent Night,” while we all sat there by the fire, and listened.
(the photo accompanying this piece is of my son Zach and me before the tree in Rockefeller Center, taken last year, December 08.)
On Mike Penner, by Sara Davis Buechner
-This short piece on the suicide of Mike Penner/Christine Daniels was written by Sara Davis Buechner. Thanks to Helen Boyd for getting permission for the reprint. A piece on Sara’s transition was published in the Times about three weeks ago.
On Mike Penner / Christine Daniels
30 November 2009About two weeks ago I was the subject of a New York Times profile, published in connection with an important piano recital I gave on November 11 in New York City. I had transitioned from David Buechner to Sara Davis Buechner in 1998, and my life since then was the focus of writer Mike Winerip’s article. I’d like to add that Mr. Winerip struck me as a very fine writer, an extremely nice (straight) man, and that one of his motives in writing about me was to applaud the younger American generation’s healthier sexual attitudes, acceptance and inclusiveness.
In many ways I do agree with his thesis, and my own story mirrors some of that. In some ways I disagree as well, and readers of that profile will note it was in Canada and not the USA that my life improved immeasurably in terms of being able to marry, obtain a job appropriate to my skills, and to gain a daily healthy lifestyle — by which I mean simple things like holding my spouse’s hand while walking anywhere in the city of Vancouver without a second thought (I don’t do this in New York except for the Village). I can’t say that I feel as though I owe the United States too many thanks for helping me out over the years.
I’m joining this blog discussion from the standpoint of still answering about 200+ e-mails, primarily from folks of the LGBT community who contacted me to tell me that my story gave them hope and inspiration. I was very touched by the words I’ve read about me here on this website, too — thanks very much (I am very grateful for a site like this people can find REAL information, sensitivity and insight). Acting as a role model is a new experience for me. I am used to playing the piano in front of people, enjoying music together, bowing to applause and greeting people afterwards for a few kind words. But I’ve pretty much left discussion of my TG experience on the back burner for a number of years. I’ve not addressed it much. Mostly that’s from the good fortune of living in a country where it doesn’t seem to matter (I think that trickles down from the government establishing equal marriage for all, by the way).
Anyway, I’ve been in a very positive frame of mind for the past few weeks, until yesterday reading about Mike Penner / Christine Daniels. That story hit me like a ton of bricks. And I felt suddenly that I wanted, even needed, to say something about it, and that’s why I’m writing.
I read the story on the LA Times website, but also online from the NY Daily News and NY Post — all accompanied by comments by posters ranging from sympathetic to rampantly hateful.
Suddenly I’m not in a very positive frame of mind anymore.
I never knew Mike/Christine, and I’m referring to him/her dually here — as I never do otherwise — because I’ve not seen it clearly articulated yet what his/her final wishes on the subject of chosen gender were. Please correct me as may need be; of course I am sensitive to correct address and I want to do the right thing, properly and respectfully.
I see Mike/Christine as an accomplished person in the media field — it’s not really the arts but a close cousin in journalism — making the change publicly in midstream. Not in a famous Today Show entertainment business way as with Chaz Bono, but well-known enough in a chosen professional field, and that’s why it seems very similar to my own tale.
In the midst of my transition ca. 1997-98 I remember well going to support groups and meeting people addicted to drugs, drink, people selling their bodies for sustenance. I had never met people like that before. “There but for the grace of God go I,” I often said to myself, even as paying my own rent and making ends meet became tough. Out of loneliness mostly I did a few marginal activities in the darkness of the Manhattan downtown too. At least I always had a bed, a roof, and some food. Yet I too would sometimes drink for days on end, or wildly swallow every pill in the medicine cabinet, or just sink into profound depression for days on end. It’s hard to transition, just plain hard. Hard when young, hard when old, hard when poor, hard when rich, hard whatever color or station, wherever, whenever. And of course, even after living as Sara for a year or two or even three, there were times when I thought: “shit, life was easier before, even if I was miserable. Who needs this?”
And worst of all, I remember how embarrassed I felt. Embarrassed that, at age 40, I didn’t look like 20 for sure, and nobody’s pin-up. My boobs weren’t great, my nose and chin are still too damn big, my first vagina was a mess (second operation fixed it mostly). Embarrassed by my fucking voice (I still get “sir” on the phone all the time but I don’t give a damn and I’m not getting my vocal cords sliced up). Embarrassed by the looks of all my old male friends whose eyes and attitude told me: I know you’re really just turned on wearing panties and a bra, you cross-dressed cocksucking pervert. Embarrassed and ashamed by ex-lovers (hated), ex-friends (lost), ex-employers (fired), ex-family (gone). People called my poor parents to tell them how sorry they felt for them. I was often embarrassed just walking down the street and riding the subway. The looks, the comments, the constant sense of condemnation. “There but for the grace of God go I,” I sensed some people thinking. Fair enough, maybe, a good lesson in judgement for me.
In Japan, it’s called “losing face,” and it’s understood that you SHOULD off yourself if your face is lost.
It’s absolutely true that none of us should make any pronouncements about Mike/Christine. I have no knowledge of his/her individual situation, or what caused the suicide. It may have been wholly non-gender related. Of course, in my gut, I doubt that — because I have been there, and done that. And I can say from experience, I know how close it was, how just a bad day or two, a few words from someone who was once a friend or family, can make a difference. In terms of making a decision and taking action that cannot be re-thought.
And I guess my main thought today is — let’s shelve some of that NY Times self-congratulatory “Look how far we’ve come talk” for a while. Just read those ugly comments on the websites. Look how far we need to go, to get past a society where there is such pontificational opinion, such condemnation, such busybodyness about others. To the point of hatred and violence. To where we are mocked and maimed and killed for walking on the street. To where we can’t hold hands with loved ones, out of fear. To where intelligent and accomplished people like Mike/Christine have to endure so much to be true to their heart. You know, in a better world, that news of change would and should have been just a big nothing — no news at all. “Oh, Mike is now Christine. And how’s her column about the Dodgers today?” Or “Christine is back to Mike now. What’s he got to say about the Lakers?”
We need to aim for the day that we really can embrace the fullness of our humanity and celebrate the kaleidoscopic ways in which we are made. I pray it comes in my lifetime. But as I said, I don’t feel very positive about it today. Nonetheless, I’ll be stubborn and choose to celebrate the life of Mike and Christine as one of incredible courage and accomplishment. What a proud and beautiful human being.
Sara Davis Buechner
Osaka, Japan
Contact
For appearances (related to GOOD BOY, dogs & gender): Christine Mykithyshyn at Macmillan Publicity:)
christine.mykityshyn@celadonbooks.com
For appearances (related to She’s Not There, Long Black Veil, She’s Not There, I’m Looking Through You, Stuck in the Middle With You, Long Black Veil, and/or other gender, human rights & education issues:)
Kathryn Santora at Penguin Random House:
ksantora@penguinrandomhouse.com
For press inquires:
Kris Dahl at ICM
KDahl@icmpartne
To contact Jenny directly:
jb@jenniferbo
