Blog

8 19 2015-WATN @ The Lot studios in LA

Here’s my piece on the plaintively-titled “Where Are They Now,” in which I cross swords with Oprah Winfrey for the fifth and–who knows?–perhaps final time.  We talk about my writing, my marriage, and our awesome sons, about whom I say, “having a father who became a woman helped my boys become better men.”

Here’s my piece from the Modern Love podcast, originally published in the New York Times some years ago, and now made into a swanky piece of audio. With new commentary from me at the end on our family, on “I Am Cait,” and on how having a father who became a woman helped my children become better men.

I arrived at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins in September 1985, bearing a box of books, a Kaypro word processor and a long blond wig I kept hidden in a box in the closet. I wasn’t out as transgender in those days, not by a long shot, but I did have the tools I needed to slip out of the house, once in a while, and prowl around Baltimore en femme. Then I’d head home, wash off the makeup and get ready for the workshop, taught by the writer John Barth.

We’d been told to call him Jack, but it seemed impossible. Barth was considered an Olympian of literary maximalism. In the vein of Borges, Pynchon and Calvino, his work combined erudition, parody and the sense that a novel might be, among other things, a comment on itself. Even if the high-water mark of maximalism in American literature had come and gone by then — the writers in my workshop were more likely to dream of becoming the next Raymond Carver or Ann Beattie — Jack was revered for his teaching. We sat there, enthralled as he introduced his theory of plot (“the gradual perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium”) or compared the structure of dramatic action to a love affair. I can still see him smiling wickedly, saying, “There’s a reason they call it ‘climax.’ ”

I was working on a novel called “The Invisible Woman” at the time, a story that was meant to be Barthian in its comic self-­referentiality, but which, in the end, turned out to be inescapably Boylanesque — a tale of a woman who had to keep herself hidden, lest the unforgiving world discover her identity. It would take me years to understand the obvious: I wasn’t writing a novel, but a memoir, and the woman in hiding was, of course, myself.

On the 40th anniversary of the founding of Hopkins’s Writing Seminars, the university staged a reading by the program’s professors. That was the first time I heard Jack read “Night-Sea Journey,” a short story narrated by a sperm. “I’ve begun to believe, not only that Sheexists, but that She lies not far ahead, and stills the sea, and draws me Herward!” he says.

I did reach Her in the end, if by Her I may refer to my own female self, the woman I finally embraced and unveiled to the world just shy of my 42nd birthday, a woman who was welcomed with almost inconceivable grace by my colleagues and my family. I found the very thing the narrator of “Night-Sea Journey” tries to forswear, the unrefusable summons of “Love! Love! Love!”

I can trace the courage to make the transition back to Barth, from whom I learned a lot about writing but even more about the art of revision. He taught me how to see my life as a story and rewrite it, finding the narratives that brought sense to the chaos. I came to understand that embracing my identity had more to do with genre than gender: The life I was living needed to be truth, not fiction, and in order to live that truth, I needed to get on with the daunting project of creating a new draft.

I wasn’t sure how Jack would react to the news of my transformation. While I thought of him (or at least his characters) as sexually adventurous, transgender issues in those days were still seen as exotic, even by the liberal and openhearted. But one day I got a lovely little email, in response to my memoir titled “She’s Not There.” Jack wrote, “I should say she is very much there, Boylan — or should I say, Girl-land?” The offhand pun on my name, the loving acknowledgment that I had indeed moved from Boy-land to Girl-land, was Barthian to its core.

A few years later, Colby College, where I was teaching, gave Jack an honorary degree. There we were, together again, after all those years — teacher and student, writer and writer. At a celebratory dinner, Jack addressed the faculty and spoke about thinking about life as a story, the very process that had saved me, both in and out of his classroom, half a lifetime before. He repeated his definition of plot, his definition of life: “It’s — all together now, Boylan — the gradual perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium.” I said it along with him, word for word, for a short, strange moment, a student again, still young, all the triumph and turmoil of life still far ahead.

He returned to the table and embraced me. “Nicely done, Jack,” I said. He replied, “Nicely done yourself, Girl-land.” I should have just let go of him, let him return to his chair. But instead I held him just a little bit longer, that great, kind genius of American literature, and thought — well, what else? Love! Love! Love!

December 20, 2015

Belgrade Lakes, ME

Good morning from Maine, where I woke up in my own bed with my own dogs this morning, after almost two solid months on the road with Caitlyn Jenner and a band of other trans women. We have travelled the country this fall having conversations with a wide range of trans people and their parents and children and their allies. I hope that when I Am Cait, season two, airs in spring viewers will see and hear a lot of interesting conversations that reflect the full diversity of our great community.

Our last stop on the long journey was Houston, where, among other things, we hoped to meet with the pastors whose intolerant, cruel exhortations to their congregations helped the HERO bill go down to defeat in November. Getting my friend Caitlyn to understand the way social conservatives have used lies about trans people to further their agenda has been one of my goals since I first met her, and this struck me as progress. I do believe her eyes are opening.

We visited pastor Ed Young’s church on Friday, Ed Young being the minister of a megachurch that took the lead on promoting anti-trans hysteria as a means of defeating HERO.

We went there without cameras, without microphones. We did not go there for a photo op. We went there in hopes we could have an off-the-record conversation with the pastor, so that we could tell him to his face the damage that he has caused. This struck me as good work to do.

I can tell you that going into that church was one of the scariest moments of my life. You cannot imagine what it is like to be surrounded by people who have denied your humanity, who have worked to take away your dignity. It is even stranger, and scarier, to have this feeling in a church.

My mother told me to love your enemies, though. So I sat in a pew with my heart pounding, trying to find the love I would need in order to have a conversation with one of our bitterest foes.

My own faith is a private matter that I generally do not speak about in public. But I can say that I believe with all my heart that love is what can change the world.

You can say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.

At the end of the evening, Pastor Young approached us. We all stood up. And Caitlyn Jenner looked him in the eye and told him how much his actions and his words had harmed our people. I was proud of her— given her conservative beliefs, it struck me as a sign of great progress, a first step into activism, gentle though it may have been. The pastor seemed to me to have never spoken face to face with transgender people before, and he clearly did not understand our lives, given some of the things he said to us.

But we were calm and polite and dignified. We told him about our lives, and he paused to listen. He really did seem to consider our humanity. I thought that moment was breathtaking.

He asked us if we’d participate in a prayer. As a Christian, when people ask me to pray, I am glad to do so. We bowed our heads. My prayer was pretty simple. Please god, open this man’s heart. Please open the hearts of all of those who would do us harm.

The season of Advent asks us to light one red candle each Sunday: one for Hope, one for Joy, one for Love, one for Peace, and on Christmas Day to light a pink one. It was in the spirit of all four of these that I accompanied Caitlyn Jenner to this church to do just as my mother commanded— to love my enemies.

I am hoping that we lit a candle.

Okay, boys n’ berries. I wanted to share a song with you.  (You can click the play button below to hear the tune.)

I wrote this in 1982, when I figured I was in the closet forever.  I almost never played this song for 25 years, then I started singing it again.

Maybe this tune will speak to a familiar place to some of you.  It’s about feeling a little bit like you’re in a bad place, but trying to find hope and joy in spite of all the darkness.  In this tune, it seems like the odds are against me.  But here I am.  Anyway, the title of the song is “There is a Reason,” and it’s a little time capsule.  New York City, Spanish Harlem, 24 years old.  Hungry, frightened, hopeful.

“There is a Reason” by James Boylan © 1982 Mean Streak Music.

Caitlyn Jenner and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Belgrade Lakes, Maine
August 14, 2015

I’ve avoided commenting on Caitlyn Jenner in a public way thus far, in part because I’m a consultant on her series I AM CAIT, not to mention an occasional member of the cast. More importantly, though, I see Caitlyn, like lots of trans-people in early transition,  as a work in progress. What most trans people need, especially in the early days, is time to figure out how they want to live in the world. Caitlyn Jenner deserves the benefit of the doubt no less than anyone else.

That said, I suppose there are a few things I would like to share. So here are a few thoughts. They represent my own feelings, not that of the show’s producers; not that of GLAAD or Kinsey or any of the other institutions I’m involved with.

• I too was skeptical about the prospect of her show at first, and her clear plan for world media domination. The transgender community has had many people in it who have arrived on the scene determined to be famous, and it’s almost always been a mess, not least because so many of us don’t know the full community before we start talking into microphones. Many of us barely know how to talk about ourselves, let alone others. I can tell you that there are things I said in 2003, when I first published my memoir, “She’s Not There,” that I wish I had phrased differently. It takes a long time to understand the many, many ways of being trans–other than our own–and to recognize that other people’s take on being trans is as valid as our own.  If you find yourself telling someone, “You’re doing it wrong,” you’re probably doing it wrong.

She was crying, so I said, "Everybody on Jenner." And soon enough, everybody was.

So from the beginning, I feared the worst. But in short order, to my surprise, Caitlyn Jenner won me over. There are a lot of things I can say about her, but I can say this above all: she is a good soul, with an earnest, heartfelt desire to help the world. She is doing this by using her own celebrity to shine a light on the experiences of transgender people, including plenty of people whose stories are very different from her own.   So far in her show (as of mid-August), we’ve seen her visit the parents of a young trans boy who committed suicide; spent some time at HRC talking to a trans man and woman about that organization’s work; spent a couple of days hanging out with a diverse gang of trans women (including me) that includes a Latina woman, several women of color, other women who’ve done sex work; a woman who was stabbed in an all-too-typical case of violence for our community, and others as well.

She will visit other parts of our community in the future, I am sure.

To those who suggest that she is too privileged, or too white, or too wealthy, to be typical, I say, you are right. She has lived in a world that I can barely comprehend. But here’s the bargain: her family’s fame brings visibility to the lives of all our people, and CJ is dedicated to using that visibility for good. And by “fame,” I mean that, for instance, her daughter Kim has the largest number of Twitter followers in the world, period. You can argue all you like about whether this fame is deserved, or just plain weird, or what.   But CJ’s transition was going to be world news, whether we like it or not. The Kardashian show is watched by people in 125 countries in 24 different languages. It’s ridiculous. And onto this stage walks Catilyn Jenner, whom I believe truly wants to use that fame to help educate people. I think it’s done immeasurable good so far. It’s amazing.

A group of trans people at HRC in San Francisco. I love how Cait, front row left, is reaching out for me (third from right.)

• Meanwhile: there are more important issues facing transgender men and women in the world than what happens on Caitlyn Jenner’s docu-series. We have had at least twelve or thirteen murders this year of trans women, almost all of them trans women of color and/or Latinas. It’s important to keep focus, and remember that the fight for trans equality takes place on many fronts: legal, social, and political. I know that the Jenner program has brought trans issues a visibility and a publicity they have never had before. But our success as a community will be measured by lives saved, and jobs created, and not by ratings.  The same might be said of the other shows that have aired over the last few years, including I AM JAZZ, and BECOMING US, and ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, and TRANSPARENT, and all the other many shows that have highlighted transgender experience in many different ways.  I am grateful for all these shows.  But I am even more grateful if one person decides not to take his or her life; if one more law is passed guaranteeing freedom from violence, or homelessness, or any of the other indignities reserved for our people.

• There’s been some criticism of CJ for being too feminine, that she defines her womanhood in terms of hair and makeup, and look, let’s face it: she is a little glamorpuss. There was a particularly idiotic column in the New York Times early this summer by a TERFy writer who felt that Caitlyn Jenner isn’t “really” a woman because she’s too girly, because she hasn’t suffered enough, because she doesn’t have a woman’s history, and so on. To this I can only say, poppycock. The world is full of women a thousand times girlier than Caitlyn Jenner whose womanhood no one doubts; full of women like, for instance, my aunt Gertrude who never got a period and who never had a baby; full of women whose experience exists along a broad, broad spectrum. The world contains Janet Reno and Dolly Parton; Mother Teresa and Lady Gaga, and newborn baby girls who have been “women” less than a couple of hours. Surely, if there is room in this world for all these different ways of being female, there is room enough for Caitlyn; room enough for you, and room enough for me.

Anyway, anyone who feels that somehow Caitlyn Jenner–or any transgender person– doesn’t fit into their special “theory” of the world might want to spend a little less time working on their special theory and instead ask, How can I ease other people’s suffering?  How can I make the world a little more of a loving place? If your special theory of gender–or anything for that matter– doesn’t reduce suffering or create a world more full of love, it might be worth asking whether what you really need is a new theory.

And if you’re still all angry about the fact that CJ likes to spend the morning wearing hot rollers, you also ought to also note that so far, in her show, we’ve seen her riding a motocross dirt bike, pumping her own gas, and flying a radio-controlled helicopter. Surely THAT’S feminine enough for you?

• I think there is a fair amount of exhaustion in the trans community about the attention paid to Caitlyn, and quite properly so: many of the things Cait is saying are things that the rest of us have been saying for decades now, and it is more than a little weird that it is only when a member of the Kardashian family says them that mainstream media pays any attention. But I also suspect that that trans community is really not the target audience for I AM CAIT. I think is a cis audience, especially of people who have never given our humanity a second thought, that is the primary audience. And I can tell you, based on what I have seen, that hearts are opening.

Cait Jenner and her transformative action squad.

I do suspect that sometimes our community has more than a little amount of what the Irish call “begrudgement,” regarding trans people who wind up in the media spotlight. Many of us feel like, well god dammit, WE are the ones who deserve to have our own show; WE are the ones whose stories ought to be told; WE are the ones who ought to have purty pictures of ourselves taken by Annie Leibowitz. And of course, we are right. We do deserve all these things, and many of us might well be more articulate than Cait has been able to be so far– although I think she deserves a tremendous amount of credit for her speech at the ESPYs, which was generous, thoughtful, and humble.

Caitlyn Jenner has been able to reach people the rest of us might not have been able to reach. She is not the perfect “spokesperson,” assuming that such a person could ever exist– given the contentiousness of our community, and its vast diversity. I am not sure she wants to be a “spokesperson” at all. What she wants is to try to do good in the world, and I think she is succeeding. In the meantime, all the rest of us continue to do our own work, in whatever way we can.  There is a lot to do.

This dress is big enough for all of us.