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<td align="LEFT"><b><font face="Georgia">Feminist On Testosterone: The View From An Intersexual FTM </font></b></td>
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<td align="RIGHT"><b><font face="Georgia"><a href="bios_a2l.shtml#Kaldera" title="click for author info">Raven Kaldera </a></font></b></td>
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<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">That's a quote on a button that I invented. I am a poet, not an
academic; a shaman, not a scholar. This essay has no footnotes.
It is entirely personal, and therefore suspect. Imagine me, sitting
there across from you - always across from you, not next to you,
because you are not yet sure how close you want to get to me.
Imagine me in my worn leather jacket, my old barn boots caked
with goat manure, my plaid flannel shirt; clothing selected not
to make a statement, but because it's easily washed after hard
labor. Imagine the gestures of my hands as I speak - large for
a woman's, small for a man's. They could be either. They are corded
with muscle; the veins stand out on their backs. Imagine my green
eyes, staring you right in the face as I speak. My voice goes
anywhere between contralto and baritone; sometimes high and lilting
and sometimes low and gruff. My name holds no clue, either. My
shoulders are broad and so are my hips. My arms are long, and
so is my hair. I do have a beard, so you're sure I'm a man, sure
that my button must be a snide comment, a piece of misunderstanding,
until someone tells you about me. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">If you get any twenty women together who claim to be feminists
and ask them to define it, and you'll get ten different definitions.
Not twenty, because some won't be sure exactly what it is, and
will take the best definition they hear another woman come up
with, but you will still get no consensus. There is no great feminist
Pope who gets to say what it is and who gets to be one, so why
shouldn't I call myself one? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Of course, there are some feminists who will say that I shouldn't
claim that title. I'm an intersexual, born a little of both, raised
female and lived that way nearly thirty years, transitioned over
and spent the last five years living as male. On one level, I'm
probably their worst nightmare -I learned all the theories, read
all the books, considered everything....and shot up testosterone
anyway. If you see me on the street now, you'd never guess that
I spent thirty years being called ?she?; that I once posed for
girlie pictures; that I used to buy maxipads and wear tie-dyed
skirts. You'd never guess, until you know, and then you search
my face while I'm not looking, searching for the clues to my former
life. You'll feel strangely comforted when you pick out a few;
surely no one could change that much, that drastically. It couldn't
be that easy to pass from one side of the abyss to the other,
could it? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">While I lived in the Boston area, I'd get visits maybe three or
four times a year from earnest young female college students who
wanted to interview me for some paper they were doing on FTMs
(female-to-male transgendered or transsexual people). They'd ask
me questions, and I'd answer them as honestly as I could. When
I answered a particularly politically sensitive question, they'd
get real quiet and get that look on their faces that said either
<i>You're lying</i> or <i>You must be an anomaly. I'm sure the rest of the FTMs must be
different. Maybe it's because you're an intersexual</i> (read: circus freak). </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I never lie. The truth is always funnier. I'm not all that different
from every one of my brothers, either, or we'd find nothing to
talk about in those support groups. At any rate, I never got a
single copy of any of these reports or papers. The last few interviews
that I did, I took down phone numbers and called to find out how
it had gone. Without exception, I got the same response. "Oh,
that," they said airily. "That didn't work out. I decided to do
something else instead." </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Granted, college students are flaky, but I had to wonder why so
many attempts to research FTMs have fallen through, or at least
not appeared. There have been some, certainly - Holly Devor's
enormous tome of data comes to mind - but not nearly as many as
there have been studies on MTF trannies. You'd think women, at
least, would be more interested in people who started out female,
wouldn't you? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Or do we just scare the hell out of them? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">As a rule, most of the vocal much-printed feminists avoid FTMs.
They avoid talking to us, debating with us, referring to us in
works except for an occasional dismissive paragraph. We don't
even seem to evoke rage in them so much as a panicked blankness,
a glazed look, a quick change of the subject. We're just traitors
after male privilege, all of us, and if they bothered to think
about it they could come up with all sorts of theories about our
childhoods or socialization that would explain why we are traitors,
except that they don't want to think about it. At all. Ever. And
they certainly don't want to actually look us in the eye and discuss
it. I've actually seen this reaction in many women when I come
out to them. They stare at MTFs, rudely even, but us they can't
look at, they turn their eyes away, won't make eye contact. It's
as if we burn their retinas. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">So now I'll answer all the questions, including the ones that
every Women's Studies student wants to ask and is afraid to. They'll
only be true for me, because I can only speak for myself, but
conversely I know that many FTMs feel similarly. And some don't,
because there are many right answers to these questions. So take
up the challenge, face me. Look me in the eye. Listen to what
I have to say, and don't run away from it. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">1. Why did you hate being a woman?</font></b><font face="Georgia" size="2"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">First of all, there were things I loved about being a woman. I
loved the fact that I could wear so many things - velvets, brocades,
silks, any color in the rainbow if I so desired. Men were limited
to half a dozen items of clothing or variations thereupon, in
half a dozen drab colors. I'm a costumer, and I mourned the days
when both sexes wore lace and ruffles. I loved the concept of
women's space, even though I was intensely uncomfortable with
the "selection process" and secretly knew that I didn't belong
there. Still, the image of the happy dancing women/goddesses/amazons
seemed beautiful to me. I even got an admittedly unfair ego boost
from being a member of the "oppressed" gender instead of the "oppressor"
one, and I told myself that women were more politically and socially
aware than men. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">There were, however a handful of things I did hate, and they tormented
me more than I can express. Eventually it got to the point where
the good things (all of which were cultural/social) did not overmatch
the problem points, which I list below. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">Top Nine Things I Hated About Being A Woman:</font></b><font face="Georgia" size="2"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">(Disclaimer, disclaimer for all you oversensitive types, lest
ye pole-vault to conclusions! I think all the following things
are wonderful....on other people. Like nipple piercings and pink
hair.) </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">1. Menstruation. Having to shed blood and have nasty cramps for
25% of my adult life - one week out of four. No way.<br>
2. PMS. Yes, it's real, I had it, and I hated it. <br>
3. Having a cycle - up, down, up, down. I like being steady-state,
or as much as my hormone delivery system will let me. No more
lunar cycles; I Sing The Body Solar- Electric.<br>
4. Having to worry about getting pregnant when I slept with most
penis-people. I did go through pregnancy once, and it was awful.
I'm grateful for my daughter, but I'd far rather that someone
else could have done that job for me. <br>
5. Having breasts. Now, breasts are great things - again - on
other people. Mine just got in the way, bounced when I tried to
run, made my clothes fit poorly, and forced me to wear a bra or
suffer pain. The only time I was grateful for them was the fourteen
months I breast-fed my daughter. After that, I became completely
sterile and they were useless. They gave me far less sexual satisfaction
than they did trouble, so I got rid of them...because I could.
<br>
6. Being short. Well, this one I just have to live with. <br>
7. Not being able to put on enough muscle. Before testosterone,
no matter how hard I worked, I could only bind so much muscle
to my body. I'm a farmer, and I like having the strength to do
the heavy work around my farm. <br>
8. Not having enough body hair. This sounds strange, but I really
like having facial and body hair. It's soft and fuzzy and neat
to touch. I was always hairy for a woman, and at first I was ashamed
of that and plucked out my beard, shaved my body. Then my wife
convinced me to just let it grow, and I did. And I wanted more
of it. After T, it thickened even more, grew in all over my body
like a halo of blond fur, an animal's pelt. I know that right
now beards and fur aren't fashionable; that even straight men
are starting to shave their chests, but it's what I want on my
body. <br>
9. Not having a penis. Why did I want a dick? Why, to have sex
with, of course. Sure, you can strap on, but it's not the same
as having something with nerve endings that you can penetrate
your lovers with. Of course, phalloplasty being the not-very-satisfying
experiment that it is, I have to deal with what I have.....which
is more dicklike than what I started with, at least. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Many of you are probably wincing as you read this list, and you
can't understand why I wanted these things, Well, I'm not entirely
sure either, and I scrutinized my thought process until it was
completely disassembled, and I dead-ended at this strong desire.
That's one reason I think it's biological. Certainly a "loosening
of social gender mores" wouldn't have made a dent in this list,
except perhaps to allow me easier access to surgery on demand.
When I'd point out to myself that I couldn't "want to be a man",
because I couldn't be sure what "man" actually meant and did not
mean, I came back to this list. I wanted to be a tall, flat-chested,
muscular, bearded, hairy human being with no uterus and a penis.
If that was "man," great. If not, OK. The label for that collection
of traits didn't matter. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">In the end, though, the emotional reason that I did this to myself
is that it made me happy. I look in the mirror now and I grin
like a fool. I'm at home in my body for the first time in my life,
and that's worth the draconian measures. Why did it make me so
happy? Damned if I know, and I've thought about it a lot. It's
not about how I'm perceived; that was important back when every
"she" rubbed it in my face that I didn't have the body I wanted,
but now I don't care about what people see when they look at me
. If I could keep this body, I'd live in a matriarchy and be the
oppressed gender again. That's how much it means to me. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">2. What about male privilege? Did you want it? Do you have it
now? </font></b></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Actually, the idea of male privilege made me shudder. What, join
the oppressor class? Give up all that moral high ground? And for
what? Being treated better in the hardware store? (Yes, I am,
now. And in the fabric store, the little old ladies behind the
counter wait on me last and look at me like I'm an escaped convict.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.) I had to give up jobs
that I held that were women's jobs - not so much jobs that were
socially mandated for women, but jobs that catered to women and
that women wouldn't patronize if they were run by men. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">The longer I've lived as male, the more I realize that male privilege
is only what your class, ethnicity, and social grouping allow
it to be. A white woman in a suit has a better chance of being
hired in a corporation full of suits than a black male with long
dreads wearing tie-dye, even with the same resume, penis or no
penis. You only get into the old-boy network if you are the right
kind of old boy. I've got long hair to my butt ("<i>...hippie!</i>"); feminine mannerisms ("<i>...faggot!</i>"); no college degree ("<i>...ignorant!</i>"); work a physical labor job ("<i>...low-class! </i>"); live below the poverty level ("<i>...redneck!</i>"); wear big boots and a leather jacket ("<i>...thug!</i>"); and I'm an out FTM intersexual with a female history ("<i>...freak!</i>"). If there's a male privilege club around, they haven't come
knocking on my door. It doesn't cut any ice with the women in
my life, either; since most of my female-identified lovers and
friends are strong women who don't take shit. Some of them have
passed as male in their former lives, and would laugh in my face
at any abortive attempts at machismo. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"But at least you're safer on the streets now," I'm told by some
women. Safer? This must be some new meaning of the word safer
that I've never heard of before. Men are just as likely to attack
other men as they are to attack women, and for different reasons.
As a butch woman, looking as tough and don't-fuck-with-me as possible
helped me get by on the street; women are generally attacked if
they appear vulnerable rather than strong. Some men get attacked
if they look wimpy, sure; an easy target is an easy target to
someone trying to look good in front of his buds. However, if
they really want to look tough, they have to pick out someone
tough-looking and beat them up, so you're damned if you walk tough
and damned if you don't. You're especially damned if you're a
guy on someone else's territory wearing the wrong uniform. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">FTMs in general are shorter and slighter than the average male,
and that puts us even more at risk. As men, we don't even have
the residual chivalry against hitting women that some men still
carry working in our favor. One FTM I know used to be a feisty
little dyke who got into the faces of people who harassed her
friends; the harassers always backed off, embarrassed. After transition,
he tried it and got instantly decked. Sure, you're safer....if
you stay in the closet, toe the line, wear the right clothing,
have the right haircut, move with the right body language, laugh
at the right jokes, and don't get in the way of people who are
actually doing something you as a former woman might object to.
That's not safety. That's a prison. Step out the door of that
cell and you are no longer safe. Maybe some FTMs actually have
male privilege that serves them in some useful way. I shudder
to think of the price of silence and fear they are having to pay
for it. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">3. What did testosterone do to you? Did it make you want to attack
and rape women? </font></b></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">This is the one they never ask. They're afraid to, but I can see
it floating around in their eyes. I wish I could say, "It gave
me a deep voice, facial and body hair and a receding hairline,
muscles, redistributed my body fat, thickened my neck, increased
my blood pressure, and cured my depression, and that was all."
But I can't. First of all, it's not true; the boy-juice did affect
my mind, my emotions, my behavior. It started affecting them within
twelve hours of my first shot, and I notice the fluctuation at
the end of each two-week shot period, and if I miss a few days
or a week. Besides, I know that they're asking about sex....and
rage. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">If you know anything at all about FTMs, you'll know that the testosterone
increases the size of our clitorises a great deal. Mine grew to
about the size of the end joint of my thumb and looks just like
a miniature penis, complete with foreskin. To my surprise, my
orgasms became twice as long and twice as intense. My sex drive
skyrocketed - I wanted to do it all the time. It wasn't psychological;
it was just that as each bit of T was slowly absorbed into my
bloodstream, it affected the spinal ganglia attached to my dick,
and made it get hard. It was terribly random, and had no connection
to what I was doing at the time - taking out the garbage, riding
the bus. Having fairly constant context-irrelevant sexual stimuli
going on all the time is not something that women can generally
understand or relate to, and I had to find ways to cope with it.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I started with jerking off. I'd never had any shame about masturbation
(luckily), but before T it had been something I did once in a
while in order to make myself feel good. Now it was something
I did two, three, or four times a day to relieve an itch, so to
speak. I had to learn to treat it like urinating; when you need
to relieve yourself, you don't wait around and hope it'll go away;
you go off and deal with it as quickly and efficiently as possible,
and go back to what you were doing. I had to learn that having
a hard-on was not an excuse for having sex, because there were
just too darn many of them. I had to learn ways to think through
them and ignore them if jerking off wasn't appropriate; I learned
that violent physical activity can relieve them. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I also learned something chilling about my new sexuality - it
was far, far more programmable than it used to be. Before T, my
sexual interests were fairly static and increased slowly, one
new thing at a time. If I didn't like something, I just didn't
like it. After T, I discovered that if I could think about something
heretofore not sexually interesting during approximately six masturbation-to-orgasm
sessions, that item would become a turn-on in and of itself....no
matter what it was. I could literally program myself in a Pavlovian
manner to be aroused by whatever I wanted. I found this out by
accident, after I inadvertently added a few new dishes to my arousal
buffet without meaning to. When I realized this, I sort of sat
in shock for a while, and then I said to myself, "Boy, you're
going to have to be very, very careful from now on." </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">So in one fell swoop I learned the reasons for all those guys
compulsively collecting porn on the Internet. It's not that women
don't do it - I've met some who do - it's just that it seems almost
par for the course with testosterone, a constant issue that doesn't
go away, that you just learn to live with like you learn to live
with daily sexual thoughts. Could I lift them out the way that
I could insert them? Nope, didn't work that way. I understand
the real nature of fetishes now, though; how one can have a mental
stimuli without any psychological baggage, lifted clinically away
from its emotional context and inserted into one's sexual template,
a cold, blank erection that doesn't mean anything more than itself.
I think most female researchers wouldn't get that concept because
they probably don't have it very often (if at all), and most male
researchers wouldn't get it because it's too familiar, the air
they breathe and the water they swim in. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">But the big question: Did I turn into a rapist? Nope. I'm still
sane, still fully in control of myself. The T may have affected
my urges, but it did not affect my actions. I can still choose
how I will and will not express a particular urge, and the line
between fantasy and reality hasn't budged an inch. This would
suggest to me that when a man goes wrong somehow, it isn't just
about what's giving him the urge so much as what's keeping him
from controlling it. Testosterone may be a contributing factor,
but not an excuse. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I am a little quicker to anger though, and it doesn't go away
as easily as it used to. Time was, I would get pissed, do nothing
about it, distract myself with another activity, and it would
go away. At least I thought it had; the colitis attacks and nervous
tics seemed to suggest that a female hormone pattern isn't useful
so much for not having rage as being more successful at repressing
it down to the subconscious where it can fester. After T, if I
get angry, I have to work it out of my system either with a cathartic
resolution or some kind of hard physical work. If I don't, I'll
stay angry for a long time, sometimes even for days. It sounds
awful, but I find it's actually healthier in the long run. Anger
is the emotion most likely to eat you up inside. Better to split
wood or run five miles than to live with it inside you. Of course,
this is the self-observation I will freely admit is most likely
to be altogether too subjective and personal to me, so take it
with a grain of salt. The inarguable conclusion, though, is that
I did not become more assaultive. Again, no excuse. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">4. Do you really think that you feel like a man? </font></b></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I don't know. I don't know what all men feel like, or if there's
even a consensus, but I'm pretty sure that I now know what some
of the biological realities feel like for most biomales. I've
learned some of the mysteries, and they are found in the body
and the bloodstream and the brain wiring. I don't think it matters,
though, whether or not I feel like a man or a woman or something
entirely different. I think that what matters is that I feel comfortable
with myself and my body. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">5. Why should I call you "he" if I don't believe you're a man,
or call an MTF "she" if I don't believe she's really a woman?
</font></b></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Because it is about courtesy and consideration of another human
being's needs. If your best friend Jane from high school shows
up one day and announces to her friends that she's always hated
the name Jane and has now changed it legally to Megan, and she'd
really like it if you could all call her Megan from now on, and
you burst out that she'll always be Jane to you, and you'll never,
never call her Megan, you are being discourteous and inconsiderate.
You are showing that your own resistance to change is more important
to you than her feelings and needs, and you will probably lose
her as a friend, and look like a jerk to boot. You can even keep
calling her Jane in your head, but it's rude and callous not to
at least publicly address her needs. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">There is no appropriate pronoun in English for a masculine androgyne,
or a feminine androgyne. The neuter pronoun in our language is
reserved for inanimate objects. Therefore, by process of elimination,
the only available and appropriate pronoun for a masculine androgyne
(FTM) is "he," and for a feminine androgyne (MTF) is "she." To
do otherwise is a blatant fuck-you, saying that you don't care
whether or not you ever have any kind of meaningful communication
with that person. Deliberately using a pronoun that you know will
offend someone is no different than using a racist or sexist term
to describe them. Either way, you are telling the world that they
have no say in your public definition of them and the marginalized
group that they belong to. </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Georgia" size="2">6. What do you think caused you to be like this? </font></b></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I think that my transgenderism was caused by a prenatal misprogramming
of my posterior hypothalamus, just as I know, medically, that
my intersex condition was caused by a congenital misprogramming
of my anterior hypothalamus and adrenals. I am something of a
biological determinist, and this is a very unpopular thing to
be in most feminist discourses. The fears around biology being
destiny loom pretty large - not just fears of being dismissed
as "biologically inferior," but fear around the perception that
being "born that way" seems so irrevocable, so unfixable. As if
we were helpless hostages to our genes; as if we had no control
and could change nothing. I understand these fears, even as I
look to nature to explain what I can't explain via nurture in
my urges and feelings. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I also understand that this is not an opinion held by everyone
in the queer, or transgendered, or women's community. That's all
right, too. You don't have to like my answer to this question,
or any of them, but it is unfair to assume that I believe this
because I'm ignorant and don't know "the facts." I've studied
a lot of facts, both biological and cultural, and I've come to
this conclusion because it best fits both my own personal experiences
and my observations. When cultural determinists can come up with
an explanation of these that does not finally come down to my
simply being in denial about everything I swear is true for me,
I'd like to hear it. So far, I haven't found it yet. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">This kind of fear of biological determinism was the template for
the great We- Are-All-Blank-Slates-At-Birth mistake which has
caused thousands of intersex children to grow up without functioning
genitalia. The idea that one could simply alter infant genitals
at will, raise to child in the "new sex," and assume that they
would stay there is part of the Big Lie. In essence, the intellectual
justification for cosmetically reforming these children was the
far end of cultural constructionism - if there is no biological
gender, then you should be able to raise children in the gender
of your choice, and it should take, right? Yet again and again
this is being proven wrong. Somehow, even when it's not told to
us, we know. I did, and I changed. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I was lucky enough not to have been surgically altered, but I
know plenty of IS people who weren't so lucky and are, as one
of the few anti-mutilation surgeons put it, "hopping mad and out
for blood." Parents are still told that IS children will definitely
stay in the sex that they are assigned....as long as they are
"treated like proper little girls." (95% are assigned female for
the doctor's ease of surgery.) This puts pressure on the parents
to reward stereotypically feminine behavior and punish perceived
"masculine" behavior. I remember the feminine boot camp that my
mother put me through, and the estrogens I went on to "keep me
a woman." It didn't work, and I am not an anomaly on this count,
either. It did, however, mean that I endured years of doctors
refusing to help me with a sex change because I was an intersexual.
To aid and abet me in this way would have given the lie to their
lies. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Like John/Joan, the little boy who was made into a girl but still
insisted he was a boy (and later changed back); like the many
IS people that I know who get sex changes or live as in-betweeners,
there is something more going on than just parental and social
conditioning. Intersexuals should be another fertile source of
information to most gender theorists, but again the research is
not being done, and I smell something suspicious there. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Whenever people bring up female genital mutilation in the third
world, I always bring up mutilation of the genitals of intersexed
infants that happens right here in sterile hospitals in America.
I usually get the same sort of familiar blank stare that I'm used
to. <i>That's different. We're talking about the mutilation of real women.
Those people are just wrong. They're mistakes, freaks. They should
be fixed, made normal. Obliterated. Made to go away so we don't
have to see them, think about them.</i> And, obligingly, the medical community does its best to do just
that. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Often, some of the people arguing the most vehemently against
female genital mutilation have a vested interest in there being
two clear Gender Camps, Male and Female, with a big uncrossable
gulf in between. It's that old human xenophobia again: Us/Them,
Friend/Enemy. What would it do to modern gender theory to interview
a whole group of adults who had grown up with various combinations
of phalluses and vaginas, in supportive families, able to choose
their own way? Probably something along the lines of what plastic
explosive does to an overpass. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">As much as it's true that many transgendered people have a lot
to learn from feminism, it's also true that feminism has a lot
to learn from transgendered people. For example, my MTF wife and
I have one of the most nonsexist relationships that I've ever
had in my life...or for that matter, ever seen. This is not bragging;
it's simple realism. Since we've both been both, the ordinary
assumptions of what men and women do in relationships goes completely
out the window for us, and we are forced to create a structure
based on our personal needs rather than the constant defaulting
to older, unquestioning roles that I see so often in other relationships.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">It's not that we have no old programming to defeat, but male and
female roles and programming are so jumbled up in each of us that
we can't "fit together" in that nice unthinking way where the
brainwashing just clicks and you're running on autopilot and you
can't quite remember, later, why you did what you did. We keep
each other off balance, and therefore awake, alert, questioning
everything. Thinking. Noticing. These things we have in common:
are they cultural, personal, or something else? These things that
are different between us; where did we learn them? People who
are of different genders have a hard time relating to each other
a straightforward human beings, without the gender getting in
the way. I think we've come as close as it's possible to get to
that. However, all the single-gendered people have this weird
reluctance to use a couple of freaks as examples of how to sort
out who does what household chores or who should initiate the
nightly sex act. I can't imagine why. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">There's a joke in the tranny community that relates to pre-transition
transsexuals in the early "denial phase" of their life; the MTFs
are all in the military, and the FTMs are all either housewives
or getting degrees in Women's Studies. Seriously, I know so many
FTMs who did the Women's Studies thing in college that it's not
funny. I know, too well, what was going on there; for biowomen
it's a way to learn about what being a woman entails; for us it's
an attempt to learn how to be a woman, to learn it so well that
someday you might actually enjoy it. After all, if you haven't
gotten it from eighteen years of growing up, maybe college can
teach you. When they finally transition, they tend to drift away,
assuming that their perspective is not one that will be valued
- or even useful - to their teachers. And yet, on top of this
willful blindness around FTMs, I read one feminist writer mourn
how she wishes there were any "matriarchal males" in existence.
Aren't some of us pretty darn close? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">You'd think that people who have lived as both sexes would be
the first place gender theorists would turn in order to add some
semi-neutral data to their hypotheses, but no; for some reason
that just Isn't Done. Most seem to be afraid that they'd be laughed
out of the Inner Circle if they said, "Well, I talked to a bunch
of transsexuals about this theory and they said..." Yet our perspective
is not only useful, it's invaluable, and it's being wasted. In
order to study something you are immured in, you need to talk
to people who have been both there and elsewhere, and have something
to compare it to. To ignore us is akin to the researcher who wants
to cure a disease but refuses to study creatures with anomalous
responses to it. There's a place in that hell called "transition"
where you are passing from one side to the other, and you are
suddenly so much <i>both</i> that you are <i>neither</i>. For some, it's a split second; for others, several years, but
we never forget it. We may repress it, but we never forget it.
Some of us are living in that sacred space right now. Ask them
what it's like. Ask me, I remember it. Some days I live there
still. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">We did not choose to be what we are, and we cannot unchoose it.
But being what we are has given us choices, choices the likes
of which you can only hope to imagine. </font></td>
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