I’m reading this about Lucy – a teenage transsexual. So she’s 18, living as female, and wants to have surgery and hormones. I have to admit I find this slightly disturbing – not that she’s 18 – after all I started hormones at 19 and had surgery a couple of weeks later at 20, (there was a birthday in between). Of course she understands the implications of starting hormones and having irreversible surgery. Well I did at 18 so of course she does.
She’s 18 – does she know what she’s doing?
I do wonder if at 18 you really understand the implications of being in the media. I often wonder if anyone who’s transitioning actually understands the implications. At the time you announce to everyone being a transsexual it’s a very public thing. It might be hard to imagine a time when it’s something you won’t want people to know.
But imagine if it’s repeated in fifteen years time – if you transition young before testosterone has worked all of it’s irreversible effects you generally pass well.
A rumour ‘So that’s why her children were adopted, she used to be a man’ will go around the PTA. Brown Owl will be in a dilemma – should she let her help on the Brownie trip and make cakes like she has done for the last two years? Her husbands workmates will wait until he leaves the canteen and whisper ‘ Who’d have thought he was a homo, he’s got a season ticket to the Arsenal’. He was comfortable having sex with a transsexual – that didn’t make him gay because she looked so female.
Then what about the children – they will probably know, she may have had gentle conversations ‘Mummy couldn’t have children because she wasn’t born with the right parts – but she doesn’t mind because she loves you’. But at school they will the topic of gossip.
She didn’t mind being out when she was younger but she’s in the closet now because she didn’t want her children and husband to have to deal with it the gossip.
And also
The other thing that makes me uncomfortable in this sort of show is that it treats what is basically routine medical treatment like a freak show. It makes us into circus exhibits into freaks. To be stared at. And it is spectacularly uninteresting medical treatment. Ooh look a breast enhancement/mastectomy ooh look a penis being cut off – now showing that on TV is just to make men uncomfortable.
I know – there are advantages
If it wasn’t for transsexuals in the media most of us would never have know it was a possibility and would still consider ourselves freaks.
But wouldn’t nice anonymous blogs do instead?
Of course it’s to be honest fairly unlikely to affect Lucy – by the time she’s older she won’t look much like her 18 year old self. People won’t recognise her. With the increase in multi-channel TV it’s less likely that any one programme will be seen by that many people.
Of course there’s a fine line between wanting to understand and prurience, but I would say that there are people out there who aren’t prutient and who do want to understand.
When I was in my late teens and wanting to understand all sorts of things, one of the things I wanted to understand was transsexuality. I read Jan Morris’s excellent, articulate account of her transition from male to female, and thought “ok, I can understand that”. I didn’t have any emotional understanding of the difficulties of course, but I did intellectually understand the idea of a person who is one gender trapped by birth and society in a body which appears to be another.
So wanting to watch programmes such as this one is not solely down to prurience. That said, there’s a limit to how many of these programmes can usefully be be made and I suspect that the limit was reached some time ago and that we are now beyond “educate” and “inform” and well into the land of “entertain”.
It’s an odd and interesting space, being an out transsexual. And you are right, it probably is the children who will have the most difficult things to deal with.
Aphra.
By: Aphra Behn on November 18, 2007
at 12:53 am
I don’t know, are the problems you describe a result of being out – or of being outed? If she has been out all along, Brown Owl will have had to make that decision when they met – and Lucy can go find another Brownie group with a less bigoted Brown Owl. Her husband (if she’s straight) will be someone who’s able to deal with whispers.
By: Anne on November 18, 2007
at 1:56 am
>> Her husband (if she’s straight) will be someone who’s able to deal with whispers.
Being in the position of her husband – ie the partner of a transsexual – I’ll freely admit here in the pseudonymity the internet that the fact that my partner’s stealth has saved me a lot of bother. I’d rather not have to deal with whispers. I’d also rather not have to deal with covert or overt prejudice. Transsexuals are protected in law, but their partners aren’t.
Aphra.
By: Aphra Behn on November 18, 2007
at 2:28 am
I’m sorry I posted so sharply Anne. And you are of course right that the problem is one of being outed rather than one of being out.
The question, though is why should someone who transitioned be Out? A post-op transsexual is someone who used to suffer from Gender identity Disorder, and doesn’t any more.
Trans-men in particular frequently stop identifying as trans and just identify as men. They’ve had the corrective medical and surgical treatment. Outing them is – in some ways – like outing someone who’s had their appendix removed. On the other hand, the world sets so much store on gender (or penises, anyway) that outing a trans-person is a big deal, which is what Z was saying.
As I said, I am sorry I snapped, I just took the comment about being able to deal with whipsers rather personally. Yes, I could deal with whispers if I had to. But that has everything to do with the fact that I am an arsy cow and nothing to do with the past history of the person I go to bed with.
Aphra.
By: Aphra Behn on November 18, 2007
at 2:51 am
I know from experience how easy it is to slip back into the closet- all it took was a new job in a new town and the world assumes I’m XY.
I like being in, I like being able to choose who I tell. It’s my information and I can share it with who I want to. I also know it’s information about my partner – so I don’t tell her friends without her permission. If I had children I wouldn’t be out to anyone they might know.
If she isn’t straight – that might be an even bigger reason not to be out – the lesbian community are quite a bigoted bunch.
I’d never have thought that I might want to become a gynaecologist when I was 18, and that’s not a career in which I’d be comfortable being out. Though it’s not the career I’m persuing at the moment – I would hate to have had to rule it out based on the fact that I was trans.
By: Z on November 18, 2007
at 1:01 pm
Z you’ve put your finger on it. If you are in a trans-relationship, you don’t out yourself without your partner’s permission.
There are people I probably would tell that I’m in a relationship with a transsexual, but that would change how they saw and related to my partner, and so I don’t. I don’t particularly mind them knowing about me, but he minds them knowing about him because it’s a cat that you cannot ever get back in the bag.
In an ideal world, and all that. The thing is, if you look straight, you’d be amazed at the amount of homophobia people will expose you to, if you let them.
AB
By: Aphra Behn on November 18, 2007
at 3:36 pm
I’m a long way from having the choice not to be out; I probably never will. Science is a small community, and I’ve already met most of the people I’m going to be dealing with the rest of my career. So this is a bit theoretical for me. But it seems like one of the reasons coming out of the closet is such a big deal for gay people is that big secrets are poison: they warp your whole life. If the first twenty or thirty years of your life are to be a secret, what does that do to your head? More alarmingly, if it’s a secret, then being outed becomes a big deal, and it hangs over your head: what if someone finds out? will I get fired? will my friends ditch me? If it’s known, well, there is a price, but you don’t have a sword of damocles hanging over your head. And just maybe, if enough of us are out, “she used to be a boy” won’t be such a big deal any more. My transition was (is being!) vastly helped by a couple of out transsexuals I met one way or another.
As I said, though, I’m still not at a stage where I even have that choice, and I probably never will be; and I am definitely not going to try to tell anyone else what choice to make. There are so many factors – how transphobic is the little corner of society you live in? how much legal protection do you and your partner have? how much are you willing to go through for the chance of changing the world a little bit? how much of your past are you talking about keeping quiet? – that I’m not going to argue anyone else’s decision.
By: Anne on November 18, 2007
at 9:05 pm
I personally found being out to be really important to me when I was gay because my partner was such a large part of my life.
Being trans is quite incidental to my life – so is really an irrelevance to things at work. It doesn’t affect my day to day life any more.
I did tell somenoe who I was becoming friends with – because we were talking a lot about relationships and it does affect the sortof relationships I have. It also means I have insights into how women think so I can offer advice that other guys can’t offer. By and large I’m ok with it and glad I did.
I have to admit knowing I’m protected by law against discrimination means I don’t panic too much about being outed. It’s not a sword of Damacles, it’s just not relvant to my life.
I do this blog instead of being out so I can change the world a little bit.
By: Z on November 18, 2007
at 11:54 pm
One of the obvious differences between being in a gay relationship and being in a trans relationship is that people can know you as a couple even though you aren’t out. By definition, if you are gay then you are out to whoever knows that your partner is your partner.
Mind you the girl who washes my hair at the hairdressers claimed she’d gone out with a lad for 6 weeks without knowing he was “really a girl”. Bless.
I don’t tell my friends my partner’s trans because I don’t want to burden him with their speculation and curiosity. He’s enjoying socialising as a heterosexual male, and he doesn’t want to damage that. While I was new in my job, I did not want the only thing anyone ever said about me to be “she’s going out with a transsexual”. Now I’ve been there a while they know me better, so it would be just part of what they knew about me.
As you say, Mary, it’s something we all have to make our own decisions about.
AB
By: Aphra Behn on November 19, 2007
at 8:47 pm
There was a similar discussion tht I came across. Only this was about labeling oneself as man/woman or transman/transwoman. This guy I know aruged that one should be proud of being trans. So why hide it? This lady friend of ours said she was ‘not subsuming to binary gender identities, she just expanding their definitions’
Its one of those debates that are really futile. We do have to make our own choices, our own labels, heck, everything needs to be defined according to OUR comfort level. And even our definitions change with situation.
As for the damacles sword, some ignore it, and some deal with it by letting it drop… and they are both better than people who sit and worry about it. I seem to be repeating the discussion here in different words.. but couldnt help putting my two-bit in.
By: 'nonnymous on November 20, 2007
at 8:52 pm
I’ve met Lucy, I was in Chonburi with her. I was getting some revision done (severe granulation can happen to anyone, alas). Fortunately, Dr Suporn fixes any problems free of charge. He doesn’t have to do that very often.
Lucy is just an 18 year old girl with an unusual past. Worried at the long-term effect of the publicity on her personal life, more concerned about the short term and getting a good job, glad and even proud to be of help to others… OK, she’s rather more mature than many of her age, but she’s just a late teenager, you know?
Today’s headlines line tomorrow’s birdcages. The world changes too. I believe she’s taken down her website, and is now avoiding what limelight she can. She doesn’t wear an “ask me about my sex change” T-shirt, just lives as normal a life as she can. That’s pretty normal, she looks great, has a caring and cheerful personality, and a lot of guys dig that, if they have two neurons to fire together. I wish her a wonderful life, and I think she’ll have one.
By: Zoe Brain on May 23, 2008
at 3:47 am
Thanks – I’ll reply again in more detail after work -mbut I’ve removed her photo to help get rid of some of the publicity
By: Z on May 23, 2008
at 8:22 am
Thanks for your reply. I”m glad Lucy’s ok, and I wish her all the best.
I really hope the publicity doesn’t harm her in the long term. But I do wish some transsexuals would think twice before publicity.
By: Z on May 24, 2008
at 12:20 am