The Riddle of Gender

by Deborah Rudacille

  The first order of business for the new Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was the development of a treatment protocol, or “Standards of Care,” for transsexual people, one that would both protect them from unscrupulous practitioners and also continue to exert some measure of medical control over the process of sex reassignment. “HBIGDA recognized the rise of private practitioners and tried to guide their professional behavior,” writes Joanne Meyerowitz in How Sex Changed. “Under its original Standards of Care, private endocrinologists and surgeons could not offer treatment on demand. Psychologists and psychiatrists … were to recommend medical treatment, and they were to have seen their clients for several months before making such recommendations. MTFs were to live as women and FTMs were to live as men for at least a year before they could undergo surgery. If they adhered to these guidelines, private practitioners could protect their professional standing and distinguish themselves from ‘chop shop’ doctors like John Brown.”

  The Benjamin Standards of Care were put into place by researchers associated with the Erickson Foundation, and carried over many of the practices (for example, the “real-life” test and the role of psychotherapists as gatekeepers) that had first evolved in the university clinics. “The first version of the Standards of Care was very similar to the guidelines that came out of the EEF-based research of Benjamin and the Hopkins clinic,” says Aaron Devor, who is working on a biography of Erickson. “I have to infer that Erickson was comfortable with the model as it was developing,” says Devor. “In the context in which the model was created and the opposing view—that anyone contemplating taking these steps was out of their mind—this is understandable.” Nonetheless, the Standards of Care and the medical model of trans-sexuality that they represented stood in direct contrast to the activist approach born in the seventies. Many transsexual people did not want to be “medicalized” and they did not want to be “pathologized.” They wanted access to surgery and/or hormones on demand without having to jump through a series of Standards of Care hoops. Their most radical claim, and the one that was to create a nearly unbridgeable chasm between proponents of the Benjamin model and an increasingly vocal and active transgender movement in the early nineties, was that American society, not transgender or transsexual people, had a “gender problem.”

  CONVERSATION WITH TOM KENNARD

  Kennard and his partner, Marianne, have been together for four years. Kennard was fifty-one at the time of this interview and spent many years in the lesbian community prior to his transition. Marianne is forty-three; she identifies as bisexual and has had relationships with both men and women. Soon after Kennard completed transition, Marianne discovered that she was losing her sight. On the morning I visited them in their home in San Francisco, Marianne was out with her mentor in a local support group, learning how to navigate the city alone. After her return, we went out for breakfast. I was impressed by the great tenderness Kennard displayed toward Marianne and by the way that they were working together to ease Marianne’s transition into a challenging new world.

  Q: Tom, could you speak about your experience crossing over from the lesbian-feminist community to living as a transman?

  It was really hard. I was big feminist, a white lesbian feminist, and I was kind of a separatist. I didn’t like men, I didn’t like the patriarchy, and I never wanted to grow up to be a straight white guy. I fought it for a long time.

  Growing up, I didn’t identify as anything, really. When you are little … I knew I was kind of different but I don’t really know how I knew that. I knew that there was a difference between boys and girls, because in school everything is segregated by gender, so I would have to get in the girls’ line, but I was like, “Why am I in the girls’ line?” [Laughs’] What is it about me that makes me a girl? So it’s all kind of murky. I know this is the stereotype, but I always wanted to do what the boys wanted to do. When I reached puberty I liked girls, and I told somebody in Girl Scouts that I really liked this woman and if I was a boy I would marry her. And all through high school we had to wear dresses all the time, and that was incredibly horrible for me. I felt like I was cross-dressed all the time.

  But then I went away to college and started reading books and I found out that “Well, okay, you can be a lesbian.” So I did that for a long time, but I always felt like a spy. In the bathroom especially, in gym, I always felt like a spy. “I’m not supposed to be in here.” So it wasn’t until I was forty-seven that I started taking hormones. There’s an FTM support group here [in San Francisco]. I went there in 1990, and there was this whole roomful of men. Oh my God! I didn’t go back for six years. It freaked me out so much. I’m like, “There’s a bunch of men in there. I don’t like men. Men are the patriarchy. Men are bad.” But finally, I just got really angry. I’d go to the store or something and give people my driver’s license to write a check and they’d read the female name and call me “ma’am.” And I would feel really angry because I’m not that person. Don’t call me “ma’am.” And I was a butch lesbian, so people would a lot of time call me “sir” but then when I would talk, because I had a female voice, they’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and maybe they would be nice to me or maybe they wouldn’t.

  Q: Did people mostly read you as female at that time?

  Here in San Francisco, because there are so many lesbians, and a butch lesbian is identifiable, people would identify me as a butch. So then of course there was all the homophobia.

  Q: In San Francisco? [interviewer feigns shock]

  Yes. And gay men don’t like women very well either, so you go down to the Castro, and gay men weren’t really happy to see you. I went in to get my hair cut one time, and they just left me sitting there for an hour. I kept waiting and waiting.

  Q: Sounds like you couldn’t really find a home in any community—in the lesbian community or the larger gay community. When did you begin to think that you might be transgendered?

  I always wore men’s clothes. I got rid of women’s clothes sometime in the early seventies. I remember taking them all to the dump. You know those big Dumpsters? I left them all draped over it. So I always wore men’s clothes. And I always felt like transgendered people were my family, but I didn’t really know why. I always kind of gravitated toward drag queens, people who were on the edge of gender somehow. Those were always the people I liked. In queer bars these people were often on the outside of things. So one night I’m at the lesbian bar, and I see a man dressed to the nines, and he’s a transvestite, and he’s with his wife who is a transvestite the other way. So we become friends, and I start hanging out with them. She tells me about a television show that wants to talk to female-to-male transvestites. It’s not a category that anybody talks about. Women can wear men’s clothes, and nobody looks at them. So that’s when I go, “Oh, there’s a transgender community.” I was about thirty-five at the time.

  So I sat with that for a while. I was a cross-dresser for a while. As I met more and more people in my community, and I heard FTM transsexuals talk, I’m like, “Gee, that sounds really familiar.” I spent a long time going, “Well, we’re kind of the same, but I go up to this line but I don’t go over, and they do.” Finally, I decided to go to that meeting in 1990 when I was about forty. And I got so freaked out. I was like, “No, I don’t want to be a straight white guy.” But by ′96 or 97, I said to myself, “This isn’t working out at all.” And I thought, “Who can you live your life for but you? I’m in my forties.” So I started hormones in October of ‘97. And I met Marianne right before I started hormones. So she’s seen me as a girl, and now I’m a boy. [Laughs] She’s seen the whole physical thing happen, and it’s a really intensive personal time, so she’s had to live through all my adolescent male stuff. All I talked about was transition for years. I’m just now getting out of it.

  Q: How wouldyou define whereyou are now?

  I fully recognize that I am not born male. I did not have that experience. I never will. I am transgendered. I am a transman.
I live in the world as male, and that’s fine. But I still feel sort of like a spy. I’m not like everybody else.

  Q: Because you’ve lived in both worlds, lived as both a woman and a man? Yeah, and I’m still struggling with a lot of things that come with being male. Like being perceived as a threat. I can’t talk to kids, and women are like this. [Holds his hands far apart] I’m really sad about the whole distance between women and me. I understand why that’s there, but I would never hurt a woman.

  Q: What are some of the other liabilities of being a man?

  Back hair. [Laughs] I’m not really sure I’m happy about that.

  But I love Halloween and there’s a whole bunch of children in the neighborhood. And I just love it when the kids come, but now when they come I have to take Marianne to the door with me. Because the parents are like, “Ooh, this middle-aged white guy standing there with his candy.” It’s really upsetting to me. And I have to learn how to use my voice. My voice has gotten really deep, and I need to sort of sound like [softens it] so I don’t sound threatening. I’m not a tall person, but I’m kind of a big guy. Which brings up a whole other area. If you are a big woman … people used to yell at me stuff like “fat bitch, fat dyke.” Big is bad if you are female; big is good if you are male. Now I just go to the Big ‘n’ Tall, and they’re like, “Big Tom is coming!” [Laughs]

  It’s a lot to negotiate. It’s a lot to try to have these hormonal changes and the body changes and then try to figure out, “Now how do I be a man?”

  Q: How important is it to you to have a penis?

  It’s really important to me, but I’m never going to have enough money to have that operation [phalloplasty]. I don’t really want to mess with my body like that. It doesn’t really go well; it doesn’t work. They can’t do those hydraulics. I would rather keep what function I have. I’m sort of half and half now. My body is … I’m a different kind of a thing, a new thing, and that’s okay. A lot of guys find it incredibly important [to undergo phalloplasty] and I honor that. If they need to do that, I think they should do it. But I’m never going to have that much money and …

  Q: And for you it doesn’t seem to define your manhood?”

  No, it doesn’t define my manhood. If they could just snap their fingers and give me one that works, I’d say okay. I don’t want to diminish the importance of it. … I just don’t feel like it right now. Now, I know some guys change their minds; you can change your mind sometimes as you go through this process. Some guy asked me about it one time, and I’m like, “Okay, all of the men in the room, let’s just get up there and line it up by how big it is. Come on, you guys, let’s go.” I mean, it’s ridiculous.

  Q: Do women relate differently to you as a man?’

  Yes, yes. It really surprised me. Women will touch me, and I’m like, “I can’t believe they’re doing that. Wow. They’re being nice.” They talk to me, play around with me. I love women. I really do. We were just having a discussion about that last night. That is really one of the wonderful things, that I can really enjoy women in a way that I never could before. Because I’m not like them. My body is not like that. Before it was really sexually difficult. Because I didn’t want people to see me naked. It was just really hard.

  Q: In your experience, is there a difference between male and female sexuality?

  It’s really hard to make generalizations, but testosterone is incredible stuff, incredibly powerful. I’m so much more visual now. I understand why there’s Playboy and porno. I never got that. I always liked women, I liked the way they looked, but I never… it’s not like I wanted to watch [pornographic] movies or anything. Now, the thing that’s really distressing to me is how much women’s bodies are used to sell things. I knew it intellectually. I was a feminist. But now I know it at this visceral level, and I am just appalled. It’s like there are these receptors in your body, there are estrogen receptors and there are testosterone receptors. Your testosterone receptors just aren’t working right now. You have them, but they are just not working. But mine all got activated. I remember about three years ago—I remember this so clearly—I was walking downtown, and this woman had like a dark gray sort of tank top on, and she was walking down the street and her breasts were just kind of jiggling. And I’m like, “Oh my god!” If I had a penis, I would have had an erection. So I have that now, I have those physical reactions. Like, I’m watching the Soul Train Awards, and those women have, like, no clothes on, and I think I must be old or something because I’m thinking, “These children should not be going around like that.” I think that women must have a clue, because women have used this to control us for a long time, and mostly I’m really happy about it. I mean, Marianne can control me with that. I’m happy, okay, honey.

  Q: Perhaps that’s the reason that women lose power as they get older, while men gain power.

  Yes, and you don’t even have to be an attractive man! You just need to be an old man, just an ugly old guy. It’s the whole thing about not having to worry about your appearance. For women, falling in love, and attraction, is about your mind and your heart. But I picked Marianne because … I probably wouldn’t have talked to her if I hadn’t been physically attracted to her. We’re all like that, but men sort of take it to an art. I buy her a lot of things I want to see her wearing, and she lets me do it.

  Q: Did you not do that kind ofthing in your old life?”

  I kind of did, but it’s not the same as it is now. I mean, I liked feminine women always … but it’s a different thing now. It’s like I’m watching movies now that I never really watched before.

  Q: Like action adventure, or shoot-‘em-ups?

  Oh, yeah! Actually, that’s really interesting, because the action adventure movies get to me now in a different way they didn’t before. It’s like, “Oh yeah, great, blow something else up.” It’s not like I want to see people killed; it’s not like that. It’s like, “Blow that up, make that car really fast.” It’s crazy.

  Q: So do you still keep in touch with friends from your old life? How do they feel about this change?”

  It depends on how old they are. If they’re my age, they think I’ve gone over to the enemy. I’m dead. They don’t talk to me.

  MARIANNE: Or like that woman on your soccer team who could sort of relate to it, but she was afraid. She actually felt a lot of the same things, but felt like the penalty of making that change would be the loss of a community that had been home for so long.

  KENNARD: That was painful. And a lot of the guys who were lesbians really feel that. And a lot of times they tried not to transition, or to hold on to it as long as they can. It’s really hard. Like I’m completely invisible as a queer person now. I’m queer. I think of myself as queer. I can see queer people. We have queer radar, we do. But they don’t see me at all. Really, the place I’m most comfortable is with gay men. I love gay men. One of my best friends is a gay man, who taught me how to shave, took me to men’s bars, showing me what it was like to be a man. I mean he’s a gay man, but he’s a man. I can touch him— straight men are so touch-phobic. I can feel what his beard is like. He got naked in front of me. I’m like, “Okay, this is how men are made.” So I love gay men and I like to be with him. And when I’m with gay men, I’m part of this great community. I’m not invisible. They think I’m queer; I mean they think I’m gay, but that’s okay. If I’m with Marianne, I’m invisible, and people want to know why we’re there.

  Q: And this is San Francisco, the home of the LGBT community ?

  KENNARD: It’s still a binary gender system. They don’t even think about it.

  MARIANNE: And so much of life is organized around it that whatever else may be up for revaluation, by God, not the M and the F. So many things are constructed on that, it’s sort of like if you change that, talk about changing your center of gravity, it really confuses everything.

  KENNARD: And a lot people won’t allow you to change. Some people—it doesn’t matter what I tell them, I’m not a man [in their eyes]. I never te
ll people what my name used to be, for example, because that is like the kiss of death. If I tell someone that I’m transgen-dered, I’m all of a sudden “she.” They never get over it.

  MARIANNE: And they never would have thought that, when they’re meeting him. They’re like, “Oh, I would never have known.” But I think that the other thing that can get oversimplified in the queer community is that straight people have complicated gender identities too. There are some men born in male bodies who have spent their whole lives as males who are also trying to figure out what it means to be a man. And trying to negotiate not wanting to automatically fall into certain roles.

  Q: We all need to negotiate gender every day of our lives.

  MARIANNE: Yes. And if you are a woman and you want to be with women, that’s perceived as a gender-transgression thing. That’s the point that we’re trying to make. That’s why we’re all in this community. That’s why LGBT and intersexed people should be in this community together. It’s a gender thing; it’s not just sexual orientation. The first thing that people want to know about you: “Who do you sleep with?” Once they get “Oh, he’s a transman,” it’s “Who do you sleep with?” And then “What bathroom do you use?”

  KENNARD: Yeah, that’s my favorite question, when they ask me what bathroom I use. Sometimes I get a little short. If a woman asks, [feigns concern] “Do you want me to go in the women’s bathroom with you?” I’m like, “Come on. Are you crazy? What do you mean ‘what bathroom do I use?’”