Coincidentally, a hate-crimes bill that for the first time includes language inclusive of transgendered people was proposed in Congress in spring 2005. It’s a foregone conclusion that a trans hate-crimes bill has about as much chance of being passed by the current Congress as one legalizing same-sex marriage in all fifty states. “Values” voters just won’t stand for that kind of thing, we are told.
It’s a strange set of values that unblinkingly accepts murder as a legitimate response to learning that someone has a penis rather than a vagina. And it is a twisted interpretation of the “sanctity of marriage” to forbid one category of lovers from formalizing their sexual, emotional, and economic commitment to each other while permitting another group to make and break such bonds at will. At least for the present—the same “values” voters who quake at the thought of gay marriage are also deeply disturbed by divorce, we are now being told by the clergy who claim to represent their interests, just as they are outraged by abortion and (in some cases) birth control. In fact, some of these “values” voters are so horrified by the immoral and amoral behavior of their fellow Americans, gay and straight, that they see the need for a great cleansing—something like the flood that recently drowned the hopelessly decadent city of New Orleans days before the city’s annual gay carnival—a clear indication of God’s displeasure, they say.
Yes, we’ve heard this kind of talk before. In Germany in the 1930s. In the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled. In any society you can name where a perceived need for purification and spiritual renewal requires a scapegoat, a category of unclean persons who need to be ruthlessly suppressed and even obliterated for the good of the society as a whole. Once, we recognized this monster and called it by its proper name—group psychosis. Today, the media and much of our political leadership bow down before this beast and worship it.
This, even more than the provocative and enlightening research I summarized earlier, is the greatest change that has occurred since I began researching and writing The Riddle of Gender in 2001. I would like to believe that science itself can, as it has so often in the past, beat back the forces of ignorance and intolerance and create a space for rational discourse. Yet when so many people, including those at the highest levels of government, fail to understand the most basic scientific facts—or seek to manipulate and pervert them for their own ends—how can science save us? As Jay Sennett pointed out in our e-mail conversation, “our culture labors under the notion of a unitary body/sex/gender system compounded by an utter lack of scientific understanding about even basic physiology and anatomy. Hell! People believe that intelligent design represents a valid scientific argument!”
In the face of such ignorance, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands and give up. This is a temptation that we can ill-afford to indulge. Those who know that intelligent design is not an actual scientific hypothesis, that climate change is indeed underway, that condoms do protect against HIV—if we fail to speak out on these and a myriad of other scientific issues in which reams of data are being ignored or manipulated, we are complicit in the ignorance we condemn. And if straight Americans do not actively begin supporting their LGBT fellow citizens they may well find some of the freedoms that they cherish are also under attack.
In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the artist Keith Haring produced a famous poster that summed up the rage and frustration of those fighting the virus in the face of overwhelming indifference— “Silence = Death.”
The message is no less valid today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many individuals and organizations have contributed to my education on the topics discussed in this book. My informal conversations with people at various conferences attended during the course of my research, as well as my participation (and lurking) on various online discussion lists has helped me to understand that members of the trans community (or more properly speaking, communities) are quite diverse in their backgrounds, beliefs, and goals. I regret that I have been unable to cover many of the topics that various individuals encouraged me to explore: for example, the challenges faced by trans elders and veterans; the impact of race and socioeconomics on access to health care and other services; the problems encountered by homeless, disabled, and incarcerated trans people; and the role of faith and family in the lives of trans people. Each of these subjects is important and worthy of discussion but, unfortunately, falls outside the scope of this book. My apologies to those who generously contributed their time and expertise on these matters, only to find that I have not covered their issues. My deepest thanks go to those individuals who shared with me sometimes very painful and private information, and permitted me to use their names and stories—and also to those whose personal or professional responsibilities required that they assume the cloak of anonymity. I am profoundly grateful to all my sources, both named and anonymous, whose candor helped me to understand their lives and struggles.There are a few individuals and organizations I would like to thank by name, as I doubt I would have been able to undertake the research for this book without their assistance. First, I would like to thank Aiden Faust, Jaina Hirai, and Chris Griffey, friends who introduced me to the trans community and helped me take my first fumbling steps on the road to understanding. I am grateful to the members of the National Trans Advocacy Coalition, particularly Yosenio Lewis and Rozlyn Manley, for providing introductions to many of the individuals profiled here, and to Naomi Goring, for sharing with me her collection of difficult-to-locate autobiographies and memoirs. Thank you also to those who discussed these issues with me at length, by phone, in person, and via e-mail as my questions multiplied over the course of my writing this book, in particular Drs. Ben Barres, Dana Beyer, Scott Kerlin, and Julie Maverick. Special thanks to Dr. Aaron Devor for sharing the results of his yet unpublished research on Reed Erickson.My agent, Flip Brophy, provided guidance and support throughout, and I feel blessed to have such a smart advocate and great friend standing beside me as I write. Marty Asher, my editor, gave me the greatest gift an editor can give a writer—the freedom to pursue the story in my own way and in my own time. I am grateful for his support and wise advice. My friend and colleague Ann Finkbeiner, director of the science writing program at Johns Hopkins University, not only read and commented on successive drafts of the manuscript but also was a constant source of support, encouragement, and empathy. Her probing questions have made this a better book.I could not have written this book without the support of my colleagues and employers at the Center for Talented Youth—Pat Wallace, Ben Reynolds, and Sylvia Kielsznia—who were willing to offer me time off and a flexible work schedule to write. The friends who wined and dined me during the course of the writing, providing much needed relaxation, also deserve acknowledgment— Nancy, Claudette, Paula, Liz, Kathy, Mark, and those other friends (you know who you are) who took me out and lifted me up when I was feeling overwhelmed. Finally, I’d like to thank my family—my children, Amelia, Jake, and Sofia, and their father, Rafael; my mother, Jean, and brother Jeff; and my nieces Jessica, Victoria, and Angela. Their constant love and support is the firm ground that I stand on in all my endeavors.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
Walking home from a neighborhood bar Peter Hermann, “1 Killed, 12 Robbed in Violent City Spree,” Baltimore Sun, November 24, 1999; Michael Ollove, “Tacy’s Story,” Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1999. Downloaded from SunSpot.net January 10, 2001.
Baron-Cohen proposes an explanation for these and other differences See Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
gender is what’s above the neck See for example Virginia Prince, “Sex vs. Gender,” in “Transsexualism: A Perspective” in Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome, Donald R. Laub, M.D., and Patrick S. Candy, M.S., eds., Stanford University Medical Center, February 2-4,1973. “For those of you who do not know me, I am a male. I was born one and I will die one. I am
not a homosexual. I am not a transsexual, but I have lived the last five years as a woman. There is not one thing that any doctor or any surgeon at this symposium could possibly do to improve my gender. Any kind of carving that you might do on me might change my sex, but it would not change my gender, because my gender, my self-identity is between my ears, not between my legs,” 21.
one cheeky irony of life Lindsey Berkson, Hormone Deception (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2000), 43.
In 2002 alone, twenty-three people in the United States were slain National Transgender Advocacy Coalition interview with Gwen Smith, creator of “Remembering Our Dead” website, http://www.gender.org/remember/index.html. “I think 2002 is only the ‘deadliest year’ we have statistics for because of three factors. The media is more willing to report on these cases, we have more avenues to find these stories via the world wide web, and we are more sensitive to these cases within our own community. … Rather than thinking of 2002 as being part of an upward trend of murder cases, I paint a somewhat more disturbing picture: maybe 2002 is much closer to the actual per-year number of cases.”
seventeen-year-old Gwen Araujo was dragged into a garage On June 22, 2004, Judge Harry Sheppard declared a mistrial in the Araujo murder case after the jury foreman informed him that the eight-man, four-woman jury was “hopelessly deadlocked.” The jury had deliberated for ten days. Defense attorneys had used a “gay panic” strategy, arguing that their clients (twenty-four-year old Jason Cazares, Michael Magid-son, and Jose Merel) were inspired by “passionate rage” when they discovered that Araujo, with whom all three had previously had sex, was biologically male. After bludgeoning Araujo with a can, frying pans, and a shovel, and strangling her, the defendants buried her in the Sierra foothills, and then went out to McDonald’s for breakfast.
Tyra’s story is surprisingly commonplace Sarah D. Fox, Ph.D., “$2.8 million Award in Tyra Hunter Wrongful Death Suit,” Quill, December 12, 1998. Retrieved from http://www.gendernet.org/quill/pr000004.htm, February 12, 2003.
Nature loves variety Milton Diamond, plenary lecture at the International Foundation for Gender Education annual meeting, March 21, 2003, Philadelphia, Pa.
One THE HANDS OF GOD
I certify that Chevalier d’Eon Quoted in Magnus Hirschfeld, Transvestites: The Erotic Urge to Cross Dress, trans, by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991), 341-42.
far from being a product of the modern world See, for example, Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture, Gilbert Herdt, ed. (New York: Zone Books 1994); “Mythological, Historical, and Cross-Cultural Aspects of Transsexualism,” in Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, ed. Richard Green, M.D., and John Money, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), chap. 1; Part I, “Cultural and Historical Background” in Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); and Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
gender crossing is so ubiquitous Bullough and Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, 5.
You have served me just as well Letter quoted in ibid., 337.
The London Stock Exchange took bets on his gender Marjorie Garber, Vested
Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992), 260. 5 I am what the hands of God have made me Letter to the Count de Broglio, February 10,1775, quoted in Garber, Vested Interests, 264.
has always been a reward for bravery on the battlefield Letter quoted in Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 339.
His hand was already slipping under my sheet Herculine Barbin, Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth- Century French Hermaphrodite, trans. Richard McDougall (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 68-69.
condemned Abel to “abandonment, to cold isolation” Ibid., 87.
When that day comes a few doctors will make a little stir Ibid., 103.
Variety is Nature’s way Milton Diamond, at the annual meeting of the International Foundation for Gender Education, March 21,2003, Philadelphia, Pa.
The most famous such case Hart underwent analysis with a Portland, Oregon, psychiatrist, J. Allen Gilbert, who, in 1917, helped Hart obtain a hysterectomy and begin living as a man. In Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1976), historian Jonathan Ned Katz identifies Hart on the basis of a paper Gilbert wrote about the case, hails Hart as a lesbian foremother, and harshly criticizes Gilbert for the course of treatment he recommended. In Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1997), Pat Califia takes Katz and other gay historians to task for their tendency to view early transmen such as Hart as self-hating lesbians. “Unfortunately, since Katz’s work has appeared in print, other gay and lesbian historians have also promoted the myth that all ‘passing women’ are lesbian elders…. The task of sorting out the dykes from the transgendered men, or at least the task of recognizing that both tendencies are present in the histories of ‘passing women,’ still remains to be done” (Califia, 155).
gender identity is subject to scrutiny Julian Todd Weiss, “The Gender Caste System: Identity, Privacy, and Heteronormativity,” Law and Sexuality 10 (2002): 131.
Ordinarily, the purpose of scientific investigation Harry Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon (New York: Ace Books, 1966), 5.
I’m not a girl, I’m not a girl Author interview with “Brad” [source requested anonymity for family reasons], San Francisco, Calif., August 31, 2001.
first employees of the city of San Francisco to take advantage of the new policy of insurance reimbursement On Monday, April 30, 2001, the Board of Supervisors passed a measure making the city the first in the nation to pay for its transgendered employees’ surgical and medical needs related to sex correction. The coverage does not extend to cosmetic procedures, only to hormones, genital reconstruction, and hysterectomies and mastectomies for FTMs. Employees must work for the city for a year to become eligible for the benefits. If using a doctor within the city’s health network, employees have to pay 15 percent out of pocket; if using a doctor outside the network, employees are responsible for 50 percent of the costs. An article by Margie Mason for the Associated Press said that the city had identified fourteen transgendered employees out of its thirty-seven thousand workers. Margie Mason, “Sex-Change Benefits Approved in San Francisco,” Associated Press, April 30,2001. Brad told me, “In the city there are thirteen of us. Half of those have already had the surgery; out of the other seven, three don’t want surgery. So I would say that there are only four people. Hello? There are not going to be droves of people coming out here. There aren’t that many city jobs, and you’ve got to wait a year anyway. This year they’ve got one point seven million dollars set aside for the thirty-five surgeries they thought were gonna happen. They said that they overestimated, because they wanted to err on the side of more, but they are way overestimating.”
a recent needs assessment survey Jessica Xavier, “Final report of the Washington Transgender Needs Assessment Survey,” Washington, D.C., Administration for HIV and AIDS, District of Columbia Department of Health.
the prevalence of SRS in the U.S. is at least on the order of I:2500 Lynn Con-way, “How Frequently Does Transsexualism Occur,” available online at http://www.lynnconway.com.
A group of researchers in the Netherlands P.L.E. Eklund, L.J.G. Gooren, and P. D. Bezemer, “Prevalence of Transsexualism in the Netherlands,” British Journal of Psychiatry 152 (1988): 638—40.
“gender identity disorders” are probably far more common Weiss, “Gender Caste System,” 129 (n. 9).
Gunter Dorner, a German endocnnologist G. Dorner, F. Götz, W. Rohde, et al, “Genetic and Epigenetic Effects on Sexual Brain Organization Mediated by Sex Hormones,” Neuroendocrinology Letters 22 (2001): 403—409. See also G. Dorner, I. Poppe, F. Stahl, et al., “Gene and Environment-Dependent Neuroendocrine Etiogenesis of Homosexuality and Transsexualism,” Experimental and Clinical Endocri
nology 98, no. 2 (1991): 141—50; G. Dorner, “Neuroendocrine Response to Estrogen and Brain Differentiation in Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, and Transsexuals, Archives of Sexual Behavior 17, no. 1 (February 1988): 57—75; G. Dorner, “Sex Hormone Dependent Brain Differentiation and Sexual Behavior,” Experimental Brain Research suppl. 3 (1981): 238-45; G. Dorner, F. Docke, F. Götz, et al., “Sexual Differentation of Gonadotrophin Secretion, Sexual Orientation and Gender Role Behavior,” Journal of Steroid Biochemistry 27, no. 4—6 (1987): 1081-87.
Dorner has published extensively on the organizational effects of hormones on the brain, and possible implications for sexual orientation and transsexualism. Earlier in his career, Dorner’s theories on the somatic basis of homosexuality and gender variance were considered reactionary, but since 1987, the biological school has rebounded. “By the early 1980s, en-docrinological theories of sexual orientation seemed to have reached a low point of credibility, and those who still espoused them were considered the ‘bad guys’ who were on a mission to eliminate homosexuality by a technical fix. In Dorner’s case the label was well deserved.” Simon LeVay, Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1996), 120. Later, in a discussion of Dorner’s hypothesis that prenatal stress might play a role in the development of homosexuality in men, LeVay says that “to give Dorner his due, his theory does have one thing going for it: it is based on a solid body of research conducted on animals.” Queer Science, 164.
The Riddle of Gender Page 38