The Man In A Case

March, as you probably know, is Women's History Month.  Does that mean that we don't have a history for the other 11 months of the year?  And what about Blacks?  Not only do they have only one month, but they got the shortest:  February.  So for 337 other days of the year (338 in a leap year), they don't have a story?

All right.  I'll stop ranting.  When I  think about WHM--or women's history or rights in general--I am reminded that in the early days of cycling, riding a bicycle was something a "proper" lady didn't do.  In some parts of the world, that's still the case:  One of my colleagues, who hails from Ethiopia and is in her sixties, has never learned how to ride.  And there are places, I understand, where a woman or girl on a bicycle is not only frowned upon, it's illegal.

From Women's History: About

But back to the early days of cycling:  During that time, Anton Chekhov wrote a short story,  The Man In A Case.  During the 1970's, Wendy Wasserstein turned it into a one-act play (with the same title) about a marriage between Varinka, a "pretty girl of thirty" and Byelinkov, a much older Latin and Greek professor at a university near Moscow.

You can see how cautious and traditional he is in this exchange:

 
　　VARINKA (takes his hands.) We will be very happy. I am very strong. (Pauses. ) It is time for tea.
　
　　BYELINKOV. It is too early for tea. Tea is at half past the hour.
　
　　VARINKA. Do you have heavy cream? It will be awfully nice with apricots.
　
　　BYELINKOV. Heavy cream is too rich for teatime.
　
　 　VARINKA. But today is special. Today you placed a lilac in my hair. Write in your note pad. Every year we will celebrate with apricots and heavy cream. I will go to my brother's house and get some.
　
　　BYELINKOV. But your brother's house is a mile from here.
　
　　VARINKA. Today it is much shorter. Today my brother gave me his bicycle to ride. I will be back very soon.
　
　　BYELINKOV. You rode to my house by bicycle! Did anyone see you!
　
　 　VARINKA. Of course. I had such fun. I told you I saw the grocery store lady with the son-in-law who is doing very well thank you in Moscow, and the headmaster's wife.
　
　　BYELINKOV. You saw the headmaster's wife!
　
　　VARINKA. She smiled at me.
　
　　BYELINKOV. Did she laugh or smile?
　
　 　VARINKA. She laughed a little. She said, "My dear, you are very progressive to ride a bicycle." She said you and your fiance Byelinkov must ride together sometime. I wonder if he'll take off his galoshes when he rides a bicycle.
　
　　BYELINKOV. She said that?
　
　　VARINKA. She adores you, We had a good giggle.
　
　 　BYELINKOV. A woman can be arrested for riding a bicycle. That is not progressive, it is a premeditated revolutionary act. Your brother must be awfully, awfully careful on behalf of your behavior. He has been careless-oh so care-less-in giving you the bicycle.
　
　　VARINKA. Dearest Byelinkov, you are wrapping yourself under curtains and quilts! I made friends on the bicycle.
　
　　BYELINKOV. You saw more than the headmaster's wife and the idiot grocery woman.
　
　　VARINKA. She is not an idiot.
　
　　BYELINKOV. She is a potato-Vending, sausage-armed fool!
　
　　VARINKA. Shhh! My school mouse. Shhh!
　
　　BYELINKOV. What other friends did you make on this bicycle?
　
　　VARINKA. I saw students from my brother' s classes. They waved and shouted, 0Anthropos in love! Anthropos in 'love!!"
　
　　BYELINKOV. Where is that bicycle?
　
　　VARINKA. I left it outside the gate. Where are you going?
　
　　BYELINKOV (muttering as he exits.) Anthropos in love, an thropos in love.
　
　　VARINKA. They were cheering me on. Careful, you'll trample the roses.
　
　 　BYELINKOV (returning with the bicycle.) Anthropos is the Greek singular for man. Anthropos in love translates as the Greek and Latin master in love. Of course they cheered you. Their instructor, who teaches them the discipline and contained beauty of the classics, is in love with a sprite on a bicycle. It is a good giggle, isn't it? A very good giggle! I am returning this bicycle to your brother.
　
　　VARINKA. But it is teatime.
　
　　BYELINKOV. Today we will not' have tea.
　
　　VARINKA. But you will have to walk back a mile.
　
　 　BYELINKOV. I have my galoshes on. (Gets on the bicycle.), Varinka, we deserve not to be different. (Begins to pedal. The bicycle doesn't move. )
　
　　VARINKA. Put the kickstand up.
　
　　BYELINKOV. I beg your pardon.
　
　　VARINKA (giggling.) Byelinkov, to make the bicycle move; you must put the kickstand up.
　　　
　　(Byelinkov puts it up and awkwardly falls off the bicycle as it.moves. )
　
　　　
　
　　(Laughing.) Ha ha ha. My little school mouse. You. look so funny! You are the sweetest dearest man in the world. Ha ha ha!,
　　　
　　(Pause.)

Not A Luxury

Being transgendered is not a luxury.

To some of you, such a statement may seem so self-evident that it doesn’t need to be said.  To other people, it may be frivolous, blasphemous or worse.

Let me put it another way:  Living as one’s true self—that is to say, living with integrity and dignity—is not a luxury.

Likewise, loving whomever one loves, and being loved by that person, is also not a luxury.  Nor is having the ability to build a life around one’s relationship with such a person.

The notion that the right to  be ourselves and to love whomever we love are luxuries is, however, deeply ingrained in people’s psyches—not to mention our legal, social and economic systems.  I say this as someone who, until the time of her transition—and, in fact, well into it—thought that living as Justine was not as important or necessary as going to school, having a career, building a family or meeting all sorts of other expectations that had been placed upon me.  

The truth is, of course, that I was never terribly successful at school, work or life itself because I was spending so much of my time trying to live without what I needed, and in alienation from the person I am.  I wasn’t more studious or ambitious than I was because I figured that the grades, the accomplishments, the accolades and everything else simply weren’t going to matter.  Degrees, titles, careers, money, beautiful lovers and spouses, and all of the other accomplishments, accolades and trophies simply wouldn’t mean a damned thing because they wouldn’t make life worth living. 

I am trying not to turn this into a hateful, resentful rant against heterosexual and cisgender people.  What I am trying to do, among other things, is to point out that people who never felt any reason to question their gender identities or any inclination to love anyone who isn’t of the “opposite” gender—or not to marry—are not treated as if their identities and proclivities must be earned, if they are allowed to exist at all.  Of course, we tell people that it’s best to be established in a career, or at least to have a stable job, before marrying someone of the “opposite” gender and having children.  However, if they are having difficulty providing for their kids, or are going through “rough patches” in their relationships, nobody questions their right to be married or have kids.  If anything, they often find sympathy and even help, even if they were “too young” or “too poor” when they got married and had kids.  If one or both members of the couple has a reasonably good insurance plan, it will pay for the hospital stay and most other costs related to giving birth. And, as we all know, there are tax benefits (at least in the US) for being a married heterosexual couple and having kids. 

The fact that there is such approval and support for a man and a woman who have kids tells us that the so-called nuclear family is seen as a foundation of society and, therefore, not a luxury.  The legal, social and economic arrangements I’ve described also allow people in heterosexual marriages, especially if they have kids, to feel secure in themselves in ways denied to those of us whose sense of ourselves and who we love is not condoned, let alone supported, by society in general.  A number of studies show that married people (particularly men) make much more money than single people, and that their kids do better in school.

Now, of course, social conservatives would take that last statement as evidence that marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman, and that only people who are so married should be allowed to give birth to, or adopt, children.  But what it shows me is the importance of having a positive (though not overly egoistic) image of one’s self in attaining loce and other kinds of success.  To understand what I mean, all you have to do is to look at how much more likely despised or disapproved-of people are to be depressed, or to abuse substances, attempt suicide or harm themselves in any number of other ways.  I know this as someone who has done those things and was depressed for about 35 of the first 45 years of her life.  Now, I’m not saying that my gender-identity issues were the sole cause of those problems, and I’m not using the fact that I had to live as someone I’m not as the excuse for underachieving and other failures.  After all, some people have had the same problems as mine and attained success in one way or another.  But even those people—including a few I know personally—wonder how much more they could have achieved, or what different choices they might have made, had they been able to live and love their entire lives as the people they truly are.

Almost nobody denies that those who grow up poor and, as a result, attend bad schools or get substandard nutrition will have a more difficult time in realizing his or her potential.  I think that most of us would want to see talented, sensitive or simply ambitious kids get the kind of education that will help them realize their potential and dreams.  I think most people would also want those kids to get the help they need in overcoming the emotional difficulties they may have as a result of growing up in a fractured environment.

In other words, I don’t think that most of us would regard what those kids need as “luxuries.”  Why, then, shouldn’t we see someone’s need to be true to him- or her- self, and to love and be loved, as anything but necessities?

Relationships Lost By The Lost Generation

A post from Feministe that recently came my way highlighted an aspect of life for the Lost Generation of Transgenders.

During the time in question--roughly from the time The Transsexual Empire was published until transgender movements were revived (and new ones, particularly for female-to-male transgenders, were begun) in the 1990's, many of us entered into long-term relationships or, at least, relationships we or our partners hoped or planned on being long-term.

Many of us married members of the "opposite" gender from the ones to which we were assigned at birth--that is to say, the gender of our mind and spirit.  Others entered into partnerships of one kind or another, and even had children, but never had the ceremony or got the license.  And then others among us were in relationships with people of the genders in which we were living at the time.

Some of us remained in those relationships for years, or even decades.  In addition to having children, some of us bought houses, started businesses and did any number of other things married couples do.  Some of us even changed careers or other aspects of our lives in order to be with our partners, or they did the same for us.

A few of us (I am not among them) are still in those relationships.  Some are living as siblings or roommates; a fortunate few have spouses or partners who accomodated to the new circumstances of the relationship.  Those partners, whether or not they voiced it, realized that they were in love with the person, not his or her gender.

Unfortunately, not all partners saw their love that way.  Many women base their relationships on the manliness of the man, and many men base their feelings on the womanliness of the woman.  Other men and women simply cannot cope with the fact that they loved people who are of their own gender.  The last relationship I had before I started my transition ended for that very reason.

Sometimes, when we "come out" to our partners or spouses, we are accused of having lied to them when we met.   Some may indeed have practiced such a deception.  More of us (I include myself), however, simply could not articulate, with the language available to us and in cultural climate that surrounded us, exactly how we felt.  During the age of the Lost Generation of Transgenders, most people--even LGBT people and those who could accept us--still thought of gender more or less the way people did at the time Christine Jorgensen had her surgery.  Some of us thought we couldn't be trangendered because we weren't gay or even bisexual; given the ideas we had, we could not reconcile, the fact that we were never attracted to someone of the gender to which we were assigned at birth with our knowledge of our true genders, and our love for someone who was of that gender in body as well as in mind and spirit.  And if we didn't have the knowledge and language to explain it, how could our partners or anyone else understand it?

So, many of us were in relationships that neither we nor our partners could understand.  Some of our friendships and business relationships, and even ones with family members, were based on their and our then-limited understanding of our gender identities and sexualities.  In fact, most people--include yours truly--conflated one with the other.  As a result, we not only lost those marriages and partnerships into which we entered; we also lost relationships with friends, family members and professional colleagues or business associates.  

Those relationships are among the casualties, if you will, of the Lost Generation of Transgenders.  I can understand why someone whose spouse says, after a number of years of marriage, that he or she feels he is trapped in the wrong body would feel betrayed, duped or simply angry:  They feel that the assumptions and beliefs on which they based their lives with the other person were false, and--to use a cliche--that the ground has been knocked out from under them. On the other hand, I also understand (perhaps too well) why we asked those people to become our spouses and partners.  Some of us were indeed desperate and hoped that being in a relationship with someone of the "opposite" gender would extinguish our feelings of having bodies that didn't express our true gender identities.  Others simply loved the people they married, even if they couldn't understand how or why.  (Some would argue that true love is that way in any event.)  I don't think many of us deliberately deceived our partners.  However, they may always feel as if we have.  And that may be one of the more damaging legacies of having to be part of the Lost Generation of Transgenders.

When I Wasn't Thinking About What Could've Been

Yesterday it was lunch with Mom and her friend. Tonight, after I took a bike ride, it was out to dinner with Mom and Dad.  We went to what is easily my favorite place to eat in the town in which they live:  Mezza Luna. 

The place is closed on Mondays.  The other day was Easter, and this week is Spring Break in much of the country.  So, the restaurant was full when we got there: We had to wait about fifteen minutes for a table.  In the meantime, Mike, the owner, offered everyone who waited free slices of pizza. And, the waiters and waitresses, who apologized for "backlogs" in the kitchen, brought pieces of dough for kids to play with.

Situations like the one I've described are interesting becuase I don't spend a lot of time around kids or, for that matter, families other than my own.  Sometimes it's hard for me to look at kids, even if they're friendly to me, because I find myself thinking about how I might be different if I had lived as a girl.  But today, I didn't find myself thinking about that.  I also didn't think about what my life might have been like if I'd had kids or if I had the same spouse or partner for most or all of my adult life.

For that matter, I wasn't even thinking about what my relationship with my parents might have been like had I grown up as a girl, or even started my transition at a younger age.  Instead, I enjoyed dinner on a warm, pleasant evening with Mom and Dad.  Perhaps this was one of the reasons to have taken the path I have followed.

Putting the "Lone" in "The Lone Star State"

Most states allow a transgendered person to get a court order to change his or her legal gender.  That court order can, in turn, be used to get a driver's license and other documentation with the person's "new" gender. It can also be used to get a marriage license.


Some states require that a person undergo Genital Reconstructive Surgery (GRS).  Others merely require certification from a doctor that the person suffers from Gender Identity Disorder (GID) or a related condition.  Here in New York, I was able to get such an order after obtaining letters from my doctor and therapist saying that I was receiving treatment, which included my therapy sessions and hormones.  That allowed me to get a non-driver's ID with an "F" in the space for "sex" before I had my surgery.


Texas was one of the last states in this country to provide such an avenue for transgendered people, having done so only two years ago.  Now some of that state's legislators are, in effect, trying to nullify it, at least in part, with a new piece of legislation.  


State Senator Tommy Williams and Representative Lois Kolkhorst have introduced a bill that would prohibit county and district clerks from allowing court orders recognizing sex changes to be used as part of the necessary documentation for obtaining a marriage license.  


If the legislation is passed, Texas would be saying, in effect, that a person's gender is assigned at birth and can never be changed, even if that person's mind and spirit are incongruent with it.   At least, that's what the state would be saying for the purposes of marriage.  And, because the Texas constitution defines marriage as being between one man and one woman, it would mean that, as an example, if I were living in Texas, I could marry only as a man, and that I couldn't marry anyone who is not a woman.  


Now, that may seem like an academic question for me, as I don't plan on getting married or living in Texas any time soon.  But, of course, that is a not-so-academic question for any number of transgender people living in the Lone Star state.  


But this development is most worrisome for an admittedly small (at least relatively speaking) group of transgendered Texans.  They are the ones who were married during the past two years.  If the bill is passed, what will happen to them?  Will their marriages be nullified?  


Ironically, Representative Kolkhorst authored the 2009 law that allows sex change documentation to be used in obtaining marriage licenses.  So far, she hasn't said why she wants to, in essence, reverse her own legislation.