I GREW UP IN A small town in North
Central Ohio. To give you some perspective, the
nearest movie theater was 35 miles away. I was a
tomboy: never quiet, demure or comfortable in
the outfits my mother and gran loved so much to
see me in. My mother has even admitted that
getting me into a dress beyond the age of three
inevitably required some form of bribery. I did
too well in school. I was too interested in
sports. I wasn't blossoming into the kind of
girl I was expected to be. It was a phase, they
clucked, trying to comfort themselves with the
warm fuzzy blanket of denial.
I never did outgrow that phase, I'm afraid. I
did, however, grow tired of the stress of living
my life, having only the folks who knew me
intimately see me as I saw myself, understand me
as I understood myself. It was no longer enough
to have those few people know me as I was inside
. . .but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I came out as a dyke at 19. I was a sophomore
at West Virginia University. A friend, a
seasoned dyke of the ripe old age of 17 with
access to two fake ids took me to the gay bar.
We entered through the back alley. The graffiti
on the wall was anti-gay epithet upon anti-gay
epithet. The first person I met told me I was
too pretty to be a lesbian. I went and got my
first flat top. No one ever told me that
again.
I read an article in the lesbian magazine,
On Our Backs in late 1990 about FTMs. I
showed it to my femme girlfriend. She raged,
"Don't you dare do that to me! I've already had
one lover do that to me and that's one too
many!" She didn't last.
I met my first FTM in May of 1991 in Chicago
at IML. I was being the cute baby butch and
since I couldn't afford the ticket, helped out
by running the office. I used the office suite
to host a party for out of town leather dykes.
Three of the people who came were FTMs who had
just started hormones. I met them one right
after the other and had to rush out to smoke a
half a pack of cigarettes. (and yes, I've quit,
thanks for asking)
I had just had one of those moments of
clarity after which you know your life has
irreversibly changed, though you're not quite
sure how. I didn't know if I wanted to be them,
or have sex with them. . . but I knew I wanted
something - so I followed them around all
weekend like a puppy.
They were kind, and sexy, and better yet,
they kept in touch. The other person I met that
weekend who changed my life was Steve Stafford.
He was working the Bear Magazine booth. He was
the genius behind such things as the Lone
Star Saloon logo and the first issue of
PowerPlay.
Three months later, I'd managed to land in
San Francisco with little more than the promise
of a couch to sleep on for two weeks and $300. I
left everything I'd known and moved to a city
I'd never been in because I knew they had
services there for FTMs, and a cute girl who
wore lacy red bras under her ACT UP t-shirts and
was a really good time. In a month, I was out of
a place to stay, had broken up with Miss Lacy
Red Bra and still didn't care because I'd met a
bunch of guys like me.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do with
this newfound information about myself. Hormones
and surgery sounded really scary, and I'd heard
what all the other dykes said about the FTMs who
went before me, "She was just trying to be like
him, because he was the only real one . . . she
was just really a misogynist. . . she just wants
male privilege."
The pronoun she was used to simultaneously
deny an FTM individual identity and claim
kinship with them in such a way as to imply that
no matter what they did, or how they felt,
they'd always fundamentally be dykes. It was as
if we would never be allowed to differentiate.
We were all guilty of not suffering from lesbian
merge. Not with our partners, but with some
vague archetypal idea about how all dykes were
supposed to identify. Of course no one bothered
to check to see if they identified that way
themselves.
Please, don't start hurling the accusations
of dyke bashing. I think dykes have really
changed in the last ten years in their opinions
and treatment of FTMs. But I don't feel like I
have to be silent about the shit I got from
dykes just so they don't have to suffer bad
press.
Then, I got to the place that I mentioned
before, where it wasn't enough to have my lovers
and friends know the Inside Me. I wanted the
Outside Me to better reflect the Inside Me. I
wanted my own facial hair, not some I had to put
on with spirit gum and then pray I wouldn't
sweat so much it would fall off. I wanted more
muscle mass. I wanted a deeper voice. I'd heard
of this thing called a sex drive, and I wanted
to try that, too.
At the same time, I spent many long nights
bitching out my higher power. I didn't want
this. It was too much work, certainly not my
idea of a good time. It was too costly for a guy
with his first steady job and health coverage
with an HMO that specifically denied paying for
transsexual reassignment.
I took the empty handed leap into the void. I
risked everything that I knew, and everything I
had, and I wasn't sure what I was going to get.
But I made that appointment with the Hormone
Lady. I told her my story. She told me she liked
my purple doc martens. I was unstrung. She told
me I sounded like a "typical transsexual." I was
crushed. Surely I was more special than that!
But she was wise. She has been through this
process many times before.
She helped me sort out how to tell my mother.
My job already knew and was a supportive place.
Well, sort of. They'd hired me as a gay man but
were then kind of picky that I didn't start
hormones soon enough for them.
They saw my inability to pass as a handicap.
They didn't think I could be an effective HIV
educator unless I could get my dick sucked while
working, apparently.
I took my first shot of testosterone. I lost
my friends. Not all of them right away, mind
you. But slowly, each of them came up against
something that they could no longer tolerate
about me. I can't tell you how often my
character defects have been attributed to the
evils of testosterone. Everything that was wrong
with my life was because I was taking T;
everything good or right in my life was because
I had been socialized as a woman.
Testosterone. I found myself going through
male adolescence and menopause at the same time,
only in dog years. Boy, that sure was pretty. I
learned to make friends who had an apparent
super-human capacity for tolerating repetitive
talking.
I also learned to pick my battles.
One night I was out at a dyke club with my
then girlfriend from London. We were getting
ready to leave when Kim ran into a woman she
knew from London. She said to Kim, "your
girlfriend is really cute." Kim replied, "That's
not my girlfriend, that's my boyfriend." The
woman grabbed my tit and said, "He looks like a
she to me!"
I just left. As we walked home, the incident
began to go over and over again in my head. I
felt that kind of spinning silent rage that
consumes your every waking thought. It began to
eat at me, so I went in search of this
self-proclaimed Queen of Pain of the London
leather dyke scene. I found her. I spent several
hours talking to her about why I chose to
transition, what it was about for me. . . really
thought I'd gotten somewhere. A few weeks later,
the news filtered back from London that she said
she'd been to America and she'd talked to FTMs
and they were just a bunch of dykes who weren't
Oklahoma with their feminine side. Obviously she
hadn't seen me in my prom dress.
I learned not to educate people at my own
emotional expense. I also learned that if I had
hit her back, I wouldn't have been the evil
testosterone monster, just someone who was
sexually assaulted who didn't get to fight back
as a kid.
Life went on. I lost one job, I got another
in a bar. Steve Stafford, who I'd kept in touch
with while an outreach worker South of market
introduced me to the manager of The Lone Star
Saloon.
When I started working there I looked like a
dyke. The only job they'd give me was a barback
- picking up glasses and getting beer from the
cooler. . . I wasn't allowed to pour drinks.
There was a part of the clientele who were upset
that there was a girl working in a men's bar.
You might know them.
They're the men possessed by an obsession
with what Eric Rofes refers to as the "ick
factor." Near as I can tell, they think women's
genitals are gross and are possessed with the
fear, despite the fact that no one is going to
make them have sex with women, the fear that a
woman's genitals might turn them on. There were
also customers who were supportive, but at first
they were few and far between.
The guys I worked with were different. They
didn't care about anything but the fact that I
did my job, and I did it well.
The manager told me I'd never tend bar there
because, to the customers, I'd never be anything
but a woman. I mean, it had been three weeks and
I'd never even fucked one customer. That proved
I was not sexually marketable enough to put
behind the bar.
They promoted two or three people ahead of
me. Then I taught myself a new skill. Yelling. I
had been so inculcated into lesbian process that
I kept trying the "use I statements. . . this
isn't working for me. . . . what I really need
from you is. . ." There was a new manager. (I
mean, it was a gay bar and it had been more than
2 weeks) I walked into his office and left the
door open. "You don't get to fucking treat me
this way!"
Just loud enough for everyone to hear, I
continued, "You will give me bartending shifts
or I swear to god I will sue your ass and I will
own this place and then you will have to work
for me!"
I suddenly had three shifts a week. The men
who came to the bar became more supportive as I
became more male looking. It's as if, despite
their good intentions, they could not honor an
identity that they did not see. Slowly, they
became my family. My extended, dysfunctional,
Lone Star family. Suddenly, it was like having
1500 mother hens clucking around and
congratulating themselves on my progress towards
manhood. "Oh look, honey. Matt's growing a
beard. . . awww you look like a real boy
now."
The family seemed to grow as the early 90s
gay community in San Francisco grew. Sometimes
the family got smaller. The day Steve Stafford
died, I found out because I came to work and saw
his rubber ducky collection behind the bar in a
big glass jug. That family got smaller last
week, when one the guys I used to sell beer to
helped crash a plane in a rural Pennsylvania
field. I didn't know him by name, I just
recognized his face. That was true of so many
people I knew at the Lone Star.
The guys I worked with seemed to have this
super human ability to remember everyone's name,
who their last 16 lovers were and it wasn't
until I realized it was because they'd either
fucked them or their boyfriends that I realized
I wasn't retarded, just a bit Victorian by their
standards.
No matter how many nice interactions with
other fags I had, there was still what I
referred to as my "Daily Reminder." Some men
just felt that they needed to remind me that
they knew and that to them, I would never be
just another guy. They used the pronoun she a
lot. When I would ask them not to do that,
they'd almost always say, "Oh, I call everybody
she." They used the pronoun she to shame me, and
to let me know that no matter how I felt, or
what I did to my body, I would never be a "real
man." Like the guy who walked up to me, pointed
to my beard and said, "Is that makeup?" "Yes!" I
replied, "It's Clinique!"
I also had the best girlfriend in the world,
but between visits from London, something
changed. I couldn't put my finger on it, so to
speak. I didn't know what it was. I'd always had
sex with men and women, even when I identified
as a dyke. I had not planned on my primary
preference changing.
I was riding home with one of the guys I
worked with at the bar and I was mentioning that
I didn't know what the hell my problem was. She
was perfect, what was wrong with me?"
He very kindly turned to me and said, "Duh,
Matt! You're a fag!"
Oh dear, another moment of clarity.
I didn't know much about men. I'd been a dyke
for most of my adult life. I was thankful for my
job in a bar where I could learn how to be
around other gay men. I got to stand behind the
relative safety of the bar and watch a world
unfold.
I got to see the diversity of the world of
men - from nipple sizes and shapes to dating
patterns, cruising and sex. That position,
immersed in men unselfconsciously doing their
thing with other men (or at least trying to)
made it much easier to begin to deal with my
homophobia.
Though I had been a dyke, my issues about men
having sex with men were quite a bit different
than my issues about women having sex with
women. I was gifted with a series of male lovers
in early transition who were kind, and willing
to show me what made them feel good, and though
none of them had ever had sex with anyone who
had parts like mine, they were very into me and
willing to learn my body too. I could sing the
praises of my string of nelly boyfriends, but
not today.
I'm glad I worked through my issues. I didn't
really have sex with anyone for the first 18
months I was on hormones. I had just taken a
really hard look at my patterns and decided if I
wanted to sustain an intimate relationship, my
body would have to be involved, too. Like many
survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I had to
fight long and hard to see my body as deserving
of pleasure, and had to get to a point where I
could do that first for myself, and then later
with other people.
I didn't feel just because I happen to be
transsexual I should take on this shame about my
body that I'd just worked so hard to get rid of
because some psychiatrist says that's what it
takes to be a real transsexual.
I also had to learn how to dress. As I began
to pass, I realized I'd gone from being a really
big butch dyke with a motorcycle and the
requisite flannel shirt collection to being some
redneck cartoon character of a guy with a tiny
crapped out motorcycle who would only wear
motorcycle boots, jeans and t-shirts. I realized
if I was ever going to get laid as a gay man I'd
have to learn a whole new language of fashion.
It made outgrowing all of my clothes twice not
such a tragedy.
And goddess bless George. The big queen from
Texas she handed me, who not only took me
shopping, but also made me watch classic movies
once a week so I'd have some clue what all the
other men were talking about.
I still hadn't had chest surgery. The stress
was becoming more and more unbearable. It made
me keep a physical distance from other men at
the bar that was read as disinterest or
animosity. Guys would go to grab my nipple and
get quite a bit more than they bargained for.
One guy yelled, "You have tits!" I said, "Can
you tell I'm white, too?"
I eventually changed schools and ended up in
one with a pretty good financial aid department
complete with its own Lone Star fag. I took out
a loan, and paid for my chest surgery. I have to
say, that chest surgery was probably the best
thing I have ever done to improve my quality of
life. I was, after surgery, able to be more
comfortable with my lovers when I was naked. But
even more, it was a huge relief to not have to
worry if my tits showed every time I got dressed
to leave the house.
It was positively liberating to be able to
walk down the street in warm weather in just one
t-shirt. I caught my reflection in every window
I walked by for months. I got to buy shirts one
full size smaller.
My life is pretty different now. I have a son
named Blake. I know a lot more about what is
going on, on Sesame Street than on Castro
Street. I live most of my adult life from
Blake's 8pm bedtime to mine at 11.
My partner and I have just split up, so now
I'm a single parent of a son who is fondly
referred to by his day care provider with a term
in Spanish that when translated to English
basically means "Blond Earthquake".
He is my biological child. I gave birth to
him looking no different than I look today. I
had quit taking hormones after a couple of years
because of disabling migraine headaches. I had
always wanted kids, and the doctor suggested a
hysterectomy, so I decided before I threw it
away, I'd use it.
It wasn't an attempt to make a statement
about my gender identity, I still saw myself as
male. I am just able to acknowledge that though
very male, I had only one set of reproductive
organs, and they only worked one way. This was
apparently very upsetting for many people in the
FTM community and when the news of my pregnancy
broke, I received everything from death threats
to entire websites dedicated to the many ways in
which I am an abomination.
I just feel really lucky to have such a great
kid, and to have him after two years of
struggles with gastric reflux and asthma -
healthy. I think for me part of the decision to
parent was about wanting to be at the beginning
of someone's life instead of the end.
I am also grateful for this conference and
the chance to help foster a better understanding
of transgender, transsexual and genderqueer
people. Reality dictates that the portrait of
transsexual sexual health is not as barren as
some would paint it.
Transsexuals, particularly FTM transsexuals
are not all stone butches on testosterone who
still won't take off their pants. Transsexuals
and transgender people can have satisfying
sexual lives with their own bodies, whether
creator given or surgically created.
Many FTMs limit their same sex contact to
casual sex in sex clubs, bathhouses and other
public sex venues because there it is possible
to have sexual contact with men without
disclosing their trans status. It is sex that
validates their male identities, but is often
unsafe, both in respect to HIV and STD
transmission and physical safety. This
profoundly affects their self-esteem and
increases their isolation.
I want you to know that it's unlikely that
you will ask me a question that I won't be
willing to answer, and indeed that I have not
answered before. I'm totally not offended by
reasonable questions, and if you're too shy to
speak out in a group, feel free to find me later
and ask. Thanks.
Paper presented to the
New England Gay Men's Health Summit,
Hartford G & L Health Collective Saturday
September 22, 2001 (c) 2001 Matt Rice
—by Matt Rice, USA
Used with permission.
