For the first 42 years of his life Matt
Kailey, a writer and lecturer, lived as a
heterosexual woman in middle class USA. In 1997
he was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder
and took the only course of action ‘that
made sense to me’.
Kailey has very little else to say about his
pre-transition life or his decision to
transition and certainly that is not the point
of the book, nevertheless, he had a fascinating
road to transition and I would like to have
known more about it.
Unlike most pre-transitional men, who
commonly go to great lengths to minimise or
disguise their female presentation, Kailey
plucked his eyebrows and had a breast
enlargement in an attempt to live up to
society’s image of the ideal woman.
‘I always felt inadequate as a
woman,’ he says. ‘I never felt
‘female’ enough.’
But as the sub-title suggests, this book is
not so much about the man as about the
‘experience’, particularly in a
strictly bi-gendered world. Kailey describes
himself as a gay man but in doing so makes a
case against a strictly two-gendered system.
He is man who doesn’t crave genital
surgery, who is happy to be described as a
transsexual rather than strictly
‘male’ and who was reluctant and even
sad to have to change his birth certificate.
‘It’s almost like denying I was
ever born at all,’ he writes.
He is keen to emphasise that transition is
not a one-size-fits-all process. Not all
transsexual men desire genital surgery, or any
surgery for that matter. He strongly believes
that people have to be comfortable with where
they’re at.
Kailey may be an outspoken advocate on trans
matters but he believes in using humour and
reason rather than tub thumping to get his
message across. What is it, he asks, about
‘fat tissue and milk ducts’ that so
excites and offends at the same time?
He is both amazed and excited when, having
appeared bare-chested in public for the very
first time, he drew no reaction at all, wryly
observing that in having chest surgery he’d
effectively been neutered. When exactly do
man-boobs become mammaries and would an
uncovered woman without breasts get
arrested?
Part memoir, part polemic, part practical
guide, Just Add Hormones is told with
humour, in an easy style that engages the
reader. There’s a little bit of something
for everyone, for those who have started
transition, considering it or are merely
curious.
