Just when I think I've heard it all...


...I often hear something new! The most recent such occurrence happened when I read Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. This is a novel about a young butch who believes herself to be transsexual, but with time learns she can be herself even if what that is defies definition. Following is an excerpt from the book following Jess' decision to stop taking male hormones.

"I didn't regret the decision to stop taking hormones. I wouldn't have survived much longer without passing. And the [top] surgery was a gift to myself, a coming home to my body. But I wanted more than just to barely exist, a stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was, to define myself. Who ever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes....

I knew I was changing when people began to gawk at me again. It had taken a year. My hips strained the seams of men's pants. My beard grew wispy and fine from electrolysis. My face looked softer. Once my voice was hormone-lowered, however, it stayed there. And my chest was still flat. My body was blending gender characteristics, and I wasn't the only one who noticed.

I remembered what it was like to walk a gauntlet of strangers who stare--their eyes angry, confused, intrigued. Woman or man: they are outraged that I confuse them. The punishment will follow. The only recognition I can find in their eyes is that I am "other." I am different. I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness."

The book continues with Jess' journey into the world as herself, her gender unidentifiable to others and ultimately irrelevant to those who come to love her.

The "eureka!" for me was a new awareness that the pairing of physiology and gender is rather arbitrary and thus artificial. My acceptance of the importance of the matching of body and gender has been reinforced over the years of working in therapy with many transgendered clients. Invariably, such clients defined their goals in terms of "passing" and ultimately bringing their anatomy in line with their gender identity. Rarely have I met a client who was comfortable with presenting an ambiguous image or who did not have the need to impress upon others what his/her gender identity was. This is no doubt a reflection of society's emphasis on the consistency of one's presentation with one's identity. There is an expectation that women will be bosomy, smooth-skinned, and clothed in female attire, while men will be hirsute, muscled and dressed in a way that identifies them as male.

The rare individual who challenges society's demands for gender consistency will be punished, as Jess predicts. Such punitive responses include shunning, ridicule, aggression and exclusion. Jess experienced all these as a young butch. She found societal acceptance as she began her transition and succeeded in "passing." However, she could not integrate the expectation of being either man or woman with her own perception of being a far more complex individual than either of these terms suggested to her. She was not willing to give up that part of herself that could not find voice in either a male or female presentation. This book made me wonder what each of us gives up as we seek acceptance as a unidimensional gender identifiable individual.


Dr. Anderson is a therapist in the San Francsico Bay Area. She can be reached at 415-776-0139. This article originally appeared in Devil Woman, the newsletter of the Diablo Valley Girls.


© 1996 by Barbara Anderson & 3-D Communications, Inc.