John to Joan to John Again
or
Gender Isn't Mutable
By Emily Alford

hose of us old enough to remember may recall hearing a
quarter-century ago about a medical tragedy. A very young boy, one of a
set of twins, was having penile surgery performed, and it went badly
wrong. The damage was so bad that with medical advice the parents decided
to let SRS be done and raise the child as a girl. As we read the news at
the time, many of us probably thought "why couldn't it have happened to
me?" I certainly did.
Now the story has returned, reported as serious news both in THE
NEW YORK TIMES (reprinted here last week) and in TIME. It's a sad one,
though the ending has proven happy. Despite careful socialization and
despite hormones at adolescence, "Joan" did not become a happy young
woman, at all. She was teased mercilessly for a tomboy appearence and
style that she just could not help. She felt profoundly that something
was wrong.
Finally, in adolescence, she learned the truth, and decided that
SRS or not she was going to live as what he had been born. His parents
supported him and made the brave decision to simply be public with it all.
That included staying in the same town and letting the children who had
teased Joan so terribly know the truth. Restored-John proved vastly
happier than Joan had ever been. Previous tormentors became very
protective and supportive friends. John is married now, with adopted
children, and apparently a very good father.
It may seem that this tale with a good ending undoes the whole
transgender project. There is a subtext in the TIME article to that
effect. Rather than crossing the line, either partially or entirely, it
might seem, we transgendered ought to learn to live with what nature gave
us.
I don't think so. Nature gave us what we cannot help feeling as
well as how our bodies are shaped. To me the story seems to give reason
for those of us who know we must cross the line entirely to do it, and for
all of us to be glad we live in a time when crossing in some way is more
and more possible, even, perhaps, acceptable.
When the accident happened, many theories were in the air to the
effect that gender just did not count, that growing up as a boy or a girl
was almost entirely socialization, until adolescent hormones might kick
in. That idea underpinned the decision to raise John as Joan. The kernel
of feminist insight in that point remains true: barring reproduction,
either people born into either sex can do almost anything of which people
born into the other are capable.
But activity is not identity. John/Joan/John's case suggests a
gender imprinting that well preceded his accident, his surgery, and his
very unhappy growing up as a girl. That imprinting could not be denied.
Young Joan's schoolmates knew that something was wrong, perhaps because
Joan knew it too.
Most of us probably remember schoolmates who knew that something
was wrong with us too, and who made our lives miserable because of it.
Just as Joan's boyness could not be hidden or denied, neither could the
girlness that I felt. My family and my playground culture would not have
been symathetic to the truth then, so I stayed secret and tried my best to
conform. I wonder how those people would feel now.
About the same time that I was feeling what I felt and wanting
what I wanted in a little town in New York State, the boy who would become
Rebecca Allison, M.D., was feeling and wanting much the same in Greenwood,
Mississippi. One of the most moving passages in Becky's fine Web
autobiography "The Real Life Test" tells of going to her high school
reunion and being welcomed for who she always had been and now visibly
was. Like John's schoolmates, the people there responded well. They were
adults by then, of course, but one would not think of the
Mississippi/Yazoo Delta as a bastion of advanced thought. My own
schoolmates might respond just the same. Probably, they would not be
surprised. After all, they knew me.
John/Joan/John's story has truths to tell us, I think. One truth
is to confirm that what we are in gender terms develops very early. That
truth clearly held for John; it's equally true for those of us who do
desperately desire what John was given but could never bring himself to
want at all. He was as truly transgendered as we; we are as truly
transgendered as he. The only difference is that for us the accident
behind it all did not happen when a scalpel slipped.
The story's other lesson is that self-recognition,
self-acceptance, and a willingness to say "this is what I am, unusual or
not," probably offer the best road to peace, both within ourselves and
with the people among whom we live.
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