Emily Alford




John to Joan to John Again
or
Gender Isn't Mutable

By Emily Alford




T

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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