by Ethan Johnson
September 12, 2006

Back in April of this year, I wrote an article titled Wound on the subject of transgendering. I struggled with this topic, and recognized even as I went to press that there were fundamental gaps in my understanding, causing me to not "get it". Koan Bremner, arguably the most prominent TG blogger, offered these thoughts in the comments section of that article:

The challenge for someone without it - someone like you, Ethan - is to decide whether that means you think it therefore can't possibly exist - and thus that "people like me" are mad, deluded, deranged, misguided or whatever. Or, to decide that it just *might* exist - to be very grateful that of all life's travails, at least this is one that you'll never have to endure - and that those who seek a solution (surgical, hormonal or whatever) to that mismatch in their own life are no less worthy than someone who needs insulin for diabetes or open-heart surgery for a congenital coronary defect. No more worthy - but certainly no less.

I am happy to report that I have done some homework, and have narrowed the gaps in my understanding of this subject considerably. I may not "get it" 100%, and I possibly never will. For example, I will never fully "get" the pain of childbirth because, well, I can't bear children. I can surely empathize, however. And that may be the extent of my understanding of transgendering.

Back in April, Seth Finkelstein offered these thoughts:

The flaw in your analogy is that there's no biological way you might "be" a tiger, whereas male and female are both expressions of basic human biology. And even very crudely, it's possible to push that biology in either direction with hormones doses (i.e., taking larges dose of the relevant horomone can create *secondary* sex characteristics, whereas no amount of tiger's milk is going to make you in any way like a tiger).

I watched 2 episodes of a documentary called TransGeneration. Wow, what an eye-opening experience. I never knew how dead-on Seth was, and I can't stress enough that Seth's line about "expressions of basic human biology" rang in my ears like the bells of Notre Dame as I watched the show. For example, "Lucas" was born "Leah". A short haircut and baggy clothes presented the appearance of "college-aged boy". But add hormone therapy into the mix, and holy cow, Lucas is born. Honestly, I could have worked side-by-side with Lucas for months on end and had no idea that he was ever anything other than a "he". Same with "Raci", who really blew my mind. I didn't watch the whole documentary, but my understanding is that Raci didn't actually go on a formal hormone regimen. But no need, really, as Raci was so incredibly feminine that the issue of "lying" came up quite a bit in the episodes I did watch.

The documentary pointed me in the direction of Dr. Marci Bowers' web site, which contains graphic before and after photos. Apparently, I have to lay off of the Wikipedia, as I was led to believe that sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) involved a lot of fakery (hence the title of my original article). No, especially when going male to female. Dr. Bowers is quite the master of SRS.

Finally, lest I give Marlena the short shrift, my thinking was indeed turned closer to the light when she advised me to consider that perhaps in utero, our "wiring" can be criss-crossed and whatnot, effectively inserting a "female" brain into a male body, or vice-versa. She is sick and tired of recommending the book Middlesex to me, and I swear I'm getting to it. I have 3 other books going right now and would like to finish one before starting another.

As an aside, I watched a documentary called A Boy Named Sue on LOGO. The video quality was pretty poor, and made the movie hard to watch (technically speaking), but the subject of the documentary hit on something that I poorly articulated in my original article. As a male, there are certain "guy things" that have essentially been socially imprinted onto me. I suppose those cheeky "man law" beer commercials speak to this, but as the female-to-male subject explained, as a "new" male, he didn't quite have "guy-ness" down. Meaning that there are all sorts of unwritten rules, such as eye contact, with whom, when, what does it mean, and so on. That's not a "wiring" issue. Then again, if I for some reason decided to go male-to-female, I wouldn't have a lot of history with the "mother/daughter" dynamic, for example. Does this make a transgendered person less of a man or woman because these imprints are lacking? I leave that to the philosophers.

Onward then, to the question of whether the Feminist movement ought to recognize transgendered females. I say yes. Especially post-operative. Semantically, I'm more about "humanism" in that I'd prefer more unity rather than hair-splitting about who belongs in which group. And by extension, which groups "matter" more. Pre-op transgenders have enough to worry about without being cast out into some gender purgatory. Fundamentally, if there is a such thing as human rights, then they should apply to all humans. That's where I'm at. <EM>