Transmen

Era of the Gender Crosser

by Mary McNamara, © 2001Los Angeles Times

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

Once upon a time in San Francisco, two people fell in love, broke up, got back together, joined their names and had a baby.

A conventional love story, except for one detail: When Patrick and Matt Califia-Rice met 10 years ago, they were women. Women who had felt, from the time they were small, that they should be men.

Matt was the first to exchange desire for reality. On the day the two broke up, he began taking testosterone. He grew a beard, had his breasts removed.

They got back together five years later, and though they could not legally marry, they took each other's names. Patrick, who was still living as a woman, began thinking that he too would become a man.

Then things got complicated.

The couple decided they wanted to have a child. With their unusual history, adoption would be difficult if not impossible, and Patrick had undergone a hysterectomy for medical reasons years before.

The only option, they felt, was for Matt to conceive. Plagued by hormone-induced migraines, he had already stopped taking testosterone and had begun to menstruate again; his doctor had advised a hysterectomy.

Instead, they found several sperm donors, and the handsome, bearded 37-year-old computer network analyst entered the world of morning sickness and water retention. During Matt's third trimester, Patrick began taking testosterone and contemplating chest surgery.

A year ago, their son was born, into a family of two male parents and a world that 10 years ago did not even exist.

Since the story of Christine Jorgenson hit the New York tabloids in 1952, transsexuals have hovered on the edge of public imagination, stock characters in a myth that went something like this: Due to a mistake in nature or biology, a woman is born trapped in a man's body. After years of denial and mental torture, he has a sex-change operation and goes on to live life as a traditional heterosexual woman, revealing her past only as the result of a medical emergency or as a guest on "Jerry Springer."

But in 2001, that scenario is outdated, if not obsolete.

Gender identity disorder, as defined in medical manuals, is characterized by a "persistent discomfort about one's assigned sex." It has no known cause. Numbers are hard to come by in a still-mostly closeted population, but those who are "out" make up an exceedingly diverse group. There are as many female-to-male transsexuals as male-to-female, and they come from every race, religion and cultural background.

Some transsexuals are straight, some are gay and some are bisexual. Some have children before they make the change, some have children after.

Many have sexual reassignment surgery, many do not; many take hormones to change their secondary sex characteristics, some do not; many dress and live as close to the traditional definition of male and female as possible; others are androgynous.

In fact, transsexual, with its historical implications of surgery, is being replaced by the broader term "transgender," which includes cross-dressers, people who identify themselves as stone butch lesbians or flaming queens and anyone who feels or acts outside the traditional gender norms. Within the transgender community, the word "transition" has become a verb to describe what used to be called a "sex-change."

Buoyed by the success of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, freed from enforced isolation by changes in the medical and psychiatric establishment, and brought together by the Internet, the transgender community has emerged in the last five years as a new voice in social activism.

This voice suggests that, although gender is an identity we are born with, an identity that no amount of social influence can sway, it is too great and varied a force to shoehorn into those ubiquitous boxes marked "F" and "M". While human desires-for love, passion, work, respect, friends, family-remain constant, the way those desires are felt and expressed cannot always be categorized at the moment of birth. Anatomy, as feminists have long argued, is not destiny.

"This is the last phase of the sexual identity movement," says Vern Bullough, a U.S.C. adjunct professor of nursing who has written extensively on sexuality in America. "The community is much more organized than it was five years ago. It's learning to live with its own differences, and becoming more mainstream. The long-term effect will be interesting. Certainly, it will blur gender lines even further."

It seems a natural extension of arguments made by feminists, gays and lesbians-and transgender people have found solace, aid and allies in both those communities. But they have also encountered rejection and hostility. Change is difficult, even for revolutionaries.

"Many mixed-race people are saying that race, as a means of categorizing people, no longer works," says Robert Dawidoff, a history professor at Claremont Graduate University. "Transgender people are showing us that gender, as a similar construct, has no meaning either. Which is, of course, very frightening to many people."

A Difficult Pregnancy for Matt and Patrick

For Matt and Patrick, that was clear right away. It was a difficult pregnancy, physically and emotionally. Tasks most couples take for granted-finding a doctor and a birthing class, telling family and friends-became dramatic events.

To strangers, Matt looked like a man trying to hide a beer belly with bigger and bigger overalls.

His appearance at a birthing class caused a stir. "We had found an instructor whose partner was transgender," says Patrick, a psychotherapist and the author of several books, including "Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism" (Cleis Press, 1997), " so that was no problem. But the class was pretty frosty."

"Matt was very clearly a man when he walked in," says midwife Kim Touevs, whose classes are geared toward lesbian families. "And he was also very clearly pregnant. Everyone was very respectful, but they were waiting to hear what Pat and Matt had to say in the introduction circle."

The two were very open, says Touevs, who has since had two other transgender parents in her class, and by the end of the session, everyone seemed comfortable, or as comfortable as a room full of expectant couples can be.

"We had to buy a lot of chocolate," Patrick says. "I have always found that it's kind of hard for people to say nasty things after you've fed them."

A man, however, cannot have a baby without someone taking umbrage, and to the couple's dismay, the most hurtful criticism came from some of their friends.

In San Francisco, they were part of one of the largest and most visible transgender communities in the world. But within that world, they were a scandal.

"A lot of [female-to-male transsexuals] are very invested in seeing themselves as "real men", " says Patrick. "And they said "real men" don't have babies. But Matt said "real men" don't have hysterectomies either. He refused to be shamed."

"One of my girlfriends said during an argument, I can't believe you were ever a woman" " says James Green.

And I said, "I wasn't. That's the whole point. I was something else."

How does he think of himself now?

"I am a man," he says, "with an unusual history."

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