Book Review

Reviewed by Tracie O'Keefe

(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.)

No Man's Land

by Paula Goergen
Published by Trafford Publishing
I.S.B.N.9781905379286

This is the autobiography of a small boy, growing up in post-second World War Germany, who is uprooted as a teenager and thrust into the Irish countryside against his will by emigrating parents.

It is about a young man escaping a family life in which he often felt abused by or unconnected to his parents. In fact the whole book is about uneasy transitions of many kinds which ultimately involve a middle-class and middle-aged man's journey and struggle to become a woman.

The themes of this book are undoubtedly resistance, repression and avoidance. During the author's journey he became a rural Irish, Catholic, a husband, father, and the archetypal high-flying successful sales executive; all rather than face his deep-seated disturbed feelings about wanting to be seen and treated as female.

With three children Paula says that she regrets nothing about being the Peter that led to him becoming a father.

Along the way, however, there seem to have been oceans of undiscussed feelings which were often typically buried, rather than talked about, in both German and Irish cultures.

The battle that the writer divulges can be a lesson to us all not to build and hide imprisons of our own making. While it is logical to believe that Peter became the man he was because he did not know he could become Paula, that largely seemed to have happened because there was little understanding of personal boundaries. If we live our lives to please other people, in order not to experience the pain of rejection, then we can never truly discover or become who we are.

Paula living post-transition in a concrete tower block in Manchester, England, left this reader with a sense of sadness and great compromise. Even though Paula seems to have made a new life for herself and found meaningful and rewarding employment the reader is left with the impression of great longing for halcyon days living the rural life by a lake in the Irish countryside.

Paula's tale is typical of many post-secondary transsexuals who lived as married men with children and then in a mid life crisis declared that they had always felt they were female.

Peter tried very hard to be a man but felt he could not continue the rest of his life that way. The book is interesting in exposing both Peter's and Paula's inability to celebrate transsexuality.

Many people throughout the world, after undergoing transition, never take the final step of embracing totally who and what they are and end up almost apologizing for their perceived terrible affliction of sex and gender dysphoria.

Paula in intentionally disclosing and unintentionally avoiding the issue of her own transsexuality shows clearly that the physical transition for transsexuals can only be part of the journey of growth that needs to happen to sex and gender dysphoric people. The transition of the mind and personality needs to be the evolution that continues after social transition and surgery. If this never happens, the post-transition person simply becomes the long-suffering opposite sex victim of their original dysphoric self. Many later transitioning transsexuals in reading this book might see themselves and can perhaps begin to come to terms with their own avoidance of who they are.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.