Book Review

Reviewed by Katherine Cummings

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"The Real Possibility Of Joy by Josephine Emery

The Real Possibility of Joy

by Josephine Emery
Published by Pier 9, Millers Point, 2009 I.S.B.N. 978-1741966107

Having read Josie Emery's book virtually in one sitting, I find I am ambivalent when it comes to assessing it. As the memoir of an intelligent and educated person who has known the frustration and heartbreaks associated with transition from one gender role to the other, it may help other transgenders striving to reconcile their suppressed reality with a world that is often censorious and cruel.

Emery is an award-winning writer and screenwriter and her name (or her former name, John Emery) has been associated with such prestigious film-makers as Philip Noyce and Scott Hicks. She has been the head of the screenwriting department at the Australian Film and Radio School and Director of the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

She was born in New Guinea soon after the end of World War 2 but her written record commences with her childhood in South Australia, where her father took up farming.

As befits a screenwriter her account uses many flashbacks and we move back and forth in the structure of her narrative, experiencing the factors which impelled her to take up the various callings of her young manhood, and affected her inner need to be female by sublimating it in sexual relationships with a number of women, most of them artistic and some openly bisexual.

Much of what Emery writes will be familiar to male-to-female Transgenders. The early desire to be female while lacking enough background information for self-acceptance, the deliberate adoption of macho professions and pursuits, proving one's masculinity to oneself, the gradual acceptance of the compromise of cross-dressing in lieu of full gender change. And then the eventual harrowing realisation that there is no other way to survive than to become the person one has always been in the recesses of one's mind, and to go forward after transition to a new life and a new niche in society.

Emery lived and worked in some of the harsher environments of Australia, mining and rigging steel. She enjoyed the camaraderie of strong, tough men, working beside them by day, drinking with them at night, yet always keeping a few items of female gear in her locker for her secret times. Like many of us she sublimated her desire for femininity into a belief, or pretence, that she was a transvestite, and, like many of us, went into heterosexual relationships, and even marriage, in the belief that she could rid herself of the need for the woman within.

Like most of us, she failed.

Personally, I could have done with fewer descriptions of Josie's sex life. I am more interested in the workings of a person's mind than I am in fervid descriptions of sex, such as, "I would wake no more with that crowbar between my legs and the fierce need to plunge it into a quenching pool of female flesh." For those who want to know what others do for sexual gratification and enjoy purple prose and soft-core porn, I will simply say that Josie deals frequently with the kind of recreation where two or three gather together and do things to each other in bed.

Josie also spends a significant amount of space talking of her sleeping dreams and confused illusions, and these spill over into areas of spirituality and even religion; areas I have no interest in and little time for. But if that's your thing, again, there's plenty of it.

Josie's family follow a familiar pattern, blowing hot and cold, bigoted and understanding, cruel and compassionate by turns, as many families do. She ploughs on, self-obsessed and self-doubting, exultant and depressed, artistically and financially triumphant, then living on a pittance with the bitterness of failure. Like most of us she rides a roller coaster of determination and uncertainty.

We never gain a real understanding of the women in Josie's life. They are cardboard cutouts and the only surfaces we see are those that face Josie (or her previous persona, John). Uniformly they turn from her when they understand the depth of her need to be female. For some, her cross-dressing is okay as a sex-game, or as a symbol of their domination over a sissified male, but as a life pattern it repels and nauseates them, as it does her mother, her children, and her siblings. Josie's father, incidentally, is the archetypal abusive male, bullying his wife and bonding with his sons when he doesn't feel like assaulting them.

Josephine Emery - Post-Thailand

Toward the end of the account, when Josie has successfully negotiated transition in her workplace (fortunate to be in an institution which was both "arty" and educational) she indulges in what I can only see as a spiteful need to prove that she is better than anybody around her. Invited to a Christmas lunch at the home of a trans woman she insults the home of her hostess by describing the bird feeder "covered in droppings" and dogs which "came and went" causing Josie and her newly-met friend "Tracy", to "sit carefully to avoid contamination". I was the hostess on this occasion, There are no droppings on my bird feeders, and my gentle, friendly dogs do not contaminate. Josie came to my home as an invited guest, because I thought she might like to spend the day with people who could understand the difficulties of being newly transitioned and alone at Christmas. In return she sneers at the appearance of my other transgender guests and invents discomfort in the "non-trans" people present. Is this her idea of humour? It seems more like gross discourtesy and an intolerance of, and unwillingness to accept, human differences.

Josie also tells of falling head over heels in love at this lunch with the stunningly beautiful "Tracy" who turns out to be transgendered, much to Josie's surprise. She pursues Tracy for the next several pages, but even in her romantic throes she presents herself as the dominant and talented partner. The identity of the subject of her crush is unmistakeable despite her disclaimer at the beginning of the book that the women she has been closest to, (Diana, her wife, Mandy, a lover, and Tracy, her soul mate) do not exist as I have described them".

I do not know "Diana" or "Mandy", but I agree that "Tracy" does not exist as Josie describes her. The real "Tracy" is a multitalented and highly successful writer and composer, witty, energetic and creative, yet she comes across in Josie's eyes as a lovelorn sex-toy, desperately in love with Josie' s residual masculinity.

There are enough throwaway lines and clues to ensure that anyone who knows "Tracy" in real life knows who is being talked about. This seems both unfair and unethical. Either you use a person's real name (preferably after showing them the passage and asking permission) or you make an effort to disguise the character by changing venues, characteristics and events, as well as names. Or you leave them out completely.

Josie's relationship with "Tracy" founders on Josie's unwillingness to remain male and so she goes forward to reassignment and then plunges into a desperate campaign to attain a male lover via dating services. Oh, dear. The campaign is not what one would call a success and Josie becomes increasingly concerned that she may be assaulted in the street,or even murdered. She attributes this to her appearance but it is more likely that it relates to the area in which she lives, and possibly her own insecurity which can often cue strangers into aggressive behaviour.

It seems that Josie is, and always has been, desperate to excel and is self-obsessed with the need to see herself as superior to those around her. Yet she always retains cobwebs of self-doubt which remain unswept in the cornice of her mind. This self-doubt is borne out in the closing passages of the book where, after suffering one too many confrontations in public, she sets out to remodel herself facially, undergoing revisions in Thailand to almost every part of her face (hair and hairline, frown lines, brow level, nose, upper lip distance from nose, Adam's apple ... ).

The revised version of Josie looks in the minor after recovery and sees "a wide-eyed, smooth-browed, tilt-nosed beauty with a pouting mouth ...". It is not recorded whether she actually kisses her own reflection. She draws attention to the high rate of suicide in post-op transgender women, apparently unaware that it is forty times higher in pre-op transgender women, and in one passage she appears to endorse the ridiculous idea that women naturally speak with a terminal rise. The terminal rise is a recent, culturally imposed, and highly irritating characteristic of some women who appear to be asking permission to voice their opinions by turning every statement into a question.

For a professional writer she commits unfortunate errors. She seems to confuse "effete" with "effeminate", "uninterested" with "disinterested" and does not understand that pronouns which are the object of a verb take the objective case. We are subjected to solecisms such as "This thing defies gravity!" "he said to my brother and I" and "There was nothing left now between my wife and I". If I were charitable I might assume she had illiterate editors. But why should I be charitable? She has been charitable neither to me nor to my transgender friends. To put a small spin on an old saying; the enemy of my friends is my enemy. Nemo me impune lacessit.

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.