[Commentary] [USA] Female-to-male alongside pop culture

[Stephanie Stevens]

The Boston Phoenix, MA, USA


Female-to-male alongside pop culture

Year in transition

By THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | May 23, 2012


[Photo: MR. MCBEE A tattooed guy in glasses, a romantic, a feminist.]

About this time a year ago, I watched Chaz Bono on Late Night with
David Letterman try to explain to America what it meant to be
transgender. Letterman's hammy reaction made me clammy with fear. Oh
god, I thought, terrified.

I'd had chest-reconstruction surgery at 27, and written about living
"between genders" publicly. But now, at 30 years old, I was about to
begin injecting testosterone.

Going on hormones was scary. I was afraid of being alone,
misunderstood, alien. And Bono complicated things for me. I didn't see
myself in his story, but he was suddenly my mascot. I watched him tell
Letterman, "When puberty hit, it was a difficult time for me. I really
felt like my body was betraying me," and thought: fuck. This was the
party line, the story trans folks often told to answer a questioning
public. Maybe it was true for Bono, but I've never felt betrayed or
trapped by my body. I've just always looked like a guy in my mind, and
at some point I realized the world didn't see me like I saw myself,
and I got sick of it.

Five days after Bono's appearance, I sent the e-mail announcing that I
was transitioning, that my new name was Thomas, that as a result of
testosterone, my chest would grow broader and my voice deeper. "Some
of you may have seen Chaz Bono on Letterman," I wrote to aunts and
in-laws, old friends and exes. "He is doing a lot of good for trans
visibility. He is also reiterating a story that I don't quite share,
so I wanted to emphasize that I don't feel I'm 'a man trapped in a
woman's body' exactly." Because I didn't. My gender was more
complicated than that, and if I was doing this, I wasn't going to
simplify myself for anybody.

In June, as I learned to shave and my voice cracked, transgender woman
CeCe McDonald was charged with murder in Minneapolis. McDonald, who
said she was defending herself after being taunted with transphobic
and racist slurs and sustaining a laceration to her face, ultimately
would plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the stabbing death
of a man with a swastika tattooed across his chest. McDonald's case
sparked outrage, and I thought about her often as the months went on
and I enjoyed the privileges of not only "passing," but doing so as a
white man.

What I mean is: I don't believe there's anything wrong with my body,
and I'm not sure if any of us are born in the "wrong" one so much as
into a culture that values some bodies a whole lot more than others.

Meanwhile, the summer marched on. Bono was cast on Dancing with the
Stars, much to the ire of a group of busybody Christian moms, for whom
the sky was falling. But Bono pressed on, and his very public
transition was mostly a watershed moment in mainstream understanding
of the "T" at the end of the mostly "LG"-visible community. As he very
publicly negotiated his relationships with his mother, his weight, and
his girlfriend, I tried to maneuver in the world of cisgender men.
Every day my body tilted more male, and I spent a lot of time
wondering how to handle the dude-to-dude camaraderie of bros and
jocks. I was afraid to swim with my shirt off or to use the men's room
at a dive bar. But I sucked it up and did it anyway, peacocking my way
through even the most uneasy moments, because I was becoming the man I
wanted to be, fears or not.

It helped that stories about transgender people multiplied throughout
the winter, until it seemed every few days brought something: a
beautiful story about trans kids and the Boston-based Gender
Management Services Clinic, or the efforts of Janet Mock, editor at
people.com, whose #girlslikeus campaign raised trans visibility on
Twitter. In January, a Colorado Girl Scout troop accepted into their
ranks seven-year-old Bobby Montoya, a transgender girl, and allies and
trans folks alike bought celebratory boxes of Thin Mints.

I learned to self-inject directly into my thigh, the accoutrements of
my hormones neatly stacked in my closet alongside my exercise
equipment. I'd learned to hold the syringe like a dart, to take a deep
breath and push the needle deep into my muscle. Like magic, as I grew
into my new body, my posture straightened and my closetful of men's
clothes suddenly fit, or even grew too tight across my growing muscle.
I'm Thomas, I thought, and stopped worrying about the rules or what
anyone else was doing. I was who I'd always been: a tattooed guy in
glasses, a romantic, a fan of James Dean, a feminist.

Spring brought news that Jenna Talackova, a finalist for Miss Universe
Canada, was disqualified because she was transgender. The groundswell
of support she received included a petition of 40,000 signatures
asking for her reinstatement, and apparently even Donald Trump (who
owns Miss Universe) must have been moved, because she was allowed back
into the pageant in April (Talackova made it to the final 12 before
being eliminated last Saturday). And now we have our first bona-fide
transgender rock star in Laura Jane Grace Gabel of Against Me!, who
came out in a recent Rolling Stone article. A mark of how much the
tide has turned can be found in the comments of her mostly supportive
fan base. "Proud of her and I will punch anyone who is a dick about
it," wrote one commenter on the Against Me! message boards.

I have, similarly, found mostly a warm welcome. I've chronicled my
relationship to masculinity and my transition
<http://therumpus.net/author/thomas-mcbee/> on the online magazine The
Rumpus, to universal positive response. Friends and family never seem
to tire of telling me how handsome I am, how much I look like
"myself."

But I don't forget how lucky I am, as my blooming (and that of Bono
and Talackova and Gabel) stands in stark contrast to the story of
Brandy Martell, a transgender woman killed on April 29 near my old
neighborhood in Oakland, California. Martell was reportedly gunned
down by a group of men who were hitting on her and her friends until
the women told them they were trans.

Martell's story is still distressingly common, and her name will now
be read alongside the names of a disproportionate number of transwomen
of color at the Transgender Day of Remembrance this November. I see
her beautiful face, and my heart crumples from the weight of it all:
the depth of how unfair it is that, though not free from danger, most
of my fears have turned out to be unfounded while many in my community
live, and die, with fear a daily reality.

As spring turns once more to summer, I pull out my clothes from last
year and try everything on again, thinking about how sweet it is to
see myself reflected back to me. I am grateful every day for this
life, and the body I have to pilot through it, and I am indebted to
every transgender person living their lives publicly — whether that's
on national television or a street in Oakland.

As for fear? I'm not afraid of anything anymore.

--

Thomas Page McBee can be reached at tmc...@phx.com, or visit
thomaspagemcbee.com <http://thomaspagemcbee.com/> .


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