Trans Guys and Moonpies

I was standing in a hotel lobby in Lorel, Maryland, feeling a bit unsure if I belonged. The internal conversation churned in my head: what does it mean to be a good ally? About 300 female-to-male (FTM) transgendered people were mixing and mingling for True Spirit ’99 — a conference organized by the American Boyz, a support and social group for people who were labeled female at birth, but feel it is not a complete or accurate assessment of who they are. For many of these folks, this was the one time of year they would be around others like themselves, and the last thing I wanted to do was be disruptive.

Without warning, a tempest of bubbling energy whirls up to me, grabs my hand, and squeals, “Girl, what do you call that color nail polish?” I find myself staring, a bit dumbfounded, into the bright eyes of a smashingly handsome trans man in a leather jacket and collar, with a bushy black and white feather boa draped across his shoulder. Grasping for composure I utter, “Honey, it’s called Starry Night, and you can borrow some any time.” Not exactly Oscar Wilde, but it’s enough to elicit a peal of laughter from this fine gentleman.

He introduces himself as Bo (but has since moved on to using the name Brody) and flourishes at his square-framed, and equally noticeable, partner Alex (also a trans man who has since moved on to using the name Keller.)

Both live in Florida and are waiting to begin the medical procedures that will allow them to live as the people they know themselves to be. Both in their early twenties, they are among a group of young FTMs at the conference who are challenging notions of what it means to be men, and even transgender. Keller is Haitian-American, and one of a few people of color at the conference. Brody is white, and together they are one of the even fewer interracial gay male couples.

Definitions of the word “transgender” vary as widely as the people the word is intended to describe. Roughly, it is an umbrella term used for anyone who transgresses, or lives outside of, gender norms. It can include transsexuals, crossdressers, intersexuals (what doctors call hermaphrodites), two-spirit people, androgyns, and a host of other identities.

It can be confusing because all people cross gender barriers at some point in their lives. Defiance of gender norms vary from someone who has lived up until age 50 as a man and decides to use medical procedures to become a woman, to the nine-year-old girl who is labeled a tom boy for liking sports. The transgender movement was born of the desire to bring freedom of gender expression to the whole of society, and to protect the lives of those whom society deems unacceptable in terms of gender.

 

When I think about Southern people whose interests are often left out of national debates about queemess, my thoughts drift to this striking Floridian pair. Mainstream gay organizations and activists rarely comment on people who don’t have the right-sized bank account, a common gender, or a sexuality fit for prime-time television. Conservative gay and lesbian people often express outrage when leather and trans people are depicted as part of their community in the media. Keller and Brody both feel that poor gay people are also excluded and made to seem exotic in mainstream gay communities.

Keller seems particularly up in arms about this. “It’s like, ‘Look, I had sex with a construction worker. Isn’t that quaint. You can change your own oil, whoopie.’”

Brody adds, “A lot of the events around here are just too expensive. So we don’t go. I mean, I’m a ‘bring me a moon pie and an RC Cola’ kinda guy.”

I wonder if the price of assimilation doesn’t hover somewhere around the cost of a ticket to a black- tie function.

There is a feeling that people who don’t appear normal enough will embarrass the larger group and act as a barrier to civil rights. To be gay or lesbian is to defy gender expectations. For many of us the argument that “we are just like everyone else” is impossible to make. Transgendered people run the gamut from conservative to radical just like any other group, but we have the most to learn from those for whom assimilation is not an option.

Coming out is a central process in a lot of queer people’s lives. The problem, of course, is that Keller and Brody have come out several times into different identities. Brody tells me that today they have been out buying restraints, but found they could get their own materials and make them cheaper. “We’re the Martha Stewarts of leather,” he quips. They both struggle with what it means to be out as members of the leather community, recognizing that there are certainly limits to what people are willing to hear.

As in any good leather relationship, power is an important topic with broad implications for them. Playing with the boundaries of pain and pleasure through giving someone the trust to safely explore those boundaries requires a lot of open communication. Brody shares with me that he has had to spend some time thinking about what it means to be a white “bottom” to a black “top.”

But, as Keller says, “If people spent more time exploring what they liked than worrying about ‘am I doing this because I’m a racist,’ they’d be a lot happier.”

Coming out as trans — in this case as FTM — has broad race and class implications. I have met very few trans people who did not lose their job when they chose to come out at work. Yet, when an FTM person begins passing as male full-time, they begin to acquire male privileges. FTMs of color often face the challenge of transitioning from what our white supremacist society views as a female sexualized object to a male violent predator. White FTMs are usually met with the challenge of how to deal with being perceived as, and given the benefits of, white males.

But of course, these privileges are always conditional. If FTMs are arrested or have to go to the hospital, the power/privilege pyramid can come crashing down on top of them. If medical procedures become part of their journey, things get real expensive real quick. The question of who can afford to transition under our current medical system remains central to trans people’s quest for liberation.

A big step with them, as for many FTMs, is taking testosterone injections to deepen their voices, shut down reproductive systems, and begin the growth of some facial hair. These changes, and the many others that will occur, come in varying degrees over varying periods of time, but allow most people to interact with society as someone who is perceived to be a man.

Brody shares his own path: “When I was young I always thought I would grow up to be a boy. And when that didn’t happen, I guess I . . . well there was this period where I just sort of put that stuff down for a while. When I got to college, the other masculine women I saw were all dykes so I identified as a lesbian, with the political life and all. But I was sleeping with guys the whole time. Then I had this epiphany while reading Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues. And I realized that I could do these things; I could go on hormones and have top surgery (FTM slang for removing one’s breasts) and be a guy.”

Keller, in his to-the-point manner, adds his part of the story: “Yeah, I had a similar awakening. Mine was at True Spirit this year, though. So I guess it was more recent than Brody’s.”

Keller is not out to his family, where gender roles are very strict. His parents came to this country in 1974, and moved several times before landing in Florida 12 years ago.

“I don’t think my parents are officially citizens ’cause they never really made a big deal outta stuff like that,” he relates. “I really can’t relate to the ‘Black-American experience’ people always talk about. My parents were not too concerned with Americanizing.”

Coming out often leads to new lifestyles and new values. Many privileged people do not engage in political struggles until they come out as something the systems finds unacceptable — and begin to lose privileges on which they’ve come to depend. Yet so much of our politics in this country is based on identity. We all shift identities several times in our lives — from youth to adult, student to worker, healthy to sick. But what does a politics of an overt and stigmatized gender change look like?

“Well, right now it doesn’t look like too much of anything,” Brody tells me. “When I first came out as trans I saw this need for some kind of support group. And initially it was for all trans people, but then it just seemed like the issues that male-to-females (MTFs) faced were just a lot different. So then I formed a group for just FTMs, but then people weren’t coming regularly and we got busy. So, ya know . . .” At this point, Keller chimes in with something I hadn’t anticipated, “And a lot of the guys didn’t like that we were fags.”

As for race and gender, Keller observes that, “People are less comfortable dealing with race than with gender. What does it mean to be black or white? It’s very basic to the color of their skin and where you come from. Everyone is so afraid of talking about race because they’re so afraid of being called a racist.”

Whether or not they have ever known a trans person, or thought outside of a two-gendered system or not, most have come to agree that gender is, to some varying degree, something we learn as we grow up. So what does that mean for folks who hear a voice from within telling them that they are something they weren’t taught to be?

“I really wrestle with that,” Keller says. “It’s like the whole nature vs. nurture issue. I look at it in the same way as how people know they’re gay. It’s not necessarily based on behavior. I can’t accept that it’s just socialization. I wasn’t encouraged to do boy things.”

Growing up, Brody says, “Dad always took me to the western shops to buy specifically boys clothes. I don’t mean to suggest that Dad made me trans, but if he did I owe him a thank you card. Basically, I’m a fashion whore. I like really really masculine clothes. I have this very big redneck part of me — and some preppy gear, oh, and maybe some hip hop,” he admits with a healthy dose of white-guy-nerdiness.

“I’m very tailored at work, but I have a silver chiffon boa trimmed with silver feathers,” Brody adds. “I can be the biggest nelly princess on the planet. I’m a man of many facets.”

Keller offers a bit of wisdom about being transgendered in the South. “It’s easier to pass [once you’ve transitioned]. People in San Francisco are more familiar with what to look for. Here people take you at face value. If you look like a man and smell like a man, you must be a man.”

Clearly, Brody and Keller — as individuals, and as a couple — encompass their right to be complex, and sometimes contradictory. Somehow all these pieces fall together as they eye their dream of breeding and raising horses, hopefully on a ranch somewhere in Florida or northern Georgia.