* * * *
The third story, The Sex Serum, is probably the least scientific (and the most awkwardly and melodramatically written) one of the three. Ironically, it was published with a scientific introduction and followed by two news stories about actual FTMs. On the one hand, the application of testosterone (referred to rather cheekily by some FTMs as “Vitamin T”) does transform a female-looking body into a male-looking body in many rather dramatic ways, although not completely—it can’t grow a full-sized penis or remove breasts or a vagina. On the other hand, this process takes months, not mere days.
It is interesting that the author chose to portray one of the effects of the sex serum as drastically changing the attitude of the character Jeanette. Not only does the newly formed young man barely remember his life as a woman, he is wholly and completely enthusiastic about being male. He also seems to have suddenly changed his sexual preference; he is no longer attracted to his former lover, and seems to have entirely forgotten what romance is. One wonders if this embodies a male fear of the era—if women became more masculine, they would forget what it was to love and be attracted to men at all.
The part of the story that is chillingly close to true life is the fact that the main character, upon discovering that his girl has now become a man, becomes irrational, violent, and murderous. This attitude is echoed even in modern society; in the minds of many people, discovering that a woman you are sexually attracted to is actually (or at least genitally) male is a reasonable excuse for murder. Transsexuals in this country are violently murdered at the rate of two a month, often by men who pick them up on a date, or who see them from afar and become obsessed by the ambivalent feelings they inspire. Most of the murdered transfolk are male-to-female transgendered individuals, who tend to trigger the sexual insecurity of barely-hinged men. “She looks like a woman, and I’m attracted to her, but I know that she might have a penis, which would make her a man, which might make me somehow gay, so if I kill her, obliterate her, make her not exist, perhaps these feelings will also go away.”
During the trial of at least one man who followed a transsexual woman home from a bar and then hysterically stabbed her multiple times in her bedroom, the defending attorney used the defense that upon discovering that the woman he desired was “really a man”, the guy had simply gone mad and had to kill her, and that his reaction was completely reasonable. The jury agreed, and reduced his sentence, which is a horrifying example of the continuing social insecurity around gender, sex, and roles. It seems that for many, those who transgress gender simply ought to be killed before they trigger any more insecurities in “innocent” bystanders. By simply existing, we force people to reevaluate their worldviews, and this, it seems, is reason enough for execution. The main character of The Sex Serum is little different from the murderers of Rita Hester, Chanelle Pickett, or Brandon Teena in this way; without his neatly dualistic world view, he goes violently insane and kills without remorse.
* * * *
In both the scientific/academic communities and in fiction, female-to-male individuals have been sorely neglected and their viewpoints dismissed. While there is a plethora of cross-dressing heroines in fiction from Shakespeare to Disney’s Mulan, all eventually revert to being unquestionably female, and usually end up gaining the hero (or in a few modern lesbian versions, the heroine). Experiencing life as a man was only a temporary expedient, not a way of life to be kept any longer than was necessary to hide, or gain access to male privilege. Stories of female-bodied people who went “native”, so to speak, and stayed that way are rare, and often strongly tinged with sadness and despair. Perhaps anything else will have to wait until there are enough FTMs to write realistic fiction about this unique journey.
One FTM was told, rather condescendingly, by some academic theorists that if we as a society could only manage to expand the definition of woman, then it could stretch to fit him (with his beard and deep voice and surgically flattened chest and hormonally altered genitalia) into the category. He told them flatly that he was more interested in expanding the definition of man to include him. Another, when criticized for having robbed the world of a strong feminist woman, informed his critiquers that in the process he had added one body to the category of strong feminist man who was willing to be an example. There is no question that this is a much smaller category, or that such role models are desperately needed. As a man who has lived as a woman, who knows how it is to be socially female, an FTM has a valuable perspective on maleness. Seen from this light, he is not a lesser or defective male, but an improved version, one that expands what it is to be male, what it is to have a male experience. It changes the FTM from the category of “weird woman” to “unusual man”.
At the end of this book, you’ll find a list of more modern reading material that features characters who walk part or all of the female-to-male path. These are the descendants of the stories in this book, the inheritors of this tradition. The tone of the writing has changed from sensational or horrified or moralistic to thoughtful and provocative. The brave modern writers who have taken on this challenge are less likely to use these stories to shore up current assumptions, and more likely to attempt to stretch the minds of their readers. This reflects a general change in the nature of speculative fiction itself; over the past twenty or thirty years it has become less of a vehicle for conjecture about interesting new technological possibilities, and more of a way to explore the effects that those possibilities have on humans and society. Hopefully, in twenty more years, this sort of open-minded fictional exploration will be seen as prophetic of people’s hopes, and not merely their fears.
Raven Kaldera
January 2005
The Feminine Metamorphosis
David H. Keller, M.D.
(Science Wonder Stories, August 1929)
From the original editorial introduction to the “Feminine Metamorphosis”:
When a physician-author writes a story on a biological subject, you may be sure that it will be more than interesting. Only during recent years have the functions of the various glands in the human body assumed a tremendous importance. It seems that the glands are responsible for almost everything imaginable in our mental and physical makeup. It is also true, very frequently, that these functions can be interfered with by altering or otherwise influencing the glands.
It has been known for some time that extracts from various glands can be used as a stimulant to the live glands of human beings, although the extract has been secured from animals or human beings. It may also be safely said that the wonderful field of gland surgery and medicine is as yet practically untouched. Some of the most surprising and far-reaching discoveries will come when we know more about them.
Chapter I: A Woman Protests
“I cannot understand why I was not promoted!” protested the speaker. “I am more competent than the man you appointed to that position, and you ought to know that I have been in full charge of the department during the illness of the late occupant.”
“You were not promoted because you were a woman,” replied the man on the opposite side of the table. “I am willing to admit that you are capable, and also that you have been filling the position for over a year. But there are certain places in this company that have always been filled by men and always will be filled by men. It is the policy of the company. We feel that we cannot compete with our opponents in business unless these places of trust are filled by men. So you will have to be satisfied with an increase in salary, and your usual place in the office.”
The protesting woman flushed angrily as she cried, “It is not fair to discriminate against me because I am a woman!”
“The question of fairness does not enter into it. We are in a business to make money. I have been elected by the Directors as the President of this company. We expect to make a profit. The Directors believe that certain offices have to be filled by men. You have gone up in this company rather quickly, but you have reached the limit. If you want to stay, we shall be g
lad to have you, but you will have to be content with your present position.”
There was no doubt about the fact that both the president of the company and the most brilliant woman who had ever worked for it were thoroughly mad. They were so mad that the interview came to an abrupt ending by the woman’s leaving the room.
A few minutes later, when the man realized the necessity of keeping her, he wrote her a nice letter to the effect that from that time on her salary would be $15,000 a year instead of $12,000, and he sent it to her by special messenger. He thought that the increase would end all the hard feelings.
The next day Miss Martha Belzer seemed to be in her usual good humor. She was as capable as ever, in fact, the letters and reports that she dictated fairly sparkled with intelligent and shrewd conclusions. John Buchanan, the President of Aviation Consolidated, reading over some of her reports, perceived their value, and smilingly told himself that a few thousand extra dollars was worth more to a woman than her pride, and at once forgot the incident.
That afternoon, after office hours, Martha Belzer took her portable Corona into her private office and locked the door. Several times during the night she sent the watchman out to get her a bite to eat. When she finally emerged it was one in the morning. During those long hours, she had written nine letters to nine of her intimate friends-business women all over the United States—and these letters she personally mailed from a sub-station, sending them registered, receipt required.
The next morning she was at her desk as usual, opening and answering the mail and tending to the thousand-and-one details of the department, many of which should have been looked after by the new head of the department. However, he had been in a poker game that night with other heads of departments, so he was not able to begin work till after his luncheon. When he did arrive at the office, he made a great pretense of business and efficient direction, but as all the work had been done by that time, he soon relaxed, and made arrangements for a golf game. Life, at $30,000 a year, looked rather pleasant to him. He had worked hard to secure the position that he now held, and, with such a capable assistant as Miss Belzer, he did not see any reason for killing himself with too great attention to little details that she could attend to just as well as he. The fact that she had taught him all that he knew about the business of that department and that the business of the company would suffer without her services, irritated him, but he felt that he could forget such unpleasant matters.
The humiliation of Martha Belzer was not an isolated one, by any means. Similar occurrences were happening every day in the large concerns of the United States. During the World War the feminine sex had tasted the sweetness of responsibility with increasing incomes, so that at the close of the war they were reluctant to return to their former humble positions. Well-educated, capable, and hard-working women were striving to occupy positions on a par with men, and the situation had become so acute that many corporations had passed regulations, strictly limiting the advancement of women in their employ. The stand that Aviation Consolidated had taken was by no means unique in the industrial life of the nation.
The result had not been a happy one. More and more women were preparing themselves for positions of trust and large salaries. Every phase of business activity, especially those requiring brain power, was being handled by the members of the fair sex, who, by their constant application to work, their ability to look after the smallest details, and their one-track minds, were far more capable of holding positions of trust than was the average business man.
There were women in the House of Representatives. It was rumored that a western state was preparing to place a female Senator in Washington. Several states had elected women as Governors. The legal and medical professions were gradually surrendering to the demand of the feminine portion of society for a change to compete on equal terms. Entire banks were officered by women. Only in the priesthood had men dared to entirely exclude the opposite sex.
More and more women were refusing to stay in the home. It was a common thing for a well-paid woman to have bachelor apartments downtown where her comfort was well cared for by capable servants.
Women in positions of responsibility easily made from twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars a year. A large number were in business for themselves. Naturally, they could not handicap themselves with husbands or cripple their earning capacity by child-bearing. Still, they had their social life. Some married, but retained their maiden names, lived on in their own apartments and breakfasted or dined with their husbands three times a week.
But, up to the present time, they had only been able to nibble at the crusts of finance. No woman had been elected to the Presidency of a large concern. Not a single one was drawing the large salaries, as high as several million a year, paid to the big men of industrial America. While the brainy women knew that they were as capable as men of doing the great things of life, the men, so far, had been very careful to see that they did not have a chance to show this ability.
And, so far, there had never been a really rich self-made woman in the United States. The few wealthy ones had inherited their property and were content to leave the directing of it to their husbands. A few women, mainly those who owned their own businesses, reached the millionaire class, but the great wealth of the nation still rested in the control of the male sex. And there seemed to be no way that it could be taken from them.
The fact of the matter was that the men of the United States who owned the greatest part of the wealth of the nation were afraid. They did not fear the election of a Democratic president, or a change in the tariff, or even a lowering of the immigration bars. What they were afraid of was the possibility of feminine control of the great corporations of the nation, and they were endeavoring to prevent this in the most logical manner that occurred to them. They believed that the best thing was not to allow the women to start securing that power. Unless they did start, they would never succeed. So the word passed from the President of one great concern to the chief executive of the next that under no circumstances should a woman be promoted to certain positions in these companies, and it was the following of this rule that had prevented Miss Martha Belzer from securing the promotion which she and everyone else knew that she was entitled to.
Miss Belzer nourished her indignation, but she was not the only woman who was resentful. In the hearts of the business women of America, revolt seethed.
It was an interesting coincidence that in the week following the date of Martha Belzer’s great disappointment, Patrick Powers, the richest man in America, died. He was not responsible for this occurrence, or for the fact that his only child was a daughter. He had lived as long as he could and had tried his best to change the destinies of his family. But eventually the end came, and at his bedside was neither kith nor kin save the fifty year old daughter, who was single and, to say the least, peculiar.
For some years the rich man had been growing more and more obstinate. It had finally become an impossibility to do business with him. Efforts to influence him, to aid him in arriving at decisions only served to make him more hard-headed and more stubborn than ever before. As he grew older he kept his own counsel and thanked others to do the same. The truth of the matter was that he was basically a miser, and in his old age had developed paranoiac ideas that others were trying to rob him of his hard-earned wealth. Consequently, he resisted all efforts made to influence him in drawing up a will and left every cent of his enormous estate to his daughter.
For some weeks she gave no indication as to what disposition she intended to make of this property. Finally, it was learned by several magnates that the only thing that she was really acquainted with was cash and Government bonds and that she intended to sell all of the stocks, bonds and interests that her father had owned to the highest bidder for cash.
Patrick Powers had held the controlling interests in a dozen of the largest corporations in America. The purchaser of these stocks would acquire this power. Half a dozen interests had been waiting for
just this opportunity and were more than willing to bid against each other.
As a commercial event, it was not nearly as spectacular as it might have been. Miss Patricia Powers held it in her home and invited a dozen financiers to attend. The certificates, stock and bonds were actually there, in great brass bound boxes, neatly arranged on the parlor floor, and securely guarded by a silent group of well-armed private detectives. The stock was put up, block after block, and auctioned off. When a sale was made, the fortunate man was asked to come up to the central table and deposit a certified check. He carried the package of stock back with him for deposit in his own brass-bound box, to be guarded there by his own private detectives.
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