She's Not There

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  Yet plenty of other women—including forty-three-year-olds— behave in ways much more embarrassing than I did. Women born women are given the right to define womanhood on their own terms. Dolly Parton and Janet Reno, to name two, represent different interpretations of the fact of womanhood, and while one might question either of their sartorial styles, no sane person would ever conclude that Dolly and Janet are not women.

  Male-to-female transsexuals, on the other hand, have begun their lives as boys, and many of the things that partly define a woman’s life—menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and an oppositional relationship to men—are things that we know nothing about. For many people, transgendered or not, womanhood is thought, wrongly, to be synonymous with femininity—with makeup and stretchy T-shirts and an obsession with Brad Pitt. None of this has a damn thing to do with it, of course, and in the long run, a transsexual who hopes to build a life around high heels and sponge cake is in for something of a disappointment.

  I moved forward into transition not in order to be Dolly Parton (or, for that matter, Janet Reno), but in order to be Jenny Boylan. There are aspects of me that are feminine now, but I was feminine when I was a man, for that matter. I still retain a number of masculine affects that I am not ashamed of, and which many other women possess as well. I like to drink beer on a hot summer afternoon; I like to watch baseball, at least late in the season; and I still like to hike in the Maine woods and go camping. I prefer music to be loud; I like to tell jokes; and I have been known to swear like a Barbary pirate. Had I been born female, no one would remark upon these things—but since I was not, any masculine affect is considered a vestigial link to a previous life; conversely, any feminine affect that seems excessive can be hauled out as evidence that I, like Morris, have arrived at middle age just in time to be fourteen years old.

  As time has gone by, I have become more mellow about the whole damn business, content to let the primary concerns of my life—children, teaching, music, my relationship with Grace, friendships with Russo and Zero and others—take up my attention. Whether these things are masculine or feminine is not particularly important to me anymore. They are simply what I do.

  Most of all, perhaps, I have let go of constantly trying to explain what this is all about. Early in transition, it was essential to me that everyone understand the condition of transsexuality—that they grasp the horror of the dilemma, that they understand its medical components, that they know I had done all I could to remain the person they had known and loved, and so on. I had an answer ready for every objection.

  What I have come to realize is that no matter how much light one attempts to throw on this condition, it remains a mystery.

  Worse, it is a mystery that everyone has an opinion about. “Hey, man, cutting off your arm doesn’t make you Lord Nelson,” said one helpful academic. My sister said, “Why can’t you just wait until Mom is dead?”Another friend said,“I don’t see why you get to be a woman just because you think you are. I mean, what if you thought you were a cat? Would you walk around with little paste-on whiskers and a tail?”

  All I could say to such comments, in the end, was, “Well, I’m not a cat.”

  Quite frankly, there are times when I think about transsexuality and I just have to shrug. I’m sorry I can’t make it make more sense to you, I told Zero. But it is what it is. Whether I “really” am a woman, or whether I “had a choice” or not, or whether anything, no longer matters. Having an opinion about transsexuality is about as useful as having an opinion on blindness. You can think whatever you like about it, but in the end, your friend is still blind and surely deserves to see. Whether one thinks transsexuals are heroes or lunatics will not help to bring these people solace. All we can do in the face of this enormous, infinite anguish is to have compassion.

  As Dr. Schrang said, “I’ll tell you one thing. These people who object to transsexuality. They wouldn’t like it, either, if they were the ones who had it. They wouldn’t like it one bit.”

  As a teacher and a writer, I found the inscrutability of the topic absolutely frustrating. I am used to being able to convince people of something I believe to be true, if only I have a few minutes and the proper rhetorical argument at hand. That there was nothing I could say to make this dilemma—which for me was so huge and all-encompassing—clear to people was an absolute frustration.

  Furthermore, I am above all else a skeptic. There are very few things, I think, that should be exempt from satire. The domain of the transgendered struck me as a land where one had to be so serious and respectful and empathetic that one more often than not found oneself having to sit there straight-faced while someone says things like “Actually I believe my ‘true’ self to be a two-year-old baby.” (Yes, someone really did say this to me.)

  “That’s hard,” I’d have to say. “That’s so hard.”

  “Just tell me this,” said my friend Tim Kreider. “When you started in on hormones, was irony the first thing to go?”

  I no longer hope that everyone will be able to understand what this condition is about. It seems to elude an accurate description. It is a medical condition, but it is not solely medical; it is a behavioral condition, but it is not solely psychological. Whatever it is, it is widespread. Professor Lynn Conway at the University of Michigan estimates that there are forty thousand transgendered male-to-females in this country, and that counts only the ones who have already had the surgery. According to Professor Conway, that makes the condition more common than cleft palate and multiple sclerosis. This figure revises a statistic generated at Johns Hopkins decades ago—and still constantly quoted in the media—that the number of transsexuals is astronomically small. But by almost any measure, it’s not.

  So why don’t we see more transsexuals in our daily travails? Why are those who suffer from the condition thought to be such rarities? Simply because most transsexuals look unremarkable; having resolved their situation as best they can, they then proceed to essentially vanish off the radar. Unfortunately, the public’s primary perception of transsexuals as a population is defined by the extremely small fringe of the community that feels driven to behave badly on The Jerry Springer Show. In the meantime, tens of thousands of other extremely well adjusted individuals have gone about the business of their lives, doing their jobs, raising their children. Remarkably, they seem to have done so even without the benefit of anyone else’s theory about their existence.

  As Zero wrote me once, “It must be hard, Jenny, to have to keep proving to people that you exist.”

  I wrote back, “I don’t care about people. I would settle for you.”

  Toward the end of transition, I found myself reading Katherine Anne Porter’s “Noon Wine,” a short novel about a farmer whose failing farm is resuscitated by the sudden appearance of a hardworking Swedish migrant worker. After several years, a bounty hunter named Hatch appears, claiming the Swede is a wanted man. The farmer tries to get between his man and Mr. Hatch and winds up murdering the bounty hunter; the Swede disappears. In an ensuing trial, the farmer is found innocent by reason of self-defense, but in the years following, he spends his life suffering from the fact that his neighbors no longer think of him as “one of us.” He drives around in his pickup, from farm to farm, trying to “explain how it was,” to assure them that not only was he found innocent, he was innocent.

  His neighbors don’t want to know about it.

  In the end, the farmer shoots himself in the head with his rifle, just like my friend John Flyte.

  It’s a cheerful little story.

  What I’ve taken away from this, however, is the way in which we can become obsessed with clearing our good name, even after our innocence has been established. It is a very human impulse, but it’s ultimately fraught with peril. The more we feel compelled to keep explaining ourselves, the less like others we become. As Zero said to me, rather late in transition, “Listen, Jenny, I don’t mind you being a woman. But don’t you think you could shut up about it once in a while?”

&n
bsp; In the end, the best thing seemed to be to keep my head high, to maintain a sense of humor, and to be forgiving. I was treated as a woman by most people and basked once in a while in the glow of their love. Everyone was nice about it, even if occasionally they betrayed the fact that my extraordinary history made them uneasy. I felt like Jim in The Adventures of Huck Finn, who is disguised by the duke in order to prevent him from being carried off into slavery. “Blamed if he warn’t the horriblest looking outrage I ever see,” writes Huck. “Then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so:

  “Sick Arab—but harmless when not out of his head.”

  Explosive Bolts

  I.

  May 3, 2002

  Mr. Patrick O’Keefe, Head Administrator

  National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  Washington, D. C. 20546

  Dear Mr. O’Keefe:

  I am writing you from Waterville, Maine, where I am co-chair of the English Department at Colby College. I am not sure if you know much about Colby, but it is one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the nation. Doris Kearns Goodwin went here, and we are very proud of her, except for that recent business about her stealing some of her books from other historians. She didn’t learn THAT at Colby, I can promise you.

  I am writing to ask if I might become the first transsexual in space.

  Although you may think this request is facetious, allow me to quickly state that my desire to educate the country about gender issues from the environment of zero gravity is sincere. I hope you will allow me to explain exactly how a transsexual in space would be something the whole nation might be proud of. A “giant leap for personkind,” as it were. I bet you have heard that phrase somewhere before!

  First, I want to say I have been a lifelong fan of NASA and all of its brave enterprises. I was born in 1958, which means that I grew up during the Gemini project, and Apollo, of course. I do not understand why no one talks about the Gemini launches any more, unless of course it is because of all the trouble you had getting the Atlas booster off the ground. In particular I recall Gemini 6 which, at the moment of countdown, just sat there smoldering, and kids all across America were so annoyed with you. NASA tried launching Gemini 6 a few days later, and guess what: same result. In fact, if I recall correctly, Gemini 7 actually took off before Gemini 6—now that was embarrassing. There were reports of Lyndon Johnson storming around the Rose Garden describing the administrator of NASA in very colorful terms. Aren’t you glad it wasn’t you?

  Still, eventually you “had liftoff” of Gemini 6, and the astronauts orbited for a week or so and even got to wave out the window at the crew of Gemini 7, with whom they “rendezvoused in space.” I thought that was so cool, four guys in two Gemini capsules orbiting a few feet away from each other way out in space. I always figured it made them less lonely, having friends a few feet away, even though of course they still had to eat creamed spinach out of tubes and dock with the AGENA docking module, which (again, if I recall correctly) started spinning haplessly out of control only minutes after docking, forcing Frank Borman to land his capsule then and there, and catching everyone in the South Pacific off guard.

  Anyway, I have here the printout from the NASA Web page concerning “Astronaut Candidate Training.” If I can read this material properly (and I have to admit that my eyesight is pretty bad)—the position I am applying for is “mission specialist.” I would be in charge, I believe, of “Orbiter onboard systems, performing space walks, and operation of the remote manipulator system.”

  Listen, Mr. O’Keefe—I’m an English professor—“remote manipulation” is what I do best! Although I do not have, as you require (I think), a degree in astrophysics, I can certainly recite from memory a wide range of English Romantic poetry, particularly that of John Keats, who observed, among other useful things, that “truth is beauty, beauty truth. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” I think this would be true in space, too, but of course we won’t know until we actually send an English professor up there, will we?

  As for the usefulness of a transsexual in space, I think this is self-evident. We all know that the astronaut corps over the years has included many valiant men, including our first American, Alan B. Shepard. (Aha! You thought I was going to say John Glenn, didn’t you—well, I know all about Colonel Shepard—he was my favorite of the Mercury Seven, in part because he was such a grouch, and in part because NASA told him to pee in his pants just before the launch of Friendship 7. Boy, I bet you guys were sweating that out! Weren’t you afraid he’d cause a short?

  I also know about Gus Grissom and how his capsule sank. Man, you guys have had a rough time of it, haven’t you. First Shepard peeing in his pants, then Grissom sinking the capsule. A transsexual wouldn’t have blown the explosive bolts off her capsule prematurely, I can promise you that! Most of us, alas, spend most of our lives trying to keep our explosive bolts from blowing—and as a result, are extraordinarily well suited at withstanding nearly unbearable pressure.

  Anyway, so yes, you have had all these heroic men, and then twenty-five years later you allowed as how maybe it would be okay to send up a woman, and you managed to find an astronaut named “Sally Ride” to fly the shuttle. (Although very few Americans, I hate to be the one to tell you, actually believed that was her real name; surely this is just the chorus from “Mustang Sally,” a song that, by the way, I have played in all sorts of seedy bars with my rock-and-roll band.)

  As I recall, Sally Ride had to wear a special electronic bra in zero gravity. Gosh, I bet your boys in R&D had fun designing that. They even, no doubt, had to try it on themselves first, just to make sure it wouldn’t short out if Alan B. Shepard peed on it by accident (or, knowing Shepard, on purpose).

  Listen, I want your engineers to know, there is nothing wrong with wanting to wear an electronic bra—not if that’s the way you feel! I did not choose to be a transsexual any more than your research boys choose to be pencil-protector-wearing, Band-Aid-holding-their-glasses-together, Neil Diamond–enjoying, Chevy Nova–driving toads. It’s just the way we are!

  I believe that God makes us all a certain way, and that the adventure of life is largely the challenge to find the courage to become ourselves. For many of us, the challenge that is given us is to find that courage, to be brave, and to stand up for the truth.

  This is a message that the astronauts of NASA have bravely sent since 1962. The citizens of this country have always taken pride in your accomplishments. (Although we were a little annoyed that the Russians got off the ground first. Be honest— do you guys still wake up at night worried about Yuri Gagarin? I know I do.)

  Anyway, I would like, should you honor me with your consideration, to join the chorus of courage to which the astronaut corps has given voice.

  Were I honored with the pleasure of being the first transsexual in space (that we know of—personally, I always had my doubts about Buzz Aldrin, but that’s just me), I would perform the responsibilities of mission specialist with grace and aplomb. And I would also, if possible, say a few things to the young people of the world.

  What would I say? Well, Dare to be brave, for one. For another, Find the courage to become yourself. And above all, The three most important things an astronaut, a transsexual, or anyone can have are dignity, self-respect, and a sense of humor.

  I hope that you will give me the opportunity to share these insights from the rarefied atmosphere of the Orbiter’s interior. It would be an honor to serve my country.

  In the meantime, I remain, very sincerely

  Your humble servant,

  Jennifer Finney Boylan

  Co-chair, English Department

  Colby College

  P. S. It also says here that in order to go into space I have to pass a swimming test, which if you ask me is a rather odd requirement, unless you’re expecting the whole sinking-capsule problem to repeat itself. Quite frankly, I had hoped you had solved this back in 1962. At any rate, I can swim across Long Pond, h
ere in Central Maine, in about ten minutes. Maine really is a lovely state, Mr. O’Keefe. I hope if you ever come up here with your family that you will feel welcome to stop in and visit.

  II.

  Ms. Jennifer Finney Boylan

  Chair, English Department

  Colby College

  5264 Mayflower Hill

  Waterville, ME 04901–8852

  Dear Ms. Boylan:

  Thank you for your letter of May 3, 2002, to NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe expressing your interest in flying aboard the Space Shuttle as the first mission specialist “transsexual” and educating the country about gender issues from the environment of zero gravity.

  NASA continually receives numerous letters from citizens offering their services to the space program. We hope the day will come when everyone will have the opportunity to go to space. For now, however, as with any rare commodity that is in great demand, NASA has the responsibility and obligation to maximize taxpayer return, in the form of scientific and operational knowledge, from both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Therefore, flight opportunities are not available for persons other than NASA astronauts (pilots and mission specialists) and payload specialists.

  You mentioned an interest in becoming a mission specialist. They are selected for a particular mission based on mission requirements and objectives and their educational backgrounds and skills. Before becoming members of the Shuttle crew, all of these individuals must meet certain medical standards, which are dictated by the existing flight systems training and operational constraints. The next opportunity to apply for the class of mission specialists will be released in the media as well as posted to our Web site: (http:// www.spaceflight.nasa.gov or www.edu.nasa.gov).