My eggs been fucking cracking then re spawning and then cracking again for decades. I've tried frying it poaching it and even scrambling the entire bloody thing. In the end I have decided to transition late in life. Is that the omelette of which you speak? 😂
You've taken that metaphor considerably further than I ever managed. And yes, that's the omelette. Late in life is the only version I got offered either, and it turns out it still cooks.
Yeah the egg crack thing is quite difficult. I'm not sure where I would put mine at. I didn't have a single discrete event where everything fell into place in one moment. Probably the best candidate would be mid-December 2025 when I finally admitted to myself I was trans, but that was a weeks-long process of discovery and emotional processing that took time to settle in. I knew really 15 years prior at least, if I had had access then to the resources I have now I probably would have known back then. I had all the puzzle pieces, I just lacked the map to put them all in the right place.
All the puzzle pieces and no map is exactly it. I had the information for decades and nowhere sensible to put it. And a weeks-long process that took time to settle sounds a great deal more honest than a single lightning bolt, which I've never quite believed anyone about anyway.
The words never bother me, but I'm damn good at disassociation - too good at times. I can crack a joke at any funeral for example (for some reason that is frowned upon).
That person seems a bit ... well ... unstable to me. If you get a message in good faith take it that way, or assume good faith until you are shown otherwise. Maybe she only saw 'Steve Bennett' instead of Stevie and assumed you were an asshole who was calling her a him. Maybe you were an asshole to her years ago and forgot but she didn't (I know I have a few people where that is the case - I suspect most of us did something stupid to someone without knowing it). Who knows? And probably a 'who cares' situation since I doubt you'll ever communicate with her again.
You're probably right that it's a who cares. I do try to assume good faith and mostly manage it, but there's a particular flavour of message where you can feel the conclusion arriving before you've said anything. And I'm sure I've been an arse to people who still remember it while I've forgotten entirely. Also, the funeral joke thing. Same.
Oh my. I am so with you on this. Not only am I an old trans woman who just 2 years ago decided it was enough to live for the others and not be happy, but I was "uneducated" on all things trans. I still live in fear of saying the "wrong" thing the " wrong" way ( if it makes any sense at all). You cant expect everyone to know at a glance what ticks you. I am very respectful and patient with people and I should expect the same from them. Especially when we have gone through as much as we all did. How can we ask for a minimum of acceptance and decency if we cant even do it amongst ourselves?
I love most of your articles and appreciate your honesty and how you present different things most of us experience. Cheers!
Note: I am french Canadian and try my best to write in an understandable english. I think I am pretty good at it, but emotions and feelings are harder to describe in an exact way when you're using a different language. But this wont prevent me to comment when I feel the need to. Thanks for your understanding.
Your English is better than you think it is, and the feeling came through perfectly well anyway. The fear of saying the wrong thing is the part I recognise most. Two years in and still worried you'll fail an exam nobody is actually setting. Comment whenever you feel like it, France.
This is a great article, Stevie! It really underscores a fundamental problem with the community that makes it almost impossible to form a coalition much less an organization for political power. We can’t even agree on the same language or terminology.
But I’d rather let you know that you made me laugh out loud about the “egg cracking” concept.
My long years of experience in business and law here in the USA first exposed me to the concept of the “egg”. It came out of the business world as jargon salespeople would use to describe a reluctant prospect who seemed to be really interested in the product or service but just wouldn’t commit to buy. They were called “China Eggs” by more experienced and successful salespeople. The novice would treat the prospect fragilely and delicately, like a beautiful Faberge Egg, 😆
China Eggs. I'd never heard that and now I'll never unhear it. And yes, we fall out over vocabulary faster than anything else, which is a very convenient way of never getting to the harder arguments.
I wish people could just be chill. Like, seriously, I'm not the best at English because I don't think too hard about it. I really dislike being corrected about terminology that I use to describe *my own* transition.
Being corrected on the words for your own life is a special sort of maddening, and it nearly always arrives from your own side, which is the bit that stings.
Say it however you say it. Nobody marking these papers has any standing to.
I also dislike the “egg” metaphor. Quite a lot actually for reasons I think were interesting enough to write about recently. Not quite the same reasons, but yeah I do agree, there’s wholly too much euphemism about transition and trans lives and not enough actually good descriptive language
“Monday: egg. Tuesday: crack. Wednesday: woman.” That’s my problem with it in a nutshell: it turns something enormously complicated into a single cute event. I’d be curious to read your reasons.
Hi Stevie substack is full of loosers & looneys I got flamed by this wierd American person not even sure if they were trans? A few weeks ago
They posted a thing about ‘not tucking but being proud of your trans crotch bulge etc etc that’s paraphrasing a bit but you get the gist
So I replied saying that lots of trans women find a crotch bulge as very dysphoric etc
They replied twice in an hour a couple of days later basically an abusive RANT apparently I’m racist (not sure how that works!) and load of other shit
I screenshotted it and then deleted it & blocked them I don’t need this crap
My comment was literally 2-3 lines not abusive or derogatory etc but pretty mildly saying how I felt they were wrong?
I don’t think trans women should have crotch bulge it’s a primary male body signal/expression/sign etc
Maybe it’s me but this whole spectrum from Femme to Masc with All the gender fluid non binary etc etc in between is frustrating/confusing and tbh blurring perceptions etc
I’m a female trans person but in my head I think I’ve always been female tucking is a major part of my life of trying to understand and hiding my maleness etc etc
So I don’t comment at all now unless I feel safe doing so which isn’t very often tbh just lurk read and try & be supportive
I don’t have the emotional resilience to deal with all this crap it’s divisive and egoistic shit
Feminist intersectionality says that the issue is patriarchal oppression and bigotry not in/fighting and one upmanship about how there’s a trans hierarchy or some other excuse for being abusive?
The part that jumps out is you not commenting any more. That's what it actually costs, and it's always the mild ones who go quiet while the shouters carry on regardless.
I argued daily on X for months and came off it in the end, so I'm hardly the person to lecture anybody about resilience. Say what you think here. The one bloke who'd started going at people on this page isn't on it any more.
Babe I’m not ‘mild’ I’m a late 70s punk rainbow green CND anarchist who got lost for a few decades & I’m finding myself again “hear me roar” “rage rage against the dying of the light”
There was an internal jack hammer smacking away at the very old and thick shell that was set off by a bunch of Year 7 trans boys. When they were going to be sitting their GCSE’s I realised that they were the only trans people that I knew and, WOOMPH!! my shell exploded.
I’ve seen a couple at pride’s this last year and told them how they changed my life and thanked them for being themselves.
Year 7 trans boys, unknowingly changing an adult's whole shape of things. That's the best kind of activism, the kind nobody signs up for. Glad you got to tell them.
I agree with what you're getting at with these terms. Dead Name shouldn't put the fear of God and the wrath of eternal damnation into a person's mind just because their past name was mentioned. It shouldn't be a crisis. I used to have a different name. And it was a male name. So what. Get over yourselves.
And that doesn't mean I wanted to be called my male name. And some people still did. And they knew I was transitioning. And that wasn't fair. But that was their choice to do that to me. Now they have to call me Kenzie, because that's my legal name.
And as far as the egg cracking, the problem with that is, as you said, it becomes this single event. And it makes transition look like an overnight thing. And that's what they use against us as a point of fear. That somebody is going to take their children and trans them literally in a couple days or a weekend. And they're going to come home as a different person. This is ridiculous. So yeah, the egg cracking needs to be understood for what it is. It is more of a point of declaring being out and initiating a transition perhaps.
But we are bullied into language, and if we step out of line, then a number of people pounce.
Legal name now, and that's the whole of it. Anyone who knew and used the old one anyway wasn't confused, they were making a choice, same as you say.
The egg cracking thing does the same job as your dead name point, it turns a process into an event so it's easier to be afraid of. Nobody explains a person to anybody in an afternoon, mine took years and I'm still getting round to some of it.
Bullied into language is exactly right, and it's rarely the people doing the bullying who get asked to explain themselves.
The egg cracking as a declaration point rather than the event itself is well put, and it's exactly the bit that gets weaponised. One weekend and a different person walks in the door, as if anyone's ever handed a costume change.
Bullied into the vocabulary and then pounced on for getting it wrong anyway. Get over yourselves is about the size of it.
I sure don't have a singular egg cracking event. Our entire existence seems to be falling/stumbling into each milestone. Realizing we were bi, abro, trans, plural... All seem to have been accidents honestly, but not singular events. Like those overly complicated machines that take hours to set up. A bunch of singular events that lead to realizations
I know that some folks early in the first few years of transition are really sensitive to language. Some even have been known to display public outbursts over perceived slights.
I wish the world were different.
I’m really old, though. The language and terminology used when I first came out was very different, and I have to be careful not to ruffle the feathers of folks.
Back in 1968 I was told I didn’t make the cut, that I wasn’t a “true transsexual”, because I failed to jump the bones of any guy that made a pass. I have never been attracted to men, so I obviously couldn’t be a “true transsexual”, the people the Benjamin Scale said could be allowed to transition. The A-line dress and pearls weren’t enough, as I wasn’t trad-wife material. As the Stanford surgeon said, “we aren’t going to make any lesbians.” (I managed eventually. Still don’t like men.)
Now I see some person with a scruffy beard and bad eyeliner proclaiming themselves to be a trans woman, and I don’t know what to believe or say. Gender presentation is optional and acceptance is mandatory. Y’all are starting to make me reconsider whether self-identification was really a good idea, if it’s open to abuse by headline seeking bozos.
I know. “Kids these days…”
I’m told by some that my questions mean I’m not a “true transgender”. Between all the gatekeepers I’m not sure what I am permitted to call myself these days. “Sapphic queer old woman of transsexual history?”
That line from the Stanford surgeon about not making any lesbians is a hell of a thing to have had said to your face. The gatekeeping changes uniform every couple of decades but it never actually leaves. Call yourself whatever you like, Michelle. Nobody is issuing certificates, whatever they tell you.
I think that Harry Benjamin, Joel Fort, and others at the Center for Special Problems were trying their best to help, but only had the knowledge and skills of that era to call on. Trans folks were considered to be even rarer, and it was thought that only perhaps 1 in 10,000 people were what they considered “true transsexuals.”
Judging their actions and criteria by what we know 60 years later would be foolish and cruel. Their care was considered to be radically progressive, causing considerable outrage in the established psychiatric community. They were able to help some of my friends. We have to remember that the “standards of care” for gender identity issues then were not something that would even be legal in much of the world now.
That's fair, and I'd not want to be judged on what I knew in 1966 either. Radically progressive and badly wrong are perfectly capable of being the same thing at the same time, which is the awkward part.
The bit worth keeping from them is the doubt. They knew they were guessing. What got passed down to the next lot was the criteria with the guessing quietly removed, and that is the point where it stops being medicine and starts being a door policy.
Too true! And so very correct. And we have made very significant progress in transgender healthcare.
That’s why it makes my blood boil to see the old levels of fear and recriminations beginning to grow again in medicine and science as a result of the war the Radical Right Wingnut Networks is currently conducting on all available fronts against us as human beings and members of society
I don’t want to leave the impression that Harry Benjamin was in any way a bad or misguided medical practitioner or sexologist. Quite the opposite is true. It’s just that, as I recall the ‘60’s, the whole concept of Transsexualism in the United States was, to put it mildly, all f**k**g over the place. I was able to get my hands on a paperback copy of “the Transsexual Phenomenon” when I was in high school. And being a student at an all-boys Roman Catholic Academy meant that it was impossible to read the book openly. Reading was further complicated by the fact that it was, in fact, a medical textbook written ostensibly for medical practitioners, of which I was obviously too young to be. But I was able to understand some things.
Gatekeeping was the overriding concern at the time as I recall. In the US, the prevailing opinion on gatekeeping was that, given Benjamin’s “type” of “true transsexual” being someone in such acute distress that they were willing to self-amputate their genitals; the question became one of “who would be that disturbed (nuts, insane…read my lips) as to ever even consider that possibility?” The obvious answer then became: “only a hyperfeminine homosexual male!” I think that’s how the “masturbation rule” came into being.
Smuggling a medical textbook through an all boys Catholic academy is its own small act of transition, and I doubt it has ever gone on anybody's form.
And you've traced the thing back to its root there. They built the criteria out of a guess about who would be mad enough to want it, and once that's your starting point every test after it is only ever checking whether you're the sort of person they'd already decided it had to be. Benjamin was doing his best with what there was. What got handed down afterwards was all his criteria and none of his doubt.
There was such a lack of information back then and for obvious reasons. As a matter of fact, my first “moment of clarity” (as alcoholics refer to it) that I was a “Transsexual” came when I was 10 years old and at my Dentist’s office. I was old enough and his office was close enough to our house that I was allowed to walk there by myself.
While waiting for the dentist, I rummaged around magazines looking for something to read. I’m old, but I firmly believe that it was a copy of LOOK (although I have never ever been able to trace it back down).
As I was paging through, I remember coming across an article with a very strange word in the title: “Transsexual”. Being a curious lad, I started to read about the intriguing, science fiction sounding word.
I will never forget this earth shattering story. It was about a Las Vegas showgirl named “Sheila”, about whom the author wrote, was: “tall and with mane-length red hair”. I remember making a quick mental note to look up the definition of “mane” when I got home.
The author then explained about how “Sheila” came to be a Las Vegas showgirl. I learned that growing up, she always felt that she should have been born a girl (hmm…interesting…just like me!). Then came the horrors that scared the living daylights out of me.
Family rejection, homelessness, prostitution, arrests, prison, rape and involuntary confinement in a mental hospital. Finally, I came across the word “Transsexual” and I immediately felt a shock to my core and thought: “That’s exactly what I am”!!
I was so confused and frightened that I threw the magazine back onto the table and ran away out of the dentist office without telling anyone.
Making a mental note to look up what mane meant, and then a few paragraphs later running out of the building. That's the whole of it on one page.
Because that was the only information going for decades, and it wasn't a description of a life. It was a list of the punishments for one. You recognised yourself in it anyway, which rather tells you how loud the thing must have been.
Hi, Michelle! It’s so nice to read a comment about being Trans in the 1960’s from someone who is roughly from the same vintage. Ah, yes; the infamous “Harry Benjamin” standards which I never comprehended. The “standards” were one of the reasons I used for decades to deny that I was Transgender! I seem to recall something about “if you masturbate, you cannot be Transexual because that means you like your tool”.
The other crutch of denial: I was (and still am) only interested and attracted to females! Just like you! I knew what I looked like as a man and revolted against myself! I couldn’t stomach the thought of being with someone who looked like me!
The masturbation rule is a spectacular piece of nonsense and I'd never heard it put quite that baldly. They built a test that anybody honest would fail, then treated failing it as proof.
Denial doesn't need much to work with, does it. Any rule will do, so long as it lets you put the thing down for another decade.
i hate the egg cracked thing too….like when did mine? at 11? 14? 17? 47?
my self denial over the years is way more complicated than an event
Exactly that. Mine would need about four different dates and a footnote. Denial isn't a moment, it's a career.
so much this
Four different dates and a footnote, and I'd still be arguing with myself about the footnote.
My eggs been fucking cracking then re spawning and then cracking again for decades. I've tried frying it poaching it and even scrambling the entire bloody thing. In the end I have decided to transition late in life. Is that the omelette of which you speak? 😂
You've taken that metaphor considerably further than I ever managed. And yes, that's the omelette. Late in life is the only version I got offered either, and it turns out it still cooks.
I think mine cracked a few times and I duck-taped it back together...
Duck tape and denial. The two great load bearing materials.
Yeah the egg crack thing is quite difficult. I'm not sure where I would put mine at. I didn't have a single discrete event where everything fell into place in one moment. Probably the best candidate would be mid-December 2025 when I finally admitted to myself I was trans, but that was a weeks-long process of discovery and emotional processing that took time to settle in. I knew really 15 years prior at least, if I had had access then to the resources I have now I probably would have known back then. I had all the puzzle pieces, I just lacked the map to put them all in the right place.
All the puzzle pieces and no map is exactly it. I had the information for decades and nowhere sensible to put it. And a weeks-long process that took time to settle sounds a great deal more honest than a single lightning bolt, which I've never quite believed anyone about anyway.
The words never bother me, but I'm damn good at disassociation - too good at times. I can crack a joke at any funeral for example (for some reason that is frowned upon).
That person seems a bit ... well ... unstable to me. If you get a message in good faith take it that way, or assume good faith until you are shown otherwise. Maybe she only saw 'Steve Bennett' instead of Stevie and assumed you were an asshole who was calling her a him. Maybe you were an asshole to her years ago and forgot but she didn't (I know I have a few people where that is the case - I suspect most of us did something stupid to someone without knowing it). Who knows? And probably a 'who cares' situation since I doubt you'll ever communicate with her again.
You're probably right that it's a who cares. I do try to assume good faith and mostly manage it, but there's a particular flavour of message where you can feel the conclusion arriving before you've said anything. And I'm sure I've been an arse to people who still remember it while I've forgotten entirely. Also, the funeral joke thing. Same.
Had a feeling you would be the same on that one. Damn, sucks to be an ocean away. Ah well.
An ocean away is probably for the best. Two of us at the same funeral and somebody would end up being asked to leave.
Oh my. I am so with you on this. Not only am I an old trans woman who just 2 years ago decided it was enough to live for the others and not be happy, but I was "uneducated" on all things trans. I still live in fear of saying the "wrong" thing the " wrong" way ( if it makes any sense at all). You cant expect everyone to know at a glance what ticks you. I am very respectful and patient with people and I should expect the same from them. Especially when we have gone through as much as we all did. How can we ask for a minimum of acceptance and decency if we cant even do it amongst ourselves?
I love most of your articles and appreciate your honesty and how you present different things most of us experience. Cheers!
Note: I am french Canadian and try my best to write in an understandable english. I think I am pretty good at it, but emotions and feelings are harder to describe in an exact way when you're using a different language. But this wont prevent me to comment when I feel the need to. Thanks for your understanding.
Your English is better than you think it is, and the feeling came through perfectly well anyway. The fear of saying the wrong thing is the part I recognise most. Two years in and still worried you'll fail an exam nobody is actually setting. Comment whenever you feel like it, France.
This is a great article, Stevie! It really underscores a fundamental problem with the community that makes it almost impossible to form a coalition much less an organization for political power. We can’t even agree on the same language or terminology.
But I’d rather let you know that you made me laugh out loud about the “egg cracking” concept.
My long years of experience in business and law here in the USA first exposed me to the concept of the “egg”. It came out of the business world as jargon salespeople would use to describe a reluctant prospect who seemed to be really interested in the product or service but just wouldn’t commit to buy. They were called “China Eggs” by more experienced and successful salespeople. The novice would treat the prospect fragilely and delicately, like a beautiful Faberge Egg, 😆
China Eggs. I'd never heard that and now I'll never unhear it. And yes, we fall out over vocabulary faster than anything else, which is a very convenient way of never getting to the harder arguments.
I wish people could just be chill. Like, seriously, I'm not the best at English because I don't think too hard about it. I really dislike being corrected about terminology that I use to describe *my own* transition.
Being corrected on the words for your own life is a special sort of maddening, and it nearly always arrives from your own side, which is the bit that stings.
Say it however you say it. Nobody marking these papers has any standing to.
I also dislike the “egg” metaphor. Quite a lot actually for reasons I think were interesting enough to write about recently. Not quite the same reasons, but yeah I do agree, there’s wholly too much euphemism about transition and trans lives and not enough actually good descriptive language
“Monday: egg. Tuesday: crack. Wednesday: woman.” That’s my problem with it in a nutshell: it turns something enormously complicated into a single cute event. I’d be curious to read your reasons.
I briefly wrote about it here: https://gooseneckgirly.substack.com/p/am-i-a-monster
Thank you for sharing it 💜
i came through cracked...they just superglued me up and claimed 'it's a boy' yay? No.
Superglued and labelled. Somebody in that delivery room was very sure of themselves.
It took me rather a long time to peel the label off too.
Hi Stevie substack is full of loosers & looneys I got flamed by this wierd American person not even sure if they were trans? A few weeks ago
They posted a thing about ‘not tucking but being proud of your trans crotch bulge etc etc that’s paraphrasing a bit but you get the gist
So I replied saying that lots of trans women find a crotch bulge as very dysphoric etc
They replied twice in an hour a couple of days later basically an abusive RANT apparently I’m racist (not sure how that works!) and load of other shit
I screenshotted it and then deleted it & blocked them I don’t need this crap
My comment was literally 2-3 lines not abusive or derogatory etc but pretty mildly saying how I felt they were wrong?
I don’t think trans women should have crotch bulge it’s a primary male body signal/expression/sign etc
Maybe it’s me but this whole spectrum from Femme to Masc with All the gender fluid non binary etc etc in between is frustrating/confusing and tbh blurring perceptions etc
I’m a female trans person but in my head I think I’ve always been female tucking is a major part of my life of trying to understand and hiding my maleness etc etc
So I don’t comment at all now unless I feel safe doing so which isn’t very often tbh just lurk read and try & be supportive
I don’t have the emotional resilience to deal with all this crap it’s divisive and egoistic shit
Feminist intersectionality says that the issue is patriarchal oppression and bigotry not in/fighting and one upmanship about how there’s a trans hierarchy or some other excuse for being abusive?
Life’s too short hugs Hx
The part that jumps out is you not commenting any more. That's what it actually costs, and it's always the mild ones who go quiet while the shouters carry on regardless.
I argued daily on X for months and came off it in the end, so I'm hardly the person to lecture anybody about resilience. Say what you think here. The one bloke who'd started going at people on this page isn't on it any more.
Babe I’m not ‘mild’ I’m a late 70s punk rainbow green CND anarchist who got lost for a few decades & I’m finding myself again “hear me roar” “rage rage against the dying of the light”
Fair. I withdraw mild.
Then go on commenting. A late seventies punk anarchist going quiet because of one bloke on Substack is the wrong ending for that story.
I feel it more like a Wall. And like in the movie..
A wall is a much better image than an egg.
Bricks, one at a time, over years. Nobody ever warns you how much noise it makes coming down.
There was an internal jack hammer smacking away at the very old and thick shell that was set off by a bunch of Year 7 trans boys. When they were going to be sitting their GCSE’s I realised that they were the only trans people that I knew and, WOOMPH!! my shell exploded.
I’ve seen a couple at pride’s this last year and told them how they changed my life and thanked them for being themselves.
Year 7 trans boys, unknowingly changing an adult's whole shape of things. That's the best kind of activism, the kind nobody signs up for. Glad you got to tell them.
I agree with what you're getting at with these terms. Dead Name shouldn't put the fear of God and the wrath of eternal damnation into a person's mind just because their past name was mentioned. It shouldn't be a crisis. I used to have a different name. And it was a male name. So what. Get over yourselves.
And that doesn't mean I wanted to be called my male name. And some people still did. And they knew I was transitioning. And that wasn't fair. But that was their choice to do that to me. Now they have to call me Kenzie, because that's my legal name.
And as far as the egg cracking, the problem with that is, as you said, it becomes this single event. And it makes transition look like an overnight thing. And that's what they use against us as a point of fear. That somebody is going to take their children and trans them literally in a couple days or a weekend. And they're going to come home as a different person. This is ridiculous. So yeah, the egg cracking needs to be understood for what it is. It is more of a point of declaring being out and initiating a transition perhaps.
But we are bullied into language, and if we step out of line, then a number of people pounce.
Legal name now, and that's the whole of it. Anyone who knew and used the old one anyway wasn't confused, they were making a choice, same as you say.
The egg cracking thing does the same job as your dead name point, it turns a process into an event so it's easier to be afraid of. Nobody explains a person to anybody in an afternoon, mine took years and I'm still getting round to some of it.
Bullied into language is exactly right, and it's rarely the people doing the bullying who get asked to explain themselves.
The egg cracking as a declaration point rather than the event itself is well put, and it's exactly the bit that gets weaponised. One weekend and a different person walks in the door, as if anyone's ever handed a costume change.
Bullied into the vocabulary and then pounced on for getting it wrong anyway. Get over yourselves is about the size of it.
I agree with you on all of the phrases. And I’d like to add “dead name” to the list, but the committee will surely come after me for that one
Dead name is a good addition. It always sounds to me like the name did something criminal, rather than just quietly stopped being any use.
The committee will be in touch. They usually are.
I sure don't have a singular egg cracking event. Our entire existence seems to be falling/stumbling into each milestone. Realizing we were bi, abro, trans, plural... All seem to have been accidents honestly, but not singular events. Like those overly complicated machines that take hours to set up. A bunch of singular events that lead to realizations
A bunch of singular events leading to realisations is a far better description than one egg and one moment.
And the overly complicated machine is exactly the right image. Mine took about fifty years to set up and then still went off half cocked.
I know that some folks early in the first few years of transition are really sensitive to language. Some even have been known to display public outbursts over perceived slights.
I wish the world were different.
I’m really old, though. The language and terminology used when I first came out was very different, and I have to be careful not to ruffle the feathers of folks.
Back in 1968 I was told I didn’t make the cut, that I wasn’t a “true transsexual”, because I failed to jump the bones of any guy that made a pass. I have never been attracted to men, so I obviously couldn’t be a “true transsexual”, the people the Benjamin Scale said could be allowed to transition. The A-line dress and pearls weren’t enough, as I wasn’t trad-wife material. As the Stanford surgeon said, “we aren’t going to make any lesbians.” (I managed eventually. Still don’t like men.)
Now I see some person with a scruffy beard and bad eyeliner proclaiming themselves to be a trans woman, and I don’t know what to believe or say. Gender presentation is optional and acceptance is mandatory. Y’all are starting to make me reconsider whether self-identification was really a good idea, if it’s open to abuse by headline seeking bozos.
I know. “Kids these days…”
I’m told by some that my questions mean I’m not a “true transgender”. Between all the gatekeepers I’m not sure what I am permitted to call myself these days. “Sapphic queer old woman of transsexual history?”
I dunno. How many people can I offend today?
That line from the Stanford surgeon about not making any lesbians is a hell of a thing to have had said to your face. The gatekeeping changes uniform every couple of decades but it never actually leaves. Call yourself whatever you like, Michelle. Nobody is issuing certificates, whatever they tell you.
I think that Harry Benjamin, Joel Fort, and others at the Center for Special Problems were trying their best to help, but only had the knowledge and skills of that era to call on. Trans folks were considered to be even rarer, and it was thought that only perhaps 1 in 10,000 people were what they considered “true transsexuals.”
https://www.historypin.org/pins/49118/
Judging their actions and criteria by what we know 60 years later would be foolish and cruel. Their care was considered to be radically progressive, causing considerable outrage in the established psychiatric community. They were able to help some of my friends. We have to remember that the “standards of care” for gender identity issues then were not something that would even be legal in much of the world now.
That's fair, and I'd not want to be judged on what I knew in 1966 either. Radically progressive and badly wrong are perfectly capable of being the same thing at the same time, which is the awkward part.
The bit worth keeping from them is the doubt. They knew they were guessing. What got passed down to the next lot was the criteria with the guessing quietly removed, and that is the point where it stops being medicine and starts being a door policy.
Too true! And so very correct. And we have made very significant progress in transgender healthcare.
That’s why it makes my blood boil to see the old levels of fear and recriminations beginning to grow again in medicine and science as a result of the war the Radical Right Wingnut Networks is currently conducting on all available fronts against us as human beings and members of society
The backsliding is the part I hadn't braced for. I'd assumed the direction of travel was settled and that the only argument left was about speed.
Turns out nothing is settled. It just goes quiet for a while.
I don’t want to leave the impression that Harry Benjamin was in any way a bad or misguided medical practitioner or sexologist. Quite the opposite is true. It’s just that, as I recall the ‘60’s, the whole concept of Transsexualism in the United States was, to put it mildly, all f**k**g over the place. I was able to get my hands on a paperback copy of “the Transsexual Phenomenon” when I was in high school. And being a student at an all-boys Roman Catholic Academy meant that it was impossible to read the book openly. Reading was further complicated by the fact that it was, in fact, a medical textbook written ostensibly for medical practitioners, of which I was obviously too young to be. But I was able to understand some things.
Gatekeeping was the overriding concern at the time as I recall. In the US, the prevailing opinion on gatekeeping was that, given Benjamin’s “type” of “true transsexual” being someone in such acute distress that they were willing to self-amputate their genitals; the question became one of “who would be that disturbed (nuts, insane…read my lips) as to ever even consider that possibility?” The obvious answer then became: “only a hyperfeminine homosexual male!” I think that’s how the “masturbation rule” came into being.
Smuggling a medical textbook through an all boys Catholic academy is its own small act of transition, and I doubt it has ever gone on anybody's form.
And you've traced the thing back to its root there. They built the criteria out of a guess about who would be mad enough to want it, and once that's your starting point every test after it is only ever checking whether you're the sort of person they'd already decided it had to be. Benjamin was doing his best with what there was. What got handed down afterwards was all his criteria and none of his doubt.
There was such a lack of information back then and for obvious reasons. As a matter of fact, my first “moment of clarity” (as alcoholics refer to it) that I was a “Transsexual” came when I was 10 years old and at my Dentist’s office. I was old enough and his office was close enough to our house that I was allowed to walk there by myself.
While waiting for the dentist, I rummaged around magazines looking for something to read. I’m old, but I firmly believe that it was a copy of LOOK (although I have never ever been able to trace it back down).
As I was paging through, I remember coming across an article with a very strange word in the title: “Transsexual”. Being a curious lad, I started to read about the intriguing, science fiction sounding word.
I will never forget this earth shattering story. It was about a Las Vegas showgirl named “Sheila”, about whom the author wrote, was: “tall and with mane-length red hair”. I remember making a quick mental note to look up the definition of “mane” when I got home.
The author then explained about how “Sheila” came to be a Las Vegas showgirl. I learned that growing up, she always felt that she should have been born a girl (hmm…interesting…just like me!). Then came the horrors that scared the living daylights out of me.
Family rejection, homelessness, prostitution, arrests, prison, rape and involuntary confinement in a mental hospital. Finally, I came across the word “Transsexual” and I immediately felt a shock to my core and thought: “That’s exactly what I am”!!
I was so confused and frightened that I threw the magazine back onto the table and ran away out of the dentist office without telling anyone.
Making a mental note to look up what mane meant, and then a few paragraphs later running out of the building. That's the whole of it on one page.
Because that was the only information going for decades, and it wasn't a description of a life. It was a list of the punishments for one. You recognised yourself in it anyway, which rather tells you how loud the thing must have been.
Hi, Michelle! It’s so nice to read a comment about being Trans in the 1960’s from someone who is roughly from the same vintage. Ah, yes; the infamous “Harry Benjamin” standards which I never comprehended. The “standards” were one of the reasons I used for decades to deny that I was Transgender! I seem to recall something about “if you masturbate, you cannot be Transexual because that means you like your tool”.
The other crutch of denial: I was (and still am) only interested and attracted to females! Just like you! I knew what I looked like as a man and revolted against myself! I couldn’t stomach the thought of being with someone who looked like me!
The masturbation rule is a spectacular piece of nonsense and I'd never heard it put quite that baldly. They built a test that anybody honest would fail, then treated failing it as proof.
Denial doesn't need much to work with, does it. Any rule will do, so long as it lets you put the thing down for another decade.
J