Gender

History – It Requires Research

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago the BBC World Service ran a short piece about Christine Jorgensen, an American who underwent gender reassignment in 1952 and returned home to a blaze of publicity. The BBC advertised this as the story of the first successful gender reassignment, which inevitably transformed into billing Jorgensen as the first ever transsexual when the story was discovered by the tabloid newspapers. Even the official UK LGBT History Month Twitter feed picked this up.

Sadly this is nonsense. Of course to a large extent it depends on what you mean by “transsexual” and “gender reassignment” (and by the way, shame on LGBT History Month for using the sensationalist and incorrect term, “sex change” — they should know better). The first historical record I know of that mentions someone who has an obvious trans personality refers to the Roman emperor, Elagabalus. People have been making eunuchs for centuries, and I refuse to believe that in all that time no one used that option to allow her to live as a woman. Making a eunuch is surgery.

Of course many societies around the world, including Native Americans, Polynesians, and most notably India and neighboring countries, have allowed people to change gender for centuries. The tradition of Hijras pre-dates Elagabalus, though I don’t think there are any specific individuals mentioned. Surgery is often involved.

There are plenty of examples in European history of people choosing in live in a gender different to that which they were assigned at birth. James Barry, who served as a surgeon in the British Army, is a well-documented example. Up until recently I would have said that the first example of actual medical treatment of a trans person would be Lili Elbe, a Danish trans woman who underwent surgery in Germany in the 1930s. The BBC documentary says that Elbe died as a result of the treatment, but this is misleading. Lili underwent five separate operations. She died following the final one. What the surgeons got wrong was to try to transplant ovaries and a uterus. This was decades before transplant surgery was perfected. Lili died of tissue rejection. The surgeries that killed her have, to my knowledge, never been tried since. The ones that she had that were similar to modern gender reassignment worked.

The first documented UK case of gender reassignment is Michael Dillon. He was an Irishman who transitioned while living in Bristol in the 1940s. Like Barry, he became a doctor, and he actually helped with the surgery for Roberta Cowell, which took place in 1951, the year before Jorgensen’s operation.

Up until today I would have been happy to accept Dillon as the world’s first case of female-to-male gender reassignment treatment. Hormone treatment and plastic surgery hadn’t been invented in Barry’s time. But today I discovered the remarkable story of Peter Alexander. According to the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Alexander’s transformation occurred naturally. I find this a little hard to believe, and it is possible that the story was concocted as a cover for medical treatment that would have been regarded with suspicion at the time. Of course, given how weird human biology can be, it may also be true. Whatever the truth, however, here is a remarkable interview made by Pathe News in Sydney in 1937.

Don’t Believe What You Read

~ Cheryl

One of the well known features of modern journalism is that most of what gets into papers isn’t actually written by the journalists, it is just re-cycled press releases. Therefore, if you have done something bad and want to put a positive spin on it, what you do is put out a well-written press release that contains the message you want put in front of the public. The chances are that it will land on the desk of someone who knows nothing about your work, and who will be only to happy to recycle what you have given them.

This is how news sources this week have been full of stories about the positive things done for trans people by the American Psychiatric Association in the latest release of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V), which has just been published. Here’s The Guardian swallowing the Kool-Aid. Here’s Gay Star News doing the right thing and talking to trans activists but still missing half the story. And here’s Julia Serano having a rant.

As you may recall, the current revision of the DSM has been a massive exercise in political compromise between psychiatrists who are sympathetic to trans people, and those who think we are a bunch of disgusting and dangerous sex perverts. I blogged about this last year. So yes, the good guys have had their way, sort of. There is no longer such a thing as Gender Identity Disorder. It is now Gender Dysphoria, which has the benefit of being a term that most people are familiar with, though is probably still more negative than the Gender Incongruence that was originally proposed.

But, and this is a huge but, there is an entirely separate section of the DSM under which trans people can also be diagnosed. It is part of the section on “paraphilias”, which includes things like paedophilia and flashing alongside more consensual activities that conservative psychiatrists find freaky such as BDSM. Basically, if a trans person has an active sex life of any sort, then they can be diagnosed with Transvestic Fetishism because someone deems that they are sexually aroused by wearing clothing inappropriate to their “true” sex (and I used “sex” deliberately there as such people generally refuse to accept gender as a legitimate concept).

It used to be the case that we could laugh at this a bit because it applied only to people wearing women’s clothing, the so-called Autogynophilia. But in the final revisions of DSM V someone sneaked in a new “mental illness” called Autoandrophilia. Yes, it is now possible for women to be deemed crazy on the grounds that they are sexually aroused by wearing men’s clothing. What does this mean? Jeans? Shirts? “Boyfriend” sweaters?

Autoandrophilia
This woman clearly suffers from autoandrophilia

My guess is that these diagnoses will be deployed mainly against trans people who are homosexual in their preferred gender, because the sort of psychiatrist who is going to persecute trans people is probably going to be homophobic too. But with an “illness” like this on the official register it isn’t too much of a stretch to see it being deployed against cis women whose attire is deemed insufficiently feminine. So remember girls, if you do wear pajamas in bed, make sure that they are pink.

How To Make Intersex Mice

~ Cheryl

Slowly but surely, some of the mysteries about how gender is determined in animals are being solved. It is absolutely not a simple issue of one set of chromosomes or another. For example, take this fascinating piece of research. By altering a single gene, scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Mainz have been able to cause mice that have male chromosomes to develop physically as females. Obviously this currently applies only to mice, and no one is going to do experiments of this sort on human embryos, but the mere fact that it happens ought to be enough to give the lie to the people who yell about how intersex people are “not natural”.

The Jim Hines Inclusion Linkfest

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

In the wake of the “fake geek girl” nonsense that has been flooding the Internet over the past few weeks, Jim Hines has done a blog post linking to various posts by other people calling for more inclusivity in fandom. He’s been kind enough to link to something I wrote several years back, but don’t let that put you off, there’s lots more interesting material to read as well.

The whole “fake geek girl” thing amuses me no end, because the same people who rant and rave about girls not being real geeks are also likely to rant and rave about me not being a real girl, which of course means I can be a real geek. I’m also struck by the parallels between the “fake geek girl” narrative and the stories told about trans women. I’ll explain.

The people who complain about “fake geek girls” often do so in terms of entrapment. That is, they claim that the girls who turn up at conventions are not doing so because they are interested in the topic of the con. No, they are doing so to flaunt their boobies in skintight cosplay outfits so as to attract the attention of innocent geeks, whom they can then persecute by refusing to sleep with them. It’s a totally evil plan.

In comparison, people who complain about trans women often also use the entrapment story. In this case the trans women are “really” gay men who disguise themselves as beautiful women so that they can attract the attention of innocent males and lure them into gay sex.

Interesting, isn’t it. Who knew that the world was so full of insecure males?

Thank You, United Nations #TDOR

~ Cheryl

Some of you may remember a huge fuss a couple of years back when the UN voted to remove “sexual orientation” from its annual resolution condemning extrajudicial killings. Hilary Clinton and Susan Rice turned up last year to get that overturned. This year Sweden introduced the motion and added to it, for the very first time, protection for “gender identity”. What’s more they did this yesterday, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which of course specifically commemorates those killed because of their gender identity.

The motion was opposed by the usual unholy coalition of Muslim countries, the Vatican, and various states with hardline Christian traditions, but all of their attempts to remove the protections failed. In the final vote only Iran voted against, though I’m deeply disappointed in the United States which chose to abstain.

Full details, included the texts of the various resolutions and the voting record, is available here.

Heck of a Day Part I – #TDOR

~ Cheryl

Well, the TDOR event at Bristol went pretty well. Huge thanks to everyone who came, and to the Council for providing the space. We had 18 people in total, which was 50% more than my top-end estimate.

I appear to have done OK with the reading of the names, though I’m sure I butchered the pronunciation on some. As usual with such things, my main concern was that the event should not be disrupted by some activist taking exception to something I did or said. And if you think that’s far-fetched, one of Roz’s young friends reported via Twitter being spat at after her presentation at a local event because she’d tried to emphasize the fact that the event should be about those who died, not about relatively safe middle-class white people. Trans people can be just as stupid as the rest of society at times.

Anyway, it’s done. And there should be some further coverage on Shout Out tomorrow night (thanks to Niall & Nathan).

Now, what am I going to do with all of these left-over candles…?

Not Just The Tabloids

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Important updates to this at the end of the post.

I’m pretty used to the Daily Malice running sensationalist stories about trans people. Spreading hatred about minority groups is one of the main ways that they market their paper. But it is by no means only tabloid newspapers that are to blame. Today The Independent ran an article about trans model and beauty queen, Jackie Green. It purports to be an interview with Jackie’s mum. There’s a lot in the article that needs to be challenged (and people are starting to do so in the comments), but for now I’ll confine myself of a couple of things. Firstly the article pulls the usual dirty trick of referring to Jackie as male as often as it possibly can so as to reinforce the idea that she can never be anything else. And secondly, note the maximum shock value opening sentence: “When Jack Green was six years old, he asked ‘Mummy, when can I have my willy chopped off?” That’s completely made up. I know that because I’ve just read a very angry comment by Susie Green on the Trans Media Watch Facebook page.

To do this sort of thing at any time is disgraceful. To run a story that is pretty much designed to attract transphobic trolls on Transgender Day of Remembrance is beyond belief. I have no idea who Charlotte Philby is, but I hope I never have the misfortune to meet someone so hateful and insensitive.

Update: Just to show what can be done, The Telegraph has a wonderful article about Janet Mock. Also The Guardian gives Roz Kaveney space to tackle one of the worst sources of transphobia in the world. The Malice, of course, has an outright attack article, which I won’t link to.

Update 2: And lo, representation was made. And the representation appears to have got the ear of someone high up at The Independent. For while I was out the article has been substantially re-written, removing the invented quotes and deliberate misgendering. Here’s the fixed version.

That Time Of Year #TDOR

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

In the run-up to the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th many organizations run trans awareness campaigns. OutUWE, the LGBT network of the University of the West of England in Bristol, asked local trans people if they would come and talk. I’d already booked to go to the Alison Bechdel event, and other people volunteered, so I declined. OutUWE asked me if I’d send a statement to be read so I did. You can read it here.

That, of course, was intended for university students in the UK, many of whom would not be trans. The reality of trans people’s lives around the world can be very different. In an entirely separate development I have ended up organizing a Day of Remembrance ceremony in Bristol (thanks for the opportunity, Annabelle). As part of that I have had to go through this year’s list of deaths. A number of things are very obvious:

  • The overwhelming majority of victims are female-identified
  • The overwhelming majority are people of color
  • Most of the victims are very poor (they do sex work because they can’t get jobs)
  • The overwhelming majority come from countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion
  • Several victims appear to have been targeted because they are trans rights activists

The countries with the biggest death counts are Brazil (126) and Mexico (48). The average age of the victims, where known, is 29, with the youngest being just 16. One of the youngest, Jessica (18), was beaten to death in police custody. No reason for her arrest was ever given.

It is an ugly picture, and one which generating greater respect for trans people amongst white, middle class people in the UK won’t do much to solve. Alleviating poverty in Latin America would probably do a lot more good. A decrease in the amount of misogyny in the world would also work wonders.

Lost in Trans-lation

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Michael Palin’s latest travel series for the BBC sees him visit Brazil. It is a timely series, given that the country will be hosting the next soccer World Cup and the next Olympics. Also Brazil is a fascinating country (and one to which I have family links and would love to visit one day). But what sparked this post is that the series is also proving QUILTBAG-friendly. In episode two Palin was asked, live on Brazilian radio, whether he supported marriage equality. He came out firmly in favor of people who love each other being allowed to get married. And last night he was shown attending Rio Pride. Not just attending it, either — he was a guest on board the official bus of the Rio trans community.

Whenever anything to do with sex comes up (as it seems to do quite often in Brazil), Palin tends to retreat into that sort of British attitude that such things are all too embarrassing to talk about. Nevertheless, he was prepared to hang out with a bunch of trans folks, and even interviewed one of them on air.

The lady in question attempted to explain the difference between “transsexual” and (the non-inclusive version of) “transgender” to him, and here’s where language got in the way. Throughout Latin America the word “travesti” is used in much the same way that English-speakers use “transgender”. It is originally a theatrical term indicating an actor playing a role of a different gender, and Palin accordingly translated it as “transvestite”, which is not really what was meant at all (see my Gender 101 if this is all getting too confusing).

To make matters worse, the Brazilians pronounce “travesti” the same way the the British pronounce “travesty”. Of course the words have the same origin, but through the miracle of language evolution “travesty” has come to mean something wrong and abhorrent. It might be better if “travesti” were pronounced French style which is more traa-ves-ti than tra-vesti, but I doubt that there’s anything that can be done now.

Despite this minor confusion, I was very pleased with how Palin incorporated this segment in his programme. Indeed, he seems to think that this was an indication of how modern Brazilian society was. Thank you Michael, much appreciated. For those of you able to access it, the series is available on the iPlayer.

What I’m Sick Of

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I’ve pretty much given up on pointing you folks at online petitions about trans people because most of them only attract a few hundred signatures and are easily ignored by those they are aimed at. This one, however, has serious traction, thanks to it being backed by the stars of the My Transsexual Summer series.

The purpose of the petition is to encourage the World Heath Organisation to remove transsexualism from its list of mental illnesses. The WHO moves very slowly. It wasn’t until 1990 that they removed homosexuality from the same list. Another revision is due, and it is time that the WHO caught up with current medical thinking. Medical professionals working in the field of trans health called for de-psychopathologisation (lovely word) more than two years ago. The EU has petitioned the WHO to make the change. Hopefully, with a few more kicks up the backside, the WHO will move on this. You can help.

Some of you may have seen rumblings of discontent in trans communities that this change will somehow cause trans people to be denied treatment. It won’t. Or at least compared to the usual tabloid scare stories about waste of public money it will be a very minor issue. No one is saying that trans people don’t sometimes need medical procedures. What they are saying is that trans people are not crazy.

For those people who do have surgery, not much post-op treatment is required. However, trans women like me do need a regular supply of estrogen to prevent them developing osteoporosis. It’s very cheap. In fact I believe that the NHS makes a profit on prescribing it. But because successive GPs have insisted that I’m mentally ill, even long after a successful transition, I still have to spend a lot of money each year on visiting a private specialist to be declared sane before I’m allowed my prescription. I am sick of this. The main thing that causes trans people mental health problems is other people’s attitudes towards us. I’d like that to stop. Starting with the WHO.

Update: Here’s the excellent Monica Roberts with more on the background to the depsychopathologisation campaign.

A Bell Bird Comes Out

~ Cheryl

It’s National Coming Out Day. I don’t have a lot to tell you right now, but a little fellow from Wellington, New Zealand is causing a bit of a storm amongst ornithologists. Biologically this bell bird is female (don’t ask about bird chromosomes, they are not like ours), but he’s strutting his stuff like a boy bird, and even has some natty male plumage. Yeah, it looks like birds can be trans (or maybe intersex) too.

TMW Conference Report

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I spent most of today at a London conference organized by Trans Media Watch. It proved to be very useful for a number of reasons, and also quite interesting. Here are a few highlights.

The first panel got a bit derailed when Sky, the young person from the National Union of Students, mentioned gender-neutral toilets. Let me explain why this is a potentially contentious issue. I’m very much in favor of gender-neutral toilets being provided as a third option for people who don’t identify as either male or female for whatever reason, or who lack the confidence to use bathrooms provided for their preferred gender. I’m also mostly happy with gender-neutral toilets being the only option in most cases (as indeed is commonly the case in cafes, trains, aircraft and private homes), though I appreciate the need for women-only spaces as places of refuge in venues such as pubs and clubs where drunk men may behave badly. Where it gets problematic is if the provision of gender-neutral toilets suddenly results in all trans people being told that they must use them, even if, like Roz and myself, we’ve been happily using the bathrooms provided for our preferred gender for decades. I spoke to Sky during the coffee break, and they assured me that there was no intention of forcing anyone to use gender-neutral toilets against their wishes. In those circumstances I have no objection to people continuing to press for their provision.

The second panel was about the situation in Europe. I was delighted to see delegates present from Germany, Switzerland and Italy (and possibly a few other countries as well), alongside the usual crowd from Britain and Ireland. Thanks in particular to Alecs from TGEU for providing suggestions as to how I might contact trans activists in Ukraine so that I can make an informed decision regarding whether to attend next year’s Eurocon.

Finally we had a panel on regulation of the media featuring lawyer-journalist David Allen Green and Guy Parker of the Advertising Standards Authority. Generally speaking it is very hard to regulate the media, especially if you wish to maintain freedom of speech, and given the ease of publication afforded by the Internet. However, I suggested to the panel that a useful option might be to make newspapers responsible for the content of comment threads on their websites. To my delight, David agreed with me. Personally I think that one of the most useful things that the Leveson Inquiry could do is make the likes of the Daily Malice moderate their comments for hate speech, because that would mean they would no longer have a reason to post “news” that is nothing more than troll bait (for example this).

How Newspapers Work

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Some of you living in the UK may have seen a story doing the rounds last week about an ex-pat Brit who was up on a murder charge in Turkey for having killed his wife “after” discovering that she was trans. Though of course, they’ll never admit it, the whole point of this exercise is to encourage people to vent in comments about how killing the deceitful bitch was absolutely the right thing to do, and the poor guy should be let off. There’s nothing like pandering to bigotry for selling newspapers. However, you may have noticed the use of scare quotes above and suspect that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Jane Fae has been investigating. In case you can’t be bothered to click through, here’s a summary.

1. The story is not new. The murder happened in December 2010. So this is pretty clearly manufactured “news”.

2. No one in the UK media seems to have checked with the Turkish authorities to see if the deceased’s alleged transness was indeed a factor in the crime, or even true.

3. The primary evidence for the deceased being trans is an online comment by the murderer which was made in 2006 and in which he also claims to have purchased his wife.

So if we believe that comment then technically it is true that the murder took place “after” the murderer discovered his wife was trans. But that’s after by a period of 4 years, with the additional possibility that he knew she was trans when he “bought” her. As crimes of passion go, this is not terribly instantaneous.

And the point of all this? If this is how our newspapers report on stories about trans people, why would you believe anything else that they say?

And Podcast

~ Cheryl

Well that was a great day out. And the folks at Ujima are very quick getting their podcasts online. You can find my main appearance here. I start about 15 minutes in. And when Paulette discovered that I publish ebooks she asked me back for a brief segment in her second hour, starting around 35 minutes in to this recording. I think I did OK, though I really must remember to mention bi people more often.

What really got me excited about the day, however, is that Ujima has launched a project called Sounds Reads. It is backed by the Lottery and Bristol Libraries, it is a project to encourage reading amongst immigrant communities in the city. There will, of course, be a particular emphasis on young people. Some of you are going to get emails from me about this. There’s a short segment starting 17 minutes into the second show with three guys talking about the problem of getting boys to read. (And some slightly dubious stuff about gender that I’ll talk to Pauline about later.)

Making Girls From Girls

~ Cheryl

Here’s a follow-up to my post about parthenogenesis the other day. It turns out there maybe other ways to create a viable female-only society.

As you may know, stem cells are really useful things, because you can encourage them to develop into other types of cell. Lots of other types of cell. But can you use stem cells to grow sperm cells? And if so, can you grow sperm cells from stem cells harvested from a woman? If so, would those sperm cells be able to fertilize an egg? Alternatively, can you make an egg cell from a stem cell harvested from a man?

The point of doing this is that you can then create children that are the true genetic offspring of same-(chromosome)-sex couples. As well as helping lesbians and gays, it would also allow trans women and women with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome to become mothers.

This Telegraph article talks about the current state of research, which reports on a successful attempt to make sperm cells from female embryonic stem cells.

Interesting, especially if you happen to be writing feminist SF.

Live Longer Without Testosterone?

~ Cheryl

Remember that bit in 2312 where Kim Stanley Robinson speculates that intersex people will be longer-lived than pure males or females, leading mankind to genetically engineer for intersex traits? Well, here’s a Wired article claiming that eunuchs in ancient Korea lived substantially longer than other males.

I’m somewhat doubtful myself. It occurs to me that non-eunuch males are much more likely to die in warfare than eunuchs, which is bound to affect the data. These days trans women are much more likely to be murdered than cis men, so the opposite applies. Eventually we’ll have better data. In the meantime it amuses me that Stan might be onto something.

More Podcasting

~ Cheryl

Today I caught up with the latest episode of The Writer and The Critic (with special guest Jonathan Strahan). Again I’m late. My excuse is that the darn thing is well over 2 hours long. Fortunately you don’t have to listen to all of it. The first half hour is given over to discussion of some sort of Internet blow-up that appears to have resulted from people misinterpreted something I wrote in a blog post. You don’t need to listen to that. Then there’s some discussion of Galveston by Sean Stewart (which I didn’t like much when I read it, but should probably revisit if only I had the time), and Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor, which I definitely want to read. Most of the last hour is given over to discussion of The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan, and quite right too. In my not-so-humble opinion it is best book I have read thus far this year.

Of course that is only my opinion, and while I do think I am a reasonably good judge of literary quality, I recognize that people don’t always judge a book by the same standards that I use. Lots of people absolutely loathe books with unreliable narrators, or books that they can’t neatly pigeonhole into one genre or another. There is some discussion of this in the podcast.

One issue that Kirstyn raises is that works by women writers that contain some autobiographical elements are often dismissed out of hand because of that, whereas works by men that are similarly autobiographical are widely praised. She cites the furor that greeted Cat Valente’s story, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time”, as an example. Mondy, because one of his functions on the podcast is to play the clueless, sexist male, asked for examples of stories by men getting praise, and Kirstyn provided a few, but what immediately sprang into my mind is the fact that the archetypal plot for a LitFic novel is that of a middle-aged literature professor with an unhappy marriage who has an affair with a student. I suspect that a lot of those are either autobiographical or wish-fulfillment. And of course the reason this happens is that for far too many people the course of men’s lives is a matter of supreme importance, whereas the course of women’s lives is irrelevant. Give the sort of social structures we’ve had in recent history, it is hardly surprising that people think that way.

Discussion of how others might see the book moved inevitably on to discussion of its chances in awards. Mondy, bless him, is still hung up on the daft notion that if a book is really good then it should win all the awards. If that was the case there would be no point in having multiple awards. I can’t see The Drowning Girl appearing on the Hugo or Nebula ballot, though I’ll be voting for it in the Hugos. Those awards simply don’t favor this sort of book. I do expect it to appear on the Shirley Jackson Award ballot, as it is very much their sort of thing. It has been suggested to the Tiptree jury, but I think they are far more likely to go for something like Beyond Binary or 2312 where gender is more central to the book. As for World Fantasy, I’d love to see it there, but juries can be capricious. It won’t win the popular vote, and one of the three jury slots will doubtless be taken by Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but I’m bearing in mind that Deathless didn’t make this year’s ballot, which is a travesty if ever there was one.

Finally I’d like to address Jonathan Strahan’s comments about the trans elements of the book. Jonathan says he’d like to see more work discussing why trans people do what they do, because he and other cis people find it so very hard to understand. Now Jonathan is a good friend, so I know he’s approaching this with the best of intentions, but what trans people tend to hear when faced with requests like that is, “I think you are crazy, I demand that you justify yourself”, which is one reason why we don’t write about it much.

Another reason is that there’s not a lot to say. Jay Lake did a great blog post a few years back in which he asked cis people to justify their gender (without reference to their biology). It’s not easy. You just are who you are. A good illustration of the issue comes up in a recent BBC radio show on philosophy. The program focuses on a well known philosophical problem known as “Theseus’ Ship”. The idea is that Theseus has a ship which is so old, and has been repaired so often, that not one of the original timbers remains: is it the same ship?

One of the guests on the program is my friend Cathy Butler (whom I’m sure Jonathan knows as well). She’s a trans woman, and she makes the point that since her transition many people have told her that she has become a “different person”. Indeed, some people claim that the “person she used to be” is now “dead”. That’s an excuse that families often use for ostracizing trans relatives. But, Cathy says, as far as she’s concerned, she’s still the same person. I’d go further than that. For many trans people, post-transition we are still exactly the same person, with the exception that we no longer have to be habitual liars. Surely that makes us better people?

So I’m not sure, Jonathan, that I can give you an explanation. I am who I am. So are Cathy and Caitlín and all of the other trans people you know. All we can do is ask you to accept that we are being honest about ourselves and accept that we feel the way we do, much as you might accept someone’s word if they say that they are color-blind, or can “feel” a phantom limb after an amputation, or any of the other odd things that our bodies and minds do to us.

META Me

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

And if four more novels to publish wasn’t enough excitement for one day, it appears that I have been published elsewhere again.

META is an online magazine specifically for trans people. It is edited by my friend Paris Lees. For the latest issue I was asked to do a quick review of Roz Kaveney’s forthcoming novel, Rhapsody of Blood: Rituals. The book is a lot of fun, and I’ll be doing a much more in depth review when it is available to buy (and hopefully in the store). If you would like to read what I wrote for Paris, details are here.

I note that this issue also includes lots of other fine trans-related stuff, including interviews with Kate Bronstein, Jonathan Ross and Julie Bindel.