Intermittently, starting in the first season, one of the boys in the show becomes involved with a ‘tranny,’ as seen here (sorry it’s not a great clip – someone lemme know if there’s a higher quality version):

While I was skeptical at first (and my roommate warned me of the “tranny” jokes before I started watching the series) I’m liking the show’s handling of things a lot more than I liked How I Met Your Mother. Because the trans character, Carmen, is totally unapologetic about being trans. In the above clip, Mac says “Is that a penis?” and she replies, “Um, yeah?” And when he says “You lied to me!” she says “No, you lied to me!” (About going to the gym…)

Likewise, in the episode I’m watching (midway through season 3) Carmen again uses Mac’s shallowness to compete with with his, um, shallowness. That is, he’s creeped out by the fact she has a penis. (Shallow!) But he’s drawn to her because she’s hot and plays into his insecurities. (Also shallow!) It’s kind of delightful to watch, particularly because she – even as a trans character – undeniably has the upper hand.

In the same episode, Charlie and Mac get into an argument. Mac thinks Charlie is trying to convince him to stop dating Carmen. Charlie is, in fact, trying to convince Mac to stop murdering people. (Mac’s not a murderer, but Charlie thinks he is. It’s that kind of show.) There’s a big back and forth of “You have to stop this!” “I don’t know if I can!” with both of them completely misunderstanding the situation.

Finally, when Mac breaks up with Carmen, he tries to justify it by saying “I’m not ashamed of you! I’m ashamed with myself,” prompting her to give a really great look of disgust. And then is really cute later when talking about having sex with her, saying “I’ve been doing some reading! She tapes it back – it’s complicated.”

I’m really curious to see how Carmen plays out, as searching for the video I included in this post hinted that she’s still around in later seasons. And while I’m certainly not thrilled with Carmen’s portrayal, I do kinda love her place as a ridiculous character in this show populated entirely by ridiculous characters.

As a transgender woman, I’ve read a lot of trans fiction. Stories about magical transformations, mutations which cause gender shifts, mind-transfer rays, nanotechnology, forced feminization, sexual domination. You name a way someone could possibly transform from a man to a woman, and some author on some website has probably beaten you to it. And I’ve probably read it: the full range of stories, from enthusiastic transitions of  willing participants to subjugation and rape.

When there is no one like you on TV, when pornography depicts “your kind” as a freak and a fetish item, when your story is absent from books and movies, you make do with what you can. Not all of the stories I’ve read were well-written. Not all of them cast trans people in a positive light, let alone a realistic one. But that hunger to find ourself in the world exists in all of us. Finding our own identity in stories certainly isn’t the only reason we read, tell stories, watch movies, see plays. But it’s a big one, the desire to find that resonance of ourself in someone else’s tale.

The first story I read that was definitively ‘trans fiction’ was The Saga of Tuck (online at http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes/writings.htm), a story about a teenage boy who begins what seems like cross-dressing but ultimately turns into a much bigger exploration of his (her? 142 chapters in and its still uncertain) identity. I stumbled across it as a young teen, and was amazed that characters could exist who asked questions like my own: what does it mean to be a boy? a girl? do I want to be a boy? what would it mean to want to be a girl? I fantasized about what it would be like to have someone in my life helping me dress like a girl, act like a girl, be a girl.

I’ve probably read hundreds of stories since finding Tuck – stories about forced feminization or unwilling transitions, ridiculous scenarios and poorly written dialog, ranging form the offensive to simply bad – to find the few gems of trans fiction that do exist. Whateley Academy (hosted at crystalhall.org) has stories about teenage superheros, including the stories of Jade and Ayla, two characters who – in very different ways – undergo their own transitions and have to deal with what it’s like to have a body that isn’t developing the way you want. Bridges (http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/20612/bridges) is a rare example in the trans fiction universe – a story about a trans woman, who is transitioning willingly, without any magical or supernatural help. Simply a good read about a character dealing with many of the same issues I face every day. From another perspective, These Lives We Seek (http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes/select/TheseLivesWeSeek.txt) deals with a college-aged journalist discovering her best friend is trans, and talks about the politics of being ‘out.’ These and others (some of which I’ve linked to and written about at http://fridaythang.com/blog/trans-fiction/) have helped me feel like I’m not alone in the world, even when friends and family might not understand what I’m going through.

So what about Orlando: A Biography? Is it trans fiction? The story of a man who – a third of the way through the book – awakes in the body of a woman? (Hopefully I’m not ruining that part for you, but you should really know that already.)

The timing for Orlando to be ‘trans fiction’ couldn’t be better. The German word ‘Transsexualismus” was coined in 1923. The first documented instance of sex reassignment surgery was performed just two years after Orlando was published, in 1930, twenty years before Christine Jorgenson became an international sensation with headlines proclaiming “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty!” Someone as interested in male and female roles as Woolf could easily have heard of such research and development coming from mainland Europe.

Alas, it has been pretty firmly established the titular Orlando is based off of Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. In a 1927 diary entry, Woolf wrote “And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other.” Likewise, Sackville-West’s son described Orlando as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature.” Orlando wasn’t trans, simply a a woman exploring sexuality with other women in a time when such things weren’t spoken of.

But Orlando’s foundation in reality, in an actual woman, doesn’t mean the book is without its exploration of gender, and its transgender themes. As Woolf so eloquently says, “The change of sex, though it altered [Orlando's] future, did nothing whatsoever to alter [Orlando's] identity.” What a lovely description of the ideal transition: I’m changed, but I’m not. I’m the same, but I’m not. Above all, I’m still me.

Likewise, Woolf spends no small amount of time describing Orlando’s shifting responses to being a woman, compared to those of being a man. Shortly after Orlando’s transformation, she is offered food by the Captain of the ship on which she’s traveling:

“A little of the fat, Ma’am?” he asked. “Let me cut you just the tiniest little slice the size of your finger nail.” At those words a delicious tremor ran through her frame. Birds sang; the torrents rushed. It recalled the feeling of indescribable pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha, hundreds of years ago. Then she had pursued, now she fled. Which is the greater ecstasy? The man’s or the woman’s? And are they not perhaps the same? No, she thought, this is the most delicious (thanking the Captain but refusing), to refuse, and to see him frown. Well, she would, if he wished, have the thinnest, smallest, sliver in the world. This was the most delicious of all, to yield and see him smile.

I’m not saying transitioning requires buying into a strict gender distinction between ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ with binarily defined roles. I disagree with Orlando that men have to be the pursuers, women the pursued. But Woolf asks interesting questions about how our personality plays into our gender roles, and the opposite. Do you take the initiative in relationships because that’s what men are “supposed to do?” Or are you a man because you take initiative in relationships? (Hopefully neither are true!)

I also got a kick out of that passage because it did ring true with my own experience. I discovered, over the course of my transition, that I like being the object of desire. I like having someone ask me to dance much more than I like asking someone else to dance. (Again, I am not saying all women feel this way, or all trans women, or that those feelings are why I transitioned. I don’t want to be taken as The Trans Woman Who Explains How All Trans Women Feel. But I, personally, have discovered to my delight that getting flowers makes me feel pretty and feminine and loved in a way giving flowers never made me feel strong and masculine.)

Back to my original question: Is Orlando trans fiction? And, as I’ve already started to answer, did it resonate with my own experience of transitioning? The answer to both of those questions contains both ‘yes’ and ‘no.’

Yes, Orlando explores both gender and trans-gender themes, questioning what it means to be a man, a woman, or somewhere in between. In that way, Orlando is trans fiction. But no, Orlando – the character herself, or himself – doesn’t seem to identify as trans. He wasn’t unsatisfied with being a man, and she wasn’t unsatisfied with being a woman.

Yes, Orlando resonated with my own experiences of transitioning. At the simplest level, going out in a skirt feels different than going out in pants, a power play Woolf comments on:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us. For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlando’s skirt, he had an awning stretched for her immediately, pressed her to take another slice of beef, and invited her to go ashore with him in the long-boat. These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts, instead of flowing, been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we are paid compliments, it behoves us to make some return. Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man’s humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman’s skirts, and his braided coat a woman’s satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take to mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

I can remember the first time I tried on a skirt, as a teenager, and felt awkward and uncomfortable. I felt like a boy in a dress, with hairy legs and a five o’clock shadow. But I can also remember the first time I felt feminine and pretty in a dress, years later. The experience of looking down at myself in wonder, at smooth legs and arms, at breasts (glorious breasts! MY breasts!) and at heeled feet and painted toes, way down at the floor. The feeling has faded somewhat since then, the sheer wonder of my body as a woman, but I still get shivers delightful when I get dolled up to go out.

I wouldn’t say gender is only a function of society – something Woolf implies when Orlando seems little different as a woman with the Gypsies and hugely changed when back in England – but I also reject that gender is purely biological, and I think Woolf and I would be in agreement there, as Orlando explores. The clothes don’t make the man (or the woman) but I do think the clothing we wear, the clothing we’re allowed to wear, impacts how we think of ourselves as gendered beings.

At the same time, no, Orlando didn’t resonate with my experiences as a trans woman. A transition was something that simply happened to Orlando, not something sought after and prized, as it is with transgender and transsexual women and men. I wished every evening growing up that I might wake up the next morning  a “real” girl, and Orlando barely seems to react at all. This did kind of bum me out, since I always love reading new stories about trans characters, about people like me, about people who don’t feel right in the gender imposed upon them by society. I admit, I wanted Orlando to be a novel about a trans character, rather than a (nevertheless very good!) novel which explores gender and trans-gender themes.

But Orlando resonated with me on a human level, as a book about a character trying to continually discover who she “really” is. And I suppose that’s all any of us can really hope for, to connect with a character on some level, both because and in spite of our differences

Finally

I was skeptical going into this movie. I grew up with the ‘Disney Renaissance,’ and was raised on films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Needless to say, I have high expectations for my animated musical Disney films. I was also nervous about the race issues surrounding Disney’s first black princess. Fortunately, The Princess and the Frog surprised me: the songs were good, the animation quality high, and while it mostly sidestepped issues of race (particularly interracial interactions in the 1920s American South) there were occasional nods to racism. I don’t feel well-versed enough in race theory to really comment, other than to say that – as an admittedly privileged white woman – I enjoyed the film.

What really threw me for a loop was the issues of ‘passing’ brought up by the alligator, Louis.

(Warning: Beyond here be – minor – spoilers.) I know, I know: I look for gender issues everywhere. I look for trans characters (or characters with trans themes) where none exist. It’s the lens through which I see the world. So sue me.

For all that, I couldn’t help but see Louis – a trumpet-playing alligator who longs to be human so he can join a band in New Orleans – as a character longing to transition. Maybe I’m reading too much into Louis…at the end of the movie, when Tiana (the ‘princess’ of The Princess and the Frog) opens her restaurant, Louis takes his place as the trumpet player, and no one is able to argue with a trumpet-playing alligator. So perhaps Louis doesn’t really want to be human, he just wants to have some of the privileges (like playing in a band) that go with it.

Here’s Louis’s big song:

It’s called “When We’re Human,” and involves Louis singing about how wonderful things will be when he’s a human being, and Naveen and Tiana singing about how wonderful things will be when they’re back to being human beings. From the song:

If I were a human being
I’d head strait for New Orleans
And I’d blow this hprn so hot and strong
Like no one they’ve ever seen

You’ve heard of Louis Arsrong,
Mr. Sidney Bechet?
All those boys gonna step aside
When they hear this old ex-gator play, Listen… (trumpet solo)

I admit, rewatching the song does make me think Louis is more interested in privileges than actually being human. But it bummed me out when, later in the movie, the Voodoo priestess who is looking to help Naveen and Tiana basically says, “Yeah, you’re never going to be human” to an unhappy Louis. Why are the magically transformed English-speaking frogs first in line to turn back into humans, but the English speaking, trumpet playing alligator is told to be happy with who he is?

As a viewer of many Disney films, I’m forced to admit Louis probably isn’t trans. (Ariel from The Little Mermaid still takes the cake for my trans character in the Disney canon.) But I do think Louis’s story is a queer narrative, of being told who to be and who not to be. Of ultimately refusing to allow society’s guidelines on acceptable behavior dictate passion.

And that’s good enough for me.

“I don’t understand.” I’d gotten the lamp as a lark, at a local thrift store. It was nothing impressive: tarnished metal, battered in a few places, curving upward into a classic “genie’s lamp” spout. I figured I would put it on a shelf, next to my LEGO Star Wars scene and Happy Meal toys of Robin Hood and Peter Pan. An interesting conversation piece, right? Something amusing and unusual, to prompt a laugh from guests and a distraction for me when I should be working. No one ever expects to find themselves in the middle of a fairy tale, the middle of 1001 Arabian Nights. You think about it, sure. Ask your friends, have late night discussions about what you would do with those three wishes. You never expect it to happen.

“I believe your culture is full of stories about genies, Master. Jinn, Ifrit, whatever you wish me to be called.” The jinni spoke with an androgynous voice, emanating from a smokey body, not clearly male or female. In true fairy tale fashion, the incense-like smoke originated from the lamp and spread upwards into an unreasonably solid-looking cloud. The smoke continued to pour out, but hadn’t expanded past the jinni’s “body” or filled the room; the only smell was a subtle hint of something floral, impossible to pin down. When the jinni spoke, the cloud around its face swirled, and subtle puffs of smoke emerged out from where its mouth would be, like breathing out on a cold day. “What is it that you do not understand? As the one who freed me from the prison of Solomon’s seal, you are entitled to three wishes, delivered to the best of my ability. A superficial read of your thoughts indicates you already understand the general guidelines from countless tales of fiction: no taking of life, no returning of life from beyond the veil, no wishing for additional wishes. There are more esoteric rules, but I will appraise you of those if and when you encounter them. For all that, you are entitled to three wishes, Master.” I could hear the capital ‘M.’

How do you decide on what to wish for, when wishing for what you always wanted would erase and rewrite your entire life?

I’m trans. Transgender, transsexual, whatever. What’s between my legs doesn’t match what’s between my ears. For the last five years I’d been transitioning: therapy, hair removal, name changes on document after document, hormones. For the last two years, I’d been living full-time as Rebecca, presenting myself and interacting with the world as the woman I am. Recently, I started researching surgeons for sexual reassignment surgery, or SRS. (No, I haven’t had “the Surgery” yet.) Growing up, I dreamed of opportunities like this, to change my body and change my life. I fantasized about magical body-shaping spells, mind-transfer rays, alternate timelines, and even more outlandish possibilities. I would have given almost anything to not be trans, to “just” be the girl I knew I was. I constantly regretted the missed dresses and dates and sleepovers of a youth spent pretending to be a boy. And now I had an opportunity to change all that, to change me.

Part of me was kicking myself, asking just why I was hesitating. Make the wish, rewrite history, and be done with it. I’d have never been trans, would have always been a girl. I wouldn’t have considered suicide because my body was so foreign to my identity. I wouldn’t have gone to party after prom after wedding after funeral dressed in someone else’s suit and tie. I wouldn’t have had to come out to girlfriends, bosses, parents, siblings. I wouldn’t have had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for hair removal, hormones, doctors’ fees, new wardrobes, therapy. I wouldn’t have to live my life as one of the smallest, most reviled minorities in modern society. Trannies. She-males. Chicks with dicks.

I wouldn’t have grown closer to my mom over the course of my transition. Bonded with members of the trans community. Discovered my love of performing personal narrative and telling my own story to the world. I wouldn’t be who I am today, if I weren’t trans.

“Do you have a name, jinni? What should I call you?” I needed some time to think. To stall.

The jinni cocked its head. “You may call me whatever you wish, Master. But, in the time before I was bound by Solomon, I was known as Jannah. Paradise, in English.”

“And…” I paused, realizing that asking ‘are you a boy or a girl?’ of a cloud of talking incense might be ridiculous. “Do jinn have genders?”

Jannah laughed. At least, I think it was a laugh. It sounded like fire crackling when a new log is thrown onto a pile, and like bells, too, somehow. “We do, Master, although we jinn are not as firmly bound to male and female as the Children of Adam. Or as bound as some of the Children of Adam.” I think Jannah cocked an eyebrow at me, but it was hard to tell through the smoke.

I admit it, my heart started racing. I hadn’t even voiced anything about being trans, and Jannah already seemed to know something was up. Stupid mind-reading. Was I going to go down in myths and legends as the woman unlucky enough to find a transphobic jinni? I had visions of smiting. Horrible, horrible smiting.

That laugh again. I could listen to that laugh all day. “Fear not, Child of Adam. You are my Master,” (again, with the capital M), “and I could not harm you even should I wish to. But, as I said, jinn are less bound to male and female than humanity. Just as Allah made you of clay, to be formed and solidified, we jinn are made of fire, forever shifting and racing from one form to another.”

I calmed down, slightly. Maybe I’d make it through this bizarre experience after all. But I couldn’t help pressing my luck, saying, “So you know I’m trans.” It was really more of a statement than a question, and I was prepared for an outburst of biblical proportions.

“Such words you humans come up with, and such concepts since my last time free of that lamp!” Jannah appear to sit down in mid-air, one leg over the other, and looked at me with a relaxed attitude. I wondered how long Jannah had been in the lamp, what being in a lamp was like – was it I Dream of Jeannie? Disney’s Aladdin? Something I couldn’t even imagine? “I know, and it matters not. Again, you are my Master, and only your wishes and well-being are my concern. Not what’s between your legs.” Jannah glanced down, and I felt the irrational desire to cover my crotch, even though I was fully clothed. Jannah’s words did give me pause, however.

“My well-being?”

“You are a lucky one, Master. Many of my kin have become dark and twisted in the time since Solmon, but I see no pleasure in causing harm.” My mind was racing. How can you tell if someone is telling the truth, let alone a magical jinni? You can’t just ask, because if they’re lying they’ll just continue to lie. What good is saying ‘Are you a mean ole’ literal genie, or a happy friendly Disney genie?’

At last, I replied, “I need some time to think, Jannah. I’m going to take a walk.” I grabbed my keys and headed for the door.

“As you wish, Master. I shall await your return.” As I closed the door, I could see Jannah turning on the TV, a truly odd site in a day already filled with weirdness.

I walked along the street, crunching the remaining ice and snow under my boots. Three wishes. How could I decide on three wishes? The first one seemed easy: money. I would need to work out the details, but some amount of financial security. I don’t think money can buy happiness, but I sure think it can remove a lot of obstacles in its way. But what kind of money? Winning the lottery? Always having luck with stocks? A magical appearance of cash in my bank account? Guarantees to a good job with a safe future? Did I want to be comfortably well-off, or obscenely wealthy? I ultimately decided on something of a compromise between “comfortable” and “obscene”: I would wish to win a lottery drawing of twenty million dollars (after taxes), and have exceptional intuition about how to make money in the stock market. Enough to never have to worry about money again, but not nearly enough to – say – buy a space shuttle or lose all connection with reality. Hopefully. I also had some plans for that money in terms of charity: political causes I believe in, and especially supporting LGBT (and T-specific) support groups and organizations.

In my contemplation, I’d walked all the way to the Lake Michigan, about a mile from my house. The water was frozen near the shoreline, and waves crashed up and over the ice. I pulled my scarf around me as I continued walking.

One wish down. The second one also didn’t seem too tough: health for me and the ones I cared about. Not to live forever (which might be a forbidden wish, anyway) but for myself and the people I loved to live long, healthy lives, free from major disease, Alzheimers, whatever. Another solid, practical wish. A boring wish, even, but something that seemed difficult to argue with.

I started heading back to my apartment, through the pedestrian tunnel under Lake Shore Drive and back west.

The third wish, I knew from the start, would be the impossible wish. The “trans” wish. The one that, in a perfect world, I could waste on superpowers or proof that aliens exists, or something utterly and obscenely ridiculous. A trip to the moon, maybe. It would even be nice (in a sick, paradoxical sort of way) if I was miserable enough to wish my current life away, to reset the clock and say “I wish I’d been born genetically female, and happy with that identity.” But I couldn’t honestly contemplate that much rewriting of my life. And somehow not rewriting my life, allowing myself to transform into a ‘real’ girl without changing anything else, would bring up a bit of confusion when it turned out that, oh!, I had a vagina all along.

So what about more complicated wishes? ‘I wish that a medical treatment would be developed (stem sells? gene therapy? I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about) to allow trans people to ‘grow’ the proper sex organs in a lab for seamless and problem-free transplants.’ But that would undoubtedly be super expensive, meaning I’d be making SRS even less accessible, and transitioning even more a class issue. What about ‘I wish for the ability to shape shift’? That’d have the bonus of being fun, letting me resolve (cheat) some other body issues, and…still end up with lots of questions about where the hell my penis went.

Maybe I wasn’t thinking big enough. ‘I wish that nanotechnology existed allowing for inexpensive and flawless body-rebuilding, allowing people to basically take a pill for SRS.’ How many times had I read that story on Fictionmania or BigCloset? But those stories never seemed to deal with the inevitable fallout. Trans people aren’t the only ones with body issues, and I wasn’t  sure I want to live in a world where dramatically reshaping your body was as easy as popping a pill.

‘I wish to be the crotch fairy, with the power to let trans people’s genitals match their identity! KA-POW! Penis! KA-BLAM! Vagina!’ OK, that idea made me giggle (and I’ve talked before about wishing for a ‘vagina fairy,’ but I’m not sure I want to be a Crotch Fairy for the rest of my life. Or, y’know, ever.

Perhaps the scariest wish of all, and the most alluring, was this: I wish for good mental health, to be comfortable with my trans identity, and not to regret what was ‘lost’ in my childhood and adolescence. Scary in its simplicity, and in the idea I’d ‘waste’ a wish in something that seems like it should be do-able on my own, yet continued to be just out of my grasp.

As I approached my apartment, I worried about how mundane these wishes seemed. I could – quite literally – wish for the moon. I could change the course of history, impact the lives of billions across the planet. Could I roll my third wish into the second? Wish for good physical and mental health, and still have that third wish left over for something more exciting?

Returning to my apartment, and seeing Jannah still on the couch, I realized I was about to find out.

It kind of strikes me. Being transgendered is a lot like having amnesia. I mean I can know things and I can self identify myself but at the same time when we all start to go through this we really don’t know a whole lot of things about who we are. It’s all Images, those lives we once led, not anything of substance really.

Kind of like our old or otherselves were a movie, one we had watched over and over until we knew it line by line and hated it. Then we start to transition and we’re given the book to read instead and it’s nothing at all like the movie. There’s similarities but it’s really not the same and we all have to start at the first of the book not really knowing what the real story of us is going to be.

http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/21191/images-4

I hadn’t heard either of these analogies before – being trans as having amnesia, and transitioning as the experience of reading a novel instead of seeing the movie – but I think they both have some value.

I don’t know enough about amnesia to comment from anything but a pop culture understanding of the affliction, but the analogy makes some sense: being trans, you know bits and pieces about what and who you are, how you’re supposed to present yourself, interact with others, what you might (or might not!) like and dislike. And there’s an expectation from those around you that you should know all this stuff, and an embarrassment when you don’t. A worry that you’ll make a fool of yourself.

Ugly Betty is a show I’ve talked about before. The trans character, Alexis, suffers from amnesia at one point (it’s that kind of show) and has no idea how to dress herself, carry herself, or interact with the world. She’s excited about what feels to her as a magical transformation for male to female, but hasn’t retained any of the experiences or knowledge to go with it. It was, to me, a poignant reminder that the journey is sometimes necessary for the destination to be worth anything.

And – as a voracious reader – I really like the idea of transitioning as reading a book versus watching a movie. Movies have to function in compressed time, telling a story in a few scant hours. Books, on the other hand, can expand details and zoom focus in as close as the author likes. Transitioning, the important details of my personality – who I care about, my politics, my humor, my intelligence - haven’t faded. But I’ve learned things about myself I simply couldn’t know while I wasn’t living ‘as myself.’ (I use quotes because I’m still not sure how to describe life before transitioning. “Trapped in the wrong body.” “Living as someone else.” “Forced to be a boy.” All have elements of truth, but none describe the whole experience.)

Now, in the midst (or post?) transition, I’m able to focus on my life instead of worrying how much time is left to tell the story. (If that sentence makes any sense…) I am not always able to forget about the movie version, I’m not always able to get over frustrations about the parts I had to leave out by not transitioning as early as I’d have liked, but I like the idea of thinking about my future as an open book, rather than a completed movie.

In that vein, I came across The Silence of the Night. It’s not super-long, and it deals with some dark subject matter – child abduction and implied rape – but it’s really a lovely story about a trans person trying to come to terms with her past. I was skeptical at first, but the magical and religious elements all come together in the end. Even I, agnostic at best, found a lot to like in the story, and definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a little hope to come out of all the darkness.

SIR Orlando to you

Sorry I’ve been so busy! Here’s a short post while I get some longer ones together.

Last night, before going to bed, I began to read Orlando. Briefly, Orlando is about a nobleman who – after some earlier adventures taking up about half the book – goes to sleep and awakes to find himself a woman, Lady Orlando.

Orlando often comes up in discussions of trans studies, and not without good reason. That said, some say that the character’s identity (and sexuality) stay as “straight male” throughout the book, meaning it isn’t quite as “trans” as is often held. I haven’t gotten to the part about the gender swap, let alone any same-sex relationships, so I’ll hold off commenting. I will say, however, that I’m loving Virginia Woolf’s style of writing, her self-awareness as a narrator, and her willingness to poke fun at the genre in which she’s engaging. I look forward to finishing Orlando (and writing more about it) as well as diving into other works of hers.

Stella, someone who could get women drivers a bad name, literally knocks Charlie off his expensive racing bike. She discovers that Charlie, a research field biologist, has a secret. He’s gearing up to transition as a woman, only he’s too frightened to do it. Stella takes control and her brother, Simon not only fancies ‘Cathy’ but falls in love with her.

Follow the mayhem, as this romantic and at times adventure story rambles all over the place as they pursue their lives. Keep the tissues handy, it has pathos, humour and real life, as Cathy deals with the triumphs and tribulations of being a woman.

It’s fun. If you’re looking for something easy to read, this is a good pick The chapters are all pretty short, nice bite-sized pieces, which makes it easy to read quite a lot without realizing it. (I’m almost at chapter 200, out of 957 so far, with more chapters still being added.)

That said, I haven’t caught up to the most recent chapters, so read my review with that in mind.

At the end of the day, it’s nice reading about a character who actually identifies as trans. Cathy has to deal with being out (or not) sleeping with her partner (or not) feeling ignorant about how to ‘be a woman,’ and so on. Likewise, Angharad occasionally touches on really difficult pieces about being trans, in feelings of inadequacy, regret, family members, romantic relationships, and more. For all that, though, I think Falling off a Bike has some shortcomings, and I’m not convinced it’ll keep my attention for another 700+ chapters.

To begin, the story has something of a ridiculous narrative, and I feel like I can only put up with so much. Cathy is wooed by a British Lord, promoted (and promoted and promoted) at work, is inherently so graceful and beautiful as to provoke a coworker’s murderous rage, saves babies from burning cars and befriends small children and forest animals (literally), and cries all the fucking time. Now, I’m aware I occasionally accuse myself of that: of having a really good life and still being down in the dumps all the time. But I sure as hell hope I’m not as tiring to my friends as Cathy occasionally has been to me as a reader.

Coupled with that, I don’t love some of the gender politics in the story. Cathy refuses to have sex until marriage, which is fine, but rejects any possibility of having sex before surgery. That’s fine too, although I would have rather read about a character who (like myself) is able to enjoy sex with the equipment they have. But I think the author portrays Cathy’s feeling around her body and sexuality in a pretty superficial way. Cathy also mentions she doesn’t like interacting with other trans people, but rather than explore that as a point for character growth it’s just brushed off. I also think the story’s characters sometimes stray over the line of ‘playful banter’ into ‘sexist jackassery.” (And then Cathy rushes off to her room to cry again.)

Do I recommend this as something to read? Yes, but with those caveats. It doesn’t fall into the trap of “Oh no, I’m really a man but [ridiculous situation] has made me a woman!” which is quite refreshing. I also do appreciate the story’s humor, and have grown to care about the characters. But that makes it all the more frustrating when I think an opportunity was missed, or don’t like how a relationship or character is being developed.

(Again, it’s somewhat unfair to judge this entire work by only 1/5 of it. But the 200 chapters I’ve read so far are at least as long – if not far longer – than some of the trans fiction out there, so I don’t feel totally out of line reviewing it at this point. If/when I catch up to the current chapters, or if/when I decide to give up, I’ll let y’all know.)

I’m a big fan of Robert Heinlein. I readily admit he had problems creating really nuanced female characters, and many of his male characters – particularly in his later books – are huge Marty Stus. Yet, for all that, I love the stories he created. He had an expert sense of dramatic timing, created worlds and universes that were exciting and dynamic, and (most importantly) wrote books that are fun to read. And reread.

On top of that, as a teenager first reading Heinlein, I loved the ideas he put forth about personal autonomy and individual freedom. As I’ve grown older, I think his vision of capitalism, of hard work equaling success, is a bit naive, but he does an excellent job of making it attractive. Of making the reader believe that, sure, if everyone tried their hardest and respected their fellow man (and in Heinlein, it usually is their fellow man) the world would turn out alright. And I still feel very shaped by Heinlein when it comes to my own optimism about the possibilities open to humanity: space travel, medical technology, and more.

More than that, though, Heinlein created a universe to which I love to return, again and again.

I’m referring to the ‘World as a Myth’ crossover of a number of his final books, where a character developed a technology allowing travel between fictional universes. This basically allowed Heinlein to hand pick some of his favorite characters, from his books and elsewhere, and send them on adventures. I just reread Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which (along with a number of other short stories from earlier in Heinlein’s career) compose the bulk of this multi-universe fan wank, culminating with the main character from Time Enough for Love going back in time to sleep with his mother, who then goes back in time in To Sail Beyond the Sunset to rescue her father, so she can sleep with him. Only it’s not fan wank because it’s written by the creator of the characters.

Yeah, this is why people give Heinlein a hard time, and rightly so.

But dammit all if, as a teenager and now as a woman in her mid-twenties, I don’t want to live in that universe. Where science solves everything. Where witty banter is the norm. Where the women are all attractive, brilliant, and horny, and the men are handsome, brave, and horny. Say what you will about Heinlein, but it’s nice reading books where the women want sex just as much as the men, not because they’re ‘sluts’ but because Heinlein is operating from the assumption that a healthy human is a horny human.  (Having just reread those four books in sequence, it’s amusing to see Heinlein’s language become more straightforward and less euphemistic between the early 1970s – when Time Enough for Love was published – and the late 1980s – when To Sail Beyond the Sunset was published.)

And you’d better believe I picked up I Will Fear No Evil because it was a Heinlein, but I sat down and read it cover to cover in one go because it was the first fiction book I’d ever seen about a man becoming a woman. Through in slightly more graphic sex scenes, a bit more description about the protagonist’s clothing, and it’d rival anything on Fictionmania.

Looking beyond Heinlein for a moment, the next book on my list of escapism was Clan of the Cave Bear. As I think about why that universe also calls to me to be reread, I think it ends up sharing a lot of commonalities with Heinlein’s “World as a Myth” books. (With apologies to both authors for that comparison…) Specifically, both books have strong, intelligent, unreasonably attractive female characters who nevertheless find stronger male characters, and they end up having lots of sex. Euphemistic sex, in the case of Heinlein, hilariously euphemistic sex, in the case of Auel.

That is, they not only have worlds that are interesting, they have characters I desperately want(ed) to be. Well, maybe not the heterosexual sex part, but both Heinlein and Auel make the 16-year-old in me feel like there’s something romantic about being swept up in someone’s arms, even if it’s done in either vaguely misogynistic ways (Heinlein) or ridiculously romantic in the worst way (Auel).

And, of course, I miss the universes when I finish reading them. Which led me to fanfiction.net, and an attempt to find Heinlein fan fic. I love the idea of fan fiction – I think expanding upon a fictional universe is part of the joy of having a cannon of literature from which to work. As a teacher and a performer, I enjoy working with adaptations for the stage, which inevitably involve imagining and reimagining fictional characters and locales. I see fan fiction – ideally – as operating within the same vein: What would this character do in this situation? How would these characters interact? And so on.

(My largest exposure to fan fiction thus far has been Harry Potter and the Key of Dagon, a well-written crossover between the Harry Potter and Buffy universes.)

Alas, Heinlein fan fic doesn’t seem to be well-traveled domain, with only 12 stories on fanfiction.net, most of which seem to be set in the Starship Troopers ‘verse. Meanwhile, the Clean of the Cave Bear series has 74, a proportion which sort of disapoints me.

Any fan fiction recommendations? Likewise, any good recommendations for a series or an individual book? I need to go to the book store (or, heaven forbid, the library) to start working through previous suggestions, but can always add more to my list.

But I have to admit, I was (and am) a little confused by the question Morgan is asking. It seems self evident – even in the links within her post, not to mention those in the comments – that there is trans literature being generated. (Morgan seems to define ‘trans lit’ as ‘fiction,’ a definition I don’t have any problems with.) More broadly, she seems to be creating divisions where none need be:

Yet what would “trans literature” be like? When we talk about the literature of an identity group we mean that members of the group want to read about people like themselves. African-Americans want books with African-American protagonists; lesbians want books with lesbian protagonists; and so on. But the trans community is very diverse, and different parts of it have very different needs. Cross-dressers, for example, often read, and write, erotic fantasies about cross-dressing. Pre-transition transsexuals reportedly read memoirs and theory voraciously in order to find out if transition is right for them, and how to survive it. Post transition, however, they often settle happily into their preferred gender and have no further need for trans books. They are often content identifying with characters of their preferred gender and don’t want to be reminded of what they see as a painful past life.

Those who regard themselves as in a third gender, as gender-free or gender-fluid, and those who are intersex, will probably want books about people like themselves. Obviously there is a real need for a literature for them. However, they are only a part of the trans community (and apologies to any of them who do not want to be regarded as part of it), so the market is even smaller.

It’s true: “trans” is very broad term, which catches potentially disparate groups under its net. But so does “people of color” or “lesbian” or “young adult.” A protagonist who is in the midst of transitioning with full familial support may have a different audience than a protagonist who identifies as genderqueer and has been kicked out of hir home. But I can imagine books being listed under ‘African American fiction’ that nevertheless share little in common beyond the protagonist’s skin color. (I was hoping to use the the books listed in African American fiction at Amazon for examples, but it looks like most/all of those are specifically romance novels aimed at women. Odd.)

And I think the thing that does bind different trans* identities together – somehow feeling outside one’s assigned gender roles – could allow those interested in trans fiction to enjoy a wide variety of trans protagonists, even if not every protagonist matches every reader’s lived experience.

I’m also concerned by how Morgan divides the trans community:

• Cross-dressers: “often read, and write, erotic fantasies about cross-dressing”
• Pre-transition transsexuals: “reportedly read memoirs and theory voraciously in order to find out if transition is right for them, and how to survive it.”
• Post-transition transsexuals: “often content identifying with characters of their preferred gender and don’t want to be reminded of what they see as a painful past life”
• Genderqueer: “probably want books about people like themselves”

First, as I said, I think someone who identifies as genderqueer might still be able to identify with a cross-dressing protagonist in a way that someone who is cis might not. But I also feel like Morgan is reinforcing really stereotypical ideas about what those identities mean.

I attempted to bring this up in the comments section of the post, saying

I think [the way you present post-transition life in your post is] an overly simplistic view of transitioning, or of post-transition life. Without getting into the ‘are you still trans after transitioning’ debate, I think there’s even more value in depicting successful, empowered post-transition characters to remind both trans and cis individuals that it is possible to transition and be a whole and complete person.

I’m not sure Morgan understood where I was coming from, though. Her reply:

I used the word “often” in that section you quote very deliberately. I certainly wouldn’t suggest that such attitudes were true of everyone who transitions. What I have tried to do here is give readers an overview of the great diversity of the trans community, and that means trying to give space to as many different viewpoints as possible.

But I don’t think Morgan got in multiple viewpoints, I think she got in multiple stereotypes.

I’m curious how self-identified cross-dessers, drag queens/kings, pre- mid- and post-transition transsexuals, and genderqueer individuals would react to Morgan’s assessment of what they are looking for. To be clear, I think members of all those groups share a desire for protagonists in which they can find themselves. I think all humans, period, share a desire for art which reflects their own experiences.

I just don’t think anyone should decide for another group what their reflection looks like.