Life Lived]
FROM THE DIARY

By Diane Frank

Freedom to Self-Express
This starts with Esther. Or, I should say playing Esther in one of the three Purim Spiels put on at my temple. Purim Spiels are plays that retell the Purim story of how Esther, the stealth Jewish wife of the Persian King saves her people from extermination by coming out to him at the last minute. How’s that for a nutshell summary? It’s a story that has resonance for lots of people besides Jews who may have had to hide their being Jewish. As I noted in a long ago article “Covering” applies to just about everyone. It has special resonance in the GLBT community. [read the original Covering article here]

Purim, the holiday, has a lot to do with other ancient holidays of misrule. One of my friends recounts seeing an orthodox rabbi, with full beard in a red sequined dress one Purim. By comparison, what I wore was tame, starting with my best impression of a contemporary assimilated, secular Israeli woman in her Tel Aviv apartment, and ending using one of my favorite saris to emulate the robes of a Persian queen.

My high point was singing “I am a Jew” to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” I told someone about this and he wryly remarked that this was getting to be a little too “drag queen” for me. Now I have my launch point for this month’s column. My reaction was why should I refrain from doing something worthwhile and fun because of trying to live up to labels or ideology? Or, as Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance at the revolution I don’t want it.”[1] What kind of woman do I want to be? What kind am I? Heaven’s, I also wore a silly hat to a birthday party. Talk about undercutting the dignity of the “trans” cause!

She’s Not the Man I Married
The business about not being ruled by labels and ideologies is one of the core values of Helen Boyd’s latest opus She’s Not the Man I Married. Helen is the author of My Husband Betty. Far more personal and terrifyingly revealing, Helen describes her reaction to Betty’s shift from “just a crossdresser” to someone who has undergone laser hair removal treatments, is on androgen (testosterone) blockers and increasingly doesn’t pass as a man even when trying. Helen has her own issues with gender, working on the concept of female masculinity for straight women. But, Helen is sorrowfully upfront with her worry that Betty would transition completely as that would destroy the marriage - having to deal with being seen as a lesbian in public, unfamiliar sexual organs and Betty really not being the same person she married could overwhelm even her. Then there’s the question of what kind of woman Betty is or would become.

Helen describes Betty’s upset at not being able to go in to enjoy a shoe sale as a woman. Not an uncommon complaint and I confess to having had the feeling myself…in the past. Having attended a few shoe sales at MarLou's, the thrill turns out to have been exceeded by the anticipation. But, Helen isn’t the kind of woman who enjoys shoe sales, or even has (in general) women friends who do.

I'll take the liberty of quoting a full paragraph here. I've highlighted a poignant and complicated sentence.

What I ask Betty regularly is whether she wants to be "one of the girls" shopping for shoes, or "one of the girls" at a feminist rally, or "one of the girls" buying graphic novels in a sci-fi shop. We went to see the first screenings of all three 'Lord of the Rings' movies, for instance, where the crowd was predominantly male and the women all seemed a lot like me certainly a lot more like me than a group of women whom I might have found at a screening of 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.' Granted, categories overlap. Some women in one group will fit just as easily into another: I might run into the women I saw at the 'Lord of the Rings' screening at a rally, or in the medieval section of the Met, or buying clothes in the downtown boutiques of the East Village. Different groups of women have different standards for membership, and even different beauty standards. What I need Betty to be is the kind of woman I would go with to see the first screening of 'Lord of the Rings,' the kind of woman who recommends novels such as 'Neuromancer,' who loves 'The Smiths' and yes, who does Lewis Black impersonations at parties. If she can keep all of that, I might be able to buy that "being the same person inside" line. And she has to figure out how to look like the person who likes that stuff, too. When she tells me that I'm the girl she always wanted to meet, I ask her to try to be more like the kind of girl that the girl she always wanted to meet wants to meet. She needs to figure out how to be the kind of girl she might have been, not the girl she wanted to be. That girl is way too gendered for me, and I suspect the girl she might have been won't be.

So what kind of woman can Betty be? Or, to tie this back to the beginning, would Betty not get up and sing and have fun because she might be confused with a drag queen? Or, that Lewis Black impressions might give her away as having been a guy once-up-a-time?

There are a lot of reasons for people to read this book. Trans people of all sorts should read it because the partner’s side of the story is hardly told at all, never mind as compellingly. Partners should read it for the grace under pressure that Helen displays. The general public should read it for a better understanding of what this can be all about.

In Closing
Due to the generosity of an AO member (who hasn’t given permission to be named yet), we are able to offer Helen and Betty an honorarium to stop in Cleveland on their way to the BeAll in Chicago at the end of May. I’m hoping to arrange a book signing and reception for the evening of Saturday 26th, with more book signings on Sunday and Monday. I’m also hoping to arrange book reviews, interviews, and whatever might help promotion, wherever possible. I’d rather NOT do this all by myself. Ideas for what we can do, contacts, etc. and legwork are welcomed.

[1] Emma Goldman Attribution
“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world— prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.” (p. 56)-

This incident was the source of a statement commonly attributed to Goldman that occurs in several variants:

If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman