Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Review: Pagan Kennedy: The First Man Made Man (2008)
Craig Young
3 July 2008
Pagan Kennedy: The First Man-Made Man: New York: Bloomsbury: 2008.
3 July 2008
Pagan Kennedy: The First Man-Made Man: New York: Bloomsbury: 2008.
As I’ve earlier provided a capsule biography of Michael Dillon, the first recorded female to male transsexual, I thought I’d focus on some more particular details involved in this biography of the world’s first transman.
Michael lived an austere professional life, whether as a mechanic, or after he’d gone to Trinity College, and qualified as a doctor. When it came to relationships with others, it never got beyond dancing due to the painful skin grafts from his legs that were neccessary to create male genitalia.
This may have served as an insurmountable obstacle to his relationship with Roberta Cowell, the first transwoman recorded in the United Kingdom. Roberta was living as a woman, taking oestrogen, and wearing female clothing. Dillon proposed that if her surgery went ahead and they married, they could move abroad to become an invisible straight couple, and then adopt a child, whereupon Roberta could settle down to become a housewife. Unfortunately, as one can see, Michael had some very conservative ideas about gender role polarisation, which may be another reason for the breakdown of their relationship. . . .Read More
Rebel without a clue
Sassy
SHE WEARS A BLUE DRESS WITH BILLOWY SLEEVES, A ribbon wrapped around her small waist. Her nails are long and pale, her fingers long and delicate, her hair long and smooth and straight. There is vanilla in her tall cup of fluffy coffee, and she drops her chin on her palm when she talks about falling in love for the first time. He was 16, she was 17, and even now, she remembers how he held her hand for the first time. There has never been anyone serious since then, after all, she considers herself a 19th-century romantic, and requires sparks and true love.
Her name is Sass, although when she was born 27 years ago, the doctor said she was a boy.
Sass is one of the co-founders of STRAP, the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines. At 3:30 on a sunny Monday afternoon, she gives an impromptu lecture on defining what a transgender is.
There are four terms to understand, says the girl in blue dress. First: gender assignment—the legal sex, the male/female box on the passport and the birth certificate. Second: gender identity—the gender felt, the gender “you believe yourself to be.” Third: gender expression—the outward manifestation of gender, the clothes, the hair, the flick of the wrist, the swing of the hip or the manly gait. Fourth: gender preference—who a person is attracted to, romantically, sexually. . . .Read More
Positively Aware Takes a Look at HIV in Transgender Community
by Gay Chicago Magazine, Gay Chicago Magazine
July 1, 2008
Chicago, IL — A groundbreaking exploration of HIV in the transgender community heads for newsstands in the July/August issue of Positively Aware magazine. This expanded 64-page issue features an exclusive interview with HIV-positive transgender actress Alexandra Billings, who also appears on the cover. Billings has recently guest-starred on the hit network television dramas E.R. and Grey's Anatomy.
Also included is an in-depth interview with noted transgender health expert and psychologist Walter Bockting, Ph.D., author of several books on the subject including Transgender and HIV. . . .Read More
July 1, 2008
Chicago, IL — A groundbreaking exploration of HIV in the transgender community heads for newsstands in the July/August issue of Positively Aware magazine. This expanded 64-page issue features an exclusive interview with HIV-positive transgender actress Alexandra Billings, who also appears on the cover. Billings has recently guest-starred on the hit network television dramas E.R. and Grey's Anatomy.
Also included is an in-depth interview with noted transgender health expert and psychologist Walter Bockting, Ph.D., author of several books on the subject including Transgender and HIV. . . .Read More
Boys Will Be Girls
Transgender child caught between two worlds
by Teresa Coates
July 2, 2008
Like a lot of 5-year-old girls, Roxy likes playing with her Bratz dolls and her favorite color is pink. She likes to wear the blue dress with big purple flowers that her mom bought for her at Wal-Mart. And she loves going to her dad’s house, but she has to leave the dolls and dresses at home. When Roxy is with her dad, she’s a he.
As a toddler, Roxy, which is not her birth name, played dress-up with her sister and avoided rough-and-tumble play with her brother. She told her mom that she wanted to pull her penis off. At preschool, the teacher noticed how she never took to playing with the boys, preferring the kitchen set over the Legos.
Kate Herman, Roxy’s mother, realized something was different with her youngest child’s gender play. After all, it’s normal for little boys to want to try on their mom’s high heels, or for young girls to play with Hot Wheels. But what Herman saw was different. Her son never wanted to be with the other boys. He wanted to wear dresses. And he wanted to be called a she. Herman says she “always knew there was something going on, but it was easier to ignore it.” She and her husband assumed it was a phase. They encouraged their child to choose gender-neutral clothing, toys and heroes. Roxy still wanted the girly things. . . .Read More
by Teresa Coates
July 2, 2008
Like a lot of 5-year-old girls, Roxy likes playing with her Bratz dolls and her favorite color is pink. She likes to wear the blue dress with big purple flowers that her mom bought for her at Wal-Mart. And she loves going to her dad’s house, but she has to leave the dolls and dresses at home. When Roxy is with her dad, she’s a he.
As a toddler, Roxy, which is not her birth name, played dress-up with her sister and avoided rough-and-tumble play with her brother. She told her mom that she wanted to pull her penis off. At preschool, the teacher noticed how she never took to playing with the boys, preferring the kitchen set over the Legos.
Kate Herman, Roxy’s mother, realized something was different with her youngest child’s gender play. After all, it’s normal for little boys to want to try on their mom’s high heels, or for young girls to play with Hot Wheels. But what Herman saw was different. Her son never wanted to be with the other boys. He wanted to wear dresses. And he wanted to be called a she. Herman says she “always knew there was something going on, but it was easier to ignore it.” She and her husband assumed it was a phase. They encouraged their child to choose gender-neutral clothing, toys and heroes. Roxy still wanted the girly things. . . .Read More
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