Such a Sad Simplicity

Helen Boyd, at her blog en|Gender, has a pointer to an in-depth article in the LA Weekly on the tragedy of Christine Daniels, the L.A. Times sportswriter who first transitioned (from Mike Penner), then de-transitioned back to Mike, before committing suicide last year.  It is a well-written, sympathetic article that takes a hard look at transsexuality and the politics that often surrounds it.

What struck me about the article is the enormous complexity of gender-identity issues, and the concomitant need for everyone to simplify it for their own ends.  For Christine, she'd come out on the job, transition to her inner gender, and live happily ever after.  For much of the general public, Christine was a man in a dress, period.  And her desire to transition just that:  a desire, a choice she could or could not make, like what color shirt to put on in the morning, or what time to go to bed.  As the doctor said, "If it hurts to do that, then don't do that!"

On the other hand, many in the TG world had one-dimensional aspirations as well.  Such a prominent spokesperson, in the process of a public transition, was a boon to the transsexual rights agenda, and they used her that way to the fullest.  When she didn't refused to conform to that agenda, which requires a sober, serious and, most of all, non-transvestitic image,writing about how much she liked make-up and dressing, they began to cut her loose.  Well-known TS spokesperson Susan Stanton told Weekly author Steve Friess  "She was writing a blog about how great it is to dress and color her hair and wear makeup and it was kind of very tranny ... I was really nervous about this."  Finally, many of the same activists that celebrated her coming-out abandoned her when she chose to revert to her male persona, in an ultimately vain hope to reunite with her ex-wife, Lisa

In this day and age of self-actualized, be-true-to-yourself individualism, Mike Penner loved her wife.  Was it more than she loved the "woman within," her inner persona that for years had struggled to be free?  I have no idea, but to her it must have seemed that way

Friends, this thing we call transgender is tremendously complex.  Although it seems to be just about us, how we view ourselves, and how that is expressed, in reality it's like a monsterinvolves everyone with whom we come into contact.  Not all transsexuals will or should conform to the TS mafia's straitjacketed notion of how our community needs to behave to get respect.  Life is messy, we aren't just one way or another, our corners don't always square neatly up.  Again, I don't know for sure, but it seems that some of that messiness, and our community's reluctance to deal with it, helped kill Christine Daniels.

It's part of the human condition to want to be sure.  To want to know, with no ambiguity, what something is and what it is not.  But we of all people should understand the fallacy in that.  Isn't society's notion that we should be either boy or girl, one gender or another, at the root of our misery?  Perhaps as transgender folk we would be better served if we started practicing what we preach, started acknowledging that it's a spectrum, and treating one another that way.