TMZ:
Chastity Bono, civil rights advocate, journalist, author and musician, is in the early stages of changing his gender—transitioning from female to male, TMZ has learned. Bono, the child of legendary entertainers Sonny and Cher, began the process earlier this year, shortly after his 40th birthday.
“Yes, it’s true—Chaz, after many years of consideration, has made the courageous decision to honor his true identity,” confirmed Bono’s publicist, Howard Bragman.
Congratulations to Chaz Bono. I have no beef whatsoever with his decision. I’ve known lots of lesbian-identified women who transitioned from female to male. Lots. I don’t have issue with it. But…
This just doesn’t happen to my gay male friends. This has never happened to a gay man that I’ve know personally. And I can only think of a single gay man in the public eye—one of the Arquettes—who has ever announced that, after years of consideration, he realized he wasn’t honoring his true identity—e.g. he’d really been a woman all along—and was transitioning from male to female. Female sexuality is very different than male sexuality—which is not to say that female sexuality is lesser than or inferior to. If we don’t view male sexuality as the standard, if we don’t use male sexuality as the baseline, pointing out that female sexuality is lived and experienced very differently is no slam. The fluidity of female sexual identity, as I’ve said in “Savage Love,” should be viewed as a superpower, not as a flaw.
And, again, congrats to Chaz.
#49–Another lesbo here. I agree that lesbian butch identity is not just a step on the way to becoming a man. I know lots of butch women. I also know a few F2M genderqueer folks. As a somewhat butch woman, I’ve never felt pressure to transition. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t imagine that it would be easier to decide to transition than to just stay being a badass butch, so I figure for many F2M transitioners there is a compelling personal feeling that requires them to transition, that they feel more comfortable with themselves identifying as a male than as a female. Whereas I’m totally happy being a butch woman and screwing with gender expectations of women.
I do think it’s interesting that for F2M folks, they almost always start out identifying as lesbians and then transition into heterosexual men, whereas for most of the M2F folks I know they started out as straight men and then identify now as lesbians. From my experience, it seems like for trans folks who are born female but become male, there is a tie in with being attracted to (what started out as) the same sex, whereas for trans folks who are born male but become female they are attracted to (what started out as) the opposite sex. I would be interested to read some research into this to see if there is any correlation between sexual identity and gender identity for trans men vs trans women.
AndI also agree that I would not date an F2M transman as I am not interested in dating men. I’ve known a few M2F transwomen that I might’ve dated had I not been in a relationship when I knew them.
I think this has less to do with sexuality and more to do with power in our society. Lots of people LOTS would like to make more money, be taken more seriously in all areas of life and be considered a hero for spending a day with their kids. ((Males)) Very few people would sign on to a gender that is considered (lovingly of course!) irrationally emotional, designed for child rearing and rendered a non-sexual object after 40. What person with a working brain stem would sign on to be a traditional woman? If I weren’t born with it I know I wouldn’t. Face it, as long as it sucks societally to be a woman, more people are going to want to be men if they can stand the change.
49: Go /away/.
I’m all for female-equality, Women’s Rights, yah yah yah! But as a transguy who’s lived it, I find people like you, wanting to rush to empower your “sisters” so they don’t “feel the need to become men and weaken our community!” EXTREMELY damaging to the psyche’s of young transmen. Everywhere. We’re not allowed to question our own gender, in part because society makes it so easy to “cross” dress for women, but also a large dose comes from supposed anti-sexism types who demand we feel empowered as /women/ for behaving more androgynously/masculinely than “typical women”.
In my experience, there’s a lot of guilt and power put into being “women” by feminists, a lot like there’s power in being “man” from society. When you guilt “butches” for coming out as trans, you just lay on the decades of bullshit we get bogged down in. That attitude acts like we don’t have to sit on our hands for years living as women because we don’t want to upset our female peers– the assumption that we have it easy.
Many of us are raised with feminist leanings, and I know I’m still working out my issues with sexism and gender; how to assert being a man without giving into the dumb oppressive shit “men” are supposed to do. I can’t help but feel a sense of loathing when people with the attitude that I’m just giving into social pressure of how men and women are supposed to act. Don’t forget that society also assumes that straight transmen, living as “empowered, gender-subverting women” /should/ be lesbians, and that the lesbian community has internalized gender roles. You don’t want straight/bi transmen entering your communities and filling out the “masculine women” roles? Then become an advocate for trans-folk {youth especially}, and start unthinking gender in the lesbian community.
This bit is more to Dan: It’s mostly because of the wedge-driving society and the medical community did between gay men and transwomen. What I know of Trans History, gay communities used to be a lot more fluid, especially with queens. Doctors encouraged transwomen to separate themselves from “gays”, and media types fluttered with of-course-they’re-not-homosexuals lines. Being gay was to be social deviant to the nth degree. It’s the same reason why cross-dresser groups ousted gay men in that time. “Yeah we’re weird but actually we’re much more morally wholesome than those /gays/!” Transmen were largely unheard of, mostly because the medical community ignored them {Freud was still relevant}..again it’s easier to move into the lesbian community because a lot of transguys don’t know the TS street is two-way, and there’s a lot of social pressure to be “awesome women” than “evil men”, regardless of the dominate culture.
@23 FTW, #29 too!