Category: Columns

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #097, Spring 2002.
by Monica F. Helms

This column began taking shape on September 15, 2001, four days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I?m telling you this so you?ll know why you?re not reading my usual jovial opening. I wanted to put down my thoughts while they were still clear. Consider this my chance to heal, if healing is at all possible.

I?m 50 years old, so I hadn?t yet arrived when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I am old enough to remember when an assassin?s bullet took President Kennedy?s life. We were living in Germany at the time. I remember my mother telling me to go get my father at the high school gym, where he and his friends were setting up for a square dance. It seemed surreal as I hurried through the cold November night. When I arrived at the gym, it was dark and deserted. I had horribly sad news, but no one to tell it to.

Dear Ari,
I began my transition two years ago with my ex-wife?s support (sort of). At first she really seemed happy that I was finally becoming myself, but lately she has been difficult to get along with and I feel she?s trying to take my kids from me. My son is seven years old, and my daughter is 10, and they both ?know,? but I?m not sure they understand. Recently, my ex yelled at me on the phone and told me the children could never call me ?Mommy.? This hurt my feelings. What do you think the kids should call me? Daddy doesn?t really fit anymore, does it?
Just sign me ?Parent?

What is Gender?
Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.

The question ?What is gender?? has been answered in many ways by many different thinkers. From all of this a number of things do become clear, or, to be more accurate, a lot of things are seen to be unclear. What do I mean by this?

Well, the basic, simple model embraced in recent times holds that there are two basic aspects to a person?s identity, with one being sex and the other being gender. Sex is described as the biological fact of being male or female, and gender is described as being the social role of being a man or a woman. In the simplistic model, an individual is assigned a sex at birth?his or her ?birth-designated sex??and that assignment matches the behavior and self-identity acquired through acculturation, training, socialization, and personal choice. To put it simply, once the doctor looks between your legs and makes the pronouncement, your role is laid out before you and you continue on that path until death. Sex, we are told, is biological; gender is social.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.
by Li Anne Taft

In older cultures, they were highly respected. Today, transsexual men and women are badly mistreated by many, including health care and medical professions, which greatly diminishes the quality of their lives.

?We don?t take blood from mahus,? the receptionist nurse said, as if I had a contagious disease. I suspect it was the blank sex field on my Hawaii State ID or my strong-appearing hands that brought out her biased attitude. As I attempted to explain my transgendered-woman identity, the biomed firm?s director rudely interrupted: ?We don?t take blood from people appearing homosexual,? he said, and asked me to leave. Angered by this bigoted bunch, I left, feeling thankful I was not in need of receiving blood?at least, not at the moment.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.
by Monica F Helms

I wonder what time of the year this issue is coming out? It?s important to know this so I can write a clever opening. Now, let?s see ... Dallas gave me this wonderful formula that is suppose to help me keep this straight?or in my case, let?s say correct. I don?t do anything ?straight? any more. According to her formula, I first take the square root of the number of shoes once owned by Imelda Marcos. Then I divide by the amount of stitches Dr. Schrang uses in the average MTF surgery. After that, I subtract the number of streetlights in downtown Ajo, Arizona, then multiply that by the cosine of 32 degrees to the third power.