In a world full of evil fascists, transphobic TERFs and religious fanatics comes the anti-JK Rowling books you have been waiting for, books about love, diversity and personal growth.
It is when you are living in dark times like these that you need art that can give you meaning and hope. This is why I will use this opportunity to tell you about two books that have given me a psychological and spiritual injection of compassion and optimism.
TJ Klune
Travis John Klune (or TJ Klune as he is known) has written several romantic fantasy novels.
He is a gay and neurodiverse author who has some really profound insights into why some people become bigots who do everything in their power to control others. But he is also very good at describing how diversity and allowing people to be themselves can lead to personal growth and happiness.
The House in the Cerulean Sea, and the follow up Somewhere Beyond the Sea, are clearly targeting a young adult audience, but – believe me – the books have something for everyone, including a kind of humor those who have lived for some time will appreciate.
The House in the Cerulean Sea presents Linus Baker, a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He is the perfect by the book bureaucrat.
He is often sent to orphanages for magical children to report on them, and even though he feels compassion for the kids, he does not really see how the system uses these orphanages to keep the magical children away from society at large.
There are some good discussions about transgender representation in books going on, most of them focusing on the works of visibly queer and transgender authors. That got me thinking: What about strong transgender characters in other books?
There are a lot of novels and stories that presents negative and bigoted views of trans people, and in particular trans women. These characters are often sexualized, pathologized, ridiculed and presented as "traps" – a threat to cisgender adults and children.
However, there are also good books that do the opposite, books where the transgender side characters are just people like everyone else. I am going to present two books that passed my trans humanization test, and one that does not quite make it.
Summon The Angels by J.J. Campanella
Campanella has published two books in their Eddy Bratenahl series. These are exciting and entertaining crime/thrillers with some drops of horror added – well written and well researched.
Bratenahl is a policed psychologist at the Chicago Police Department. As such he is not really supposed to take part in investigations, but for reasons that will become clear to the readers of the books he does end up doing detective work anyway, due to his experience and contacts.
Amanda Richards is introduced in book 1, A Sum of Destructions, but it is in the second book, Summon the Angels, she plays an essential role. You do not have to have read book 1 to read book 2.
Minor spoilers from here on.
When Amanda disappears she leaves her nephew Joshua in Bratenahl's care. He is soon engaged in the search for Amanda. The book then follows this search in parallel with a presentation of Amanda's past, including her training as a glass artisan in Japan.
Campanella has clearly done a lot of research on Japanese culture, and that alone makes the book worth reading.
The reason Campanella passes my trans humanizing test is because Amanda is presented as a complete human being. She is treated with respect by the author (and most of the other characters), and the story about her transgender journey and her life as a transgender woman seems true and believable.
By the way, there is another strong female character that caught my interest. Mary Kate Calderon is a veteran homicide detective working side by side with Bratenahl, and she has powers you rarely see in books like these. The book definitely passes the Behcdel test.
Summon of the Angels is a real page-turner, but what makes me love it is the way they go beyond pure entertainment and explores more existential questions like the role of evil and suffering in people's lives. Amanda's life story therefore becomes one of many threads in a tapestry depicting love and hate in a world that is often hard to understand and embrace.
In part 1 of this article I explained why we need to look into what makes transgender people trans. In this part I discuss some of the most influential theories and explain why I think one of them is better than all the others.
The theories attempting to explain trans identities
I will focus on the four of the most dominant scientific models found during the last 150 years or so:
The Rainbow Model
The Body Trap Model
The Psychodynamic Model
The Two Type Inversion Model
There is also a wide research field addressing gender roles and gender identities in the social sciences and the humanities. Gender studies have, for instance, contributed greatly to our understanding of gender variance.
But that tradition is most often based on a given acceptance of transgender identities, and is more interested in explaining the way social systems lead to oppression based on gender. It rarely considers the interplay between biology, culture and psychology, which I suspect is the primary concern of Tailcalled, who invited me to this discussion, so I will not describe it here.
That sort of thinking has greatly influenced my reading of the science of gender and transgender identities, though.
The Rainbow Model
The dominant model for explaining transgender identities these days is what I will call the Rainbow Model. It is a non-reductionistic model, in the sense that it does not reduce sex and gender to a simplistic biological sex binary or one single factor of origin.
Modern research has uncovered a mind-boggling complexity as regards the development of biological sex, both as applies to the development of the body (both prenatally and after birth) and the formation of a conscious gender identity.
Felix Conrad has published a new ebook: How to Jedi Mindtrick Your Gender Dysphoria, containing some pretty useful observations and advice for those MTF crossdreamers who do not go down the road of transitioning.
Felix' inner wise man talking to his inner woman. (Photo of female Luke Skywalker by MJ MIller.)
The recent interest in transgender issues has been of great help to transgender people of all types.
Yes, the bathroom laws represent a back-clash, but you only get a back-clash when society is changing, and in this case in a much more tolerant direction.
Non-transitioning
There is still one group of transgender people --- and I am using the term in its broader, umbrella meaning of gender variance here -- who remain invisible, though. Or, at least, less visible.
These are the gender dysphoric transgender people who -- for a wide variety of reasons -- decide not to transition.
This is the group Felix Conrad, our MTF crossdreamer philosopher per excellence, targets in his new book How to Jedi Mindtrick Your Gender Dysphoria.
Many transgender people struggle with shame, guilt and self-denial, some to the point of attempting suicide. Monica P. Mulholland's book brings hope to those troubled.
Although the book's main focus is on transgender people who have transitioned or intend to transition, it does cover the needs of the whole transgender spectrum.
There is even a chapter on crossdreaming. Most MTF crossdreamers and crossdressers will therefore find something of interest.
Monica herself courageously discusses the dark side of being transgender, including the pain of gender dysphoria, the fear of social exclusion and the possibility of self-harm and suicide attempts.
Many transgender writers avoid this topic, as they fear that writing about it may trigger destructive behavior. I agree with Monica: We need to bring this part of being trans and gender variant out into the open, and talk about it. That is the only way we can bring trans and queer people out of isolation.
Talk about feelings
Monica underlines the need to look at transgender feelings:
"Many who misunderstand the Transgender experience seem to lose sight of the word 'feel'. They may speak about the anatomy and endocrine processes, while dismissing the Transgender person's 'felt' experience as 'personal choice' -- rather than as something physiological.
"Feelings are an extremely important part of the human condition -- and especially so when trying to understand, and communicate with, a person who is Transgender. If a Transgender person does not feel known, understood, accepted, loved or included, then barriers to feeling of well-being and self-worth negatively impact their communication with those who are most important to them."
Felix writes about using active imagination in his new book, a tool that can help transgender people connect with the other self or their truegender as he calls it. (Photo by Mizina)
Felix Conrad, crossdreamer philosopher and agent provocateur, has published a new ebook: The Science & Art of Transgender Erotica. This book contains a mix of philosophical essays and transgender fiction.
Felix Conrad does not give a damn about the kind of social conditioning that makes people cringe when they see a four letter word or make them squirm when they read some really explicit descriptions of "kinky" sex.
He puts it all out there, because crossdreamers need to face their sexual fantasies and stop being ashamed of them.
In order to accept yourself, you have to see yourself, and in order to do that, you have to get past sexual and cultural hang-ups regarding gender violations, sexual orientation and cross-gender arousal.
That being said, it could be that including an explicit sissy humiliation short story in a book discussing the origins of crossdreaming and gender dysphoria might confuse both transgender erotica connoisseurs and the ones looking for info on trans. But I do get the point: The story serves as an illustration of one of the topics of the book: (1) Why humiliation can be such a turn-on for some crossdreamers.
The other main topics are: (2) The sexual orientation of male to female crossdreamers and the role of the faceless man in crossdreamer fantasies, and (3) The use of active imagination in transgender psychology.
All these discussions presents some really interesting, but controversial, takes on what it means to be a male to female crossdreaming transgender person. (Like me Felix uses the word transgender as an umbrella term for all types of gender variance, while crossdreamer refers to the fact that some transgender people get aroused by the idea of being their target sex.)
In this post I will look at his discussion of "the faceless man" and the "inner totem" of MTF (male to female) crossdreamers. The faceless man
In the chapters on the faceless man, Felix discusses the fact that many male to female crossdreamers fantasize about being a woman (or -- in some cases-- a feminized man) having sex with a man. In particular he discusses some MTF crossdreamer's fascination for the male sex organ.
Why is it, Felix wonders, that MTF crossdreamers who fall in love with women fantasize about having sex with well equipped masculine men?
An important experiment presented in Felix' book
takes place in the bar of the Majestic Hotel in Barcelona.
Felix has to admit that, try as he might, he is not
able to find the men there attractive. The women, on the
other hand.... (Photo: Majestic)
Felix dismisses the idea that they are closeted androphiles (i.e. that they are sexually oriented towards men):
"The superficiality of their attraction to men is revealed the second they go a little further up from the rippling chest and glorious manhood and actually look into the eyes. They get instantly turned off."
As Felix himself points out, this observation may easily lead to the conclusion made by Ray Blanchard in his autogynephilia theory: The men and their penises are fantasy props meant to affirm the crossdreamer's imagined femininity, and nothing more.
Some of us over at the Crossdream Life forum are planning a crossdreamer anthology.
Think of it as a book that may answer some of the many questions asked by crossdreamers and crossdressers, gender variant people who are trying to understand themselves and their place in the world.
These would be questions and topics like:
Transgender vs. crossdreamer
Childhood Awareness
Am I mentally ill?
Is this a fetish?
Why can’t I stop?
How far will I have to go?
Breaking the news
Clothing and appearance
Why does it seem to become so important in midlife?
Why are we included in LGBT?
We are looking for crossdreamers and gender variant people who may discuss these and other topics. If you think that you can contribute, please add a comment here or or over at Crossdream Life, or send me and email (jack.molay@gmail.com).
We are not going to limit ourselves to new material. There are a lot of existing blog posts and forum comments out there that deserves a wider readership.
If you have a favorite blog post or comment, written by you or others, that you believe will be of help to crossdreamers and transgender people, please let us know in the same manner.
And he has done all of this with a sense of style and flair previously unheard of in this corner of the web.
Serious humor
He is the master of what I call -- for lack of a better word-- a Catalan-British sense of humor. His use of irony has caused some bewilderment in crossdreamer and transgender circles, but no more than is needed in this field of gender confusion.
As soon as you move beyond the provocative headlines and imagery, you find deep, serious, thought-provoking analysis of the various myths and misconceptions found in the world of crossdreaming, crossdressing and gender variance.
He calls himself a philosopher, and has every right to do so.
(I am using male pronouns here, as he is presenting as male publicly, and is using them himself.) Transgender: Fact or Fetish
While his previous book was more of a practical guide for living as a male to female non-transitioning "late onset" transgender person, this one is a bit more philosophical.
Felix, being a male to female transgender person himself, is cleaning out his closet, so to speak, realizing that he has to understand the main theories of what makes crossdreamers crossdream, before finding his own answer to the ultimate question: Who am I?
This could have become a very dry and theoretical book. It is the exact opposite. Conrad writes in a way that will make perfect sense to people who do not have a Ph.D. in philosophy.
Felix Conrad's book on transgender.
He is using everyday language in a way that helps us see through the convoluted jargon of -- for instance -- Ray Blanchard, the sexologist who has most strongly tried to define male to female (MTF) crossdreamers, crossdressers and transgender women as "paraphiliacs" or sexual perverts.
Indeed, this book can be considered Felix' final farewell to the autogynephilia and fetish explanations of what causes transgender feelings and identities. He has tested them and found them seriously lacking.
Debunking the Autogynephilia theory
Ray Blanchard does, as many of my readers will know, divide trans women (and non-transitioning male to female gender variant people) into two distinct categories:
(1) "Homosexual transsexuals" (i.e. MTF trans people who are attracted to men), who -- according to Blanchard -- are hypefeminine gay men.
In this third part of my "must read gender/transgender books" series, I look at books that discuss sex and gender in general.
Illustration by Olyzel
Much of the pain gender variant people go through is caused by the fact that their family, friends and surrounding society do not understand them.
The reason they do not understand them is that they are trapped in a binary narrative that tells them that men and women are two different species with completely different temperaments, abilities and modes of behavior. Anyone who breaks with this binary is therefore mentally ill.
Recent research, in the social sciences as well as in biology, tells us that this strict binary is wrong on many levels. What is considered proper gender expressions varies tremendously between cultures and over time.
Moreover, it turns out nature is nothing like what your school text books told you. Did you for instance know that the bonobos, our closest relative, has a matriarchal society run by females? They solve conflicts by having a lot of sex with each other, regardless of age or gender. The next time someone tells you gay sex is "unnatural", tell them about the bonobos.
Those who follow nature programs on TV know the script: Violent and aggressive males stalk weak and passive females in an everlasting tale of evolutionary brutality. This narrative is then used to make fun of "feminine" men.
Roughgarden shows us a natural world that is nothing like the gender stereotypes of traditional evolutionary biology.
Like Roughgarden, Fausto-Sterling is good at seeing through the stereotypes of natural science. Most of the differences between men and women are created by culture and not by nature, Fausto-Sterling argues.
Serano has become our leading trans philosophers. This book is of special interest to MTF crossdreamers, as she is one of the trans activists that openly discuss crossdreaming in a non-stigmatizing way.
A fascinating discussion of the the transgender history of ideas, not only in the US, but also in Europe. Most of the models of transgender we find among activists and researchers these days were there 100 years ago.
This book was originally published in Germany in 1910. It remains one of the best books on crossdressing and transsexuality, written with empathy and a deep respect for the life journeys of the transgender persons he presents. Please note that for Hirschfeld the term "transvestite" is an umbrella term for all shades of transgender.
For many the struggle with sex, sexuality and gender identity leads to reading -- a lot of reading. In this three part series I will present books that have helped me in my understanding of myself, crossdreaming, gender dysphoria and transgender issues.
Boyd treats crossdressers and crossdreamers with respect and empathy, but without hiding the difficulties that follows from gender variance of this kind.
This novel is hard to describe: Honest, funny, tragic, radical... Anyway, the book contains some of the best descriptions of crossdreamers I have ever seen in fiction, whether they are closeted or transsexual. (And then there is that wonderful description of autogynephilia-supporter J. Michael Bailey....)
Girlfags are not necessarily female to male crossdreamers, but some of them are. Hardy's book is part autobiography, part essay on women who identify with gay men.
A fascinating book by male a to female transgender person who tries to find a place between crossdressing and transitioning. Part 2 of the book gives a good review of research on crossdressing, crossdreaming and transsexuality.
Typical yuoi manga cover.
From Houyou Hikken.
Note the German title: Your Heart! Yaoi is a
global culture.
What makes women, world wide, write and read comics about men having sex? Crossdreaming, of course!
There are scientists who deny the existence of female to male crossdreamers, that is female bodied persons who get turned on by the idea of being a man. As far as these scientists are concerned only men can be what they consider "paraphiliacs" or "perverts".
Ray Blanchard, who came up with the "autogynephilia" theory, belongs to these researchers.
I have through several blog posts documented that not only are there female to male crossdreamers among us now; we find them in a wide variety of cultures and they have most likely always been here.
In other words: This is not a purely cultural or psychological phenomenon.
The reason the researchers do not see the FTM crossdreamers, is that they do not look for them.
Today I am going to present to you the fascinating world of female to male crossdreaming, and prove to you that there are large numbers of girls who dream about being boys out there.
They have their own thriving crossdreamer and crossdresser culture, in which we find a lot of parallels to their male to female counterparts.
She has put them within a framework that makes sense, not only for the people involved, but also for people like me. I am using that article actively in this post. Do read the original! Her work is going to change our understanding of what it means to be transgender.
Some words about words
When you try to write about female and male bodied crossdreamers at the same time, it is easy to get lost in the terminology, as the inter-gender dynamics are a bit unusual.
Rutta to Kodama, yaoi comic presenting
a male same sex relationship. Note that
both look quite feminine, but the uke to the left more so than the
dominant seme to the right. In manga
large eyes might signify both
child like innocence and femininity.
In this post MTF refers to male to female, i.e. male bodied persons who dream about being women or -- in the case of transsexuals -- transsexual women who have realigned their female mind with their hormonally and/or surgically altered female body.
FTM means female to male, meaning people with two X chromosomes who fantasize about being men, male being their target sex. FTM crossdreamers might call themselves "girlfags" online, a word most of them do not find offensive.
Some crossdreamers may identify with their target sex, living at the transsexual end of the transgender scale. Unless they have transitioned, these often experience gender dysphoria, a deep unease from not having a body that fits their "inner woman" or "inner man".
Other crossdreamers identify with their biological birth sex, arguing that their fantasies do not entail another sex or gender identity. Most of these do not report dysphoria. Note, however, that there is a lot of denial and repression going around. The crossdreamer's journey may be a trip from one end of the scale to another.
The terms "inner man" and "inner woman" are metaphors referring to whatever it is that seeks expression through crossdressing and/or crossdreaming. I truly believe there is a biological core to crossdreaming as well as the transsexual condition, but the terms are helpful even if there isn't one.
To avoid confusion as to what the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" refer to (birth sex or target sex), I refer to people who are predominantly attracted to women as "gynephilic" and people oriented towards men as "androphilic". Believe me, it is easier this way!
I refer to FTM crossdreamers as women if it is clear that they publicly identify as such, and as men if they tell us that they are men. Transmen are men in my book. End of story!
What is BL and yaoi?
An uke is the submissive receptive partner in a yaoi gay
male relationship.
From the blog Manga Freak.
Male bodied male to female crossdreamers have different ways of expressing their "inner woman".
Some crossdress. Some explore their female avatar in online gaming. Others write stories or TG captions (illustrations accompanied by ultra short TG transgender stories).
They are all trying to express a side of their own self that the society around them does not accept. These are men who not only dream about being women, but who even would like to have sex as women.
The FTM crossdreamer culture has had a different cultural trajectory and history. At this moment in history their main way of expressing their "inner man" is through Boy's Love and yaoi, which at its core is a genre of Japanese style comics.
Boy's Love, BL or yaoi comics contain stories about gay male relationships. They are written by women, though, and the readership is mainly female. Boy's Love female readers identify with one or both of the male characters in these stories.
The very popular documentary movie The March of the Penguins from 2005 was used by Christian fundamentalists to prove that in God's nature animals are heterosexual and monogamous. They had long argued that homosexuality was unnatural, and here was the proof.
The problem is that there is a lot of same-sex action among penguins. Same-sex behavior has been observed in close to 1500 species, and is well documented for 500 of them. There is in general a lot of "gay" animals.
All right, make note of the quotation marks. To use words like "gay" and "homosexual" when it comes to animals is complicated, as those words have a lot of human connotations that do not necessarily fit other species (or other human cultures for that matter).
Still, it makes sense to look at the phenomenon of same-sex sexuality among animals, because it broadens the scope of what can be considered "natural" in the original sense of the word.
What causes "homosexual" behavior among animals?
Sexual selection theory consider same-sex behavior a mistake, a deception or a disease caused by genes that decrease fitness in one sex but increase fitness in the other.
Among more "positive" theories we find indirect insemination, male over male domination, and "the practice hypothesis" (they are training for the real thing). Then there is the "sexually antagonistic selection" hypothesis: same-sex behaviour in males are favoured by selection because they increase the reproductive chances of their daughters.
Female Laysan albatrosses from Hawaii. Over 30 percent of the nesting pairs consist of two females. "They engage in mutual preening and even occasionally copulation, and, like female-male pairs, each year they raise a single chick." (Research by Lindsay Young, ref. New Scientist, Photo: Tui De Roy/Minden Pictures/FLPA)
Professor Joan Roughgarden over at Stanford, on the other hand, considers homosexuality a positive and natural thing in and for itself:
"Homosexuality, together with mutual grooming, preening, sleeping, tongue rubbing, and interlocking vocalization allows animals to work together as a team -- to coordinate actions and tacitly to sense one another's welfare." (2009, p. 245)
In other words, animals -- like humans -- use sex for bonding.
Macho gay big horns and effeminate straight rams
In Evolution's Rainbow Roughgarden describes many species with same-sex behavior. I am not going to go through all of them here, but find the macho big horn sheep of North America so fascinating that I just have to give you a taste of what the book has to offer.
The male and female big horn sheep are only together during the breeding season. A female is receptive only for three days and will not be mounted outside of these three days. The males solve this lack of sex by forming "homosexual societies". Almost all males participate in same-sex courting and anal copulation!
The few males who do not take part in this activity are known as "effeminate" males among big horn researchers. They look like the other males, but prefer to stay with the ewes:
These males do not dominate females, are less aggressive overall, and adopt a crouched, female urination posture. These males refuse mounting by other males.
As Roughgarden points out, this case turns the meanings of normal and aberrant upside down. In this case the researchers believe the effeminate male must suffer from some kind of hormone deficiency, in spite of the fact that they look the same as the masculine males:
"Now, why would being straight be a pathology, requiring a hormone checkup?" Roughgarden asks sarcastically. "According to the researchers, what's aberrant is that a macho-looking bighorn ram acts feminine! He pees like a female -- even worse than being gay!" (2004, p. 138)
The bonobo - our pansexual sibling
Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom are the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobos (or pygmy chimpanzees, Pan paniscus). We share 96 percent of our genes with them.
Chimpanzees behave the way they should according to the sexual selection theory. The males are aggressive, the females subordinate. Among the bonobos, however, the females have the upper hand, and they use sex as a way of dissolving conflicts.
Chimpanzee matings are front to back, with the male mounting. Bonobos, on the other hand, also enjoy the missionary position, although I doubt any missionary would find their sexual habits comforting.
All bonobos enjoy same-sex copulations, female-female as well as male-male. The young are also invited. There is a lot of French kissing, fellatio, reciprocal male-to-male masturbation, clitoris rubbing, rump-rump contact and penis fencing.
Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting write that the most regular masturbators in their studies are adolescents and adult females (de Waal 1997, p. 104):
"The latter is significant because of yet another uniqueness claim: from Frank Beach to Desmond Morris, scientists have declared female orgasms to be exclusively human. While people readily assume males to enjoy sex, many appear skeptical about females. This reflects the puritan belief, prevalent until early this century [20th century], that sex is a man's privilege and a woman's chore."
The female orgasm is important, as it may partly explain the prominent role of the female in bonobo society. The orgasm means that the female bonobos are as motivated for sex as the males. The fact that the female bonobos are receptive almost continuously (unlike their chimpanzee sisters), also means that sex can be used as a social tool during the whole year.
The reason for all this sex is that it facilitates sharing of food, leads to reconciliation after a dispute, helps integrate new arrivals and is used in the establishment of coalitions. As for humans, reproduction is just one of many reasons for getting close.
"For example, after one male has chased another away for a female, the two may engage in a scrotal rub. Or when one female has hit a juvenile, and the juvenile's mother has come to its defense, the problem may be solved by intese GG-rubbing [genito-genital contact] between the two adults. >Based on hundreds of such incidents, my study produced the first solid evidence for sexual behavior as a mechanism to overcome social tension. " (de Waal 1997, p. 109)
Why gay?
As you can see from these two examples of "gay" animals, the sexual habits of animals vary a lot. You can not deduce one and only one explanation for same-sex relationships in all animals, nor can you use the bonobo or the big horns to explain human homosexuality (at least not directly).
But this very diversity is interesting, again because it helps us get around some of the sexual stereotypes of traditional evolutionary theory.
Why do the female bonobos enjoy each others company in this way? How can such a trait have evolved? Roughgarden points out that females maintain strong friendships with unrelated females, females control access to food, females share food with one another more often than with males, and females form alliances in which they cooperatively attack and even injure males.
"A female who doesn't participate in this social system, including same-sex sexuality, will not share in these group benefits. For a female bonobo, not being a lesbian is hazardous to your fitness." (2004, p. 150).
In this case same-sex sexuality is a social-inclusionary trait. Same-sex sexuality promotes friendship, and that may also increase survival. Given that these female bonobos also engage in "heterosexual" sex this can lead to more offspring.
It can be no question that "homosexuality" in animals is inherited, although not because of one single gene. (p. 155) And given that it can increase both fertility and survival, it does not necessarily go against evolution. (p. 156)
Now, the most important questions remain: What does all of this mean for transgendered people? That will be the topic of my final post in this series.
Here's a video with Rouggharden presenting her own theory:
Marcel Barelli‘s cartoon Dans la nature (In Nature) documents the diversity of animal sexuality and gender, proving once and for all that nature does not care a bit about the binaries of bigots.
,
she has managed to make the female bodied crossdreamer visible for themselves and for the rest of us.
