Read Online My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover by Molly Haskell - Free Book Online Page A

descending on a family whose social status is none too
    secure to begin with. In fact, the four components of GLBT are all far
    more disparate than such a rubric allows for. Gays and lesbians may
    have less in common than either has with straight people of their re-
    spective sexes; and there are subsets and branches of each.
    I tried to imagine him, her, somewhere. What about a community
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    with other transsexuals? “I don’t want to be one of them,” he said.
    What did he even mean by this, a strangely callous remark from some-
    one as generally empathetic as he? I assumed he meant a commune of
    in- your- face queerish drag queens, mascaraed babes out of La Cage aux Folles rather than sobersided members of society, but why, if they come from backgrounds as diverse as he makes clear they do? He was
    equally averse to joining an online support group. More of a recluse
    than a joiner, Chevey had always been obsessed with privacy (the first
    piece of equipment he bought when he went into business for himself
    was a shredder). He was so secretive, Mother and I never knew if he
    had any clients! Even Ethel, when I told her, was surprised at his attitude. “But he is one of them,” she said.
    I only gradually came to another interpretation. Because a trans-
    sexual thinks constantly and obsessively about being a woman, there’s
    a tension between the need for support on the one hand, and the de-
    sire, if not to pass completely as a woman, at least to live in as utterly normal a way as possible. The last thing they want is to wear the label
    “T,” join a club, and be seen by the world as freaks or at best hybrids.
    They’re already so far out on the fringe, so beyond political legitimacy, there isn’t the same desire for political solidarity as among homosexuals or other minorities. Indeed, solidarity would only magnify their
    problems. Most want, as Chevey says, “to blend in with the hetero-
    sexual population.”
    This all came home to me when I watched a CNN documentary,
    Her Name Was Steven , in which Steve Stanton (now Susan), the onetime city manager of Largo, Florida, gave a lucid and dispassionate
    account of her feelings and decisions. Of particular interest to me was her appearance at a congress of transsexuals, where she infuriated her fellow transsexuals by refusing to toe the line and voice solidarity.
    “Somehow I’ve been thrown into this role as a national spokesper-
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    son for a cause I don’t understand myself yet,” she says at one point.
    Even as one applauds her courage, and sees a woman quite at peace
    with herself, the ex- wife is a different story. She has refused to appear in the documentary but answers questions off- camera, and at one
    point says poignantly, “I watched him gradually fade away, and it has
    been like a slow death for me.” Eleanor must be feeling something like
    this about Chevey.
    I try to imagine losing Andrew in a way that is almost more com-
    plete than death, because it brings into question the shared past and
    the self that has morphed and mutated, but always within the endless
    dance of marriage.
    I ask Beth if Chevey’s revelation of transsexualism undermined
    her sense of their marriage, and she replies in the negative. They were best friends before and remain so.
    “He had such integrity,” she says, “more than anyone I’ve ever
    known. And so does she. Nevertheless, I hope Ellen doesn’t want to
    talk about hair and makeup all the time. And I’ve told him he can’t be
    my friend if he wears frou- frou clothes. You know, over- the- top
    feminine— plunging necklines and short skirts.” The truth is, we’re all more “masculine” than he is, or rather than the she that he will be.
    The one person who can no longer joke is Eleanor. They’ve been
    married twenty