Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels

by Justin Vivian Bond

Justin Vivian Bond's memoir, set before V's discovery of words like transgender, genderqueer, or agender, chronicles a young child's discoveries of lipstick, sex, transphobia, bullying, femininity, religion and friendship.

There's an endorsement on the back that says this book should be in the hands of every child and every adult that cares about that child. (I knew I should have written this review before I gave it back to the library. I can't properly quote. Please don't sue.) I'm not sure I'd go that far--I think I'm conservative enough to think that giving a book that describes having sex--lots of sex--as an eleven-year-old to children everywhere isn't the best of decisions. Adults that care about children, yes--Bond's desire to simply be accepted, struggles with the gender binary, and harassment are universal themes that adults who care for children need to understand. It's a good read, fast, gripping, and a little shocking--don't give this one to Grandma. It shows the reader how Bond's gender identity was present from early childhood, and not compromised by the fact that all Bond knew of queer culture was that boys who had sex with boys were faggots. As Real Man Adventures describes post-transition life, Tango describes pre-transition life, a welcome diversion from the many peri-transition narratives, if that is a word.
This is an open apology to Bond if I have used the wrong pronoun above--there are no pronouns in the book itself, except for the he/him ascribed to Bond by society, and I am getting my pronoun knowledge from the introduction, which confusingly uses V's, Mx's, and his somewhat interchangeably as the possessive pronoun, and left me extremely confused. Not that Bond owes me pronouns, but let it stand that it's hard to give a review of a book without the pronouns of the main character, and I'm sorry if I'm wrong!

Overall rating: 3/5

Project upshot: I appreciate the look at childhood life and also how dysphoria for a non-binary person can be similar and different from dysphoria for a binary person.

Real Man Adventures

by T Cooper

Real Man Adventures is a collection of interviews, essays, lists, and other bits of snarkiness that T Cooper has assembled into what he calls "a mostly non-fiction book on the subject of masculinity with some biographical elements" (260). It discusses Cooper's experience of manhood and masculinity as a trans man, including his interactions with his parents, his brother, his wife, his kids, government officials, other trans people, and more.

Cooper is honest to a fault, owning up to his insecurities, his fears, his resentments, and his anger. And I do mean 'to a fault'. I seem to remember saying in a previous review to a previous book that a character's faults are most easily forgiven if the character owns up to and dislikes them. It doesn't work here. While I acknowledge Cooper's right to be angry when the passport office won't change his passport sex to M without genital surgery, I also think taking it out on the person on the other end of the phone (who, in all likelihood, neither makes the rules nor has the power to change them, and simply doesn't want to lose their job) wasn't the kindest or most useful thing to do. While I empathize with his insecurity concerning his wife's ample opportunities to find a cis man, he mentioned it enough times that I got frustrated and wanted to respond, "What more does she have to prove to you? She clearly adores you. You've adopted her children. She's transparent about what she's doing when she's out with other men (part of her job as a reporter). She's supportive and thoughtful about all the problems you come to her with, and she shoots you down the second you mention that she might prefer a cis man." I know these things aren't ruled by logic but by fear. I still wished he'd mention it less. His is a unique perspective--unlike many trans men, Cooper doesn't identify with 'born in the wrong body', nor does he have any single life-changing moment where he realized he was a man. He doesn't talk about his transition, he talks about his life after his transition, the parts of his life still affected by being trans even afterward. It's a good read if you've experienced similar frustrations and fears and need to know someone shares them, but not the sort of book you want to hand your mom to say, "Look! This is why you need to try harder to use the right pronouns!" There are some really good arguments about why you should try harder to use the right pronouns, but I recommend reading it yourself and rephrasing rather than just handing it over. The angry tone of it will likely put her on the defensive and you won't get anywhere. Much of it is amusing, some of it is confusing but stubbornly not elaborated upon. (In the chapter titled Ten Things People Assume I Must Understand About Women but Actually Don't, #1 is "The physical pain involved in menstruation" (59). There is no explanation as to why.) Not all of it is directly related to being trans, even though the experiences are necessarily colored by it.

Overall rating: 2.5/5

Project upshot: This one'll go back to the library. I feel duly warned against certain cliches, but that's it.

Closets and Skeletons

Being in the closet has the detrimental effect of making people feel like strangers to those closest to them. Like liars. Like imposters.
I remember being at my own birthday party, laughing with my friends, and suddenly wondering how many of my friends would be there if they knew the truth.
After all, there are scary things like skeletons in closets.
I'm out to most people now as gay--certain conservative family and friends no longer within my closest circle remain. (There are also a few people with whom it simply hasn't come up.)
And then I found myself back in the closet, once again restructuring sentences, and I discovered a new pain to the closet.
When you have a partner you haven't told anyone about, you can't share the joys of a new relationship, the learning process of its progression, or the sorrow at its ending.
I broke up with a lovely woman today, and cried alone.
Only now, as the relationship is ending, am I finding the courage to say I dated two wonderful women at the same time, they knew about and cared about each other, and I have been doing one of them the occasionally necessary disservice of not telling anyone about her.
Well, hardly anyone. By my count, seven people besides us three knew. (This is the scientist and the poet in me clashing.)
And so I made her things. I can't take any credit for technical ability--you too can make these on weavesilk.com, but they do mean things, and this is, after all, a blog for art.


So I'm taking a moment off from research to mourn a romantic relationship and celebrate a friendship and make things and be a little pissed off that I can feel safe as a lesbian now and fear being seen as poly. There's a rant to be had there, but I don't have it yet.

From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation​, FTM and Beyond

by Morty Diamond
This book was too complex and I have too many quotes and feelings to write this as a typical book review. But I'll try to be reasonably...ah, what's the word...it means going from A to C by way of B instead of Kumquat. I can hear the voices of almost everyone I know asking me why I'm going to bother. A few things you'll want to note while you're still up here at the top. There's a lot of quotes in here. They're all formatted by author of piece, page number. They're good quotes. But if you're not interested in quotes, there's still more writing at the bottom!
     "I started off my life as a boy with a slight disadvantage, nothing so big that it could not be overcome with a little ingenuity and spunk, but a setback, nonetheless. You see, despite being a little boy from the very start destined to become the handsome and talented man I am today, I happened to have had the unexpected surprise of being born a girl. I’ve yet to come across a reasonable explanation for this mix-up, but there’s no sense crying over spilt milk." ~Eli Wadley, 99
I am calling this book Inside Out because like a lot of nonfiction, it has a ridiculously long title. It's a fitting one, though. This book is a collection of personal essays, poems, and one entry that included parts of both, all by people on the trans* spectrum about their experience being there. They identified in ways that would be countless if there were infinite chapters, but they all had one thing in common: They were labeled female at birth and have had some form of complaint about that. Some identify as FTM. One complains about that term because he was never female. One wonders how much of his desire to be a boy came from being trans* and how much from the patriarchy, and refrains from giving himself a label at all. Several found themselves most comfortable somewhere between gender extremes.


"I’ve been blessed to have my physical form be an educational experience for the rest of the world. It’s a truly beautiful existence, riding the line of gender and seeing everything from both a female and male perspective." ~Rocco Rinaldi Kayiatos, 74

"My mom and practically the rest of the world assumed I now identified as FTM female to male) transsexual, but that was a false accusation. First off, I was not going from F to M. Whatever gender my parents chose to raise me was their choice but the gender I truly am is not my choice…It’s just who I am, and who I was meant to be. I never felt I was F because I never was, and therefore the FTM identity does me no justice. Recognizing this helped me form my MTM male to male) identity." ~Johnny Giovanni Righini, 78

  This book could be Transgender 201. 101 gave you the basics: what does my parent/child/lover/friend mean when they say they're trans? They want to be a boy/girl? Doesn't everyone sometimes? But you're still a girl, you haven't had *that* surgery, right? This book takes you beyond, to answering the questions that can only be asked of indvidual people, rather than the community at large. Do I say 'transgendered'? Many people find that objectifying, but some still use it as self-identification. Best not to use it in larger contexts, but respect people's wishes one-on-one. Is it accurate to say someone 'used to be a woman'? Same answer.
There are people in this book who have had no surgery or hormones, some who have had 'top' surgery, and everything else. There's a person who uses 'he' pronouns as a way to screw with people's expectations even more than as a comfortable fit. Many of the authors never say what pronouns they use. One author writes about black boys, one describes growing up in a traditional Hispanic house, and one blatantly admits to having a life made easier by being white middle-class. The last essay is a neat transition into the beginning of intersectionality and queer of color critique, which has its roots in women of color feminism, queer studies, native studies, and more. I took a course on queer of color critique and it's worth studying, but you'll want a strong background in gender and sexuality first.
Anyway. I think this is a must-have for a trans* person trying to find their identity, or words to describe it.

     "One of my MTF friends has spoken of transition as crossing the fear barrier.” We feel commanded to do this crazy thing, to slash the ropes of family ties and crush the bones of our previous values. As we start to walk through the fire, we have the opportunity for a reprieve, as Abraham also received, we do not have to be murderers and no one has to die. We can transition safely and usually less catastrophically than we feared. But by our willingness to have made the worst possible sacrifice, we are reborn and have a new relationship with the powers that be."  ~Tucker Lieberman, 24

     "We are diplomats. We are go-betweens for men and women. This is true whether we embrace or deny it. We are here to make peace with ourselves, our lovers, other transgendered people, and to carve out a home in the cliffs that sprang up between the sexes. We belong to the holy order of the self-sacrificing diplomats." ~Tucker Lieberman, 25

     "Whatever gender current or gender vector we have, whether our birdhouse hollow points toward the rising or the setting sun or the harvest moon, we are all pursuing the question of how to be at peace with our bodies in the world and to realize, through that peace, the true meaning of it all. At that point, gender is no longer about navigating one’s life between two categories."~Tucker Lieberman, 25

     "It isn’t about becoming” another person—I already am who I am—I just want my body to reflect that. It’s not like I am suddenly changing from the person you’ve always known—this is more about your willingness to see who I’ve always been." ~Cooper Lee Bombardier, 28

    "I am not sure which is worse, feeling invisible as a tranny when being perceived as a butch dyke or feeling invisible as a queer when being perceived as a man." ~Cooper Lee Bombardier, 29

     "I don’t want to disappear into the world as a straight man." ~Cooper Lee Bombardier, 29

     "For awhile, I was swindled into thinking, as many of us are, that there is a correct” way to be trans, we have to take hormones, get surgeries, get a GID diagnosis, change pronouns, pass, feel like a boy in a girl’s body, and get a preppy haircut. My inclination is to break rules or flee from them, and if this long list of rigorous requirements was what it took to be trans, I didn’t want that." ~Boots Potential, 33

     "I know what is acceptable once I leave the comfort of my genderqueer microcosm where self-identification takes precedence over body parts, voices, and names. I know that there are ways that I can act, ways that I can present myself when I step outside of my door so that people will not question who I am. It’s hard not to fall into that." ~Wyatt Swindler, 67

     "I think it is sad that even the most enlightened people seem to think that gender stereotypes are what makes people want to transition. I used to be guilty of that myself, when hearing about the decisions of my trans friends. In fact, my belief that only sexists would want to transition was the main reason why I fought so hard against coming out to myself and anyone else. In fact, it’s the notion that anyone who transitions is antifeminist and patriarchal which kept me from dealing with this for so many years."  ~Gavriel Alejandro Levi Ansara, 92

     "I am transitioning not because I think men and women have different characteristics, because I am emphatically NOT a gender essentialist. I am transitioning because I feel most comfortable when people refer to me in male terms and because I feel most comfortable and liberated in my body as a man." ~Gavriel Alejandro Levi Ansara, 93

One of my favorites was about a man who was wondering about the fact he attended a women's college, and whether this would continue to haunt him on job applications. He finds it ironic, being a man and being an alum of Bryn Mawr.

Yes, Bryn Mawr! I go to Bryn Mawr! And I have such a lot, statistically speaking, trans* friends there. I want to call them all up and tell them I found a brother of theirs who went before them. This fellow talks about how he learned a lot there, how to be a feminist, what it is like to be a woman in those circumstances, and is he expected to just forget four years of his life in order not to be constantly haunted by his past?

“Will I switch my memories to the coed college a mile down the road?”~Daniel Ray Soltis, 128

I know exactly which college he's talking about, and have been there several times. No, I want to tell him, you will be a proud queer Mawrtyr, for isn't it just this past Plenary we started rewriting our constitution to include gender-neutral language, isn't it here people have asked me my pronouns, not, I think, because I present very masculine, but because my name is Phoenix and even the slightest hint of gender non-conformation is enough to make people here want to check, isn't it here that despite years of roots as an all-women's college my friend group is the most inclusive place for trans* people that I have ever seen?

Now, I know my trans* friends have their problems with it, with the casual use of 'garden party girls' and 'freshwomen', and I don't want to act like we are some kind of utopia for trans* people. But--and this is why I am not an activist--I want to compare it to the way I grew up and the way most of my high school people live and the blank looks my parents give me when I throw out 'sy' as a pronoun and explain that there is more than one way of being agender or asexual (or anything else, but those are my pet peeves right now), and celebrate how good it actually is at Bryn Mawr. I'm so freaking proud to be here.

Overall rating: 5/5

Project upshot: I think I'll get a lot out of this book for the project!