In my previous column I said that it is possible you've been in bed with a transsexual person and not noticed. Medical technology is quite good, at least for MtF genital transitions, and people actually aren't all that much alike, anyway. If everything worked okay and all were pleased with the experience, who cares?
Well, some people do care, quite a bit. I've heard a number of lesbians say that an MtF person who does not disclose their complete sex/gender history before having sex is engaging in de facto rape. Janice Raymond, in her vicious and judgemental book The Transsexual Empire, says, "The transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist, having castrated himself, turns his whole body and behavior into a phallus that can rape in many ways, all the time." (She doesn't think any better of FtM people.)
I suspect that most people, when they are preparing to have sex with someone, do not reveal all past events that could possibly be upsetting. Perhaps quite the contrary. In this rather dangerous world we now inhabit, I can think of more important things to know than a lover's surgical history.
There are some people who believe, with Janice Raymond, that once a 'man' always a 'man,' and that a 'man' is something best not spoken with, much less slept with. But I don't quite see why a past that does not cast a visible shadow on the present should be such a problem. Plenty of 'lesbians' were raised as heterosexuals, have had sex with men, and have been married to men. So long as these women now behave themselves, their pasts are generally not held against them.
I have to admit that from my vantage point I simply do not see strong dividing lines between male and female, masculine and feminine, or between the many sexualities and sexual orientations. What lines there are, do not seem to me to be firmly fixed. Many things about us change as we travel the path from birth to death, why not these?
I do believe that as one attempts to build a committed relationship with another person the past must be laid bare. For me, trust is crucial in a relationship. I would never conceal something as important and as immediate as that I am transsexual.
On the other hand, I do not always carry a sign labeling myself as such. So I meet people, and I begin to form relationships, with that part of my past not being out in the open. I then have to decide when and how to divulge that I am transsexual. This often is a very difficult decision for me to make.
There are few things one can say to another person that can as suddenly and as irrevocably alter a relationship as saying, "I'm transsexual." One of the reasons I am so blatantly out in all parts of my life is that I find it very difficult to say those words in a one-on-one situation to someone who doesn't already know. I'm human. I don't like being rejected because of what I am.
Is biology in fact destiny? Once male, always male? Any way I look at it, this does not make sense. If I am no more than a biological machine, why have I known since earliest awareness that I am female? If I am soul or spirit, how can I be determined by biology, by genitals?
No, I do not have the same herstory as do all female people, and that is why I do not claim to be 'one of the women.' But neither do I have, nor did I ever desire to share, the history of males in our culture. I am something of both, but largely of neither.
Before my transition I was quite a bit like Genly Ai in Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, an alien observer alone on a planet full of differently gendered people. Now I merely feel like a person who has gone to live in a foreign land. I've studied the language and customs but they have not yet become totally a part of me; I still catch myself wondering if I am making mistakes and being laughed at behind my back.
I've never been able to take gender for granted. I've always been conscious of the script, the lines and blocking, the costumes and makeup. I am the ghost of gender past, present, and future.