Bending Gender

Bending Gender Richard Grayson Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs Edited with an introduction by Jonathan Ames Vintage Books http://www.vintagebooks.com 332 pages; paper, $13.95 Most Americans are intrigued by transsexuals but don't know what to make of them. I can recall the dopey reaction ofoneteenagertothe sentimental 1970 film The Christine Jorgensen Story: "She was such a cute guy! Why did she become a girl?" Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs doesn't answer this adolescent question. Jonathan Ames, the book's editor, is after something more profound than that. In his introduction , Ames calls the etiology of gender dysphoria "probably unanswerable...a mystery of the human condition." The testimonies ofthe fifteen transsexuals compiled here serve as a celebration of that mystery andofthe infinite capacity ofhumanbeings to reinvent themselves. At first blush, Ames—a talented novelist, performance artist, newspaper columnist, and perhaps the wittiest writer of his generation—might seem an odd guiding force behind this kind of anthology. But Ames's comic novels—I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man, and Wake Up, Sir!—aie, at their heart, stories ofquirky characters choosing toprofoundly transform their lives. While changing one's sex may seem like a drastic step, the overarching theme of the entries in SexualMetamorphosis is restoring the natural orderof things. The first excerpt, Case 129 from Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (first published in 1886), sets the tone for the volume. A nineteenthcentury Hungarian physician describes how, despite marriage and children, he has felt "like a woman in a man's form" his entire life. Although the second memoirist, the Danish painter Lili Elbe, born Einar Wegener, died in the 1930s following surgical implantation ofovaries, later medical advances made true sex change possible and , fairly safe. At this point, Ames notes, transsexuals' memoirs take on the same basic narrative structure: first, a child feels terribly uncomfortable in his or her gender role; next, an adolescent or adult, after much torment, undergoes a transformation into his or her "true" sex; finally, after more suffering—now physical as well as psychological—the individual finds peace, if not total happiness, in the aftermath of the sex change. The excerpts from Jan Morris's Conundrum (1974)—the bookthatmade transsexuals respectable if still abit outré—exhibit all the stylistic gifts ofherbest travel writing. Morris's earliest memory, exquisitely rendered, is of three-year-old James, sitting beneath his mother's piano as she plays Sibelius, suddenly realizing that he "had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl." Despite that, Morris relates a happy, nearly idyllic childhood, and seems so welladjusted that it makes James's transformation from husband and father into plucky, Mrs. Miniver-like Jan almost anticlimactic. Some of these selections deal with public reaction to the writer as metamorphose. Jorgensen, the former Army private from the Bronx whose Danish sex change operation in 1952 caused a national sensation, is represented here with an account that goes a long way to explaining how her unpretentious charm and ladylike demeanor made her something of a beloved figure, the first celebrity transsexual. In contrast, Christine Cossey, a fashion model and James Bond girl cruelly outed by British tabloids, wanted to keep her gender reassignment a secret, not only to the general public but also to her overbearing mother-in-law. When, to her horror, Cossey's sex change is revealed, her career and fairy-tale marriage appear to come apart. Most of these memoirs deal not with public coming out, but with private people struggling with their own feelings and relationships. The excerpt from Deirdre McCloskey's Crossing relates how a distinguished economics professor named Donald, who has long enjoyed dressing as a woman, finally decides to become Deirdre. McCloskey concentrates on the struggles with Donald's wife and adultchildren, who react to his crossing the genderbarrier with horror and cruelty. No wonder McCloskey tells her story in the third person. On the other hand, the excerpt from tennis player and physician Renée Richards's Second Serve concentrates on the physical aspects of the metamorphosis , recounting in somewhat gruesome detail the bodily pain and suffering she undergoes in her surgical...