The Guide to Getting It On (161 page)

Transgenderism has many layers and variations. Its expression can range from when a sexy-looking girl wears her boyfriend’s clothes out clubbing, to when a person endures thousands of dollars of surgery and cosmetic hell to become a member of the other sex.

Transgenderism has its own vocabulary and nuances, including words such as “packing,” “tranny bois,” “tranny fags,” “transitioning,” “drag queens,” “drag kings” and “genderqueer.” There can also be regional differences in how terms are used. A term that’s in favor among California TGs might be considered offensive by TGs in Ohio or vise versa. Even the terms transgender and transsexual are nuanced, with a transsexual being someone who wants to completely change gender by having top and bottom surgery, while transgender is more of an umbrella term that can include the girl who packs a fake set of male genitals in her jeans or a role-bending straight couple where the wife pegs her husband in the rear with a dildo.

Rather than trying to provide an overview of the transgender scene, which is still evolving and defining itself, it would be an accomplishment if you left this chapter with an appreciation of some of the different possible TG combinations and how complex it can be for those readers who live it as well as the for the family and friends who love them. To that end, this chapter will focus on the transsexual part of transgenderism, which is where a person wants to change their sex.

NOTE:
TG stands for transgender or a person who is transgender, while M2F and MtF are interchangeable and describe a male who has transitioned into a female. FtM or F2M is a female who has transitioned into a male.

TG-Ball: Trading in Your Balls and Bat

Around here, when you need help explaining something fundamental about sex, you turn to baseball. What sport has donated as many sex terms such as
Getting to first base or Hitting a home run?
And while the following quote from Yogi Berra wasn’t about transgenderism, it was certainly in the ballpark: “90% of this game is mental, and the other half is physical.”

So meet Clive Deacon, who spent the better part of eight seasons in the Carolina League. Given that this was the minor leagues, Clive had lots of time to think. Especially during the year when he started with the Lynchburg Hillcats and ended in Winston Salem, with stops at Durham and Myrtle Beach.

Clive Deacon was a pitcher. He was good enough to stay on a roster but didn’t have the stuff to go any further. One of the things that occupied Clive’s mind were his feelings in the locker room, particularly during shower time.

While the other guys would be thinking about which of the local girls were going to show up after the game, Clive’s thoughts were more about being or becoming one of the local girls. You might assume that Clive is gay and wonder why he just didn’t come out of the closet, but Clive knew about gay cruising and baths and gay bars. It’s not like any fans would recognize him if he did any of that. He’d even had opportunities with players, but Clive wasn’t homosexual. He may have done a little crossdressing along the way, but Clive had no sexual interest in men. Clive was so in love with women and their bodies that he started to want to have his own vagina and female body.

As the seasons progressed, so did Clive’s awareness that he felt like a woman and needed to become one. As he soaped his hairy chest and pulled his penis out to pee, it felt like he was touching the body of someone else. These were parts that belonged to a man and they symbolized being a man. Clive had less and less use for them. By the time he reached Lynchburg, it felt like aliens had stuck on the penis and had given him the hairy chest.

What’s the Score?—Transgender Possibility #1.

Clive wants to be a woman. This has nothing to do with Clive being gay because Clive isn’t. He isn’t effeminate, either. Behavior wise, Clive’s a guy’s guy. He’s always slept with women and there isn’t a single straight player in the entire Carolina league who needed to worry about dropping a bar of soap when he was in the showers with Clive.

Are you starting to get the difference between gender and orientation? Being a man or a woman is about gender. Being straight or gay is about orientation. If Clive were happy being a guy and wanted to give the second baseman for the Nationals the best blow job he has ever had, it would be about Clive being gay, and that is about sexual orientation. But this is only about gender, as in being “male” or “female.”

Unlike Clive, the Nationals’ second baseman is 100% male in body and mind—his psychology agrees with his anatomy. He is what many of the women in town long for: a straight guy with a really good batting average. And even if he were gay, the chances are still 99.9% that he’s perfectly happy being a male.

Transgender rule #1
The first question is always “What sex does the person want to be?” as opposed to “Who is the person sexually attracted to.” But that will change in the next inning.

Clive’s Change-up

We know Clive wants to be a woman. He feels like he’s a woman. More and more, when he uses a rest room, he has to stop and consciously remind himself to go into the door with the figure of the man on it instead of the one with the girl in a dress. We won’t even mention how forlorn Clive feels about his own plumbing when he passes the stand up urinals in the men’s room.

This is a new inning in our game of TG-Ball and you might say, “So why not bring in a whole new pitcher?” Sorry, but the only other transgendered pitcher in the minor leagues was called up to the majors. We’ll have to make do with Clive. And quite frankly, if this weren’t just a little bit confusing, it wouldn’t be transgenderism.

In this new inning, we’ll talk about how Clive is sometimes attracted to Penny, the Pelicans’ scorekeeper, when he isn’t thinking about changing his sex and having his own vagina. (When you are a fairly macho man who is willing to have your penis and testicles removed, the chances are good that the idea of becoming a woman overwhelms your thoughts 24-7.)

“So big whoop,” you say. “Clive’s a good-looking guy, nice personality, he doesn’t chew—why doesn’t he just ask Penny out, get her a little drunk like the other guys do, and have sex with her? Penny is a known resource throughout the Carolina league.”

But Clive doesn’t want to just do her, not with his penis. Clive doesn’t even feel like his penis is his. Some mornings he doesn’t know how it got there. Clive wants to make love to Penny woman-2-woman style, like two lesbians in love. Penny is clearly not gay, but she might be bi. And Clive feels like he is a woman, once you get past the penis and hairy chest.

What’s the Score?—Transgender Possibility #2

It’s never a good idea to predict what orientation a person will be once they change their sex of origin. But the chances are good that their sexual orientation won’t change. In the case of Clive, who was straight to begin with and who had no trouble passing as straight, it is likely that he’ll still be into women once he no longer needs to wear a cup.

So Clive still retains his sexual orientation, which is that of a straight male who loves to have sex with women. Once he transitions into being a woman, Clive hopes to have sex with Penny girl-to-girl, rubbing his girl breasts against hers or pushing his vulva against her vulva.

Clive to the Showers, It’s Barbie the Batgirl’s Turn

We just traded Clive. Now our transgendered attention is on Barbie the Batgirl. Barbie is a woman of few words; maybe it’s the chew, maybe it’s the swagger. Some lazy evening after the Blue Rocks have been swept in three, you can buy their manager a beer and maybe he’ll tell you about the night when the Blue Rocks’ top reliever tried to get fresh with Barbie. They had to air lift him to a hospital in Philadelphia.

Make no mistake about it, Barbie wants to have a penis, but not in her. Barbie wants a penis hanging from her. She just can’t figure why it isn’t there each time she tries to whip it out to pee. And she can’t figure why she doesn’t have big hairy balls to scratch like the other guys. She knows they’re there, she just can’t find them.

Believe it or not, Barbie has a thing for Penny the Pelicans’ scorekeeper. But not as a woman to a woman. Barbie the Batgirl is not looking for some lesbian extravaganza. Barbie wants to make love to Penny like a man does a woman, or like they do in the minor leagues: Barbie wants to get her a little drunk and then fuck her till the Avalanche comes to town.

To the very depths of her soul, Barbie the Batgirl is a boy. She and every one else pretty much knows it. There’s just that awkward problem that nature stuck the penis that Barbie wanted for herself on Clive. And Clive wishes he had been given Barbie’s clit. That way, he could get off the way that feels right, by rubbing his clit instead of by stroking his penis.

Barbie wants to stroke her own penis to orgasm, while Clive wants to rub his own clitoris to orgasm. Being able to stroke instead of having to rub (or visa versa) can be a very real issue for someone who is transgendered. It’s something those of us who aren’t transgendered take for granted.

What’s the Score—Transgender Possibility #3.

“I’ve got it this time!” you say. “Barbie has the gender thing going on, and gender trumps orientation. So Barbie’s best bet is to load up on as much juice as Barry Bonds, get that manly muscle thing going, and become a man—a heterosexual man who wants to have sex with women.” Barbie wants to make love to women as a man.

So what happens if Barbie wants to change both gender and orientation? In this case, Barbie the Batgirl becomes a man (changes gender), but becomes a gay man who wants to have sex with other gay men instead of with women. When an F2M woman becomes a homosexual male she is known as a
tranny-fag.

One thing is consistent: Barbie had no desire to have sex with straight men before changing genders, and she doesn’t have any desire to have sex with them after changing genders. If Barbie wants to have intercourse with a guy, she wants to have it as a gay guy who’s doing another gay guy. And if she wants to have sex with women, she wants to have it as a straight guy who is having sex with a woman.

MtFs Who Aren’t Players Like Clive

While each person who is TG has his or her own unique personality, situation and sexual make up, studies have shown it is possible that a number of male-to-female transsexuals might fall into one of two groups.

The first group involves the lion’s share of MtFs. It’s the one that best describes Clive’s situation. Men in this group were seldom effeminate as children and often consider themselves to be straight. They never needed to fake being masculine, and their decision to transition into a woman often takes their former school mates by surprise.

Many of the men from this group are married and have fathered child-ren. If they decide to become women, they tend to do so later in life than males who are part of the second group. Men from this group often find themselves so entranced by a woman’s
specialness
that they feel they need to become it. (It’s way more complex than the old, “I feel like I’m a woman trapped inside the body of a man.”)

The other group of male transsexuals were almost always effeminate as children. While they didn’t start out trying to be like girls, they soon learned that they were different from the other boys and they had a lot more in common with girls. They aren’t as enamoured with becoming a woman and having a vagina as are the men from the first group. If they do transition, it’s often because they are so feminine that they realize there’s no way they would ever make it as men. They transition sooner than other M2Fs, and they worry about how well they will pass as females. Their sexual orientation is gay from the get go. They want to have sex with other males, often with men who are very masculine appearing. Unlike Clive, a number of M2Fs from this group wouldn’t mind at all being sexually ravaged by one of the boys of summer.

It’s unlikely that a man who is this effeminate would have been a baseball player like Clive—not even in the Carolina league. After transitioning, this group of M2Fs remain sexually attracted to men, as they were from birth. It’s an attraction that feels natural for them and usually makes perfect sense.

There can also be a difference between the two groups of male M2Ts during puberty. For most straight and gay males (including Clive), puberty is when they become more masculine and start to look more masculine. However, for males in the second group, puberty does not always make them look more masculine. In fact, as teenagers, they are often confused for being girls even when dressed like guys. For these males, transitioning into a female persona is not that big of a step. They were always effeminate to begin with. However, for males like Clive, becoming female is something they might need to wing or learn along the way. They don’t always transition into females with the same naturalness that men from the second group might.

Alice Novic, a cross-dressing psychiatrist and author of
Alice in Genderland
(iUniverse, 2009), offers her own perspective on these two groups:

“In my eye, we MTFs come in two varieties: started-out-straight and started-out-gay:”

“Started-out-straight MTFs
include crossdressers and most later-trans-itioning transsexuals. Our hallmarks are 1) We enjoy being women (and are deeply satisfied by anything that tells us that’s what we’re doing). 2) We aren’t spontaneously and uncontrollably effeminate. 3) We’re attracted to women (whether we develop a fondness for men later on or not). 4) We gravitate toward business or technical careers.”