Out of the Shadows and Making Our Own Light.

Recently, an old grammar school friend resurfaced in my life thanks to Facebook. It's been nearly fifty years since we've spoken, but the bonds of having survived Catholic grammar school, deranged Franciscan nuns and the never-ending reminders that the bloodied body which was nailed to the cross and which hung above the blackboard was there because of my miserable, sinful, ten-year-old life is the glue which allows us to reassemble our friendship in these, the beginning of our sunset years.

 Old friend Peter, with whom I graduated kindergarten; Peter, whose mother was my den mother and who taught us how to grow grass in an eggshell filled with dirt, and with whom I later served Mass dutifully as an altar boy, writes a column for a well known financial magazine. But he occasionally strays, as all Catholic boys do, from his mission to write of other things unrelated to the wonderful, wacky, world of finance.

One of his well-thought out and articulate columns had to do with the radical feminist Cathy Brennan's views on male privilege and her obvious resentment toward transgendered women moving in on what she considers her "turf".

Peter stated that our parochial school education and the behaviors of the nuns was similar to Ms. Brennan's in their resentment of male privilege. Having lived with both tribes, and having experience such privilege and then having it removed, he was interested in my perception of the whole shebang. Here is my response.

 This year marks the 12th year since my surgery and my 14th since beginning this whole process. During that time I have spent a great deal of it pondering exactly what I am.

In the early years, I made every attempt to justify myself as fully female. I guess I needed the validation from others, and so I stayed firmly entrenched on the third of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Acceptance and Love from others) for quite some time. As much as I wanted to be 'fully female' and as much as I wanted to be in a lesbian relationship, the reality and politics of the LGBT world, and particularly Lesbiana, reminded me time and time again that while I could have friends (some close, some not so much), the bulk of Lesbiana would always view me as an "other".  This attitude was never as clear to me as the year some of my friends decided to go to Michfest. I was told that it was for "womyn born womyn" and that I could not attend even if I wanted to do so.

This was about five years ago and at the time I found the statement quite hurtful. But what it drove home to me was that no matter how I viewed myself, I would never...NEVER be considered 100% female by those folks. But like anything, some good comes out of every negative and it forced me to come to grips with what and who I was.

 To them, I would always be an interloper; that no matter how much surgery I had or how much I gussied myself up, I would forever be inexorably male to them. And for years, I resented that and countered with the quip, "I got my ticket to this club the hard way and I don't intend to be stopped at the gate now."

Over time though, I began to realize that the closer I got to the gate, the less I wanted to go through it. Where I once marched in LGBT parades on Pride Day, I began to realize that the Trans community was woefully represented in them. Where I once attended lesbian groups (both social and political) regularly, I began to sense that I would never BE one of them. And so gradually, I began to pull away. I found that the political component of being a lesbian far outweighed the possibility that a woman could put aside the "trans" part of what I was and just accept who I was as a human being. I came to understand that the politics of being a lesbian was as much a part of the whole thing as being attracted to a same sex member. Through my eyes (and remember, this is just my opinion), women found themselves unable to give up that badge of honor that allows lesbians to say, we don't need men in our lives. After years of exposure to that kind of thinking, I found myself back at square one. If I was not a woman, and I certainly was not a man, then just what was I? All of my childhood training about gender was about to get thrown out the window.

As you might imagine, back when I began this process (1999-2000), there was very little information regarding how we trans folk came to be, but the prevailing theory then (as now) is that this is not a mental disorder but an organic one. Nature loves variety as we know, and the growing number of trans-identified folk coming out each year coupled with history being rife with trans types (see the trial transcript of Joan of Arc)  gave credence to the theory that trans folk did not just suddenly pop onto radar, but that we have been around since the beginning of recorded time.

 Now of course, the Internet provides us with a preponderance of information regarding trans society and has opened up so many people's eyes about what we are and where we fit in the world.  

I have learned to view gender as a continuum. To me, there is no absolute male or female. We are all somewhere on that line. And while society does tend to still classify gender as absolute, I believe that those lines are being blurred too, mostly because of the growing transgender population. When so many people are declaring themselves as "other", as they are these days, isn't the idea of a gender continuum more reasonable than absolute male or female?

Yet there is that nagging question of male privilege. Does it exist? Yes. In my field of comedy for instance, it is very pronounced. There is still a large segment of both the entertainment industry and the general public who believe that female comics are not as funny as their male counterparts. Female comedians are paid less and generally will not headline a show. Nor will you see two female comedians on the same show and when there are, club owners rarely place them back to back on the lineup. Having worked as a comedian for both tribes, I can tell you that it is markedly different for women, and not in a good way.

But back to the radical feminists. I believe (again my own personal opinion) that when movements begin, it is because of the radical factions. Their zeal, no matter how angry or discriminatory it may seem, is often the power behind the growth of a movement. Once that movement gets a foothold in the mainstream it begins to grow organically, and the very militants who sired it often are pushed back to the fringes in favor of a more centrist majority. Once dialogue ensues between the "warring" parties, assimilation begins. We've seen it in race relations in this country, with European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century and most recently, with our gay and lesbian populations. Trans people are next in line and have finally begun to unite. But it has been the young trans radicals who are at the forefront of the fight. No longer content with being shunned by genetic "cis" women as in the case of Michfest, or with being on fringes of the LGBT family, trans women and men are discovering that united, they too can have the power to change things. Right now, there is a brouhaha going on within our own community over drag queen RuPaul's use of the word 'tranny' and she-male. Many of us find those words demeaning and derogatory because in most cases, the context of the sentence is meant to do just that.

Our young people in the arts have begun to demand that movies, television and film begin to cast trans folk in their productions. Jaret Leto's portrayal of a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club for instance, was the subject of much rancor within the trans community. Many of us felt that this could have been a breakout role for a trans actress, but none were auditioned for the part.

 And so in closing, I believe that the growing number of visible, vocal trans people are questioning and redefining gender all over the world. I believe that in the next three or four generations, acceptance of  the gender continuum will make the current absolute definition archaic. I believe that in time, trans people will have trans role models to look toward and the desire to feel or be 100% female will disappear. Finally, I believe that someday, many will look at the trans community with some degree of envy because we who were blessed with this very natural way of being have the decided advantage of seeing, feeling and actually living with the points of view of both genders. Already, scientists are pointing toward genetic and chemical causes for gender dysphoria, itself a misnomer as it implies being trans as negative. Ask any trans person how they feel after coming out and the answer is more likely to imply euphoria than dysphoria. And who needs radical feminists for validation? I am happy. That is validation enough.

Authentic people, Authentically funny.

Lately, I’ve been asked on a few occasions if performing as a woman is much different than it was as a male. I’m prompted to write about this tonight because of yet another brouhaha (pun intended; I love puns, Dammit!) caused by the  former Letterman talent coordinator Eddie Brill, who implied that female comics were “not authentic”, and “acted like men to please an audience”.

I used to know this talent coordinator when I worked in New York, but it’s been years since we’ve spoken. Ostensibly, his unfortunate remarks to oh, I don’t know... THE LARGEST NEWSPAPER IN THE FRIGGIN WORLD was the reason given for his dismissal, but there is more to the story than that. I don’t wish to speculate or discuss it here, because quite frankly, being a transgender, lesbian, nearly senior citizen comedian, the odds of me being booked as a guest on Letterman are about the same as Herman Cain  teaching world history at Harvard. Therefore, the subject is irrelevant to my life.

Having said that, my perspective on where women stand in standup has been altered since coming back. And I would at least like to use the talent coordinator’s quotes as a launching point for this blog entry, because it brings up a subject very dear to my heart; gender identification.

The issue of “authenticity” is one that I am not unfamiliar with. Transgendered people live with it in nearly every aspect of our lives, from who we can marry, what state of the union decides if we should be considered women or men, even deciding in which public restroom we are allowed to use to relieve ourselves. At the annual Michigan Women’s Music Festival, the “for womyn, born womyn only” rule bans us from attending. This stupid rule is our equivalent of the Jim Crow laws. I say stupid because using their definition, female-to-male transgendered men like Chaz Bono would be allowed to attend the event.

Despite the enormous price transgender people pay for their right to “be”, society still holds our fate in its hands; even among our LGB family. So I’m not really sure what Mr. Brill means by the term, authentic, though it does smack of the sexism and chauvinism that ran through American culture prior to the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s.

All of that began to change of course, with the publishing of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. This book, arguably responsible for the resurgence of the Women’s Rights Movement begun earlier in the century, began the dismantling of female stereotypes that continues to this day. One of the side benefits of the movement was an increasing blur in the lines that traditionally defined gender.

The simple truth is that today’s males and females look and act nothing like their pre-Friedan counterparts. When was the last time you heard the phrase “blonde bombshell” in reference to a movie star or watched a tough-as-nails, “man’s man” like John Wayne, in a movie? Humphrey Bogart would never cry or show a bit of sentimentality in his movies because his gender role wouldn’t permit it. Even at the end of Casablanca, when he bids farewell to Ingrid Bergman, knowing that he’ll never see the love of his life again, he remains Spartan in his countenance. Find me even the toughest action star today that will emulate Bogart’s stoniness. It wouldn’t be until the mid 1950s that movies like Rebel without a Cause, and On the Waterfront would begin to change the public’s idea of what constituted a man.

Cinema, television and advertising have always guided trends and served as a cultural tour guide of modern life. At the same time though, they have also reflected the changes in societal norms which they helped to create. Those of you old enough to remember the phrase “You’ve come a long way, baby” know that this was a direct reference to the Women’s movement, even though it was attached to a vintage Virginia Slims cigarette ad campaign. Can you even conceive of that happening today?

More and more, today’s media reflects characters who have adapted many of the traits that were once considered purely male or female. Men are more feminine today and women, more masculine, going by the standards of the past. But these standards are arbitrary, created by people (mostly men) who dominated the media for many years. So in response to Eddie Brill’s accusation of authenticity, neither men nor women are authentic if you are using standards that are 50 years old; And that includes him as well.

His other accusation, that women act like men to please an audience, is not surprising  when you consider that he only booked one woman out of the twenty-two comics that appeared on Letterman last year. Here again, Brill is going by a standard that no longer exists. He may be right that female comics use a lot of the same tools that the males do, but that is more a function of stand up than of emulating a man. To make an analogy, if a female carpenter builds a house, she doesn’t create new female tools to build it, does she? But then again, I suspect that Eddie might consider female carpenters not authentic women either.

All of which brings me to my current presentation on stage. As a transgender, lesbian, nearly senior citizen comedian, I was a bit confused when I first began performing again. When I was with the other tribe, my onstage persona was a variation of my father’s loud, curmudgeonly behavior and it was very successful; it pleased the audiences, but fueled the anger and discomfort I was feeling inside. I knew that once I’d transitioned completely, I would never again be able to use the material I’d crafted over twenty years of performing. I needed time to build a life history again in order to have something to talk about. I also need time to rebuild my dignity and self confidence in my own head and it would take me eleven years to do it.

One of the biggest concerns I had in coming back was whether I would be too male or too female up there. It wasn’t until my third time onstage, that it hit me...I was subjecting myself to the very same standards I learned growing up. My own personal sexism was guiding me up there! So I cancelled one or two guest sets and decided to pull back, rethink and regroup. Speaking to some comic friends that I respect, I kept hearing the same thing over and over again; you were funny then, you’re funny now. Funny is funny, no matter what gender you are.

I pulled out some old Rick Scotti tapes and began to watch them from a purely technical aspect. As I watched this stranger performing, I had to keep reminding myself that it was still me up there on the screen; still the same person I am now, just in a different package. The essence was still inside me as I thought well if I was female then and I’m female now, why shouldn’t the old character work just as well?

And so I began writing with the same attitude that I had before. The more I wrote, the more I began to understand that trying to be female was going to lead me down a dangerous path of stereotypes, many of which I had never experienced and had no connection with. True, I have experienced some sexism over this last decade, and understand how frustrating it must be for a GG (genetic girl) to have had to endure it her entire life, but that was not my reality.

The next time I appeared onstage at the Comedy Works in Bristol, Pa., I went up there determined to just be me and fuck the result. If it failed, I decided, then so be it. I would go back to the drawing board and try something else. But it didn’t. In fact, I ‘killed’... and it felt good.

Now, each time I step onstage, I am more determined than ever to be honest with myself and my audiences. And the results have been impressive. I am seeing consistently good sets that ring true in my heart. Most importantly, I am becoming fearless up there, which can only lead to better and truer comedy.

The takeaway from all of this is that there have been funny women for as long as there have been funny men. While the tools are the same, the content is different not because of a gender issue, but because there is a cultural one. All of our ‘stories’ are unique and we tell them the way we tell them. The only reason we think of stand up as a traditional male domain is that word tradition. Traditionally, men have dominated the media and thus comedy. All of that is changing, thankfully. The proof in that pudding is the rise of people like Tina Fey, Ellen de Generes, Joan Rivers and all the others into places of public prominence and respect.

Time is wearing away the attitudes of the Eddie Brills in this world. Time will also some day make the ‘womyn born womyn” rule at the Michfest become an anachronism as well. And some day, a transgender woman or man will appear on Letterman, Leno, and all the others. Someday a transgender person will star in a movie or television show and people will think nothing of it; But not yet. Maybe not even in my lifetime. For right now though, I’d like to think that my own little baby steps and the giant leaps of people like Eddie Izzard are in some small way breaking down the walls that separate us from the mainstream. Whether we were born female, male, or transgendered, we all have something to say, and we are all authentic human beings.

That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat! Abbondanza!