Back To:  The Tyranny of Materiality

Updated August 21, 2000

"Steve / Stephanie" Frank Yazum [right, standing] [James, left, sitting]

Friday, March 31, 2000

I found out today that someone slit Steve's throat Friday March 24, 2000 . . . Steve was the kindest, most polite sweetheart . . . I got to know Steve over the past four years watching him/her grow and become independent . . . s/he was a he though felt comfortable dressing as "female" . . . no, s/he came alive as Stephanie . . . s/he was lovely:  thin, nice legs, dripping with style, meticulous about his/her appearance and damn it:  beautiful from the very core of self . . . his/her killer(s) are unknown, as well as motive(s), though it appears as if cross dressing is considered motivation at this point in the investigation . . . cultural intolerance murdered Steve, or, in the very least, robbed him/her of his/her identity . . . how exasperatingly stupid / pointless / inane can gender intolerance be?  Why must we all be defined by our genitalia?  Can't we just fucking be ourselves regardless of penis and vagina?  I wish I had an image of Steve as Stephanie, though, I do, way inside the convolutions of my brain . . . no matter what s/he appeared as s/he was wonderful . . . isn't that obvious?

There is a $5,000 reward for information regarding Steve's murder . . . call 518-382-5245.

 Newspaper Article Two

 Newspaper Article Three

 Newspaper Article Four

From the Albany Times Union Site:

"Schenectady -- A 28-year-old Becker Street man was charged Thursday night with the knifing death of an acquaintance last month in the victim's Stockade area apartment.  David Bronson of 1834 Becker St. "made admissions'' of his involvement in the crime as he was being questioned by city detectives, said Detective Sgt. Al Buzanowski. Robbery was the apparent motive for the killing, the sergeant said, but police withheld comment on how much cash was taken from Frank Yazum, 40, that night."

 Pistol Permit Documentation

By Bobbi Jo Williams

There’s one more story I have to write. I wish I could change the ending, but the truth of it won’t
allow me. Nor can I change the setting or the characters. I can only report the events. The truth of
it binds me to it’s conclusion. So listen. Please. And try to understand why I had to tell you this...
this last story.

She weighed less than a hundred pounds; ninety-five, I think she told me once--a size four or six.
Such a little girl. Her Polish features gave her the look of a doll--not a Barbie or Chatty Kathy, but
the kind of dolls you find at European fairs, with colorful ethnic outfits. She wore glasses too, her
eyes being very weak, but that affliction was minor when put beside her epilepsy and diabetes. Oh
yes. You might say she was quite a case. But you’d never know it by her demeanor.

“You make the best Alabama Slammer I’ve ever had,” she’d tell the bartender, then wink and
excavate the contents of her purse to find her money. “I’ve got it here somewhere, ” she’d say.

She’d bring her drink to the table and we’d sit and talk, though most times she would talk and I’d
play mom and listen.

“Oh yes,” she told me one evening not long before it happened. “I’m in love.” And she batted her
eyelashes and grinned like a 9 year old who’d just got a note form the little boy sitting behind her
in elementary school.

“Is it mutual?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said without hesitation. ”I’m sure it is... well... pretty sure...”

I waited while she sipped her drink.

“She has a child... a seven year old, and that kind of gets in the way of our spending a lot of time
together.” She looked toward the door. “She said she’d come by tonight.”

“So,” I said. “It’s a girl.”

She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “And no. She’s ‘f’ to ‘m’. Or she’s going to be. I mean, she, er... he, just
started hormones.”

“Ahhh... “

“So it’s perfect!” she exclaimed. “She’ll be ‘he’ and I’ll be ‘she.’”

“Eventually,” I said.

“Yes!” she squealed. “Eventually.”

I smiled and raised my glass. “To love,” I said.

She lifted her glass and repeated the words, “ To love,” she said, then sighed, the way that smitten
schoolgirls do.

But Stephanie was not a schoolgirl. She turned forty just this year. Finally, on her way to
becoming herself at last, she was happier, she said, than she had ever been. For all those years
before she had lived with parents who protected her, wouldn’t let her go; the sickly child, the child
with disabilities, the child who remains a child in their parents eyes. But why, they asked, did she
have to make matters worse with... ‘this.’

“I don’t think they really understand,” she explained. “My mother calls me ‘ queer’ and ‘gay’ and
says I should stop being so foolish.”

“Maybe you should just tell them to stay out of your life,” I tell her.

She doesn’t respond to that. “They came to my apartment last week and told me it was too messy.”

“Did you ever think of moving out of town?” I ask.

She laughed uncomfortably. “They pay the rent,” she said.

Of course, I thought, that’s how she can afford to live there, in an older, more elegant part of
town, made up mostly of restored houses from the 1700’s. Not something a file clerk could afford.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “They love me, you know.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“They just don’t understand.”

“Who does?” I asked.

She shrugged, then took another sip from her glass.

“I want you to come,” she told me one night. “This Saturday... at the pub.”

“You’re in the show?” I asked, almost disbelieving.

She nodded vigorously, her little head bobbing up and down like one of those dogs in the back of
car. “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” she said. “I want to do Shania.”

“Shania Twain,” I confirmed.

“Either ‘I Feel Like A Woman’ or ‘Don’t even think about it!’” She paused, then asked “What do
you think?”

I smiled. “Sorry, I said. “I’m not much of a country music fan.”

“Oh... no... no” she said, shaking her head so that the page boy wig shook from side to side.
“Shania’s not country really. She’s pop.”

“Ok,” I said. “Regardless. I don’t listen.”

“Well, you should,” she said, admonishingly. “I don’t need a shrink to tell me what I think,” she
sang. “That’s one of her lines; good stuff.”

“Saturday,” I said.

“Probably not ‘til eleven o’clock. They always start the shows late.”

I arrived at the pub around ten o’clock. Stephanie was already there, weaving in and out of the
crowd, like a mouse traversing a maze. I tagged her as she slipped by.

“Hey... when do you go on?” I asked.

“I’m fourth,” she said. “It’s because I’m new, I guess.”

“Fourth’s not bad,” I said.

“Out of four?” she asked.

I smiled. “Well, you know,” I said “ in show business, the star is always the last act.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Really.”

“Hmmm,” she murmured, then grinned. “ I have to get ready,” she said, and scurried away.

I ordered a drink and chose a seat at the bar with a good view of the stage (a large plywood plank
laid on top of the pool table at the back of the room). After a while, the bar lights dimmed and a
single light came up on the ‘stage.’ From somewhere out of the crowd, a voice announced the first
performer.

It was the usual lip-synching. The three ‘girls’ performing ahead of her were, at the very least,
semi-professional. You could tell they had done it before and knew how to work the crowd.  (Those gathered around the stage would lean forward as the performer bent down to accept their
tips.)

At first, Stephanie’s music didn’t cue up properly. Standing there, in the bright light, her
vulnerability became painfully obvious. She was shaking; her arms moved awkwardly, like a moth
in a flame, and the usual problems she had with the high heels now were compounded by her
nervousness. But she forced a smile and when the music suddenly started she jumped into the
song, unleashing the energy that had been pent up by her nervousness.

“No inhibitions-make no conditions; Get a little outta line, I ain’t gonna act politically correct; I
only wanna have a good time?"

As she sang and moved she stared upward, over our heads, her eyes transfixed, it seemed, on
something we couldn’t see, something she was feeling. And the contrast, between that look and
the awkward, nearly clumsy way she moved about, took the crowd aback.

“The best thing about being a woman,” she sang, “Is the prerogative to have a little fun and... “
now she looked down at the crowd, “Man! I feel like a woman!”

Everyone hooted and cheered at that last line and Stephanie grinned broadly. She WAS having a
good time. At that moment, she WAS Stephanie; she WAS the star.

As she was helped off the stage, I slipped off the bar stool and moved to intercept her.

“How was it?” she asked.

“It was great,” I said. “Just great."

“Well,” she said, “you know... I think I could have done a little more. You know. Like maybe... at
the opening, but they screwed up the cue.”

“No problem,” I said. “You did just fine.”

She squeezed my hand “Thanks,” she said.

The last time I saw her was at the Tri-Ess meeting, which isn’t ever a meeting at all, but just an
excuse to go to one of the nicer bars and get together with other girls. I had been there a while
when she showed up.

“Hi Stephanie,” one of the other girls said. “How’s it going?”

She frowned, tipped her head to one side and closed her eyes. “OK... I guess.”

When she bought her drink I heard her tell the bartender “You make the best Alabama Slammer I’ve ever had.” Then she picked it up and walked over to my table.

“You look very nice,” I said. “I like that suit.”

“Sixty dollars,” she volunteered. “I always get the bargains.”

“I know,” I said. “And if I were your size, I’d get them too.”

She laughed. “I used to hate being small,” she said. “Small boys get picked on. But now it’s an
asset. You know?”

I nodded.

“How’s the girlfriend... or boyfriend?” I asked.

Her expression changed. “We broke up,” she said. “He said he didn’t have time for a relationship.”

I said nothing. I’ve never known how to respond to news like that. I knew that anything I said
would sound cliched. And I thought to myself, ‘if someone cares about you enough, they make the
time for the relationship.’ Finally I said simply “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Oh well,” she said. “At least she,... er he, didn’t lead me on.”

I changed the subject then, trying to get onto lighter things. And that seemed to work. After a
while, she asked where I was going after the meeting.

“Well,” I said, “seeing as this isn’t really going to be a meeting, I’m not sure.”

“I’m going to the pub,” she said. “ If you’d like to come along... “

I nodded. “Sure,” I said. “That sounds fine.”

We finished our drinks, put on our coats, and said goodbye to the others.

“Where ya goin?” Karen asked.

“Just over to the pub,” I replied.

“Oh... well, maybe we’ll see you there.?"

At the pub, we were greeted warmly by the bartender and a couple of the regulars. (They knew
Stephanie by name now.) We slipped out of our coats and ordered drinks.

It was a Saturday night, but there weren’t as many people there as I expected. Then again, this
town has been dying over the last twenty years. The major employer has left it with very little and
the population is, generally, much older. It’s not the best venue for a gay bar. To a great extent, all
that’s left is the dregs, left-overs unable to leave. But the bartender and owner are friendly and
most of the patrons leave us alone.

Stephanie liked to play pool. After a short while she announced that she was going to find a game
and withdrew to the back where the pool table (the same one that had been the stage a few weeks
earlier) was situated.

I sipped my drink and chatted with the bartender. None of the other girls showed up, but the bar’s manager came over and talked with me for a while. When at last I’d finished my drink, I looked
around for Stephanie. Because of her epilepsy she couldn’t drive and I’d given her rides home
before.. I put on my coat and took a few steps toward the center of the room and finally spotted
her.

She was in the back, in the farthest corner, in the arms of a man I’d seen playing pool with her.
They were kissing.

I paused, considering if I should interrupt. And as I stood, not realizing I was staring, I heard
Shania ’s voice singing “And I’m not lonely anymore at night; And he don’t know only he can
make it right.”

I could see that Stephanie was in her world. It was still the world of the little girl, caught now in
the schoolyard by the little boy whose friends had dared him to kiss her. The bar, the noise, the
people around her didn’t matter. She was being loved. Who was I to intrude? I turned to leave and
caught the eye of the bartender who was staring as well. He raised his eyebrows and tipped his
head to the side. I tossed off a small wave, headed for the door, and never saw Stephanie again.

Reprinted by permission of the author. 'One Last Story' is also included in the collection 'Me and
Bobbi and the Girls,' available from Xlibiris Publishing and online at amazon.com.

      Copyright 2000, Bobbi Jo Williams. Used with permission.

Ahhhh . . . the Death Penalty may be a factor . . .

Gaining a Daughter: a Father's Transgendered Tale

  By LENNARD J. DAVIS

I look around and find myself, strangely enough, in the women's lingerie section of the Kmart in an upstate New York town. I am with my 19-year-old son, who is comparison shopping for a pair of black tights.  Some farm ladies are regarding us with dubious glances. My son asks if I think medium is too
  large for him. He stands at about 5 feet 11 inches. I really have no idea what will fit him. Trying to be helpful, I suggest that he might want to wear the fishnet stockings, which seem to me a bit more goth, but he sticks with the regular ones. Then we move on to the cosmetics section for lipstick and hair dye. As I help him pick out a L'Oreal shade called Parisian Black, I wonder to myself how I got here.

How indeed? A few days earlier, my son had arrived back from his first year at college. The following morning, he sat me down at the kitchen table and announced that he had a big thing to tell his mother and father. My wife was on the telephone, and as we waited for her to finish talking, my son whispered, "I'm getting married." Then he added, "No, just kidding." He was jumpy with nervous intensity. When my wife sat down, he spoke: "I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I wanted to tell you -- I'm transgendered!" He looked pleased with himself and somewhat triumphant. My wife and I looked at each other, confused and horrified.

He must have sensed that we were nonplused. So, being of an academic bent, as we are, he began pulling out of his backpack books with titles like My Gender Workbook and Gender Outlaw, reading us long passages like the following, from Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors:

As he talked, I tried to listen but could not escape the sensation that I was in someone else's movie. I thought about this young person and wondered if there was something I was missing. He had always seemed to be a very masculine guy -- interested in girls -- who never once could have been mistaken
  for a female. He wasn't effeminate in the least, and there seemed to be no apparent prehistory to this moment. Later, though, I recalled the many comic strips and zines he had written featuring female main characters. They seemed, in retrospect, to have been his alter egos.

My wife and I both consider ourselves progressive academics.  We have been willing to accept virtually any behavior from our children -- from their experimentation with marijuana to having their sexual partners sleep over at our house. We are a poster family for permissiveness and have cruised fairly
  comfortably from grunge through swing to goth. I've seen my kids' hair go from brown to blue to green, as mine has gone to gray. I followed my son as he crossed a police line and grabbed a bullhorn at City Hall to protest budget cuts in education; worried as he came back late from punk-rock clubs; trembled a bit as he explained that he might be arrested for defacing (or reconstructing, as he would say) corporate
  billboards. We are feminists against homophobia. And I teach courses with titles like "Women, Nation, Empire" and "The Different Body."

  Could anyone be more of a political ally than I?

Had he announced, "I'm gay," my wife and I would have been relatively prepared to say, "Great! Who's the lucky guy?" But transgendered? I didn't have much of an idea then what the word meant. We asked some predictable questions. "Are you gay?" My son laughed, "No, I love women. I'm completely
  heterosexual." "So, do you want a sex-change operation?" "No, I like my body the way it is." "So, what does this mean?" "It means, I'm a girl. I want to wear dresses, makeup, and challenge the whole patriarchal, bourgeois idea of gender."

My mind raced. We were having Stanley Fish and Jane Tompkins over for dinner that night. I imagined my son swirling down the stairs, arriving at dinner like Loretta Young in flowing chiffon. How exactly would I explain such a phenomenon to my guests over hors d'oeuvres? As it turned out, our son dressed
  neutrally and got into an argument with Stanley over Bosnia, not biology.

Over the next few days, my son continued to explain his metamorphosis to us: "Michel Foucault says that gender is socially constructed. So does Judith Butler." Foucault!  Butler! Those were the names of scholars I teach, now being hurled like grenades at my feet. Those theoreticians believe, as I do, that such seemingly fixed and essential things as gender or disability are really pliable and plastic. It had seemed fine to accept that gender was a social construction, but now here was my child before me, attempting to carry out in principle what I had been teaching only theoretically in my courses. I suddenly felt rage toward those ivory-towered theoreticians who glibly spout gender theories. Now I was going to have to pay in humiliation and pain, in seeing my son in a dress. Thanks, Judy!

The next few days were pretty intense for my wife and me. As we sat up late discussing this alteration in our family life, we quickly passed through the phases associated with getting a fatal illness. First was denial, followed by the willing accomplices of rage and despair. Acceptance kept its reserved distance; the sticking point was the issue of wearing dresses.  I thought I could logically argue my son out of that penchant.  "If women are oppressed and femininity is a construct, why should you essentially reinforce or parody the feminine? Isn't that giving in to patriarchy? Reinforcing the gender binary?"  As a litigious academic, I could in a pinch come up with a cogent argument.

Knowing my rhetorical strategies only too well, my son replied that to break down the binary, we had to be able to dress as we wished. In our culture, women could wear men's clothing without any opprobrium, but men could only wear women's clothing at their own peril. If a woman wears a tuxedo she's an icon, as Marlene Dietrich knew, but if a man wears a dress he's comic. Just ask Tony Curtis or Jack Lemmon.

He was right, no doubt, but no matter how rational our discussion was, the dress became an eternal stumbling block.  As some friends of ours said later, our son had picked the one thing that we, as progressives, couldn't accept. I continued trying to argue, "How would you feel if you saw me wearing a
  dress and makeup?" He replied, "I'd be so relieved." I countered, "What would your roommate think?" I was figuring that his Japanese friend, who was obsessed with technology, would be horrified. "Oh, he's saving up his money for a sex-change operation." My last round of armaments was quickly being depleted. One last salvo: "Well, you say you like women.  What will they think of you wearing a dress?" He smiled like a cat with a canary in his maw and confided, "It's the greatest way to meet women," and winked knowingly. What could I say?

By now, I was beginning to understand a bit about this transgender issue, although I'm far from an expert. My son says that a transgendered person is anyone who breaks the rules of the gender binary. By his definition, people who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual are not necessarily transgendered, since they define themselves by their sexual preference, rather than their gender crossing. They would be transgendered
  only if they attempted to break from the gender they were assigned at birth, by redefining their identity through an act of philosophical or political awakening, hormonal or surgical intervention, or choice of clothing.

My son says that it's all about a person's right to choose. He defines himself as a "transgirl." Some women may choose to define themselves as men. And other folks may head for the shifting middle ground of gender "variants," who like to keep things ambiguous. Inhabiting the transgender territory are
  drag queens and drag kings, "transgirls," "transboys," and those who vote for their identity with anything from estrogen to haircuts. A heterosexual male could be considered transgendered if he were a cross-dresser, although a cross-dresser is not necessarily transgendered if he only likes to wear women's clothing but doesn't consider himself female or a gender variant.

The possibilities are mind- (and body-) boggling. There are relatively simple variations along the transgender continuum, including male-to-female "post-op" transsexuals, such as Deirdre N. McCloskey, the noted economist, or female-to-male transsexuals such as Leslie Feinberg, the author of Stone
  Butch Blues. Then there are those who adopt hormonally and surgically the secondary sexual characteristics of the other gender while keeping the genitalia with which they were born.  There also are bearded women, like the well-known circus performer and gender activist Jennifer Miller. Intersexuals --
  formerly known as hermaphrodites -- whose parents "corrected" their gender, walk side-by-side in this movement with those who managed to retain the organs with which they were born.  Then, on the genetic level, there are women who, according to their  chromosomes, should be male (they have female
  genitalia, but they can't reproduce).

The old gender binary begins to look pretty Procrustean when confronted with this welter of permutations.

My son is part of what might be called a "fourth wave" in gender activism. The first wave was clearly the feminist movement, followed by the next tsunami, as gays, lesbians, and bisexuals established their identities as individuals and communities. Then came a surge of queer activism, which challenged even gay notions of what was normal. But to my son and his peers -- who are mostly under 30 -- those three sea changes now seem merely to be part of a conservative undertow.

This generation believes that earlier activists, while challenging various kinds of gender abuses, still clung to the notion of the criticality of gender per se. First-wave feminists, for example, never doubted that being a woman was essential to their mission. Likewise, although gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals challenged the notion of mandated or "normal" sexual preference, they saw their identity as defined
  by a ratio of one's gender to one's sexual choice. That is, a lesbian could only be defined as a woman who chose another woman as a sexual partner. Even some conservative post-operative transsexuals cling to the gender binary, saying "I was born the wrong gender, and now I've become the right one."

Members of the fourth wave, who like to call themselves "trannies" (perhaps in solidarity with 60's "hippies") see challenging the fixity of gender as their most important goal.  My son reported to me that gender is so complex that there are 100 genders, and that we can morph through 20 of them in a
  single morning. He indicts the quotidian norms that force people to subscribe to one gender, to be legally identified as having one, and to be forbidden to use certain social spaces by that specific aspect of identity. Indeed, the International Bill of Gender Rights, drafted and adopted in 1993, lists as
  fundamental the prerogative to define one's gender identity, control and change one's own body, and have access to "gendered space."

When my wife and I asked my son why he thinks he is transgendered, his snappy retort was, "I don't know which bathroom to use." When he is wearing a dress, should he use the men's room or the women's room?

The transgendered concept allows for some interesting family groupings. A father in a couple might undergo sexual reassignment surgery and thereby become a lesbian, if he remains with his wife. Or a cross-gendered bisexual can pair off with an intersexual lesbian. A cross-dressing male can live with a post-op male-to-female and appear to fit nicely into the prototype of the typical American family. The
  possibilities are limitless. They make Ozzie and Harriet look like something from the late Devonian period, and Ellen DeGeneres's coming out seem as staid as that of a debutante.

I understood all this intellectually, but I was taking a fair amount of time to process it emotionally. My wife initially insisted on an N.I.M.H. -- Not In My House -- policy in regard to cross-dressing. That stance resulted partly from embarrassment and shame about how friends and family might perceive our son if they knew the truth.

Somewhat conveniently, the grandparents had already transmogrified to that genderless beyond, so at least we wouldn't have to explain the situation to them. Our 16-year-old daughter thought the whole thing was kind of cool and couldn't understand why we were so upset. "Some boys in my school come to class in skirts or wearing lipstick, and we think they're sexy." My brother, a financial analyst living in the suburbs, was blase. His college-age son was open-minded, having lived his four university years in a frat house, where he had no doubt seen worse.

We were uncertain about what to say to our friends. The artistic types were intrigued, and even offered some fetching outfits, if needed. One male friend was judgmental, and said our son was manipulating us. But that same friend sheepishly admitted that, when his wife bought new high-heeled shoes, he had to be the first to wear them at home. Another friend, who is part of a gay couple, confessed that his dream was to be married in a wedding gown, something his more conventional partner just would not hear of. In fact, a lot of folks stepped up to our confessional with Oprah-like stories of their own journeys into the backrooms of sexuality, gender, and fashion.

In the midst of all this turmoil, or because of it, my son decided to go to an indie-rock concert in Washington State. He would take a Greyhound bus and camp  out. He asked me to help him get organized, which is how I ended up in the Kmart as his shopping consultant. He packed a few dresses into his backpack, along with his other clothing, and left. All of us felt relieved.

We began to get phone calls from bus stations scattered across the country. At first our son was friendly, but one late-night call from Fargo turned angry quickly. "I've been thinking, and I'm really upset that you won't accept me for who I am." My groggy response was that I was doing the best I could. "That's not good enough. I can't believe that you, of all people, who teach about the rights of people with disabilities, people of color, working-class people, can't accept this. These are my people! They are being discriminated against, cast out, and you can't accept it?"

For the first time, I felt that he was completely right. I had no counterargument. Whether I liked it or not, a disenfranchised and despised group was in need of support; what made it difficult to accept was the fact that my son was in that group. I had to confront my own prejudices and realize that I was a bigot. I, like many of my peers, thought that a man in a dress was either humorous or pathetic, as so many episodes of Monty Python or Benny Hill have suggested. It was true that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry about my son.

My son asked that I read some of the books he had brought home, and I agreed. I also ordered some books through Amazon.com. (Then, when I logged on, I got helpful messages like, "If you liked Transvestism: A Handbook, you'll like Bound and Gagged.") I not only read through the material, but,
  since I would be teaching a course in the fall called "The Different Body," I decided then to put some of the books in my syllabus. (It is interesting to me that my reaction, as an academic, was to teach about what was mystifying and edifying me.)

I've just about gotten used to seeing my child in women's clothing. At first I experience a confusing, cognitively dissonant moment, but then I remember that he is the child I've known for years, with the same brio for life he's always had, the same excitement over his ideas, commitment to fairness and justice, and love for us. The only difference is that he's in a skirt. I remember my mother's agony over my long hair in the 1960's -- how she asked me not to come to her place of business because she was embarrassed, and how much that hurt me. I knew as a parent, and as an activist, that I could not legitimately reproduce that rejection.

Our life has gone on. My son announced that he wanted to bring his girlfriend, a "bidyke" as he described her, home for the holiday season. I learned that the term "dyke" has now been freed up from its dependence on sexual preference, and is an operative word to describe a strong woman. When she arrived, she seemed a bit androgynous, but not remotely butch. And she wore a prom dress out one night. We all liked her, and it was a memorable Christmas.

Meanwhile, my graduate course on "The Different Body" went very well. The body in question was a little more different than it had been in the previous year's version. But the students were barely fazed by the transgendered component of the course. They were blase, even when I told them about my son or showed them pictures that I thought were pretty shocking -- like a photograph of Tala Candra Brandeis by Loren Cameron titled "Biology Is Not Our Destiny," depicting a nude person with long, flowing hair, breasts, tattoos, and a penis.  It seemed to be all in a day's work for this generation of cultural-studies adepts, brought up as they had been with RuPaul and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I
  shared with the class my son's zine entitled Boy Is Girl and gave them his e-mail address so they could converse with him about these subjects. My son was pleased with the correspondence, and the students were, too.

The story is not over. In the months since his announcement, my son's attitudes toward some issues have shifted. He has come into conflict with more-conservative elements in the trannie community who do not agree with his radical politics.  He has had to deal with the fact that some people within that community do not regard him as truly transgendered, because he hasn't taken hormones or had an operation. He is evolving a position that I have come to respect and from which I have learned a great deal. In many ways, he occupies a similar position to the one I do in disability studies. I am not a person with disabilities, and I have to negotiate that liminal status on a regular basis. In addition, both he and I are
  against the narrowness of certain kinds of identity politics and see our goal as opening up the question of identity through a notion of the mutability of the body. So, we talk a lot about the ways in which our interests intersect. I've helped him with his zines, and he's helped me with my course.

As an academic, my job is to learn from the world. And if that world comes into my house in women's clothing, spouting Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, then I have to learn from that. As a father, my pleasure is to love and accept my children. When those two roles come together, in a kind of serendipitous   confluence, one must be quick to recognize the opportunity that presents itself. My child and I have grown closer through what might have been a terrible conflict, one that in some families might have been the end of the line. What made a better scenario possible was that same intellectual desire to learn, to know, and to encourage that has been behind all my teaching and scholarship.

The other day, my son announced that he wanted my wife and me to refer to him as our "daughter." He asked that we not use masculine pronouns or nouns to describe him. I told him that I probably could not find it in myself to call him my "daughter," that my sense of the English language was that it was not sufficiently flexible, nor was I, to accomplish that gender purification of my linguistic practice. This was
  finally a moment, I felt, when the old binary dog couldn't learn new transgendered tricks. We got into an argument, and he hurled Judith Butler at me again. She was getting to be my nemesis.

My son knew that I was writing this article, and he approved.  But when I told him that it would be impossible for me to write this piece without using masculine pronouns, he was upset. He suggested that I use "s/he" or "ze," and I responded that I was sure the Chronicle style sheet was pretty limited in that regard. After some discussion, he said, "OK, but just do it at the end of the essay." So I told her I would. After all, I figured, I wasn't losing a son, I was gaining a daughter.

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