A Game of You

This is probably going to really surprise a lot of you, but believe it or not, I am a huge geek. Seriously, it’s true. The reason I’m willing to disclose such an awful shocking truth is to explain how I was exposed to my first transgender comic character. No it wasn’t Jimmy Olson in one of his wacky psychedelic adventures from the 60’s; I’m talking about the 90’s when our favorite ginger lad was back to being as dull as corduroy slacks. I’m talking about Wanda from The Sandman story arc, “A Game of You”. To me, this made Neil Gaiman the best comic book author ever. (BTW, Annie, don’t read this until you finished the book. Jodi, Annie is reading a comic book and is a total geek as well.)

I see that blank look on your face and yes, I am just a little bit pissed. OK, just in case you were still trying to pull off a “cool guy” or “girly girl” façade back in ’91, I’ll explain a little bit. The Sandman was an edgy 90’s era comic book published by DC comics under the Vertigo imprint. The main protagonist was Dream of the Endless; one of seven eternal embodied concepts who all had names that began with a ‘D’ for some reason. This particular story line was about a shattered divorcee getting hassled by some dream adventures she had in the past. If you are interested in knowing more, you should pick up the trade paperback available on Amazon. What I liked about this story were the supporting characters: Thessaly, an extremely old but hot witch; Hazel and Foxglove, two butch looking lesbians; and Wanda, a trans woman too poor to get any medical intervention.

The role Wanda played in this story was that of Barbie’s, the aforementioned divorcee, best friend and confidant. It was a very positive portrayal, although I do have a few nitpicky issues. In one scene Wanda appears in her underwear, and naive neighbor Hazel notices and points out that Wanda has “a thingie”, to which she replies that it isn’t nice to point out a girls shortcomings. Clearly Wanda, or more likely the author, was not well versed in the art of the tuck.

The only part that genuinely irritated me was a scene in which the ancient witch Thessaly barred Wanda from participating in a moon ritual to take them to dreamland and rescue Barbie. Thessaly explained that Wanda wasn’t really a real woman as would be recognized by the elder powers that be. Grrr. It would be one thing if the words came from some doofus of a character with an opinion, but by having this one declare it, it was akin to saying that is truly the way it is. Many of us, self included, get a little bit prickly about such statements. It was, however, 20 years ago and hopefully the author has come around to recognizing a more enlightened status of things.

Toward the end of the story, Wanda, having been declared a phony-baloney girl, is left behind to watch the coats and purses as the “real” women traipse off to dreamland. This is doubly unfortunate as soon thereafter the building collapses, ending Wanda’s brief tragic existence. The epilogue deals with Barbie, grateful for not being crushed to death, traveling down south for the funeral of her friend. To her dismay she finds that Wanda came from holy roller caricature stock, and that the extended family considered “the boy” to have been living in sin. For the funeral, they cut her hair, dressed her in a suit, and insist on referring to her as her original name, ironically ‘Alvin Mann’. The family is mortified by Barbie’s wacky goth ways (she draws a black veil on her face using an eyebrow pencil) and shoo her off. Her last act is to use a cherry poppin red lipstick to cross out “Alvin” on the tombstone and write in Wanda.

The very, very end does have a redeeming scene in which the ghost of Wanda appears, and looks like a gorgeous cisgender woman. Why the moon goddess couldn’t see that and left her behind to cool her heels in a remarkably unstable building I’m not sure, but I was happy that it was made clear that her soul was female and no longer had to worry about displaying a package in her panties. For 1991, I have to say I was impressed at the decent treatment, even if there was a bit of misguided opinion thrown in.

As an addendum, I want to add that my other favorite part about this story line was that the positive portrayal of LGBT characters prompted the Concerned Mother’s of America to send in a pissy prissy boycott letter. What made me cheer was that the publisher saw fit to include the letter in the letter column of a follow on issue, and made great fun of it. The country having just emerged from the Regan Moral Majority era, was still a bit skittish about ruffling feathers, so it was a pleasure to see DC crank the mighty bird up in response.

Review: She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan

I went to Barnes and Noble on a cold late morning to look for something else all together. I was finally at the cusp of understanding myself and had ceased my avoidance of the topic. My preliminary research told me that True Selves was the best introduction to things transgender. I don’t know why I assumed they would have it. They did not. I did myself a favor by typing ‘transgender’ into the clunky store search engine that is heavily biased toward Nook offerings. The only thing in stock was a biography of someone I had never heard of. I picked it up anyway and cashed out.

I read the back cover again in the car and leafed through it, noting some basic similarities to my own life. I rationalized. Either this was going to hit home and I’d be driven closer to what I suspected but not quite ready to admit, or I would not be able to identify with her story and would broaden my investigation into my identity issues. In retrospect I can’t believe how dense I insisted on being, but it is important to the context in which I read She’s Not There; A Life in Two Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

I’ll speak to my bias first and get that out of the way. While no two lives are exactly parallel, the author’s experiences pre-transition and my own had enough similarity that I was able to immediately identify with her. Her easy, flowing writing style spoke directly to my preference that could have easily made this a one day read even if the experience wasn’t pegged to a voyage of self discovery. I’m sure exceptions exist, but it is difficult to imagine any American MtF transgender woman not responding favorably to this book and feeling a kinship to the author as a result.

What I enjoyed the most in the pre-transition portion, roughly the first half minus the first chapter, was the authors ability to convey her struggle in wrestling with a pre-aware transgender identity. This may also be bias, but her familiar attempts at self-correction were poignant but painful to read as she displayed a great deal of candor in describing the awkwardness, false hope, and self deception I was so familiar with. Many transgendered people, and myself included, face overwhelming temptation to take a revisionist approach to our pasts. In the comfort of the present, it seems nearly ludicrous to not have known ourselves and destination. The author pushed past that and managed to capture those moments true to form, as near as the reader can tell in any case.

Transition and after, the second half of the book, read just as smoothly. In the context I was reading, it was almost a guide of what to expect when you are expecting to transition. Hungry for information, it became less of a story than a manual for newly self discovering transsexuals. Reading it this way does her story a great disservice. I read it the first time in a mad grasp for fast knowledge, a second time to take notes for my therapist, but came back a third (unprecedented for me since The Hobbit back in fourth grade). On the third read I was able to come back to the overall story and read as it was intended. In this respect it was as moving and impressive as the first.

From a strictly transgender perspective, this work is wonderful in both providing a wealth of information in a very personal narrative. Because of that, it also brings a great sense of comfort. Jenny struggled, found herself married and a parent, and yet managed to transition and the world did not come to an end. I did find some of the physical aspects of transition to be slightly glossed over, but the capture of the emotional and social components well made up for it. It was gratifying to have her concentrate on the truly hard parts.

One of the reasons I picked this for my first review, other than sentiment for the first transgender work I read, was that I have no criticism to add. I do, however, have a small word of warning. The author, Jenny, is very passable. A trans reader should bear this in mind and consider some of her experiences may be atypical for those of us who were cursed with more stereotypical male features. This is not the authors fault as she tells her story as an autobiography and can only speak to her own experience.

I’m not going to bother with a scale based rating system in my reviews, but I will conclude by reaffirming that this book was excellent. In addition to speaking to my own condition of existence, I have found that it makes a superb introduction to transgender for cisgender people. I have loaned my copy out enough times that I bought a second. The feedback I received from my cisgender friends and family was overwhelmingly positive as both an enjoyable read and as real world validation of the experiences I have been trying to relate. I understand a 10^th anniversary edition is coming out shortly with new material and I will be picking it up.