Hey, does anyone want to talk about The Gilmore Girls? I love that show. How about if I share my banana muffin recipe? Or talk about the spicy coconut milk champurrado I made last night? Or my binder? I could post about that! It’s really painful!
No? Darn.
I guess I’ll have to talk about the New York Times article after all.
I don’t have a very good sense of the paper’s coverage of transpeople or ftms thus far; I cannot remember seeing many other articles on their site, in print, or linked from online ftm communities. Apart from the profile of Ben Barres and countless reviews of Transamerica, there hasn’t been much other coverage this year. This article seems like a late entry in the Ftms: They Walk Among Us genre. Most of it is boilerplate; some of it could have been lifted verbatim from its counterpart in the San Francisco Chronicle, for example.
The New York Times:
The Trouble When Jane Becomes Jack
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Straddling Sexes
The New York Times:
Among lesbians — the group from which most transgendered men emerge — the increasing number of women who are choosing to pursue life as a man can provoke a deep resentment and almost existential anxiety, raising questions of gender loyalty and political identity, as well as debates about who is and who isn’t, and who never was, a real woman.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
A boom in the number of people transitioning from female to male (referred to as FTMs) has been stirring up controversy, even within the lesbian community. There are those who are feeling curiously uncomfortable standing by as friends morph into men. Sometimes there is a generational flavor to this discomfort; many in the over-40 crowd feel particular unease. Having lived through the fiery feminist years, when challenging male power was central to a particular agenda, some lesbians have gone so far as to say they feel betrayed by those “transitioning” – the street parlance for crossing genders.
And the Chronicle’s subheader:
Young lesbians transitioning into men are shaking the foundation of the lesbian-feminist world
The New York Times:
Barbara Price, a former festival producer, said the uneasiness has been “a big topic among lesbians for quite some time.”
“There are many people who look at what these young women are doing, and say to themselves, ‘Hey, by turning yourselves into men, don’t you realize you’re going over to the other side?’ ” she said. “We thought we were all supposed to be in this together.”
(snip)
Politically and personally, the change has equally profound effects. Some lesbians view it as a kind of disloyalty bordering on gender treason.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Historically, it’s been butch lesbians who have been the most angered about what sex crusader Susie Bright has gone as far as calling “butch flight.” In 1984, Bright’s magazine, On Our Backs, featured her butch lover, Honey Lee Cottrell, in the debut centerfold. In an era when butch-femme identity was just re-emerging in the lesbian community, it was a daring act of butch- appreciation.
Cottrell, a photographer, now 57 with a shock of white hair, says her gut feeling is that those who are transitioning leave her alone in her battle for acceptance as a masculine lesbian. “What happened to cross dressing and taking on masculine drag? I fought very hard for butchness to be viewed as a badge of honor,” she says, “and I feel as though there are less people now to fight the fight.” Still, as someone who has fought for freedom in both sexual and gender expression, Cottrell say she is extremely aware of the divisiveness of her viewpoint. “At one time in history I was accused by the lesbian community of betrayal because of being butch. I’m certainly not out to disrespect anyone else.”
The New York Times:
“There is a general uneasiness about this whole thing, like ‘What are we losing here?’ ” said Diane Anderson-Minshall, the executive editor of Curve, a lesbian magazine. The issue stirs old insecurities about women being “not good enough,’’ she added.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
“How is leaving femaleness behind supportive of female power?” she asks. M claims a hierarchal view of masculinity has developed in the lesbian community; she’s heard young butches say that if they don’t transition, they fear they won’t get dates.
The New York Times:
The Census Bureau does not try to count the number of transgendered people in the United States, and many who make the transition from one sex to another do not wish to be counted.
A European study conducted 10 years ago, and often cited by the American Psychiatric Association, says full gender reassignment occurred in 1 in 11,000 men and 1 in 30,000 women, a ratio that would place the number of men who have become women nationally at only about 13,000 and women who have become men at about 5,000.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
The number of FTMs now in the Bay Area is impossible to figure; speculation runs from the mid-hundreds into the thousands. The first Bay Area FTM newsletter was published in 1986, and the third inaugural meeting called a year later brought out 10 FTMs at various stages of transition. By 1995, nearly 400 FTMs attended a public conference. Support groups have now been outnumbered by Internet chat groups offering community as well as practical information about hormones, doctors and legal issues, but make it difficult to take a head count.
The New York Times:
Transgender advocates, however, say those statistics fail to reflect an increasing number of people, especially young people, who call themselves transgendered but resist some or all of the surgeries available, including, for women becoming men, the creation of a penis. Some delay or avoid surgeries because of expense. For women [i.e. transmen] especially, the genital surgery is still risky.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Despite anecdotal evidence and a buzz that has terms like “T” – street shorthand for testosterone – popping up in daily conversations, numbers are also elusive because definitions are hazy. Though most FTMs do take hormones, some don’t, and choose instead to cross dress or bind their breasts to create their identity. And though many FTMs remain visible and active in the urban lesbian community, others disappear into the suburbs. The sexual orientation of FTMs runs the spectrum, from those who identify as heterosexual and pair with straight women, to those who are attracted to men and identify as gay – and, of course, all possibilities in between.
(Note that the last passage has no counterpart in the New York Times article.)
The New York Times:
She [sic] began taking testosterone about three years ago, then had “top surgery” — a double mastectomy — and is now a muscular 42-year-old of medium height with long sideburns and a goatee.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Now, young lesbians immediately enter a community in which the option to change genders is readily available – an option that some say they might be taking up too lightly, injecting their bodies with testosterone and having radical breast-reduction surgery before they’ve had time to explore who they might be as adults.
The New York Times:
For financial and practical reasons, Mr. Caya, the legal director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco, decided to forgo “bottom surgery,” which could cost as much as $100,000 and would involve two or three operations to graft on an ersatz penis.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Very few FTMs undergo genital reconstruction: The operations are costly, painful and have yet to produce a fully functional penis.
“Fully-functional?” What does that mean, exactly? I doubt that it’s a standard many transguys are comfortable with, particularly since it places us firmly on the lemon side of the divide. As someone in an ftm community pointed out, “ersatz” definitely is not a neutral term. Ersatz coffee, for example, is a transparently inadequate imitation of real coffee. An ersatz penis, then, would be a condom stuffed with ground chicory and sawdust.
All that aside, can the mainstream press either agree to describe more than one bottom-surgery procedure or just stop talking about bottom surgery at all? I’m sick and tired of articles that provide the following information about ftm genital surgery:
1) It’s “risky.” In fact, the results suck.
2) Virtually all of us don’t want it.
3) It costs as much as a hundred thousand dollars. Or more. Possibly several hundred thousand dollars. No one really knows. Penis is the most precious material on earth, doncha know.
4) It might involve the creation of a phallus. Of some kind. Or something.
Would it be that difficult to put in a standard fifty-word description of meta and phallo respectively, given that they’re so different that it’s virtually impossible to talk about both at the same time? The NYT’s subscribers probably think we go on a penis transplant list or get fitted for animatronic genitalia or something.
There are two types of ftm genital surgery. Like I said, they don’t have very much in common. The first one, which is by far the most common, is called a metoidioplasty. This is Jamison Green’s description of the procedure:
Metaoidioplasty (commonly spelled metoidioplasty), meaning “a surgical change toward the male,” is a term coined by one of the surgeons who developed the technique in the 1970s. It results in a small penis, but one that is erotically sensate and capable of unassisted erection. Derided by some as not masculine enough, for many transmen it is an acceptable alternative because it does not leave scars on other parts of the body, and because of the promise of erotic sensation. Not all transmen are good candidates for this procedure because acceptable results require a significant amount of testosterone-induced growth in the clitoris (usually discernable after about one year of testosterone treatment). And not all transmen are capable of accepting themselves with a small penis.
Metoidioplasty techniques can be compatible with urethral extension, and with the proper placement of the penis and scrotum forward on the body (which sometimes doesn’t happen, due to the transman’s original physical construction or the surgeon’s technique), a very natural-looking, natural-feeling package is achievable. This procedure may be done as an outpatient in a clinic, though, as with phalloplasty, a general anesthetic is required. It can be done in one stage, though some surgeons prefer to construct the penis and scrotum first, then place testicular implants in the scrotum in a second procedure using local anesthetic and a sedative rather than a second general anesthesia. Costs for this procedure range from roughly $10,000 to $20,000.
The second one is called a phalloplasty. You can read more here, and even see pictures:
Techniques of Phalloplasty:
Forearm Free Flap Technique
This technique creates a phallus by removing tissue (blood vessels, nerve, skin and tissue) from the non-dominant forearm (usually left). This tissue is rolled into a tube (to look like a penis) and then grafted onto the groin area where microsurgery is used to attach the blood vessels and nerves. Usually, a skin graft from the thigh is taken to cover the skin removed from the forearm.
Abdominal Pedicle Flap (aka Suitcase Handle)
This technique has the surgeon creating the phallus by cutting tissue on the abdomen or waist, rolling it into a tube and letting it get used to being on its own (separated from the body). Basically, the patient has a large roll of skin on the abdomen or waist for about a month or two – this allows the tissue to establish its own blood supply. Later, when the surgeon is sure that the phallus has a proper blood supply, it is further cut to hang in the groin area and shaped to look more like a penis.
Different procedures, different costs, different risks, different benefits, different results. These two procedures cannot be described at the same time. Phalloplasty can cost “as much as a hundred thousand dollars.” Metoidioplasty never costs that much. Phalloplasty involves a skin graft. Metoidioplasty does not. Phalloplasty is much more involved than metoidioplasty, and in many ways more chancy. More transmen are interested in metoidioplasty than phalloplasty. More transmen have plans to eventually obtain metoidioplasty than phalloplasty. More transmen have obtained metoidioplasty than phalloplasty.
The mainstream press tends to describe bottom surgery in phallo-inclusive terms, which means that they provide really inaccurate information about the costs, results, and popularity of bottom surgery in general. For example:
For financial and practical reasons, Mr. Caya, the legal director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco, decided to forgo “bottom surgery,” which could cost as much as $100,000 and would involve two or three operations to graft on an ersatz penis.
As far as the rest of the article goes…like I said, it’s your standard mainstream coverage of transsexuals. It uses the wrong pronouns for no good reason. It divides every ftm life into pre-transition/girl and post-transition/wow-it-really-looks-like-a-dude. It’s not as overtly fetishistic as the Chronicle article, but it does engage in a lot of the same objectification of transmale bodies.
With respect to lesbians and ftms who came out into the lesbian community and might or might not feel a strong connection to it, plenty of ftms are not oriented towards women. Some never were, and some never considered themselves lesbians. In fact, I’m not sure anyone’s ever proven that most ftms come out of the lesbian community–a lot of us are invisible throughout. There is a lot of overlap, in affiliation and reception, between “female-assigned person with masculine or androgynous characteristics” and “dyke,” but butch flight is a deeply inaccurate way to frame the emergence of ftms who were once lesbian-identified. It wouldn’t have killed the New York Times to present a slightly more nuanced picture of ftm sexuality and queer identity.
While they’re up, it’d be nice to break out of the style section.