When asked about the trans experience, I have often told the story about a top golf pro who takes on a game for a million dollars, where the only handicap is “three gotchas.” He doesn’t know what that means, but how bad could it be? On the first tee, just as he swings his opponent … Continue reading Study Says: Third Gotcha!
I know how to take a hit. I learned that very, very early. In a meeting with a flack, my big boss told her that my boss was being promoted. She was surprised, asking “Who knew?” He assured her that nobody knew, but she had seen my stoic reaction and was puzzled. “They … Continue reading Lizard Strongbox
Callan, when I see your deep emotions spark out from behind the elegant rational cloak you have fashioned, I am usually touched and moved. Sometimes it is hard to remember that even when you play the breeches role, acting as a man to serve the process, the energy behind that comes from a profound feminine … Continue reading Shards of Callan 2019
Transgender, if you do it right, is terrifying. Transvestism isn’t, be it crossdressing or drag. If all you do is change clothes for a bit of fun, retaining your assigned gender, staying fixed in heteronormativity. Transsexualism isn’t. If you have a birth defect and your attempt is to hide it, fix it, blend in as … Continue reading Terrifying Transgender
Did I ever really have a personal voice? I know that I have a service voice, the voice of the concierge. I can take care of others, helping them develop their own voice. I know that I had a written voice, constructed texts that have attempted to share my learnings, my experience, my feelings. But … Continue reading Lost Voice
Having the zest to really commit to a performance — from a turn on-stage to chairing a business meeting to just being a mommy — depends a great deal on how safe, understood, affirmed, mirrored and protected you feel when you are backstage. A place where you are out of the spotlight, the pressure off, … Continue reading Backstage Meta
“I took care of my partner while he was sick, until he passed three months ago,” one man at my Sage Table said. At that moment, all the women cooed in sympathy and commiseration, showing that they felt the emotional impact, wanting to convey their support to him in his time of loss. It was … Continue reading Aging Sighs
“It’s not the frivolity of women that makes them so intolerable. It’s their ghastly enthusiasm.” — Horace Rumpole, “Rumpole Of The Bailey” (John Mortimer) When you are a delightful gamine creature, enthusiasm is seen as a charming affectation. When you are a big, hulking lug, though, enthusiasm is seen as a terrifying potential lack of … Continue reading Impassioned
My life has been a constant stagger between “That’s way too much information!” and “Why didn’t you tell me that right away?” I have never known exactly how much information I should disclose in any given interaction with other humans. Watching them glaze over, turn away or, worst, recoil in disgust when I show them … Continue reading Transactional Timbre
“And we have groups for trans kids,” the program director for the local gay & lesbian centre told the seminar on trans health issues. “Aren’t trans kids just amazing?” they burbled to the audience. If trans kids are an amazing group, then what group isn’t amazing? The answer bubbled to the top soon afterwards in … Continue reading Every Trans, Kid.
Colin Mochrie has come out as a trans advocate after his 26 year old child emerged as a transwoman. Mochrie says his daughter came up with the name Kinley after consulting him and McGrath. “We had a bit of a bump at the beginning where she picked a name and it didn’t seem to go … Continue reading Standing Beside
I often do the exercise of imagining what I might say if I got a chance to speak to a specific audience, so I was just spit balling a presentation for Connecticut Trans Advocacy Coalition’s Transgender Lives Conference which focuses on clinical professionals and transpeople. Trans-Empowerment: Believing In Yes Trans people grow up being taught … Continue reading Trans-Empowerment: Believing In Yes
My triumph is inseparable from my tragedy. They are two sides of the same coin. Any rebirth I have achieved came at the price of death, letting go of the past to claim the future. Transcendence always requires a leap, losing something — comfort, safety, defences, youth, ignorance — to claim something more. “Normal” … Continue reading Tragedy And Triumph
Every teenager believes they created the world from scratch. No one has ever felt like they do, for their first times, first challenges, first feelings are the first that ever existed in their own world. Adolescents have to create themselves, assembling a new identity. They don’t have the time, intention or capacity to wonder … Continue reading Scratch
When you meet a transperson, be kind to them. However together and comfortable in their own skin they look, on some level they are feeling too queer for the room. They are ready for the “third gotcha,” that moment when somebody decides their moral obligation is to stand up against creeping queerness, needing to re-gender … Continue reading Feeling Too Queer
If the ultimate battle cry of transgender activists is “People are who they claim to be and that’s that!” then they are sure to lose. “People are simply who they are identified as at birth” is a massive falsehood, enforcing a projected binary that is easily demonstrable as an oversimplified pile of tripe, but at … Continue reading Triumph Of The Binary
On the lovely show “A Chef’s Life,” Vivian Howard is often under pressure, away from her own kitchen and struggling to make things work. In those moments, she will turn to her partner Ben Knight and vent. “You are in the way, you are on my nerves, you are getting in the way!” Ben, being … Continue reading The Scent Of Safety
I know how I gird for battle. My heart gets locked down hard and my head gets locked in. Instead of using it to guide me, I deploy my heart as a sensor, giving me important messages about both my emotional status and the emotional status of those I am dealing with. By using my … Continue reading Bracing For Blows
While I have supported any changes transpeople choose to make to their bodies, when I first came out I looked into the mirror and decided that I would never be able to female my own body to my liking, to anything that would make my passage though male puberty less than visible. Bones don’t lie. … Continue reading Present Callan
Being trans means leaving the system of standardized desire. When people line up “boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl,” we no longer fit easily into that structure. Instead of fitting nicely into the paradigm of seeking — men seeking women, women seeking men, men seeking men, women seeking women — we are other. We demand … Continue reading Abstracted Love
Callan 