Sunday October 4, 2009
A question of sex
Stories by LEE TSE LING
There are some things you don’t ask, just as there are some things you need not tell.
IS there such a thing as a bad question?
That’s a common enough dilemma under normal circumstances, let alone when a person whose job it is to ask questions meets a couple for whom strict privacy is necessary to lead a normal life, free from discrimination and even persecution.
A few months ago, I was that person, and the couple was James and Nadia (not their real names).
Representatives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community taking part in the Rainbow Pride Walk in Calcutta, India, in June 2008, to call for an end to discrimination, and push for acceptance. – AP On March 29, StarMag ran a letter in our agony aunt column from a gentleman in his late 40s about his issues with his gender orientation (Woman in hiding, Dear Thelma, Heart & Soul). Womanly Feeling, as he signed off, was lucky enough to have a wife and a close female friend who were supportive of his desire to transition from male to female (MTF).
Less fortunate was Man in Hiding, a single lady in her 40s who responded on April 26, empathising with Womanly Feeling and revealing her own gender orientation struggle (In a man-woman mess, Dear Thelma, Heart & Soul).
Man in Hiding wasn’t sure if she was a man trapped in a woman’s body or a lesbian. Unable to confide in her family or the girl she was in love with, she was very unhappy.
Nadia wrote in on May 3, offering information and encouragement to Man in Hiding (Stand tall and proud). She could truly empathise with Man in Hiding as her partner, James, was a “man in hiding” too, that is, a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual who was not yet fully “out” (openly a man).
After a careful exchange of e-mails (James was protective of his privacy, and Nadia was fiercely protective of James), the couple agreed to meet me. So over tea at their place on a Saturday afternoon at the end of May, they told me part of their story – that of a straight woman in a long-term relationship with a straight transsexual man, who was part-way through his transition.
Nadia’s story concerned her journey of learning about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) realm. James’s concerned his journey toward realising his true self. By sharing this, they hope to reach out to other confused Malaysians trapped by purely biological definitions of gender, and sensitise those oblivious to the transsexual community.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Calpernia Addams, an activist, actress and author, has had to field countless bad questions about being a transsexual. – File photo Which brings me back to my worry about bad questions. James and Nadia had been kind enough to open up. I didn’t want to repay them with hurtful clumsiness. Thank goodness I found Calpernia’s List of Bad Questions to ask a Transsexual Person.
‘Anything about my genitals’
Calpernia Sarah Addams is an American actress, author, musician, and GLBT activist who began transitioning in her early 20s. She has worked on films like Casting Pearls, Beautiful Daughters, and the Oscar-nominated Transamerica, and performed in the 10th Anniversary Vagina Monologues at the New Orleans Superdome alongside Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler, and Jane Fonda.
As an activist, Addams has served as a national spokesperson for the GLBT organisation Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (pflag.org) and worked with the US Service members’ Legal Defence Network (sldn.org) to lobby against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the controversial policy concerning homosexuals serving in the US military.
Having been in the public eye for well over a decade, Addams has had to field a disproportionate number of bad questions. In 2008, after one too many, she published a compilation of the worst ones, and her responses to them, on her website (calpernia.com). This later became the script for a tongue-in-cheek, edutainment-style video streamed on YouTube. You can watch a newer, director’s cut version of this (just under 15 minutes) at http://tiny.cc/cbJMv.
This isn’t a list of taboo questions you can never ask a transsexual person, but questions you should not feel you are entitled to ask just because he is transsexual. Especially if you’ve just met.
Obvious ones include “anything about my sex life” and “anything about my genitals”. That’s just good manners. If you wouldn’t ask a straight person whom you hardly know that, the same goes for a transsexual person.
Some questions are less obvious, especially to those who have never had an identity crisis more serious than bad hair or unwanted weight, or to thick-skinned snoops in search of a saucy scoop. Questions like: What is/was your “real/old” name? Can I see a picture of you from “before”?
In her video, Addams answers: “My real name is Calpernia Addams. What are you really asking here? Think about it.
“Most people ask this because (1) They don’t ‘really’ consider me a woman, and while they’re willing to humour me by calling me Calpernia, they want the ‘truth’ about who I am.
“(2) They ‘really’ consider my current identity to be a fabrication.
“(3) They want to have something they can hold onto and ‘prove’ that I’m ‘really’ something other than what I seem.
“At best, it’s a rude question, and although you may be morbidly curious, don’t ask.”
Via e-mail, Addams says the video was intended to be humorous while pointing out that transsexual persons shouldn’t be exempt from the same good manners and respect you would extend to someone you consider normal.
“I think transsexual people are subconsciously (or consciously) considered unworthy of this common courtesy,” she says, “because outsiders often see transition as a ‘fetish’ or ‘weird sex thing’ rather than the expression of a deeply felt sense of identity. They consider us ‘sideshow freaks’ or ‘perverts’, and thus feel free to say anything they like to us.”
Many viewers responded to the video by defending their right to be curious.
“Curiosity is indeed normal,” she concedes, “but knowing when and how to ask questions is a basic social skill that should be applied, especially in such delicate situations.”
An additional, indirect point Addams successfully makes with Bad Questions is that sensitisation isn’t simply a matter of identifying this word or that topic as insensitive and policing their use. Instead, it’s about getting people to think twice about the reasons why such words or topics are insensitive before they decide whether or not to use them.
If you’re ever in a situation where you don’t know if what you’re about to ask is insensitive, here’s a rule of thumb: If you have to begin a question with some sort of disclaimer (“Don’t be offended when I ask you this, but...”), then, yes, it’s a Bad one.
James and Nadia
So, newly armed with my knowledge of bad questions not to ask and list of allowable good ones, I met James and Nadia at home.
They had just moved in a few weeks ago. A few unpacked boxes remained in the hall. Nadia had made a start on the garden with squares of turf and flowering plants. Boo (not her real name), their dog, ran sniffing around my legs, excited to have a new visitor.
While James brewed a pot of tea in the kitchen, Nadia told me how they started to date after sparking at a wellness retreat. Her recollections focused on romance, until James came back with the tea, and a challenge.
“Did you tell her how scared you were of me?”
Laughing, Nadia described the first impression James made on her as he swaggered around like a real tough guy and stood staring off into the distance while smoking, deep in thought.
“He was so ‘hardcore’ and ‘jinjang’!”
My first impressions?
Nadia is sweet, protective, and particular. James is laid-back and good-humouredly teasing. They’re like any loving couple with a sense of humour.
Back when they started dating, James had told Nadia he was a lesbian, as he thought that would be easier for her to accept. Nadia was mildly nonplussed but not put off, and gamely began reading about lesbianism online and from his collection of literature.
Later, he revealed that he actually identified himself as male, and, having decided to transition, was taking testosterone injections and would soon undergo “top” surgery, that is, have his breasts surgically removed.
So she switched topics and began researching this new aspect of her partner. In December 2006, she accompanied him to Bangkok for the surgery and cared for him when he returned until he recovered.
As James is not “out” yet, they were concerned about how to preserve his anonymity, especially from his colleagues. To ensure they couldn’t be identified, and given how articulate they both are, we decided they should write, in their own words, what they told me that afternoon.
Based on my notes, I provided them with a structure and the result is My Journey and Talking Straight .
When encountering something new, our initial response is often to pick at the differences while clinging to the familiar.
So if you’re straight, you’ll probably first identify a transsexual by how different he is from you, or vice versa. Hence the sometimes bad and frequently self-referential questions straight people keep asking transsexuals.
I feel the problem with self-referencing is that we assume “we” are the benchmark of normality. And that the degree by which a person differs from us therefore represents the degree of his abnormality. That narrow-mindedness can be insulting and hurtful.
What is crucial in such instances is to get past the differences so you can appreciate the similarities.
Unlike me, James is so ill at ease with his female gender that he has to surgically correct it. Like me, he and Nadia believe people should be brave and true to themselves.
They respect, care for, are honest with, and have faith in their chosen partners. They speak up for what they think is right.
They vote in the same elections. They love their pet. They have families, friends, jobs, job stress, joys, and troubles just like everyone else.
Such similarities are humanising. And it’s indecent to ask another human being a hurtful, bad question and expect to get away with it.
Related Stories:
Talking straight
‘Sick’ definition
Trans-terminology
My journey
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