Calliope
03-13-2007, 05:46 PM
She's Not The Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband
Helen Boyd
Seal Press (Avalon), 2007
For those just tuning in, Helen Boyd is a "tomboy" "feminist" who has been loving, and married to, an increasingly out, MtF transitioning transsexual.
Her first book (My Husband Betty: Love, Sex and Life with a Crossdresser), published in '03, had admirable spunk, invigorating a genre often dreary with predictable storylines and narrative solipsism. My Husband Betty was a wry, skeptical and loving critique of the MtF world, full of anecdotes, quotes and ideological bravado (such as taking Tri-Ess to task, for example). So far so good.
Since '03, the genre has smartened up.
The bestselling She's Not There, presented the standard angst-to-operation saga with unprecedented style - perhaps owing to authoresses' Jennifer Finney Bolen's big-time lit experience; Richard [Alice] Novic's Alice In Genderland defied convention by positing a nonop happy ending, told with glowing prose; while Chris Beam's Transparent went even further, offering a unique plotline (lesbian adopts street T-girl) told with an unassailable sense of drama.
Helen Boyd returns to a far more challenging milieu. Alas, she falls way short.
As Boyd notes, since the publication of her first book, she and Betty have been working the conference and workshop circuit - and I believe that's the problem. Panel presentations and university lectures have seemingly induced diplomacy, restraining her prior edge; no more dissing Virginia Prince. Understandable enough, but Boyd's concomitant absence of emotional volubility cripples the storytelling.
She's Not The Man I Married reads like a collection of seminar notes, padded to reach a publication length. The prose is arid, full of cliche ("necessity is the mother of invention," "fish out of water," "king's ransom," and so on) and most of her gender epiphanies offer stock axioms ("genitals are the least of it," etc.). When Boyd occasionally lights up a cool phrase ("frisson of stubble"), she cannot resist repeating it in the next chapter. Sigh.
So - what do we have here?
As Boyd perceives it, her marriage was supremely satisfying (at first) because, she, a masculine woman, and Betty, a feminine man, formed a unity of opposites in which all binary roles enjoyed a copacetic equal expression. But now, Boyd observes, Betty is taking the duality too far. As a feminist, Boyd cannot relate to Betty's "uberfemininity" (referring to Betty's brief infatuation with Britney Spears) while as a woman (however rough 'n tumble) she pines for the guy she fell in love with.
It's a hell of a dilemma.
And, too bad, it should have made a hell of a book.
Oh, well - not a total loss; Betty does look ravishing on the cover.
Helen Boyd
Seal Press (Avalon), 2007
For those just tuning in, Helen Boyd is a "tomboy" "feminist" who has been loving, and married to, an increasingly out, MtF transitioning transsexual.
Her first book (My Husband Betty: Love, Sex and Life with a Crossdresser), published in '03, had admirable spunk, invigorating a genre often dreary with predictable storylines and narrative solipsism. My Husband Betty was a wry, skeptical and loving critique of the MtF world, full of anecdotes, quotes and ideological bravado (such as taking Tri-Ess to task, for example). So far so good.
Since '03, the genre has smartened up.
The bestselling She's Not There, presented the standard angst-to-operation saga with unprecedented style - perhaps owing to authoresses' Jennifer Finney Bolen's big-time lit experience; Richard [Alice] Novic's Alice In Genderland defied convention by positing a nonop happy ending, told with glowing prose; while Chris Beam's Transparent went even further, offering a unique plotline (lesbian adopts street T-girl) told with an unassailable sense of drama.
Helen Boyd returns to a far more challenging milieu. Alas, she falls way short.
As Boyd notes, since the publication of her first book, she and Betty have been working the conference and workshop circuit - and I believe that's the problem. Panel presentations and university lectures have seemingly induced diplomacy, restraining her prior edge; no more dissing Virginia Prince. Understandable enough, but Boyd's concomitant absence of emotional volubility cripples the storytelling.
She's Not The Man I Married reads like a collection of seminar notes, padded to reach a publication length. The prose is arid, full of cliche ("necessity is the mother of invention," "fish out of water," "king's ransom," and so on) and most of her gender epiphanies offer stock axioms ("genitals are the least of it," etc.). When Boyd occasionally lights up a cool phrase ("frisson of stubble"), she cannot resist repeating it in the next chapter. Sigh.
So - what do we have here?
As Boyd perceives it, her marriage was supremely satisfying (at first) because, she, a masculine woman, and Betty, a feminine man, formed a unity of opposites in which all binary roles enjoyed a copacetic equal expression. But now, Boyd observes, Betty is taking the duality too far. As a feminist, Boyd cannot relate to Betty's "uberfemininity" (referring to Betty's brief infatuation with Britney Spears) while as a woman (however rough 'n tumble) she pines for the guy she fell in love with.
It's a hell of a dilemma.
And, too bad, it should have made a hell of a book.
Oh, well - not a total loss; Betty does look ravishing on the cover.