“Before I Had the Words” is the Best TG Book I’ve Read So Far

I’ve just finished reading the best FtM transgender book that I’ve run across to date. (And that’s quite the statement, given that I’ve read at least a dozen of them and have written one of my own.) It’s called Before I Had the Words. The author is Skylar Kergil.

 

 

I’ve always said that kids today have an easier time “coming out” along the LGBTQI spectrum than we had it back in the day, but it still is darned hard to do it.  At least these days teachers, parents and psychologists know about transgender issues (there was no term for transgender back in my day, and gender was considered binary: you were either male or female, period) so the enlightened ones can help youngsters navigate what they’re genuinely experiencing without sending them off to psychiatric hospitals (commonly called insane asylums in bygone eras–how clueless and abusive was that presumption?)

 

Most of society is better educated and more tolerant of the gender orientation/sexual orientation spectrum than ever before, but the Internet and social media make it all too easy for mean-spirited, bigoted trolls  to harass, bother, bedevil and castigate those who decide to “name it and claim it” so they can be transparent and  navigate through life in the same way straight cisgender folks have the privilege of doing.  Being LGBTQI is part of the normative spectrum. For millions of people, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning or intersex — or any combination thereof — is normal; being anything else would feel decidedly abnormal to them.

 

Skylar’s story resonated with me every step of the way, although his story begins less than thirty years ago and mine began six decades ago. He’s such an exceptional storyteller that it’s impossible not to get drawn completely into the thick of his journey without experiencing it as he did right along with him.

 

It’s heartwarming, heartbreaking, upsetting, triumphant, ennobling–all the good stuff!

 

Like me, Skylar is a heterosexual man who was designated (or assigned) female at birth because of the prevailing external body parts that were on board.

 

(There is also the possibility that I was born intersex and surgically altered shortly after birth to present physically as female. Physicians didn’t keep records of intersex births in the 1950’s. The default “solution” for most intersex conditions was removal of the external male genitalia so the child could be raised as a female so parents and children wouldn’t be forced to raise “boy-girls”, then called hermaphrodites. Intersex was considered an easily-correctable birth defect back then. But gender is brain-based, not body-based–and millions of people have grown up not knowing whether they were born intersex or if they’re genuinely/legitimately naturally lesbian, gay or transgender. Intersex conditions are as common as natural red hair; one infant in 100 is born with ambiguous genitalia. Only one in 1000 adult intersex individuals has gender confirmation surgeries to correct for their earlier, in-error sex-assignment surgery as an infant or to present as a binary-gender person, male or female.)

 

But Skyler transitioned hormonally and medically: I haven’t.  He was never a lesbian because, to be a lesbian, you need to be  a cisgender female (completely comfortable, gender-wise, with the female body parts you possess) and sexually attracted to other women, just as gay guys  who are  cisgender are sexually attracted to other men.

 

The above paragraph can be very confusing to a lot of cisgender folks. Many of them simply  aren’t aware that there is a major difference between sexual orientation and gender orientation.

 

Here’s the difference in one easy-to-remember-and-repeat sentence:

 

Sexual orientation determines who you want go to bed with; gender orientation determines who you want to go to bed as.

 

To be clear: I’m celibate but not asexual. I don’t interact romantically with a significant other simply because I don’t have the correct body parts that would make doing so a positive, pleasurable, sharing experience for me.

 

If I had the money and if I was young again, I would transition; there are some very good gender confirmation surgeries these days that make physically becoming the man I am possible.

 

But at my age, I’m destined to live out my life the way I have so far. And I’m okay with it (for the most part). That said,  I’d love to get rid of my breasts, at the very least, so more people would recognize my maleness and feel completely comfortable calling me he, him, his and sir.

 

A great many people aren’t okay with what they’re saddled with: far too many of them commit suicide, drink or do drugs. The smart, sufficiently-wealthy ones commit to making the changes they need to feel complete for the first times in their lives.

 

So here’s the bottom line: It’s thoughtless, careless and cruel to sit in an armchair and judge them unless you have walked in their shoes and lived the lives of quiet desperation that they have. I’m fortunate to have escaped the more harrowing coping strategies that a lot of people use. But I totally understand why some people find refuge in them.

 

It’s hard to feel left out of something that gives other happy couples so much pleasure!

 

I think if you read Before I Had the Words by Skylar Kergil and my book, you will gain an up close and personal sense of what it’s like and why being kind and supportive is the absolute best way to help transgender people not just survive but thrive.

 

Please read the book, especially if the word transgender scares you or puts you off. I think it will ease your mind a lot.

 

You might even end up loving some of your transgender friends.  I have several new TG friends and several long-time TG friends who never felt comfortable coming out to anyone else (including to me!) until I did. That says a lot, right there. I hope these  books make it safe and comfortable for your friends to be as much themselves with you as you are with them…

 

Transparency deepens relationships.  The relationships that transparencies destroy were never true friendships to begin with since they were based on false assumptions, spoken or unspoken.