The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [56]
Q: Do you have any childhood memories of the big media splash surrounding Christine Jorgensen’s return to the United States after her surgery in Denmark? Was she an inspiration to you? Did you ever meet her?
I never met Ms. Jorgensen, nor can I even say that she was a true inspiration for me when contemplating my own surgery. The media frenzy that accompanied Christine’s arrival at New York International Airport [sic], February 13, 1953, actually had a decidedly negative effect on me as a high school freshman. The hoopla surrounding the Jorgensen gender transformation focused an unflattering spotlight on me as an overly feminine teenager. “Buddy must have caught what Christine has,” was my classmates’ taunting chant for several weeks at Trousdale County High. I wasn’t thrilled to have my carefully constructed male cover blown by Christine Jorgensen’s high-powered publicity splash. I felt exposed. I felt very threatened. I was not yet aware that I was Christine’s transgendered sister. I’d always believed I was meant to be a girl, but the jokes, horror, and general commotion that surrounded Christine Jorgensen’s transition kept me from believing I might be a girl like America’s first transsexual.
Q: One of the things I found so refreshing about your memoir was your honesty. Some of the earlier transsexual memoirists like Jor gens en were so circumspect, because of the times the authors were writing in. They really couldn’t discuss their sex lives, for example. But you really don’t pull any punches. You put it all out there.
I’ve heard that. And I’m flattered. That’s what I wanted more than anything. If I’m taking this step, and coming forward at long last, I must be honest, and I can’t sugarcoat anything.
Q: One of the things I’ve found interesting as I’ve been conducting my research is the conflicted relationship between homosexuality and transsexu-ality. Christine Jorgensen and many other early transsexuals were adamant about insisting that they were not homosexuals. One of the things I found unique about your book is that you admitted that you were a gay man …
Perceived to be a gay man. But I didn’t think that was the case. Before I met Dr. Benjamin, well… You wear the badges that are available at the fair and that’s what was available. I was not popular in the gay bars, and the men who were attracted to me were attracted because of the image I projected onstage. I was just too ultra for the gay community. If an interested potential partner thought that you believed it (that you were female), that’s the difference. If it were bigger than life, drag, a parody of femininity, that’s camp. Then, that was okay.
Q: Did you feel comfortable in the gay community before your transition?’
No. I did not feel comfortable in the community. I do more so now, actually. Adore it, really. Because I’ve become an icon. I went to a book reading in San Francisco, and there was a very interesting young man who came by and said, “This book is so important to me because the movement in the gay community is now to exclude those of us who want to cherish our femininity.” And I thought, yes … Because here he was in a lumber shirt and the whole thing. I view that as almost criminal. We just must learn to let people be as they are. The whole impersonation thing also [drag queens] … The community has turned on those representatives of the Stonewall era. They are ashamed of them now.
Q: You were a patient of Dr. Harry Benjamin. You met Dr. Benjamin when you were working at Finocchio’s?
Yes. Started hormones, did all that. And of course with his rules and regulations, generally you have to dress in the clothing