The Riddle of Gender

“Ooh, this middle-aged white guy standing there with his candy.” It’s really upsetting to me. And I have to learn how to use my voice. My voice has gotten really deep, and I need to sort of sound like [softens it] so I don’t sound threatening. I’m not a tall person, but I’m kind of a big guy. Which brings up a whole other area. If you are a big woman … people used to yell at me stuff like “fat bitch, fat dyke.” Big is bad if you are female; big is good if you are male. Now I just go to the Big ‘n’ Tall, and they’re like, “Big Tom is coming!” [Laughs]

It’s a lot to negotiate. It’s a lot to try to have these hormonal changes and the body changes and then try to figure out, “Now how do I be a man?”

Q: How important is it to you to have a penis?

It’s really important to me, but I’m never going to have enough money to have that operation [phalloplasty]. I don’t really want to mess with my body like that. It doesn’t really go well; it doesn’t work. They can’t do those hydraulics. I would rather keep what function I have. I’m sort of half and half now. My body is … I’m a different kind of a thing, a new thing, and that’s okay. A lot of guys find it incredibly important [to undergo phalloplasty] and I honor that. If they need to do that, I think they should do it. But I’m never going to have that much money and …

Q: And for you it doesn’t seem to define your manhood?”

No, it doesn’t define my manhood. If they could just snap their fingers and give me one that works, I’d say okay. I don’t want to diminish the importance of it. … I just don’t feel like it right now. Now, I know some guys change their minds; you can change your mind sometimes as you go through this process. Some guy asked me about it one time, and I’m like, “Okay, all of the men in the room, let’s just get up there and line it up by how big it is. Come on, you guys, let’s go.” I mean, it’s ridiculous.

Q: Do women relate differently to you as a man?’

Yes, yes. It really surprised me. Women will touch me, and I’m like, “I can’t believe they’re doing that. Wow. They’re being nice.” They talk to me, play around with me. I love women. I really do. We were just having a discussion about that last night. That is really one of the wonderful things, that I can really enjoy women in a way that I never could before. Because I’m not like them. My body is not like that. Before it was really sexually difficult. Because I didn’t want people to see me naked. It was just really hard.

Q: In your experience, is there a difference between male and female sexuality?

It’s really hard to make generalizations, but testosterone is incredible stuff, incredibly powerful. I’m so much more visual now. I understand why there’s Playboy and porno. I never got that. I always liked women, I liked the way they looked, but I never… it’s not like I wanted to watch [pornographic] movies or anything. Now, the thing that’s really distressing to me is how much women’s bodies are used to sell things. I knew it intellectually. I was a feminist. But now I know it at this visceral level, and I am just appalled. It’s like there are these receptors in your body, there are estrogen receptors and there are testosterone receptors. Your testosterone receptors just aren’t working right now. You have them, but they are just not working. But mine all got activated. I remember about three years ago—I remember this so clearly—I was walking downtown, and this woman had like a dark gray sort of tank top on, and she was walking down the street and her breasts were just kind of jiggling. And I’m like, “Oh my god!” If I had a penis, I would have had an erection. So I have that now, I have those physical reactions. Like, I’m watching the Soul Train Awards, and those women have, like, no clothes on, and I think I must be old or something because I’m thinking, “These children should not be going around like that.” I think that women must have a clue, because women have used this to control us for a long time, and mostly I’m really happy about it. I mean, Marianne can control me with that. I’m happy, okay, honey.

Q: Perhaps that’s the reason that women lose power as they get older, while men gain power.

Yes, and you don’t even have to be an attractive man! You just need to be an old man, just an ugly old guy. It’s the whole thing about not having to worry about your appearance. For women, falling in love, and attraction, is about your mind and your heart. But I picked Marianne because … I probably wouldn’t have talked to her if I hadn’t been physically attracted to her. We’re all like that, but men sort of take it to an art. I buy her a lot of things I want to see her wearing, and she lets me do it.

Q: Did you not do that kind ofthing in your old life?”

I kind of did, but it’s not the same as it is now. I mean, I liked feminine women always … but it’s a different thing now. It’s like I’m watching movies now that I never really watched before.

Q: Like action adventure, or shoot-‘em-ups?

Oh, yeah! Actually, that’s really interesting, because the action adventure movies get to me now in a different way they didn’t before. It’s like, “Oh yeah, great, blow something else up.” It’s not like I want to see people killed; it’s not like that. It’s like, “Blow that up, make that car really fast.” It’s crazy.

Q: So do you still keep in touch with friends from your old life? How do they feel about this change?”

It depends on how old they are. If they’re my age, they think I’ve gone over to the enemy. I’m dead. They don’t talk to me.

MARIANNE: Or like that woman on your soccer team who could sort of relate to it, but she was afraid. She actually felt a lot of the same things, but felt like the penalty of making that change would be the loss of a community that had been home for so long.

KENNARD: That was painful. And a lot of the guys who were lesbians really feel that. And a lot of times they tried not to transition, or to hold on to it as long as they can. It’s really hard. Like I’m completely invisible as a queer person now. I’m queer. I think of myself as queer. I can see queer people. We have queer radar, we do. But they don’t see me at all. Really, the place I’m most comfortable is with gay men. I love gay men. One of my best friends is a gay man, who taught me how to shave, took me to men’s bars, showing me what it was like to be a man. I mean he’s a gay man, but he’s a man. I can touch him— straight men are so touch-phobic. I can feel what his beard is like. He got naked in front of me. I’m like, “Okay, this is how men are made.” So I love gay men and I like to be with him. And when I’m with gay men, I’m part of this great community. I’m not invisible. They think I’m queer; I mean they think I’m gay, but that’s okay. If I’m with Marianne, I’m invisible, and people want to know why we’re there.

Q: And this is San Francisco, the home of the LGBT community ?

KENNARD: It’s still a binary gender system. They don’t even think about it.

MARIANNE: And so much of life is organized around it that whatever else may be up for revaluation, by God, not the M and the F. So many things are constructed on that, it’s sort of like if you change that, talk about changing your center of gravity, it really confuses everything.

KENNARD: And a lot people won’t allow you to change. Some people—it doesn’t matter what I tell them, I’m not a man [in their eyes]. I never tell people what my name used to be, for example, because that is like the kiss of death. If I tell someone that I’m transgen-dered, I’m all of a sudden “she.” They never get over it.

MARIANNE: And they never would have thought that, when they’re meeting him. They’re like, “Oh, I would never have known.” But I think that the other thing that can get oversimplified in the queer community is that straight people have complicated gender identities too. There are some men born in male bodies who have spent their whole lives as males who are also trying to figure out what it means to be a man. And trying to negotiate not wanting to automatically fall into certain roles.

Q: We all need to negotiate gender every day of our lives.

MARIANNE: Yes. And if you are a woman and you want to be with women, that’s perceived as a gender-