Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty and She's Not the Man I Married, was interviewed earlier today on Air America on Nicole Sandler's show. It's a great clip, which you can access here:
Start it at Minute 9.
Though the interview is a lot about what it's like to be in a trans relationship, with plenty of personal questions for Helen, the interview was prompted because of Jennifer Finney Boylan's op-ed in the NY Times earlier this week about being “differently married.” Boylan is a trans woman, legally a female, married to a woman because she married her when she was still a man.
This was a largely overlooked issue in Labor of Love, by Thomas Beatie. The media doesn't really want to talk about the fact that trans people are allowed to marry as long as they're legally "opposite sexed," while gay and lesbian couples can't. And Thomas sheds light on the ironic fact that he and his wife Nancy could have easily gotten sperm if they had wanted to conceive as a lesbian couple, but his being trans made doctors suspicious of his mental stability.
The fact is that trans folks and genderbenders mess things up for people who like everything to be in nice, neat categories. And kudos to Jennifer for pointing out the obvious:
"It’s my hope that people who are reluctant to embrace same-sex marriage will see that it has been with us, albeit in this one unusual circumstance, for years."
---Brooke
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