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My Husband Betty
By Helen Boyd

Love, Sex and Life with a Crossdresser . . .

The first book to explore the relationships of crossdressing men and their female partners. Known traditionally as transvestites, men like Helen Boyd's husband are starting to come out and win the respect of friends, family and society - even if their behaviour still baffles mental health professionals and the crossdressers themselves.
Helen explains the "taxonomy" of the transgendered, the distinct societies within the transgendered community, the effects of the closer, sexuality, and the issues faced by the wives and girlfriends of crossdressing men. Helen's own experience is at the heart of this book, her story complemented and contradicted by interviews with crossdressers, drag queens, "tranny chasers", and other transgendered couples.

"Rating: 10 out of 10

Shortly after Helen Boyd met the man who was to be her husband he told her that he cross-dressed. It has cost her some struggle and pain to come to an accommodation with this side of his nature, but she's a Renaissance woman and used her intellect to grapple with it. A pragmatist of some stature, she stepped outside the matter to take a long, hard and penetrating look at it. The result is a remarkable book - My Husband Betty newly released on Amazon, but not yet published in this country. From the cover the almost impossibly beautiful face of her husband Betty gazes coolly at us, looking us straight in the eye foreshadowing the frankness of the book itself. Boyd, a pseudonymous New York writer, dissects her subject matter with the precision, ruthlessness and forensic skill of a surgeon. This is strong meat, and those who only look in mirrors to see what they wish to may find that its uncompromising honesty makes them uncomfortable.

The book begins as a journey of self-discovery: Boyd, almost amazed at her own reactions, exploring the world and minds of cross-dressers, scalpelling deep to see what makes them tick. The majority of cross-dressers are, she thinks, miserable because although they are able to revert to the power and privileges that go with being male, they are trapped in the social constructs we call masculine. Their behaviour and demeanour have potential to bring catastrophic change into their lives and they fear it, so hide in the closets. Involved in this is a lot of avoidance behaviour which Boyd explains well in setting out her desire to start her own on-line support group; 'Basically I wanted a community that wouldn't be scared of honesty; that could discuss sex as adults, and that wouldn't reassure me with half-truths'. She found it, and it is this community that has enabled her to throw the cold light of day on behaviours that many cross-dressers prefer to sweep under the carpet such as masturbation and sexual fantasies. This flies in the face of the image preferred by an older generation of cross-dressers who hold to the view that what they do is somehow more acceptable if it is non-sexual, but 'gender-orientated'. Boyd gives that idea short shrift, which will win her some disapproval, but from this quarter, loud applause.

In some places Boyd retreads paths already blazed by folk like Peggy Rudd or Marjorie Garber, but she does it with a clarity and a modernity that make it more immediate and relevant mixing academic rigour with intimate detail, the pragmatism mixing with often raw emotion, introducing us to real people and real lives. And what fascinating lives and people; Heather, who is more comfortable cross-dressed and could happily live as a women, is a 14 year combat veteran in the US Army; Victoria, a Vietnam veteran; Jayne, a musician. We meet also their wives, read their testimony and wonder at what compromise and acceptance can forge out of the plain straight love that two people have for each other- as Meredith, wife of Victoria says; 'His interest in crossdressing is not going away and as long as he doesn't shove it down my throat I can tolerate it. ' Or there's Kathy; 'I have always had an underlying interest in feminine men since a very early age' who deliberately set out to find a man who cross-dressed. Boyd scans the spectrum of cross-gendered behaviour with a clear eye, interviewing transsexuals, cross-dressers, fetishists, drag-queens, TGs, RGs, BDSMs, GGs and an alphabet soup of human deviations from what we may risibly see as 'the norm'. I love her classifications of TG behaviour, so I'll list them; The straight Drag Queen, the fetishist, the closeted cross-dresser, the transgenderist, the slutty cross-dresser, the out cross-dresser, the classic transvestite, the sissy cross-dresser and the blend. I'm a 'Blend' and I forecast with some certainty that this term is destined to become part of the glossary as applied to cross-dressers. Boyd may be bold in nailing down such categories, but there are, believe me, few people more qualified to make these sub-divisions.

It's fair to say that a man could not have written this book. I confess that there are few features of our community that anger me more than the almost blasé and unthinking claim that because of what we do we can somehow imagine what it's like to be, or empathise with a woman. Well we can't - unless we are TS and that's because they are women already in their heads. Few things damage us more with women, did we but realise it than that spurious notion. One of the most fascinating things about it is the shafts of insight that allow me to peep at, if not truly comprehend, what woman think of what we do. 'I sat sullen in the cab, envisioning my new boyfriend who suddenly didn't jive with the artificial girl sitting by my side... That handsome man seemed far away and I was terrified that there would some a day that he would be dead and gone, and only Betty would remain.' Boyd lives with that fear and makes no attempt to hide it. A friend of hers had a partner called Luke, who is now Elle. And yet her pride in her husband is evident also - a strange mixture she is of fear, fascination, an almost maternal pride, and unconditional regard for the man she evidently loves to distraction; 'My husband is beautiful as a man or a woman, but unbelievably beautiful when he's something in between.'

Some sections of the book will no doubt offend some sensitive souls- but I'm not one of them. I find myself in total agreement with all that she says, even if I have not the courage to leave my house and (secluded) garden dressed. She inspires me, and yet she makes me afraid. Her conclusion is that other minorities like black people, Gays and lesbians have gone through a civil rights struggle in the last 30 years and the only significant minority group not 'out' is us. All we have to do is let go of our place in the 'straight world' and we would lose a lot of our fear. She's probably right- and she makes me shake in my boots. This book is and will be a classic - buy it and read it because it is simply the most insightful thing I have ever read about people like you and me. It is also very well-written, a pleasure to read in terms of language, syntax and image- and very hard indeed to put down. This is my wife's opinion also.

Reviewed by: Anne Gordon (UK Angels www.theangels.co.uk) on 10/02/2004"

 

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