The Transgender Monologues, Gender, Sexuality, and LGBT Life

By Joanne Borden

This is a different, informative, and entertaining book regarding transgender and LGBT issues. "The Transgender Monologues" examines issues closely as though through a magnifying glass. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and mostly transgender people, their loved ones, and students/professionals in psychotherapy, anthropology, social science. One reader said, "The Transgender Monologues are observations of an acutely sensitive and intelligent person, who is navigating the waters of transgenderism. She has thoughts and ideas that are amusing, interesting, and always provocative. There is a great deal of insight the nontransgender person can gain from this collection beyond focusing on the transgender phenomenon. It is insight into the most exciting area for human brings—knowledge!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joanne Borden
• Release date: Dec 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9780991466269

Joanne Borden

Joanne Borden is a transgender woman. She lives in Nassau County, New York, is a widow, has 2 children and 4 grandchildren who refer to her as Papa Joanne.Before retiring, Joanne earned a Psychology AB, a Business MBA, and Engineering PE. She was an Industrial Engineering Consultant, was president of two engineering societies, and is a WWII veteran.In retirement, Joanne is the author of three books: "Transgender Complete, A Virtual Handbook," "The Transgender Monologues, Gender, Sexuality, and LGBT Life" and "Identical Treatment in the Machine of the Law, the Quest For Transgender Civil Rights."She has performed in the Vagina Monologues, her own monologues, and several Fresh Fruit Festival Variety Shows (NYC), where she won the Best Story Teller of 2012 award. She has spoken at Transgender Day of Remembrance services, churches, and synagogues on transgender and GLBT issues.Joanne is a Past Vice President of her League of Women Voters, an advocate for women’s equality, and the civil rights of gender variant people. She often speaks promoting all LGBT issues and has delivered 100+ speeches in county and state legislatures and other venues.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

If you are looking for a different, informative, and entertaining book regarding the transgender and the LGBT phenomena, The Transgender Monologues is the one for you.

Furthermore, transgender, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, their loved ones, and other interested parties will be given a virtually magnifying glass to understand and experience the life of heterosexual and nonheterosexual life as never before. No other writer known to the author dissects and examines so many issues, so closely, or in the same way. However, as informative as the monologues are, they also contain some humor that may even give the reader a few smiles.

There are more reasons to recommend this book. Among the 58 monologues are many that were presented to entertain large audiences ensuring most contain a measure of entertainment. More than a few of the monologues were presented in churches, synagogues, Transgender Day of Remembrance Services, Long Island GLBT Services Network Centers, and other venues for the benefit of LGBT causes.

The Cure is one of the LBGT directed monologues. It is full of smiles, facts, and won the Best Storyteller of 2012 Award at New York City’s Fresh Fruit Festival. The Cure is of interest to general audiences since it traces the history of homophobia and transphobia to the present day. The Cure even alerts the reader to unethical people who claim to cure LGBT people of their birth variation.

Some people and so called authorities on the subject are quick to forget how many of them tried to turn left-handed children into right-handed children because most people are right handed. They forget the serious harm done by trying to make these kids right handed like everyone else.

Although most monologues directly involve transgenderism, they also involve LGBT people, since so much of it is aimed at LGBT life either directly or is parallel to transgender people’s life.

During the 4 years of full time research for the author’s first book, Transgender Complete, A Virtual Handbook, a good deal of study included lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. This research revealed that closeted gay, lesbian, and bisexual people react the same way and generally face the same issues as closeted transgender people. The author’s research also indicated there is a close connection between gay men and transgender women.

Some of the monologues have wider application than LGBT life. They will be of interest to the general public. Also, LGBT people are people. We are part of the general public. LGBT people are just like everyone else in every way except for their romantic preference and/or gender identity. Of special interest to general audiences is the monologue Sexual Orientation—Pick One. because it examines bisexuality as a universal romantic preference. This monologue explores bisexuality as it has not been explored since Sigmund Freud. I try to avoid the use of the term sexual orientation (except as an attention getter) because everyone has a sexual orientation; and lesbian, gay, and bisexual people cannot be properly described in sexual terms any more than heterosexual people can. Same-sex romantic preference or simply lesbian, gay, or bisexual people are enough of a description to distinguish them from the general (heterosexual) population.

My observation of the many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people I know indicates that they are not primarily interested in sex any more than heterosexual people. Their primary interest is obtaining a companion. They either have a companion (e.g., spouse or partner) or desire one.

Other monologues that are directly applicable to the general public include Happiness, The Meaning of Life, and others. A Sneaky Peek examines a behavior transgender people learn to practice early in life that nontransgender children have little need for. Some monologues are written tongue-in-cheek like, The Decline of the Male; however, someday it may prove to be fact.

I could go on and on but the different aspects of life, including sociologically induced behavior, are examined in greater detail than I have read anywhere else. Suffice it to say, there are a great variety of topics intended to entertain, elicit a smile, and thus painlessly inform.

The author, that is I, started writing this collection of monologues in 2009 as a result of winning a raffle. The raffle tickets were sold at a benefit for a Queens, New York LGBT homeless children’s shelter. The benefit was sponsored by a Long Island, New York transgender Internet group called Femme Fever. The group has about 4000 transgender members, mostly on Long Island, New York and is associated with a boutique. The raffle’s prize was a web site donated by JJFWebDesign.com.

I never had a web site before but thought why not use the prize and have one? I always seem to be attracted to avenues I never traveled before—things I never previously engaged in or explored. The problem the prize presented was what to do with it. I did not have any idea of what my web site should be like—what it should contain. Finally, I thought my picture in different activities celebrating my new life as a woman might be a good start. I also thought it would be appropriate to include a short story of The Life of a Transgender Woman, my life and the life of so many once closeted LGBT people I have known. I knew the web site would be available to the public, but I believed I would probably be the only one to look at it. After several years, I abandoned the web site in favor of a Facebook page under my name.

I enjoyed writing that first monologue. I even enjoyed reviewing it and adding more perfect phrases several times to be sure any reader would know precisely what I was saying. I also tried to analyze why writing a monologue is so enjoyable and rewarding. I finally decided that I enjoy writing a book for its great accomplishment and as my contribution to the transgender community. However, writing a monologue provides a feeling of accomplishment relatively quickly. Writing my book took four years of full time research and another full year to put it together before I had the gratifying feeling of completing a project. I enjoyed researching and writing the book I was working on, but a monologue brought a sense of accomplishment in short order. With monologues, I had many moments of gratification—one each time a monologue was completed.

Life is peculiar. If I didn’t go to that benefit and buy a raffle ticket that won a web site, I might never have learned how rewarding and enjoyable writing a monologue is for me. After my first monologue, whenever something sparked an idea for a new monologue, I put everything aside to write it. I thought of every circumstance affecting that issue/subject, did some research of anything I recognized as affecting the subject, and with a good deal of editing I had completed a monologue. The editing involved a daily once-over until I found nothing more to change. I rarely depart from my motto—there is no such thing as good enough. It was like the book writing was my full time job and writing a monologue was a short break from my job.

By the time Transgender Complete was finished, I had written over 50 monologues. I kept writing until now I have included the 58 monologues I like best in this book.

It is hoped parents of LGBT children will gain insight into what may be going on in their child’s mind and the phenomena with which they are dealing. If the subject is not present in their child’s mind, it is likely to occur if their LGBT feelings are driven underground and into the closet. That is what has happened to previous generations. Variations from heterosexuality and/or the binary sex label assigned at birth were misunderstood and believed to be a sexual perversion. Perversions must be kept a secret and there is only one place a for a secret—a double life in the closet.

It is also hoped that this book will provide LGBT people with insight regarding their behavior and entertainment from reading the various monologues. Parents, relatives, friend of LGBT people and students and practitioners of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and education who are part of, or interested in, the LGBT phenomenon, enjoy the presentation and content of these monologues. Whatever the purpose, all readers may even get a chuckle or two as they read them. Furthermore, I also hope this book serves as another vehicle by which the general public gains greater understanding of LGBT people.

Back to: Table of Contents

THE MONOLOGUES

The Cure¹

People thought I needed a cure, because Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible tells us women shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man. Neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment. You can look it up! It is written in Deuteronomy 22.5.

The Bible says gay people also need to be cured. That is written in Leviticus Chapter 18 Verse 22.

In Biblical times, gay and transgender people were thought to be one and the same but it really made no difference. Everyone knew how to cure them and had the same cure for both. They didn't need Social Workers or Psychologists. The cure was simple and fool-proof. They were stoned to death. As far as we knew, they weren't transgender or gay anymore, because they were cured.

Coinciding with that period, or immediately thereafter, is when I believe someone invented the closet. It seems some very enterprising person invented the closet because he saw a real need and a ready-made market. The closet was handy for people to go into and escape being stoned to death. Pretty cleaver of them, eh?

The closet was quite durable. That same closet is still being used to this very day. No one knows who is in it, but when I left it was pretty crowded. Most people in the closet thought religion was the root of that evil. I feel that was because they didn't care for the cure.

However, there was a worse side to religion. Religion was used as an excuse for wide- spread violence. Think of the Crusades and wars like the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years War, and so many others. I feel a lot of blood was spilled in the name of religion because people were different. Actually, that sounds a lot like their reason to cure gay and transgender people. They were different! There is a saying I read somewhere, Nature loves variety, but people hate it. I feel there is a lot of truth in that. But it wasn't religion that spilled the blood. It was men using religion as an excuse to kill other men. I never could understand it, but many people feel difference is bad and difference of any kind needs to be eradicated.

We all know many bad things were done in the name of religion, but religion is supposed to have you follow God and God did not write the Bible. Someone wrote it ages and ages ago. That someone said God told him all that stuff. He might have been hallucinating or employing self-aggrandizement, but who knows what all those translators that came later did to the original words.

The only thing God wrote himself was the Ten Commandments. It's true! Really! Ask the guy who was there, Charlton Hesston saw the whole thing.

God didn't tell his Commandments to anyone. He was smart enough to etch his words in stone. He made sure his words were not changed by anyone, especially those translators. How smart was that!

Now, when you talk about the Ten Commandments, that was all good stuff. It was and is a perfect moral code for everyone to follow, so most people do!

In the middle of the fourth century, there was a new cure. Casting stones was much, too much work. An easier cure was needed. Stoning was good sport, but so tiring. With sore arms they finally employed what today we call Work Simplification Principles. You heard the motto, Work smarter, not harder!

They cleverly came up with the easier way they sought. They even had a catchy name to describe the new cure, Burn'em ‘n Cure'em. That catchy phrase caught on immediately and quickly spread throughout Europe. Again, the cure was fool-proof. It was so easy, all they needed was to gather a few sticks, pullout their flint stone, and there you have it—poof, a cure! They had a cure without all the work of throwing stones. A real arm saver, if you ask me. I remember something people always said and it fits this situation perfectly, necessity is the mother of invention. Good for them!

They did not even have a name for transgender or homosexual people, but everyone knew they needed to be cured and thus they were cured, permanently. In some cases, death alone wasn't enough. They had to be punished with torture before they were burned alive. That was always good fun, as long as you could get to be the torturer.

It is interesting to note that women were not subject to those cures. At least there is no evidence that they even needed a cure. Women were always under the strict control of their fathers until they were given away—to their husband. Women were mostly confined to harems, anyhow. No one knew what went on in those harems, but everyone always wondered what all that giggling was about.

Then came modern times when people were civilized and more enlightened. Stoning and burning seemed so old fashion and it was. However, those people still had to be cured. Time did not change that. It seems people are right when they say, The Bible will live forever.

Some were cured with a lobotomy, the removal of the part of the brain that was thought to be guilty of all the trouble. That only disabled people mentally and they ended up in an institution.

Well, that obviously had poor results, but they still had to find a cure. After all, everyone knew the old cures were not satisfactory. Stoning was too much work and burning polluted the atmosphere. So, the Reparative Therapy Cure was invented to be the modern, the scientific name for torture. As recently as the mid-1950s, Reparative Therapy was used. Some psychiatrists like Kenneth Zucker, in Toronto, still think the Reparative Therapy Torture should be employed.

Actually, Reparative Therapy seemed to work. It didn't cure anything, but the person capitulated to end the torture. No one ever said transgender and gay people were stupid. I think they simply joined the others already in the closet.

If they weren’t cured by so called modern psychiatry, many were only fit to spent the rest of their lives drugged in an asylum like those who had a lobotomy

Now, even though we have a name for homosexuality and transgenderism, people still want to hurt and kill us. They claim it is God’s word, but they don’t really believe in God. If they believed in God, they would not think he lost his Biblical power and strength. They would believe he is still capable of doing his own punishing.

Today, born women who are transgender men and lesbians are included in the hate. This hate takes both a subtitle and a violent form. They deny us equal rights and protection under the law to punish us. It's their form of subtle torture. Others turn their hate to violence just as some did in biblical times. They found a cure that is even easier, better, and more effective than stoning and burning. They now have guns and can kill us from a distance with a mere finger motion. But that is not good enough. Haters need to be close up and see us suffer as we die.

They don't take the time to understand that medical researchers, such as Dr. Karl Maria Kertbeny, as far back as 1869 said, these ‘conditions’ have a biological cause with a congenital origin. That means we were born this way. Throughout history and to this day researchers believe the same thing—we were born this way. By now, many people understand that we were born this way and there simply is no cure. There is no cure, because there is no sickness!

Variation²

I would like to tell you about variation. Variation is nature’s best thing. Nature loves variation. She loves it so much that sometimes she seems to go to extremes. Who besides nature needs 9,000 species of birds, 28,000 kinds of fish, and 350,000 different beetles? Nature loves variation so much that she now has over 2,000,000 different living species.

I can’t figure out why we need so many, but nature apparently does. Furthermore, people generally love nature’s variations. Some very popular television programs do nothing more than show strange species native to exotic places. In fact, the strange animals found in some places are what makes them exotic places.

Large numbers of people go to zoos, take African safaris, travel to the Galapagos Islands, and many other distant places just to see nature’s display of her strange and different animals.

Nature loves variation in people as much as in other species. We have all heard the sayings that no two people are alike and everyone is different. Well, it’s true!

Some time ago I sat next to a family of five in a restaurant. They were celebrating the parents’ wedding anniversary. From the conversation and anniversary number, it was apparent that the children were from the 2 adults at the table. Each of the 3 kids, all of school age, looked different from the others.

Why didn’t the children look like each other? After all, when you mix blue and red what do you get? You always get purple. It never varies from purple. When you combine the genes of the two parents, shouldn’t you get a combination like the consistency of purple? Shouldn’t the result, the children, be the same? Shouldn’t they look alike? They should, but they were all different.

Again, that must be nature’s love of variation which causes that difference.

It is rare when the offspring look alike. When they do, people comment about their resemblance. Even when the resemblance is just a bit the same it frequently draws a comment. When children demonstrate a variation in appearance or anything else, it is accepted as so usual that nothing is said about it and no one takes conscious notice of it.

Nature seems to say, once in a while they can look similar; have similar personalities, and et cetera, but most of the time I make them different. I make them different because I can and I like to produce variations. There is no question that nature likes to produce variations and continually demonstrates her power to do so.

People tend to ignore and accept nature’s variations regarding people mostly because everyone has a birth variation of some kind. However, many people depart from their acceptance of variations when the birth variation