THE DEATH of J. D. Salinger earlier this year prompted Jennifer Finney Boylan to comment in The New York Times (Jan. 1, 2010) that what made the author’s reclusiveness “sad and strange” is that the author shunned the fame and publicity that so many unpublished writers so desperately desire. Boylan would know. The widely published author and four-time Oprah guest also teaches writing at Colby College, and like the majority of her students, she understands that in an era of tweets, blogs, and book tours, a writer can’t always remain inside a room of one’s own. In 2009, she performed The Porcupine Woman, a combination of songs and stories, in Seattle, Atlanta, and New Haven, and as the first transwoman to appear regularly on the op-ed page of the Times, she has made her private life—or lives, first as novelist James Finney Boylan and later as Jenny Boylan—a source of public interest.
Not that Boylan is complaining. To satisfy what she calls the “humiliating, cringe-inducing necessity of becoming a public person,” she once found herself in the green room of the Today show—about to promote her first memoir, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003)—seated beside actress Lucy Liu, who asked what Boylan was there to discuss. “Sex change,” Boylan replied. Reflecting later on this simple truth, she would write: “Was this what it means now, to be a person of letters? Discussing one’s genitalia with the actress from Charlie’s Angels?” This is characteristic of Boylan’s comic sensibility and her love of the punch line. As she observes in I’m Looking Through You, Growing Up Haunted (2008): “It is an unfortunate fact that transgendered people generally have to take responsibility for educating the people around them about their nature, in a way it is unnecessary for most people who emerge as gay or lesbian, or say, Flemish.”
Boylan has been married to Deirdre Finney (or “Grace” as she’s called in She’s Not There) for 22 years. The couple has two teenage sons, Zach and Sean, who refer to Jenny not as “Mommy” or “Daddy,” but as the hybridized “Maddy.” This interview was conducted in February via e-mail (a medium that Salinger probably dreaded).
Colin Carman: Late last year, Maine voters approved a referendum that overturned marriage equality. What are your thoughts?
Jennifer Finney Boylan: A friend of mine, a Republican, wrote to chastise me for calling the opponents “haters.” She said, “No, it’s just that Mainers don’t like things being shoved down their throats.” I could only think that occasionally justice should be shoved down people’s throats. There were millions of people opposed to equality for African Americans, and we fought a war over that, and wrestled with the consequences for a hundred years.
CC: Last year, you wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times titled “Is My Marriage Gay?” What makes it gay if you married Diedre Finney in 1988 when you identified as “James Boylan”?
JFB: The thing is that the transgender card throws all of these same-sex marriage laws into a whirl. I mean, the morning after marriage equality was vetoed in Maine, guess what: I still had a legal same-sex marriage. Because I was wed when I was male, and no one can divorce us without our permission. There’s a famous case in Texas where a marriage between a transwoman and her husband was annulled because the wife had a Y chromosome. The judge ruled that marriage is only between people with a different sets of chromosomes. Which meant that thereafter, in Texas, a transwoman like me (with a Y chromosome) could legally marry her lesbian partner, making Texas the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. What we need to embrace is the messiness of gender, its inscrutability and its malleability. That’s a good thing for the species, and for families, and for individuals.
CC: How did The Book of Dads, a project to which you contributed, come to be written? Can you say more about being a trans-parent?
JFB: Ben George, the editor, put that book together. It’s a very cool book. And yeah, I’m the only woman in The Book of Dads. I think my boys are sensitive to people who are different, and I hope this has made them into good men. I don’t think we’re perfect parents, obviously, but then who is? I know there are times when my sons wish they had a traditional father. But, to quote my son, “most of the time, I feel like the luckiest kid in the world.” Those are nice words for a parent to hear—any parent, of any child.
CC: Aren’t you and your sons collaborating on a young adult novel?
JFB: My sons and I came up with the idea for Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror two years ago. I’m hoping that the same basic questions of identity that I’ve been writing about for ten years now, and which have launched me into all sorts of frightening places, like Oprah and Larry King, and the Barbara Walters Special etc., are here in the heart of Falcon Quinn, although in an oblique and playful and comic manner. For me, the best thing was talking about the book with my middle school-aged sons, who were a tough little band of critics, I can tell you. I feel lucky that we’ve never given up reading as a family at the end of the day—even now, with them in the eighth and tenth grades. They know all about coming from a “different” family, but will tell you they feel lucky.
CC: In She’s Not There, you write that “gay and lesbian people don’t necessarily have that much in common with transsexuals except for the fact that we get beaten up by the same people.” What other similarities and differences exist?
JFB: What’s that old cliché, “To someone who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail?” People tend to decipher the mysteries of the world using the tools they have, the tools they know how to use. The mysteries of a trans-life—mysteries of embodiment and spirit—are sort of like the issues for gay men and lesbians, but sort of not. There’s a lot of talk in trans communities about whether the T really even belongs in the GLBT, quite frankly, and on occasions when we get jettisoned in order to serve the needs of the G and the L and the B, I think trans people rightly feel vulnerable and angry. But lots of trans people I know have worked very hard for their gay brothers and sisters, and it hurts when that loyalty is not returned or respected.
CC: You wrote to NASA to plead your case for becoming the first transsexual in space. How is that effort coming along?
JFB: Well, I’ve come to suspect that I won’t be the first transsexual in space. More’s the pity. I could have done such great things with my hair in zero gravity! Actually, there are lots of parts of my body that would be improved by the absence of gravity.
CC: Do you remain hopeful about the prospects for marriage equality?
JFB: Absolutely. When I was a student at Wesleyan in the 1970’s, I didn’t know anybody like me; I had almost no role models; I didn’t even have a word for the thing I was. Now, when I travel to college campuses, I always see young trans people—lots of whom see me as yesterday’s transsexual. They’ve all moved on with the discourse, which is fine. When I was at Johns Hopkins, John Barth used to tell a joke about the missionaries who are sent to a culture where the young people once fed their grandparents to the alligators. After a while, the elders seem depressed. “Why?” the young people ask. “Because,” say the elders. “You used to feed us to the alligators, now you don’t. It’s like you don’t love us anymore.” It may well be time to feed Jenny Boylan to the alligators. If and when that happens, don’t worry. I’ll know it was meant with love.
Colin Carman, a colleague of Boylan’s at Colby College, now teaches at Colorado Mountain College.
