BOI PARTS

Haven’t heard of Kye Allums — formerly Kay-Kay — yet? You will soon.

The NCAA athlete, who is currently a junior shooting guard on the George Washington University women’s basketball team, recently decided to reveal that he is transgender.

In other words, Kye was born a girl, and a biological female, but has always identified as being male on the inside. Now he has come out to his team — and the world.

G.W. has been supportive, as have his team members. But because of his status as a Division I athlete, there are strict rules on what he can and can’t do about his transition from one gender to another. No testosterone therapy until he graduates, for example.

And please, he says, do call him “he.”

Kye’s is a precedent-setting admission, sure, but what we really wanted to know was this: How did he first know he was transgender? What does he wish people would understand about that? And where did he find the courage to come out?

After the jump, we chat with an athlete with serious courage.

Lemondrop: How did you first know you were transgender?
Kye Allums: I haven’t always known. It started after high school, my freshman year of college when I moved away from home, and I had to start thinking about myself and what I wanted.

Were there signs growing up that you were different from other girls?
Well, for me, I liked playing football — all the things that the guys would do. But I would also get teddy bears and I would make my sisters play house with me. I baked cookies with my mom. I never really thought I had to pick either/or.

What made you decide to break the news to your team now?
I was sick of feeling like I had to hide everything. It was getting to the point where it was affecting basketball, and I couldn’t focus. I needed to say, “This is me,” and I said it. I feel like the world is off of my shoulders now.

Who was the first person you told?
One of my good friends on the team. She thought it was a joke at first. Then, when I started to say, no, no — and to get serious about it, she got on board. Now she’s the first person to correct someone if they screw up.

Meaning calling you “she” instead of “he.” Do people do that a lot?
Yeah, it happens a lot. As long as people acknowledge that they made a mistake, then I’m fine with it. And people acknowledge it all the time!

How’s your family reacting?
My mom said that she still loved me, and she didn’t understand, but she’s going to try … My dad? That’s a different story, but he said he loves me. They’re supportive.

You’re going to keep playing for the women’s team until you graduate, but you can’t undergo hormone therapy until then. What are your long-term plans?
Long term, I plan on becoming a male 100 percent, with hormones and surgery and all that.

Read More About Kye Allums and Other Athletes Who’ve Broken the Mold

I definitely want to go to school for architecture and be a personal trainer and have a couple of businesses.

In other words, you’re a real slacker. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions people have about being transgender?
That maybe I have both body parts, from a male and a woman. Or that I am a man on a woman’s team. Or that I was born male. My sex is female, because I was born a biological female, and my gender is male.

Some people have alleged that it’s not fair that you’re playing on a women’s team. That maybe you should try out for the men’s team now. What do you say to them?
Of course it’s fair! I’m just saying how I feel. It doesn’t change who I am. If I said, “I feel tired today,” then should I not play on a women’s team?

How did you learn about what it means to be transgender?
I took a class [at G.W.] on gender in general. I wrote papers on transgender athletes. I wrote about a motocross athlete, male-to-female, who was competing and then she stopped competing because people said it wasn’t fair that she used to be a he, even though she didn’t take hormones or anything.

I wrote about the Olympics and how some players were competing without taking hormones — a male-to-female competing with other women — and they hadn’t done anything! There were no rules yet. And they wound up having to give their medals back because people said they were cheating.

And I went online and found support groups for people who felt the same things that I did.

What is it that you wish people would understand about how you feel?
Nobody chooses to feel a certain way. Just because my body is like this doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to want to play against other people.

I feel like I want to compete with these people around me. Nobody should have the right to tell anybody that that’s not right.

Do you think you’ll keep competing in sports after college?
I love sports to death, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

What about dating? Once you’ve had the surgery, will you be a straight male, who dates girls?
I don’t like labels. I don’t like labeling myself. I’m just me.

A few months ago some friends and I ventured into Good Vibrations in the Mission on a quest for some good porn. I was interested in seeing some “straight” FtM porn—i.e. a movie with a trans man having sex with a woman—but to my chagrin there wasn’t much of that genre to be found. Why not?

There seems to be a plethora of porn with trans women (MtF) and cis-men, often referred to as Shemale Porn, where straight men get “tricked.” Porn star, Wendy Williams talked to San Francisco Bay Guardian about her fanbase being largely made up of straight men and why she believes there’s a lack of FtM porn out there—commenting that FtMs still have “a female brain” while she still has a “male brain”—this is problematic to me on many levels and I do not agree with her in the slightest. In Julia Serano’s book Whipping Girl she suggests that trans men are less visible because they pose a threat to cisexual men. I can’t help but wonder if this is really why trans men are rarely seen in porn—especially “straight” porn.

Most pornography is made for and by heterosexual men; porn star with Trannywood Pictures, Dex Hardlove, stated that “historically, transmen have not been encouraged or often invited to make porn” therefore most trans porn comes from “politically radical organizations within the queer community who stray from heteronormative representation. I would like to stress that this has more to do with sexual identity than gender identity.” In a 1998 survey conducted by Adult Video News showed that roughly “90% of adult video consumers were heterosexual men.” According to Hardlove, Trannywood Pictures is “a gay porn company, not queer or straight, but gay porn company. They may change their genre in the future, but currently it is gay, men on men (of all kinds) having hot safer sex.” Hardlove also raised the question what makes something “straight porn?” If that consists of trans men having sex with a woman (which for the purpose of this article is my definition), then locally based companies Pink and White and No Fauxxx have such scenes in their productions. However, both of these companies are often labeled under “lesbian/ dyke porn.”

Buck Angel, known as the “Man With a Pussy,” seems to be the only well known FtM in porn. On his blog he even refers to himself as “the first and only FtM transsexual porn-star.” Angel’s goal is to bring FtM porn into the mainstream as a legitimate genre and not as a “freak show.” In 2007 he won Transexual Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards. He was the first trans male performer to do so. Interestingly enough, Buck Angel has worked with Wendy Williams in Big Boob Adventures. “It was the world’s first filmed FtM and MtF sex-scene” according to Wikipedia.

A friend who recently got a job reviewing porn websites commented that she’s “never seen any trans men porn stars except on user uploaded X-Tube, and Buck Angel.” She went on to say that she has rarely seen even Angel having sex with women. The real issue, according to Hardlove, is that there is not enough FTM porn in general. “We need to find more ways to include FTMs in all porn. As a queer person, I feel like FTMs are under represented in general, so it is not wonder ‘straight’ FTM porn is also under represented.”

It’s silences like this that add to the fetishizing of trans sex and relationships. In a world where we can watch a porn on just about anything, a couple ought to be able to find porn that somewhat mirrors them. “It is important to recognize that there are straight identified FTMs who may want some representation on the big screen. Also, there are straight identified women who prefer FTM lovers who would also appreciate some representation on the big screen” stated Hardlove, and I agree. So what can we do? Hardlove suggests that those who want representation organize it and create it. “I mean I would love to watch some hot porn made by passionate people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.”

Dear Cecil:

There was a news story a few years back about a jazz musician who died and was found to be a woman after living her life as a man. She was married and had three grown children who refused to believe their father was a woman. No one I ask remembers this. Do you?

— SMENGI, via AOL

Cecil replies:

You think I could forget the story of Billy Tipton? Yes, she lived as a man from age 21 till the day she died at age 74. Yes, her three sons (all adopted) never suspected a thing. But that’s not the bizarre part. She lived with five women in succession, all of them attractive, a couple of them knockouts. She had intercourse with at least two of them and, who knows, maybe all five. But of the three we know about in detail, none tumbled to the fact that her husband was a woman (one figured it out later). At first you might think: man, I thought my spouse was oblivious. But the more charitable view is that they were taken in by one of the great performances of all time.

We know as much as we know about Billy thanks to a newly published biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook, Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton. Middlebrook reports that Dorothy Lucille Tipton decided to become Billy Tipton in 1935, ostensibly because it was the only way an aspiring jazz musician could get work in an almost exclusively male business. The transformation wasn’t all that tough. Billy’s face was boyish, and her figure was more Coke can than Coke bottle. (She had sizable breasts but no waist.) A sheet wrapped around her chest, men’s clothes, and a bit of padding in the crotch, and she easily passed. In fact Billy was positively handsome; women thought he was a doll. A talented pianist, horn player, and tenor, he quickly found a gig with a band.

At first Billy was strictly a cross-dresser, making no great effort to conceal her femaleness during her off hours. She lived with a woman with the unusual name of Non Earl Harrell, in what other musicians assumed was a lesbian relationship. Initially they were based in Oklahoma City, but by 1940 they had moved to Joplin, Missouri, then an entertainment center. There Billy began to masquerade as a male full-time, a pose he would adopt for the rest of his life.

Billy and Non Earl broke up in 1942. After a liaison of some years with a singer named June, Billy took up with Betty Cox, a pretty 19-year-old with a striking figure. The two stayed together for seven years, during which they had what Betty recalled as a passionate heterosexual relationship, including intercourse. She even thought she’d had a miscarriage once. How could you share a bed with someone for seven years and not realize he was a she? Breathtaking naivete had to be part of it, plus the fact that, as an accomplished entertainer who was 13 years Betty’s senior, Billy called the shots. They made love only in the dark. Billy never removed his underwear and wore a jockstrap that Betty later speculated was fitted with a “prosthesis.” He wore massive chest bindings at all times, supposedly for an old injury. He would not let himself be touched below the waist nor disturbed in the bathroom. Betty may also have been a bit distracted. Acquaintances said she went out with other men while she was with Billy, and while she appears to have been genuinely fond of him, in some ways this may have been a marriage of convenience for both.

A turning point in Billy’s life came in 1958. He had his own trio and a growing reputation, and a new hotel in Reno wanted to hire his group as its house band. He seemed on the verge of, if not the big time, at least a fairly high-profile career. But Billy declined. Instead he took a job as a booking agent in Spokane, Washington, playing music on the side. Middlebrook thinks he feared fame would lead to discovery and decided he’d gone as far as he dared.

At this point Billy was living with a sometime call girl, but in the early 60s he left her for a beautiful but troubled stripper named Kitty Kelly. She claimed she and Billy never had sex, but in other respects they lived a stereotypical suburban life. They adopted three boys, but neither could handle the kids during adolescence, and after a bitter quarrel in 1980 Billy moved into a trailer with his sons. From there it was all downhill. The boys split, his income dried up, and he spent his last years broke. Refusing to see a doctor despite failing health, he collapsed and died in 1989. The paramedics who were trying to revive him uncovered the truth. Death must have come as a relief; he had been on stage nearly 54 years.

— Cecil Adams

My thoughts on the article:  Now I plan to put the above-mentioned biography on my reading list, right after I finish The Danish Girl (more on this later).  I’m thinking that Billy died in 1989, not so very long ago.  I had graduated from college and was headed to graduate school, completely unaware of the tragic last years of Billy Tipton.  I’m wondering how many years will pass until people will be treated like people, celebrated for their differences and not forced to into the soul-sucking conformity that society expects?

(Source: genderrevolution.com)