Sugar, spice, and everything nice
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A transy memoir sans the treacle
By
Michael Bronski
The Woman I Was Not Born to Be: A Transsexual Journey
by Aleishia Brevard
Temple
University Press
How to order
These days it is pretty clear that
sometimes boys will be girls; but in
Alfred Brevard Crenshaw's case--
related in gossipy detail in this
memoir-- he didn't want to be a girl,
he wanted to be a woman-- and what
a woman! Born
in 1937 to a proper, genteel
Tennessee family, Crenshaw knew
that he was different from an early
age. And what would any
self-respecting Southern boy do in
such as case? Why, flee to San
Francisco. There he became a
female impersonator and a hit.
Under the name Lee Shaw he
dazzled audiences at the
world-famous Finocchio's. This top-
draw drag club featured the best in
gender-switch entertainment, and
"Lee Shaw" was the top-of-the-line.
But
by the early 1960s, simply dressing
up wasn't enough and Shaw decided
to undergo surgery to become a
woman.
In the early 1960s,
transsexual surgery was a
brand-new idea, and not easy to
obtain. With the help of a friend,
Shaw castrated himself in his own
kitchen to stop his body's production
of testosterone. Obviously this was
a bad idea, but the extremes to which
Shaw was driven give us an idea of
the pain and craziness that
transgender people endured in
decades past. Sometime later, after
seeking safer medical solutions to
his gender dysphoria,
Lee emerged after 11 hours of
surgery as Aleshia Brevard-- a
dynamic, well-built, gorgeous
woman. In the parlance of the 1960s:
a terrific broad.
Aleshia Brevard pursued a
career in entertainment. And with this
new body who wouldn't? She
became the embodiment of the
dream of every Southern queen-- a
burlesque actress, a Playboy bunny,
and then a real,
live Hollywood B movie star. Her
biggest success was playing the
glamorous lead against Don Knotts
in
The Love God.
Written in a breezy, gossipy,
tell-all style reminiscent of 1950s
movie-star autobiographies (which
this, at heart, is) Brevard's memoir
has none of the self-pity or
sentimentality often found in other
transgender memoirs.
She is funny, unsparing of herself
and others, and dead-on charming
when need be. But even more so,
she is honest and direct about both
the pain and considerable joys of
finding out who she really was/is.
Aleshia Brevard's
story-- replete with bumps, grinds,
sequins, and heartache-- adds an
entertaining curve to the growing
number of books about transgender
life and love.
| Author Profile: Michael Bronski |
|
Michael Bronski is the author of
Culture Clash: The Making of Gay
Sensibility and The Pleasure
Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the
Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes
frequently on sex, books, movies, and
culture, and lives in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. |
| Email: |
mabronski@aol.com |
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