On the Shelf
Cleavage
By Jennifer Finney Boylan
Celadon Books: 256 pages, $29
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“I hope people don’t think it’s a book about the history of breasts,” laughs Jennifer Finney Boylan via Zoom from her New York City apartment ahead of the publication on Tuesday of “Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us.” Her latest memoir comes on the heels of President Trump’s executive order proclaiming that the U.S. government will recognize only two genders — male and female.
“I call the book ‘Cleavage’ because, to some degree, it’s about a separation: before and after,” she says. “Cleavage is a wonderful word. It’s what linguists call a contronym because its definition contains its own opposite. It means division, but it also means coming together. It also means the space between things.”
Boylan also toyed with the titles “Both Sides Now,” after the Joni Mitchell song, and “He’s Not There,” a “bookend” to her first memoir about coming out as trans, “She’s Not There,” in 2003.
“When I came out 25 years ago, nobody had yet been given formal instructions on how to hate me,” she says. “In some ways, things are easier 1738668740. The path that was, for me, so obscure is now fairly well-blazed. But in some ways, things are harder because with increased visibility comes increased blowback.”
Boylan talked to The Times about Caitlyn Jenner, religious hypocrisy, her trans daughter and “Emilia Pérez.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
How does it feel to have your book coming out at the current political moment?
That’s the question, isn’t it? Is it the very best time to publish a book about the transgender experience or is it the very worst? I’m hoping it’s a good time because the topics are in the news. On the other hand, there are a lot of topics in the news. I hope people will take a moment to consider the stories that I tell because storytelling, I believe, is the best method for opening hearts and enabling people to have empathy.
What’s your response to Trump’s “two sexes” executive order?
I woke up in my own bed surprised to learn that I was a man again and my wife was back in a heterosexual marriage. What’s odd is that nothing seemed to have changed, at least nothing close at hand. Maybe that’s the lesson to follow: They can make all the laws and proclamations they want, but nothing is going to change the truth. It’s not for someone who has never met me to declare that they know my soul better than I do. I think I’ve become a pretty good expert on who I am over the years.
It does make me feel sad because what we’re facing, among other things, is a failure of imagination. To understand transgender people requires a certain amount of imagination and willingness to understand the lives of people who are different from ourselves. It makes me a little cross because it doesn’t seem to me to be such a heavy lift.
The language you use to describe your pre- and post-transition existences is pretty frank and plain. Are you worried at all that it could be used as ammo for far-right extremists who deny the existence of trans people?
They can bend anything out of shape. Everyone knows what I’m talking about when I say pre-transition and post-transition. I recognize that there are lots of ways of looking at this. There’s not a singular transgender experience. The wonderful thing is that we have so many different ways of being us.
I talk about my own experience the way I see it and the way I think is easiest for people who don’t know anything about the transgender experience to understand. How I talk about these issues to a general audience might be a little different from the way I discuss it with a group of my peers. My main desire is to tell a story and to provide people who’ve never thought about this stuff with a way in.
Right-wing folks will bend whatever I say out of all sane context, but in the end, do they understand that conservatism ought to mean leaving people alone? Do they understand that the command from the Bible is to love one another even as I have loved you? Do they understand that Jesus himself said, regarding trans people, let those who can accept this who can. “Some are eunuchs because they were born eunuchs, some are eunuchs because they were made eunuchs by others, and there are some who were made eunuchs in order to better serve God. Let all who can accept this who can” [Matthew 19:12]. You want to quote scripture, you want to bend my words around — have at it. But in the end, all we can do is try to love each other and understand each other. I’m going to be saying that as I’m carried off to whatever prison they have in store for me.
On that note, what do you make of Bishop Mariann Budde calling for mercy and the backlash that has ensued?
Oh no, not a backlash to mercy! What a controversial thing to say, that we deserve mercy and that the job of the president of the United States is to protect the vulnerable and the needy in this country. What an incredible controversy, that an episcopal bishop should be calling on us to have mercy and to love one another. We’ve reached a world in which the idea of mercy is political. It’s going to be a long four years.
It was a great sermon and it’s a shame that we didn’t hear more of that during the campaign because Mr. Trump, in addition to being a deeply unserious person, is a cruel person, and his policies are designed to pick on the weak and to get everybody else to hate each other.
You also write that “People coming out as trans now aren’t apologizing for who they are. They aren’t begging for forgiveness or understanding.” Do you think that will recede in light of more anti-trans bills?
If anything, I think people will have an increased sense of fury that their desire to be themselves should be anybody else’s business. I can understand if people are a bit more careful about who they share that information with because we are under attack as never before.
As a mother to a trans daughter, what advice or words of wisdom and solace do you offer to trans kids growing up now?
When my daughter came out as trans, she didn’t want my counsel. That should surprise no one — doesn’t that sound like what your 20-something daughter would want to do? [Trans kids’] experience is different enough from mine that it’s maybe not my place to be giving people advice about how to live their lives. When I do give advice, it’s pretty general. I use the acronym TRUE: T stands for therapy or talk. Find someone to talk to. Don’t keep it all inside. R stands for read. There are a lot of good books about the trans experience now. I didn’t write all of them, but I did write most of them. [laughs] U stands for you. Be yourself as best you can. You shouldn’t try to be Jenny Boylan. You shouldn’t try to be Caitlyn Jenner, God knows. E stands for euphoria. Find your bliss, with the caveat of accepting that you might not be able to have everything you want right now. Now I’m sounding like a parent.
It’s not an easy life. Right now it feels like it’s harder than ever.
What do you make of Caitlyn Jenner’s continued support of Trump, especially in light of the “two sexes” executive order?
I don’t understand it. She’s supporting someone who has just declared her male. The ultimate goal is to erase us from society. To support him only suggests that she’s more concerned with issues having to do with her personal wealth and privilege than she is with the lives of people like herself. Or it might be that she’s as dumb as a bag of hammers.
Everybody on [“I Am Cait,” the E! docuseries that followed Jenner’s transition and starred Boylan] put our reputations on the line to open her heart. As I write in the book, “no one could accuse her of becoming the transgender Encyclopedia Brown.” It’s a shame.
And I wanted to ask you about Karla Sofía Gascón’s historic Oscar nomination for “Emilia Pérez” — have you seen it?
I haven’t, but it’s on my to-do list. I wrote a piece for the Washington Post about “Will & Harper” and I was delighted by that film. I’ve seen a lot of transgender documentaries and films and they’re almost always horrible so I can rarely watch them anymore. What’s almost as bad is how frequently these movies that I think really misrepresent our experience are loved by a broader, [cisgender] audience. I need to buckle in and watch that movie. I’ve heard great things about it.
Boylan will be discussing her new novel at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena on Feb. 25 at 7 p.m.
