Wiretap - Co-ed

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

A mother who was once a father, a male pole dancer, a 9-year-old who wants to do away with the girls and boys sections in clothing stores. Plus, Academy-Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg performing his dramatic monolog in which a post-gender-normative man tries to pick up a woman at a bar.

A lot of news podcasts give you information, the basic facts of a story. What's different about your world tonight is we actually take you there. Paul Hunter, CBC News, Washington. Margaret Evans, CBC News, Aleppo. Jerusalem. Ottawa. Prince Albert. Susan Ormiston, CBC News in Admiralty Bay, Antarctica.

Correspondents around the world, on the ground, and at the source where news is happening. So don't just know, go. Your world tonight from CBC News. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and you're listening to Wiretap on CBC Radio 1. Today's episode, Co-Ed. What do you think mom would be like if she were a man?

Slim, wiry. That's the kind of figure I think she would cut. It would seem my first. My father sees my mother as more of a sugar A. Leonard, say, than a Roberto Duran. It's worth noting, too, that I spring this question on my father, apropos of nothing. But he answers, without missing a beat, as though, in fact, he's been waiting his whole life to be asked just this question. We go through life with our gender pretty much invisible to us. We've been playing the role of man or woman so long that we don't even realize we're playing a role.

but it is in fact a kind of play and my parents enjoy playing so whereas many other families on a road trip might talk about news headlines or where to stop for lunch we talk about this kind of thing what kind of a woman do you think dad would be I think he'd be a great woman

because he's very prim and proper he likes to spray his hair he likes to smell himself up with perfume he'd be a good lady Sure, I take care of my hair, get my eyebrows done. What kind of hairstyle do you imagine you would like? Maybe something long, pulled back, piled up on top of my head. Like a beehive?

No, not a beehive, but, you know, long hair. He would never go outside the door unless he's perfectly dressed. Like he'd never go out in his underwear to put something in the... garbage can. Wait a second. So that to you is ladylike because that's something... I run out sometimes if I don't see anybody outside. I run out of my nightgown. See these are things I would never do. That's why she's a better as a man. You see I couldn't go to a place where everybody's running around naked. I hate these kind of places. What kind of place is this that you were imagining? Well like

you know these spas. I seem to remember you talking about some place that you went to where people you they were trying to get you to play ping pong naked or something? I am very uncomfortable with that. I don't like it. Where your mother would be at home. Wouldn't bother her. It doesn't bother me in the least. For people who were barely born before women had the right to vote, my parents are pretty open about questions of gender. But those kinds of issues aren't always so easy to navigate. In fact, addressing them can be like tiptoeing through a minefield of political correctness.

Here's Jesse Eisenberg tiptoeing his way through as a post-gender normative man trying to pick up a woman at a bar. Hey, how's it going? Mind if I sidle up? I saw you over here sitting alone, and I thought, that's fine. A woman should be able to self-sustain.

In fact, a lot of women are choosing to stay alone, what with advances in salary, equitability, and maternity extensions, and I think it's an important and compelling trend. I noticed that you were about to finish that drink, and I was wondering if I could possibly watch you purchase another one, and at the risk of being forward if you could possibly purchase one for me. So what do you do?

And before you answer, I'm not looking for a necessarily work-related response. I don't think we have to be defined by our industrial pursuits, especially when they're antiquated and heteronormative. I curse my mother, who was an otherwise lovely human person, for not buying me an easy-bake oven when I was younger. I grew up idolizing male thugs like Neil Armstrong and Jimmy Carter. And yes, I do work at ESPN, but I spend more time being spiritual and overcoming adversity, for example, than I do working for some faceless corporation.

And if I were to find a mate, be it you or someone else here tonight, I would be more than happy to tell the proverbial man that I quit so I can raise our offspring with gender-neutral hobbies, while my biologically female partner continues to pursue her interests, be they industrial, recreational, or, or, yeah, Yes, even sexual with another mate. Oh, how gauche of me! I've just been chattering away incessantly like some kind of girl or boy who talks a lot.

I haven't even properly introduced myself. Although, one often gets the uneasy sense that patriarchy dictates a learned and ultimately damaging order of events with men taking an unearned lead. My name is Terry, with a heart over the eye instead of a dot. I have a heart, is what that says, and I am not afraid to wear it on my sleeve. So what do you think? Would you like to take me up on my offer for you to buy me that drink? If you would like to respond, that would be wonderful.

Of course, if you would like to continue to sit here silently, staring at me with that powerful gaze, which both breaks gender constructs and also scares me a bit, that would be fine as well. What's that? I should go f*** myself. I agree, men should be more self-generative. Thank you for your astute assertion.

Why should women exclusively have to bear the burden of childbirth when men are biologically doomed to fear commitment? It is counterintuitive and it is socially degrading. Ah, that beer is refreshing. Thank you for throwing it in my face on this warm summer evening. Okay, okay, I'm leaving. I'm leaving. Thank you for your blunt rejection of me. It takes a lot of courage, which you no doubt have an equal measure to any other human. Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to the bathroom, where I will cry silently in a stall,

questioning my body and texting my mom, but for now, I thank you for your time, which was equal to my. If I were a girl, I'd start a femme rock band, a really loud one. If I were a guy, I'd pee in the snow and make creative designs. If I were a girl, I'd throw a drink in a guy's face just to see what it would feel like. If I were a guy, I'd walk around shirtless, whenever and wherever possible. If I were a girl, I'd walk around shirtless whenever and wherever possible. If I were a guy, I'd rock a six-pack and a beard, like nobody's business.

If I were a girl, I would let myself cry when I needed to. If I were a guy, I'd enjoy being called passionate and assertive instead of crazy and loud. If I were a boy, I don't think it would change much because you're you, and it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl, that's who you are. So you don't think there would be such a big difference if you were a boy? I don't know. It's just sometimes I've got to be. impression that they're feeling forced to do what other boys do because they think oh well that's how being a boy is i'd better be like other people or i'm going to get laughed at well a lot of people at school think that girls are much more sensible than boys but i don't believe in any of that

stuff it's just that i can i can like whatever i like no right that's so true and do you feel that way? Yeah, except that sometimes, well, when it comes to clothes, there's like a boy section and a girl's section. I don't really like that, because what if, like, somebody likes something in the boy section and they're a girl? Like, for example, I like Lego, okay? And some people consider that as a boy thing. Yeah. So often, well, there'll be, like, a boy section for Lego. Okay, and in the girl section, there will be costumes of princesses. That I don't like princess costumes, okay?

Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a really girly thing to like, but, and I like Lego. Do you find, how old are you now? I'm going to turn 10 in February. And do you think it's going to change as you get older what it means to be a girl like do you think you think it'll get easier do you think it'll get harder it'll definitely get harder because i'm going to be fighting in between like what's more comfortable

and what i like more you think that's going to become more of an issue as you get older more of an issue how come because right now i don't really care what what what clothes i wear as long as they're warm enough when it's cold they're cold enough when It's warm, and that's what it's about, wearing clothes. What makes you think that might change? Do you have any friends who are older or cousins or anything?

Well, I do have one cousin that's 13, and I don't know if her clothes are comfortable or not, because I haven't worn any of her clothes, but they just look very teenager, like trying to look as cool. you can, like the newest fashion, like, well, everything like that. Yeah. I don't know. It's like a new gender. It's like a teenager girl, and a teenager boy is totally different than a girl or a boy. If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end.

when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach, and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop behind the books you love. Like, why Emma Donoghue is so fascinated by trains? Or how Taylor Jenkins Read feels about being a celebrity author? You can check out bookends with Matea Roach wherever you get your podcasts. If I were a guy, I'd go for long walks after dark just because I could. If I were a girl, I would have a baby. That would be rad.

If I were a guy, I would sport a really nice suit complete with pocket square and cufflinks. If I were a girl, I'd wear skirts every day without the strange looks I currently get now. If I were a guy, I'd hit on the girl no one else does, because I'd know she deserves a chance. If I were a girl, I'd read 50 shades of gray on the bus Instead of at home in secret If I were a guy, I would get paid a dollar For every 77 cents a woman makes And that would be awesome

If I were a guy, I would lift weights And eat like a horse If I were a boy Oh wait, wait, I was My name is Jennifer Finney Boylan And I was born James I always knew that there was something weird. I didn't have a name for it when I was really little,

because what do you know about the sexes when you're a child? But it was as I approached adolescence that I began to really know, uh-oh, okay. And I remember that feeling as all the girls entered puberty, that sense of, it was like standing on a dock watching the ship sail away. It was a sense of, oh, no, now I'm screwed. And there were two problems. One problem was having this fundamentally weird problem that you didn't understand.

And the other problem was not being able to talk to anybody about it, which was actually the worst of the two problems. Because, you know, if you're trance, it's just something that's always with you. It's the first thing you think about when you wake up. It's a thing that's continually coming back to you during the day. It's the thing that you feel before you fall asleep. What is specifically, do you mean? Well, that's the question, isn't it? What specifically is it?

Because, you know, a lot of people think, well, why can't you just be feminine and stay a man? And, of course, the answer is that it's not about being feminine. If it was about being feminine, I would have stayed a guy and just had a whole different record collection. But it's a sense of the way you reside. within your own body. And people who are not trans should know that they have a privilege. They may not think of it as a privilege.

But if you wake up in the morning and you never have to worry about what sex you are, you are really lucky because you have something that transgender people wish they had. And so you lived most of your life as a man. You got married, you had children.

What made you finally decide to come out? The most dramatic coming out was essentially the one I made with myself. So when I first started admitting to myself, this is something that I've got to deal with. That was pretty rough. There was one night I was outside. I forget what I was doing.

It was probably walking the dog. And we live in Maine, so it's cold and snowy, and the skies are dark and clear and filled with stars. And I looked up at the sky, and I saw the constellation Orion which is a constellation that has always haunted me

it seems to have appeared at various moments of truth in my life and there it was and I just felt myself asking the question how long are you going to keep

running away from the truth of your life I mean nothing happened that night I didn't then go upstairs and tell my wife I had the transition in that moment. I didn't call on my friends and tell them I'm changing my name. But if I think back to one moment in which there was a before and after, it was that moment of just looking up into the stars. I had always assumed that love would cure me,

which is, I don't think that's a delusion that is unique to transgender people. But yeah, I always thought If I fall in love deeply enough I will be content to stay a boy And I guess the weird thing that happened Was that I did finally fall in love deeply enough With Didi with my wife And what wound up happening in the end

Is that my love for Didi And the love that received from her Gave me the courage to actually come out And do the transition So that love did save me in the end, but it didn't save me in the way that I expected. What was it like telling your kids? Well, my boys were really little.

When I first started going through transition, I think they were like two and four when I began the process. Also, know that the process I went through was very gradual. So, you know, it wasn't like one day I waltzed in, you know, in a prom dress and said, Hello, my name is Tiffany Chaffan. I think that the first time I actually appeared wearing a skirt for work or something or wearing makeup in front of them, they didn't actually even know. I remember I said to my son, do you notice anything different about me?

And he said, you're not wearing your glasses? But it is my feeling that in the long run, having a father who became a woman has helped my son's become better men. How do you mean? Well, it certainly made them more tolerant. It is given them the chance to grow up in a house in which not one, but both parents have had to swim against the tide of the culture. And it's true, not just for me, but for my wife, Didi, who plenty of people thought, well, you should call a wire is what you ought to do. And Didi, um, Dedy does, decided early on that her life was better with me than without me and that we were going to work it out as a family. So my boys have grown up in a family not only in which people love

each other, but also in which that love has been kind of dramatically and visibly tested. And we've survived. Do you ever get tired of having to explain yourself to people? I mean, being trans is something that a lot of people aren't familiar with, and yet trans people do deserve the love and the respect and the dignity that everyone

deserves, and part of that means not always having to explain yourself. I want to help people, and so people have lots of questions, and I'm ready to answer their questions, but sometimes I feel like people should be able to be loving and generous

even before they understand something, In other words, being able to respond to someone who's different shouldn't hinge on a scientific understanding of their lives. It should hinge upon a fundamental recognition of their humanity. I mean, the amazing thing I found is that the journey from maleness to femaleness, in the end, I turned out to be a much more familiar person than anyone expected. The person that I am now is, in many ways, fundamentally the person that I was when I began this journey, except in a different shape. You know, the expression I use is the same monkey's different barrel. And I know a lot of transgender people who go through the transition, expecting that they will emerge on the other side as someone wholly new and wholly reinvented. And it's sort of true, but you don't become someone else.

The person you become is yourself. You become, with any luck, a truer version of the person that you were all along. So for me, in some ways, the big difference was not going from male to female. The difference was going from someone who had a secret to someone who didn't have a secret. And that was the profound change. During the course of our conversation, Jennifer pointed out that when you lay down the burden of your secret self, when you go through a gender transition, everyone around you has to go through a transition as well. Your female friends have to learn to accept you as a sister. Your male friends wonder if you're still going to be friends in the same way.

One of those male friends of Jennifer's is writer Tim Kreider. He'd always looked up to Jennifer as a friend. a male role model and had to reconcile this seemingly new person with a man he'd known for years. In a way, Jennifer's transition made him question his own sense of masculinity. In an essay called Shoots and Candyland, Tim writes about his relationship with Jennifer and how he reacted when she first came out to him. Jenny argued she'd never been a man, he writes. She'd just been impersonating one. I would say, you and me both. That's what we're all doing, trying with varying degrees of success to impersonate our assigned genders.

But over time, Tim started to realize he'd been obsessed by the wrong question. He writes that the question never should have been, is she a woman or is he a man? But what is a friend? Jenny may be the only person in this world, Tim continues, whom I now think of purely as a human being, free of all the corporeal baggage of chromosomes, hormones, and footwear. It's always important to be supportive of the people in your life that you care about, no matter what. Hello? Did I catch you in the middle of chasing after an ice cream truck or sandwich wagon of some kind?

You sound out of breath. You know what? I am out of breath, and I was... Hold on. Thank you, Sally. Okay. Yeah, I'll see you next time. Okay, bye.

What's going on? Just leaving my pole dancing class. Excuse me? You heard me? Pole dancing class. Do you have a problem with that? So this is that whole, like, Stripper Bowl fad dancing thing? No, I was that.

a Polish wedding. Yes, stripper pole dancing. It is a very outmoded and sexist term. It is pole dancing, okay? It is the trend that's been sweeping the nation for, I don't know, the last nine decades. Who else uses stripper poles, if not strippers? Firemen? Poles are extremely in vogue in every spirit.

What do you think a candy cane is, but a pole with the hook? Santa Claus uses a stripper pole? Yeah, but he doesn't dance around it. Well, Mrs. Claus does. The elves take great pleasure in that. So I don't understand. So this is like some kind of, like, co-ed kind of

well I mean it's co-ed because I'm there you're the only man in the class I'm the only man man enough to take the class yes all right so what's what's the angle that you're working here angle the only angle I'm working is a delicate 45 degree outward thrust and then a finely filigreed spin down the pool

that's the only angle I'm working son I moved beautifully I moved like an angel in fact my name is angel at the class I insist that everyone calls me that so you have a stripper name as well I have a name, and I have my signature moves, you know, the lucy-goosey, the upsy-downsy, the roly-poly, the mashed potato. What's the mashed potato? That's when I take a place full of mashed potatoes up to the top of the stripper pole, and I eat it there while I slowly glide down.

I take the class on my lunch break. What do you wear in this class? Sequins, bangles, rhinestones, nudity, all of it. You get naked? Well, no, because then, of course, there'd be pole-shaefing. That's why you want your pole to be glistening, right? And pole oil is very expensive. You can't just, you know...

Pool oil? Yeah, that's right. The people with whom you share this pool, they don't mind you're greasing it up in oils? Oh, that would be very unhygienic to use the same pole. We have our own poles. It's like a collapsible cane. You know, you strap it on your back, yoga mat style,

you bring it to class, you snap it together, and you go up and down like a sexy stock market. So you're taking this class, and the other women in the class, they're... The other women? Oh, so I'm a woman just because I take the class? See, this is the kind of outmoded sexist thinking that marks you as a dinosaur. Your fellow dancers, they appreciate your presence.

Really? They're coming around. Are they? No. They don't want me there. They think I cheapen the class. I think they're actually in it more for the exercise. I'm following my bliss, helping down that pole.

I don't know that anybody wants to see your bliss. You know what I have the teacher do sometimes? She takes a laser pointer, and she runs it up. down the pole and I just chase it. You should see the way the women look at me with their hungry eyes. I love it. Josh, are you sure you're not just trying to pick up strippers? Pick up strippers?

What demented, fevered part of your brain do you imagine that strippers take stripper pole dancing classes? I mean... I mean... The only people who take these classes are bored suburban housewives. And that's who I was trying to meet. I knew it. You couldn't possibly just be doing this for your health.

Well, why? It is good for my... You would do better to, like, just, you know, stay at home and do jumping jacks. John, home is where the cheese is, and I just eat it all. Go to the why. You know what they call it, why? Why would you go there? You see, I...

See, I knew you wouldn't understand. You're stuck in an Alamoid agenda paradigm. You're a home record. And you're going to let me your stilat him heal. Today you heard Buzz and Dina Goldstein, Joshua Carpatti, Nellica Dager, and Jesse Eisenberg, reading his dramatic monologue, a post-gender normative man tries to pick up a woman at a bar. It was recorded at the Radio Foundation Studios in New York City. The original version of his piece first appeared at McSweeney's.net.

You also heard Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of the forthcoming memoir, stuck in the middle with you, Parenthood in Three Genders, a memoir about the Differences between Motherhood, and fatherhood. It's due out in April. Special thanks to Dan Savage and Tim Crater, author of We Learn Nothing. You also heard a vox of gender-themed desires submitted by our listeners. Thanks to our friends at CBC Montreal for reading them. Wiretap is produced by Mirabirt Wintonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.