Book Excerpt: Let's See What You've Got
October 15, 2012 by Matt Kailey
http://tranifesto.com/2012/10/15/book-excerpt-lets-see-what-youve-got/ (http://tranifesto.com/2012/10/15/book-excerpt-lets-see-what-youve-got/)
I recently participated in a book reading at the Mercury Cafe in Denver, offering up a couple of essays from my latest book, Teeny Weenies and Other Short Subjects. Here is "Let's See What You've Got." (Note: The text of the essay follows the video.)
Let's See What You've Got
"I've never met a female-to-male transsexual before."
Yes, of course. I get this all the time from gay men. But this particular gay man had just spent the last fifteen years living in San Francisco. If a gay man lives in San Francisco for fifteen years and has never met an FTM transsexual person, I can only assume that he spent those fifteen years:
A) incarcerated.
B) homebound.
C) in a hut on the far side of Alcatraz island.
Almost every major urban center in the United States is teeming with trans men. If we don't live there already, we often migrate there in search of a more welcoming community, better access to health care and other resources, and a larger trans population with which to connect. San Francisco, with its rainbow flags down Market Street and its "anything goes" Castro district, is particularly attractive, especially for gay trans men.