When My Husband Came Out as a Woman

(This post was originally published at Good Vibrations Online Magazine.)

June 30, 2007

My husband came out to me as a woman this summer, three days after our five-year wedding anniversary. We were supposed to have our first date with a babysitter that night, but she bailed on us. Instead, we went out as a family for an afternoon drink at the local pub, fresh from the pool where I spent pretty much every day this summer with our four-year-old daughter.

It was a damn good wedding anniversary. I think we were both feeling that our marriage had arrived at its strongest ever. He gave me a delicate diamond ring; my own, my style, as opposed to the hand-me-down I got from his mom when we married. And he read me the vows that afternoon in the sun at the pub's deck over beers; the vows he never got around to writing five years before. It was precious.

The Sexual Chronicles of a French Family {featured trailer}

My apologies for my absence this past month; I've been busy with events in conjunction with the launch of my new book After Pornified: How Women Are Transforming Pornography & Why It Really Matters (Zer0 Books, October 2012). I returned from Europe only last week where the official launch party took place at Berlin Porn Film Festival, the leading international film festival for progressive artistic sex film. I attended the entire five-day festival and saw an amazing array of films.

Regretters {featured trailer}

Regretters is the amazing widely prize-awarded Swedish documentary featuring the candid conversation between two men who both decided to change their sex only to later regret it. This is a hugely soulful and powerful film for anyone—straight, trans, or queer—who cares about navigating gender and identity in our sadly gender claustrophobic culture.


Regretters Trailer from Atmo on Vimeo.

Walk Like a Slut

I took my then three-year-old daughter to SlutWalk last year because I want her to grow up knowing nobody has the right to tell her avoiding rape is her responsibility. Or that she needs to police her look and behavior but a boy does not. As another mother said, she brought her six-year-old daughter because "she wanted her daughter to know that nobody has a right to her body." Her body is hers and no one has the right to do anything to it that she doesn't want.

Heading to the walk, I told my daughter SlutWalk is about celebrating girls and women. She said we should celebrate boys too.

Indeed. We need to foster a culture where boys and girls respect and trust each other. Where girls' and boys' fears and insecurities about sexuality—including when it comes to their own budding bodies as well as those of the opposite sex—are addressed. Through positive sex education that equips both girls and boys to approach sex with knowledge, respect and integrity.

Boys who "can't help themselves" are boys who've been shamed into wrongly thinking this is in fact so.