Transgender Book Reviews

Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual
Nonfiction by Geri Nettick with Beth Elliot
Copyright 1996, 336 pages, $6.95
Rhinoceros Edition from Masquerade Books
ISBN 1-56333-435-6

Capsule: an interesting autobiography by a strong-willed male-to-female transsexual who underwent sex-reassignment surgery when it wasn't a well-known option. Her revelations about making it through the acceptance maze (both to get surgery and find friends in the lesbian community) make for provocative reading.

Full review:

I must admit some partiality here -- Geri Nettick writes about her journey in a time and place I'm very familiar with (San Francisco, 1960s-70s).

His/her story is sandwiched between a short political/historical analysis and a medical analysis. It's the story I will review.

On the first day of Catholic grade school, Nettick's teacher asks boys and girls to form separate lines. Nettick, by all outward appearances a boy, automatically joins the girls' line. He thinks like a girl, prefers to play with them, and is often bewildered when adults (especially his parents) keep trying to peg him as a boy.

Nettick, at least in the early years, is portrayed as shy, with a penchant for the wild and crazy underneath. As he progresses through school he avoids getting trashed for his feminine instincts by being a top student. But his nighttime dreams tell him things about himself ....

Finally at age 19 he has a mind-clearing "ah-hah" vision when he fully acknowledges his need to become female. "I was aware of being in sync with the women I saw, while the men to me were different ..." He also realizes he is attracted to women sexually.

And so Geri has a multitude of hurdles to jump: obtaining sexual reassignment surgery and the wherewithal to pay for it, parents who never accept his revelations (his father threatens to cut his testicles off), acceptance by other lesbians (in the politically-charged 70s, some reject transsexuals as impostors), how to earn a living, and more.

She is accepted, finally, into Stanford University's sexual reassignment program -- one of the first -- and emerges with a body more in concert with her mind. But there are some very low emotional points. Without her many lesbian and straight friends, and lovers, Nettick might not have survived. On the other hand, one wonders how her parents could be so cold as to not visit or phone their son/daughter after major surgery.

Mirrors provides a vivid picture of the politicization of the lesbian-feminist movement (the question becomes -- who is certifiably a real woman?). Mirrors realistically explains that having a womanly body doesn't mean a transsexual will be accepted by women and lesbians as a real female.

Toward the end of the book, Nettick can enjoy being a sexual-reassignment grad, talking to new surgery candidates. The San Francisco Bay Area pool of male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals grows and forms a community, and the entire process becomes easier. In fact, the end of the book has a consumer guide to the skills of various sex-reassignment surgeons in the U.S. and abroad. That says it all.

Nettick comes across as a very intelligent, opinionated person, with glints of wry humor. Credit goes to his/her co-writer for preserving these qualities.

(Reviewer: Valory Gravois) (Copyright ©1999 by Alchemist/Light Publishing)

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