Media.www.LeProvoc.com – Kristen Miller
Gender is not a hobby – It is a fact for Finney Boylan
Gliding across the stage in a floral dress and a black blazer, Jennifer Finney Boylan compared her surgical procedure in 2001 to “the feeling of leaving one country and going to another.” Boylan, an author and professor at Colby College, is referencing her sex-change procedure when she officially and completely went from James to Jenny. Six years later, on November 6, 2007, she stood before a packed auditorium at Clark University in Worcester, MA to explain her personal experience with being transsexual. Her talk was not about the surgery itself, but how she dealt with this lifelong and nearly incomprehensible condition.
“The issue of transgender is so hard to talk about because the term refers to all sorts of people,” Boylan said. The term covers territory from drag queens to homosexuals-which caused Boylan to exclaim, “So no wonder everyone’s confused!” Boylan does not claim to be an expert on the subject, nor that she is the “emblematic transperson.” She just has “a bunch of allegedly amusing stories,” she remarked with a smile. These stories are outlined in her memoirs, titled “She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.” They range from stories of her time as a man, where she would practice public speaking with a bra on-to her life with children and their reactions to her fame as a transsexual.