The Trans-Woman Nameless Exception

Trans Women Are Living Icons of What the World Has to Gain

People wonder how I didn't know—till age 54—that I'd always been a woman. It's the topic of my memoir, How to NOT Know You're Trans, and its follow-up, TransQuality. The simple answer is: I wasn't allowed to.

Father Culture has gaslight us all.

Scene 1 - Women, the Spoils of War

The professor opens my college freshman year with Homer's Iliad as the foundational piece of Western literature. The story begins with its hero, Achilleus, throwing a fit and sitting out the Achaeans' siege of Troy because his commander, Agamemnon takes for himself Briseis, daughter of the priest of the Trojan temple that the Achaeans have just sacked.

"Women are spoils of war," says my professor, explaining that men leaving their homes to fight in battle expect compensation. This is their pay. Agamemnon and Achilleus fail to divvy up Briseis equitably, which spurs the plot of the Iliad.

Not a person in the room says, "Whoa! Why isn't the focus of the story on the absolute horror of Briseis' meaning nothing in comparison to men's dilemma in deciding whose sex slave she's going to be?"

If I'd had the poise to ask that question, the answer would've been, "That's the way it's always been."