While Chaz Bono’s childhood was fairly unusual, his struggle to identify the reason for his life-long identity discomfort will sound very familiar to others whose genders don’t fit their bodies. His journey was complicated by the fear of becoming an embarrassment to his very public family. Health issues that may have arisen in response to his antipathy for many aspects of his body led to abuse of pain medications. And having come out as a lesbian, Chaz repeatedly fell in love with women who expected him to be a woman too.
All this goes to explain why Bono delayed transitioning until middle age. During the years he suppressed his authentic identity he says, “My being transgender felt like having the Incredible Hulk ready to explode from within me and ruin my life. I didn’t realize that I had it all backward, that being a transgender man was my real identity, and that my fear itself was the angry green monster preventing me from truly being myself and being happy.†That happiness and wholeness is palpable in the conclusion of this book.
Bono’s autobiography is also interesting for the pictures he gives us of how his mother and his partner coped with his transition. The reality of the changes brought on by testosterone affected them more strongly than they expected. Bono himself sees the changes as a liberation from the passive, pleasing others-first behaviors that had been part of his attempt to live as a girl. Another interesting insight is that Bono never felt he belonged in the lesbian community. When he met other female-to-male transgenders, he felt that he finally found people with common interests. “In the trans community, I had not only found my peers in an emotional sense, I had found my cultural home too.†Bono has made a career as a spokesperson for the LGBT community, first as a lesbian and now as a transgender man. That continuity led him to observe that “in most cases of homophobia, what people react violently toward is individuals not fitting into the assigned gender role that society deems fit or acceptable.†Like Christine Jorgensen in her day, Chaz Bono has turned the inevitability of media attention into an opportunity to smooth the road for other people who are transgender. For that very reason, his memoir belongs in collections that serve a general audience.
Reviewer: Carolyn Caywood, Retired
Virginia Beach Public Library
