Both Sides Now

**I guess "journeying" into and through gender is the predominant metaphor these days**

Khosla, Dhillon. Both Sides Now: One Man’s Journey Through Womanhood. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2006.

Dhillon Khosla, in his book, Both Sides Now, offers readers an intimate chronicling through which he presents his bodily transformations from female to male. His chapters are broken down by the month and range from July 1997 (when Khosla is twenty-eight years old) to November 1999, moving readers through various steps in his transitions as a transsexual man.

Although not exclusively focused on the various medical and surgical procedures Khosla undergoes (including, but not limited to a full mastectomy, testosterone shots, hysterectomy, and metoidioplasty) Both Sides Now does center heavily on such bodily transformations. Khosla’s memoir makes evident the extent to which he lives in and through his body, and the utmost significance it is to his well-being (mental, emotional, physical, etc.) that his body not only match his gender identity as a man, but also that others in the world receive him as a man and his body as male.

Many may not understand the depth of the despair Khosla feels whenever he is addressed as “ma’am” instead of “sir.” I certainly don’t purport to fully understand the utter dejection Khosla conveys at such instances. But, to his credit, Khosla tells his story in such a manner that demonstrates to readers the necessity of such bodily transformations for him, if not for readers themselves.

With this said, I would expect Both Sides Now to appeal to other transsexual men looking for affirmation for their own choices to undergo various sex-alignment surgeries, while possibly being met with some skepticism from those transgender and genderqueer people who find themselves in various relationships to the question of hormones and surgery, whether in favor of some surgeries but not others, against any hormones and surgery whatsoever, and all other possible options.

An element concerning his various surgeries that I especially appreciated was Khosla’s descriptions of his pre-surgery routines and his post-surgery recuperations. Khosla gives us several glimpses of the processes circumscribing surgery—from researching surgeons, scheduling appointments, finding the money to pay for surgeries that health insurance won’t cover, getting home after surgery, dealing with drainage bulbs and catheters, as well as adjusting to the external physical changes (or lack thereof) accompanying surgery.

The struggles to find money to pay for transsexual-related surgeries are certainly not a new topic within transsexual narratives, nor are the concerns about post-operative satisfaction. However, I did find Khosla’s discussion of various pain medications and post-op recoveries (with and without complications) to be rather unique. It is in large part due to his struggles around surgery that he is able to so convincingly sway readers as to the vitality of surgery for him. (And, I doubt that we were even privy to the most gruesome details his post-op experiences.)

Another element that could have proved unique would have been if Khosla had said a little more about how his race came into play in his transition (he was born to an East Indian father and a German mother). We get glimpses of his racial identity in relationship to food, language, and growing up outside of the U.S., but never really in terms of his sexual or gender identities (with the exception of the name he chooses for himself).

[Hopefully race will figure more centrally in the book I picked up alongside Khosla’s, Max Wolf Valerio’s The Testosterone File: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male.]