Jamison Green, Becoming a Visible Man

Back in December I had the fortune of attending an event that featured Jamison Green. Brought to campus by my university’s undergraduate lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and questioning student group and entertainment events team, Green’s talk was preceded by a panel of transsexual, transgender, and genderqueer folks who generously offered their experiences and knowledges to open the discussion.

I’m ordinarily hesitant about such panels because there’s a way in which I feel they feed non-transpeople’s curiousity in too facile a manner. Don’t get me wrong, such panels definitely do much work to change people’s attitudes by showing the humanity of LGBT people. But, I guess there’s something about the project of feeling as if I have to prove my humanity to others that rankles me. Besides, too often I’ve heard people leave such events with the misconception that the panelists’ views are representative of the whole of the community (despite panelists’ very efforts to reiterate that they speak about their personal experiences). Still, the popularity of such a format cannot be overlooked. Case in point, despite that this event took place on a Friday afternoon right before finals week, the seats were filled! It’s only a shame that this couldn’t have been turned into a two- or even three-part series, because there just wasn’t enough time to hear each of the panelists’ out, and to fully hear and engage with Green.

I didn’t necessarily leave feeling as if I learned anything new that I hadn’t known before (I know, that sounds awfully egotistical, but it is my truth). I did, however, leave feeling as if others in the room were being exposed to a lot of new knowledges. Perhaps more valuable to me, however, was to witness the way in which Green and the other panelists were able to make themselves heard to the audience. They did so with a style and grace that ingratiated them to the audience without compromising their dignity or other parts of themselves. This certainly wasn’t reminiscent of the talk show freak hour, but rather an open, honest, educational, and challenging conversation. If we could only spend all our afternoons similarly engaged!

In any case, though I had own Jamison Green’s book, Becoming a Visible Man, for quite some time prior to this event, I hadn’t done more than quickly glance through it. After seeing him speak in person, however, I finally made my way through the book more thoroughly and methodically. And I’m so glad I did!


Green, Jamison. Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004

Jamison Green’s book Becoming a Visible Man is easily among my current top choices of trans-related texts. Not only does Green give readers pieces of his own personal experiences (following the trend of many other trans texts), but he also offers accessible, educational, and nuanced arguments around trans issues. In this way, Becoming a Visible Man is not only the story of Green’s own personal becoming, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the story of the structures, institutions, and other forces that circumscribe, shape, and color all our becomings. In this vein, I’m confident that this book would appeal to transpeople and non-transpeople alike, both those with none or very little knowledge of trans issues, as well as those with much experience in this area.

While I haven’t had the fortune (yet) to be familiar with Green’s writings in the FTM Newsletter, I have no doubt that he provided much help and wisdom to its breadth of readers. His writing is balanced and aware of its biases, always mindful of questioning the existing structures of power, and responsible to those with whom he seems himself in community and alliance. By no means does this mean that Green attempts to speak for or about all transpeople or all transmen, or that he understands all transpeople or their experiences to be the same. Rather, Green is quite adamant about the differences between and among transpeople, at the same time that he is clear that we must come together in all our differences to effect true social change. And to his credit, through this all, his author’s voice is calm and poetic; a great combination indeed of form and context!

I really could go on at length about the merits of this text…there isn’t one thing I didn’t like or find useful in its 231 pages. But, I’ll settle for highlighting some of my most favorite passages:

(68) “I realized that if I could live in a way that declared my own self-acceptance—that is, not to broadcast my history every minute of the day, but to speak up honestly when it was appropriate, not necessarily with anger or even impatience, but with the compassion that I was finding within myself, to dispel myths and stereotypes that people cling to about us—that it would show others they could do it, too. Together we could change the conditions that generated our fears.”

(78) “Politics is the art of negotiation among divergent goals, and cooperation is difficult when people are unaware of their motives or goals, or unable or unwilling to reveal them.”

(89) “Being a transsexual is not something we do in the privacy of our own bedrooms; it affects every aspect of our lives, from our driver’s licenses to our work histories, from our birth certificates to our school transcripts to our parents’ wills, and every relationship represented by those paper trails.”

(127) “For some people, the consequences of a transperson’s assertion of his or her identity are simply too frightening because it threatens their own position within a particular community of ideology or faith.”

(128) “My brother was not exactly disapproving of my sexual orientation, nor was he resentful of my ability to pitch in with his friends on construction projects or to manage home electrical problems, but he was much more comfortable when he didn’t have to explain me anymore. This is not a reason to transition, as far as I’m concerned, but is a fact that an appearance of conformity with normative gender behavior does cause less social friction, a fact that every child has had drummed into her or him from earliest consciousness.

(177) “The extent to which we convey the truth of our experience is the extent to which any audience will receive us, yet so long as other people control the forum, or so long as the analyzing or commenting voices are not informed by direct experience of us, we are still vulnerable to being treated with nothing more enlightened than prejudice.”

(180) “Social conventions and institutions support individual prejudice against the rights of transsexual people, adding to the burden of secrecy. These conventions persist because no one has tried, until very recently, to correct them.”

(191) “Gender is a private matter that we share with others; and when we share it, it becomes a social construction, thus it requires, like language, a ‘speaker’ and a ‘listener.’ It is between the two of these actors that gender is defined, negotiated, corroborated, or challenged…But if we don’t speak a language that others understand, then it can be a source of difficulty, even conflict, if we find ourselves in an intolerant environment.”

(210) “If we are concerned that others will perceive our physical differences as laughable deficiencies, the answer is not to dehumanize and desensitize ourselves so we can manage rejection, but to sensitize others to appreciate us, and to learn to manage our own self-doubts so that others will be able to see worthy partners in us.”