GLR July-August 2025

We don’t do that stuff so much anymore. Really, the sports thing is infuriating. Tell me that this is really a national problem, re quiring the full attention of the Executive Branch. As if the peo ple who are all blue in the face about trans women in sports ever gave two flying fucks about women’s sports before. Or women in general. Just about the only thing about women’s lives that kept them awake before was the hope of taking away our right to abortion. CC: I reached out to a friend of mine who is currently transi

write this book, taking stock of where the movement has been over the last 25 years. I guess I hoped, though, that the occa sion of writing a bookend to She’s Not There would mark a mo ment when we could celebrate our progress instead of mourning all that we have lost, at least for now. I wanted to write about the fullness of a trans woman’s life, instead of focusing on transition. So many books about and by trans people are about transition—Chaz Bono even gave his book that title. But life goes on, and I wanted to write more broadly about the differences I experienced Before and After, in thesaurus one day, looking up words that meant division. Cleavage jumped out at me as a “contronym,” a word that means both itself and its opposite. Which, in addition to evoking images of breasts and bosoms, also is a good way of thinking about the life of a trans person. CC: At my university, the LGBT group hosts an ask-me-any thing booth where they try to explain the current nomenclature, “they-them,” “cis-male,” “nonbinary,” “transphobic,” etc., to other students unfamiliar with, and sometimes hostile to, these ideas. Why are pronouns important? JFB: Pronouns are important because it’s an act of human kindness, or generosity, to call people by the names, and the everything from love to loss, from food to fashion. There were a lot of stories to tell, and earlier ones I wanted to revisit. The title came from my looking at the

tioning and is a big fan of yours. I asked her to formulate a question, and she wrote: “These are very hard times for trans people, especially young trans people who want and need to play a sport. As a parent, what would you say to a trans youth who’s told ‘No, you can’t play’”? JFB: I would gently explain that the world

Walk tall, be proud, and be happy, because if you’re trans, you’re a superhero. And oh how they hate it when we’re happy!

can be a place in which mean men and women sometimes hurt people, but that sometimes people act mean because they’re afraid. But I would make it clear that there is nothing wrong with the child, and that there are more good people than mean ones in this world, and that we can help mean people be nicer by treating them with love. And then I would tell the child in no uncertain terms: “I will play with you.” CC: You had a foray into reality television, a show titled I Am Cait , in which you road-tripped with Caitlyn Jenner. Talk about a wild ride. How do you think about that experience now? JFB: Caitlyn turned out to be as dumb as a bag of hammers. I hoped to open her heart by teaching her about the lives that trans people live, but in the end she was less interested in that than in the stupidity to which she was committed. It broke my heart. I really liked her, and think she had the potential to do great good in the world. I don’t think the show was especially well cast, though I came to love the women I traveled with. There was one night that kind of summed it up for me. We were all in Chicago, and at the symphony hall a pianist was per forming Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 . I proposed that we all go together. But instead everyone was determined to go to a local drag show, where we stuffed dollar bills into the G-string panties of someone dressed up like Liza Minelli. I get drag and celebrate it as art. It has been a way of find ing expression when there were no avenues available for that— and also it has created a loyal, fierce community. I love all that. Still, there are lots of women (and men) in the trans community who are at least as interested in books and ideas and music as they are with people lip-syncing to Gloria Gaynor. It is worth noting that in Caitlyn’s Malibu mansion I never once saw a book. Although Fox News was blasting from big TVs all day long. CC: Your previous memoirs, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003) and I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted (2008), both take their titles from famous songs, and I know, having worked with you in Maine, of your love for music. Why “ Cleavage ” as the title of your latest memoir— which, you told the Times , you did not especially want to write? JFB: Did I say that? I wonder what I meant. I was psyched to

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July–August 2025

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