Introduction
The only tragedy I can see in the amazing-but-not-completely-unforeseen news that came out last week, my cher peoples, is that it is forcing me to put off some really, really awesome posts.
First of all, I found an amazing poem about Moonstruck to share with you, written by a fabulous new poet whose first book primarily explores gay and coming-out themes, as well as family relationships in that vein (a really well-written book in all aspects)…but that has to be put off. Another item: I was at a Culver City birthday party two weekends ago and met someone there who works as an accounting consultant for Universal (but the publishing side) and I intended to post my longer exchange with him. The jist of it: while I was interviewing the accountant regarding Cher’s recent lawsuit for royalties, the birthday-party host, (who once playyed in Johnny Thunders’ band but now is in the music-marketing biz), waltzed by and declared loudly. “People are suing Universal all the time, Mary. You only care because it’s Cher.”
Okay, fair enough. Turns out there’s a spreadsheet for all ongoing lawsuits, how much cash they have in the kitty to deal with it, and what they’re going to counter-offer. Imagine some Cher line-items in that .xls. Also at the same party, I learned that Preston Sturges’ son Soloman lives in the accountant’s garage apartment…which has become somewhat of a Collier’s Mansion. The accountant defined Collier’s Mansion for us all a few times so we’d know what that meant.
But all that LA gossip is tidily-winks now! Although you could draw out a larger discussion about celebrity kids trying to survive in LA and how many of them spontaneously combust in various sorts of ways…that’s for another day. Because I was ALSO contacted a few weeks ago by Sonny & Cher’s 70s-era album engineer Lenny Roberts who found some errors in my comments about him (since corrected) in my "All I Ever Need is You" review (long form). I was able to interview him. But that awesomeness will also have to wait, because I have been completely upstaged by the formerly-Chastity-Bono’s announcement that she is becoming officially Chaz Bono, a he.
This news is a real bombshell all over, although Cher fans probably remember rumors stating Chastity has been thinking about this. I actually had friends call, email and facebook-poke me about it. My first question is will he keeping his middle name? Because Chazsun really runs together quite nicely.
Overview:
So in a nutshell, Chaz is getting what is technically called a gender reassignment (and I have never understood the assignment word in that phrase which sounds more like a school project than a physical reality). He will be doing this through hormone treatments and/or surgery which could possibly involve a legal gender switch as well as a biological one.
Reports are that Chas has the support of his family, including Cher and Mary Bono, her father’s widow. He has also received support publically from Neil G. Giuliano, the president of GLAAD; Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese; and Casey Schwarts, a trans youth specialist — and probably others by now. All are emphasizing Chaz’s courage and honesty in his decision. It’s hard to say Chaz has gone public with his decision, since going private with the decision was simply never an option for someone so famous.
A Chaz Bio Review
One thing that fascinates me about this story is how news outlets perceive both Chaz and Cher. Chaz seems best known as a political and social activist. But he has had a checkered career as media advisor for GLADD (which led to a public feud with Ellen DeGeneres over her sitcom Ellen and its possible “gayness”), memoir author (of sorts—both books under the Chastity name were co-written), a musician in the band Ceremony, and a journalist for The Advocate, among other vocations.
Likewise, Cher in one report was described as an LGBT icon. This is new. I have never seen her identified as an icon for lesbians, not to mention bisexuals and transgenders. For years I’ve been meeting many lesbian Cher fans at shows and conventions, but no one in the media seems to fully recognize this fan base.
To review, Chastity came out to her family in 1987 while a freshmen at NYU. She was outed forcibly in 1990 by a tabloid. Chastity came out herself in a 1995 cover article of The Advocate. She chronicled her relationships in her book “The End of Innocence.” She has said her coming-out helped her mother see her as a full person –- which is interesting because this seems to be a common Mother/Daughter struggle for many women, as opposed to men. Which seemingly has more to do with how mothers perceive their daughters vs. how they perceive their sons. And I wonder if Chaz's gender reassignment will alter this aspect of the mother/child relationship.
That Hate-Take
You know there’s always a freakin’ hate-take. So skip over this section if you have a low tolerance for hate…or if you’re so over it.
Criticism seems to be coming so far from the Christian-right, although sprinkles of snark and criticism have also been heard from what I have heard described as the sometimes-trans-phobic Gay community, including a theory that Chaz is simply trying to skirt the gay-marriage ban in California. There's one article I found that took the health-care-crisis/class-issue angle, accusing Chaz of being “a rich kid with time and money” while other people “don’t even have basic health care less the option of such an elective procedure.” Their agenda is showing.
Mary Ann Kreitzer of the Catholic Media Coalition (printed in Spero News) posted a typical critique and you pretty much know the drill. (The followig is synopsis of her points, not mine):
Chasity’s orientation (not to mention her trans-gendering) is a “lifestyle choice” which can be blamed on her parents’ famous, debacherous lifestyle, Sonny’s dressing her as a boy, and Cher’s lesbian friends who "seduced" an innocent little girl at an impressionable age. Mary even criticizes the setup of the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour dialogues as a contributing factor: “…their snide nit-picking at each other for a cheap joke wasn’t really funny at all.”
Btw, Farrah Fawcett’s dad also dressed and treated her like a little boy and who turned out more hyper-fem-sexualized than she did?
Mary also questions the validity of transgender “doctors” (her quotes), and calls transgendering “mutilation,” and part of “ identity delusion” resulting from the “lies of the gay lifestyle.” Then, no surprise, she lumps in abortion, the “biblical truth,” what "God intended," and finally calling on Cher to express sorrow and repentance.
At least she ends with a paragraph admitting that no parents are perfect before offering the Chaplet of Devine Mercy for Chaz in hopes that this will solve the whole unsavory situation. The most appalling aspect of her diatribe is that she quotes Chaz’s own memoirs against him.
The fact that anti-gay zealots use Chaz’s own words against him is what makes his attempt at privacy now problematic. They will interpret the act of publishing memoirs about sexuality as an invitation of publicity and will then mmisconstrue the content for their own agenda.
I continually find it interesting that these folks seem to have ownership of knowledge on “what god intends” and their theories always seem to map exactly to their own ideas 100%. Like God is identical to them in every moral way. What are the odds of that?
God intended weeds to grow in your garden, by the way. I’m just asking you to think your absurd absolutist thoughts through, that’s all.
A Dream I Had Last Night
Last night I had a dream that a girl I knew in high school named Joey, (for Josephine – she was always being harassed as an impostor by the substitute teachers), walked up behind me in a bar and she had a beard. I started catching with him about his transgendering when another HS person named Kay broke into the conversation unsolicited with the comment “My problem with this is…” I just gave her the hand and continued to ask Joey about his experiences and if he planned to change his name. He said “Duh, my name is Joey.” Later, I turned to Kay who said she was upset because I acted like I didn’t like her; and I said I didn’t not like her but I didn’t want to hear how she felt about this issue. Suddenly she morphed into a middle-aged paraplegic man who seemed a bit needy in wanting some attention for his handicaps. I wondered in the dream — do these people just want attention, these hate mongers? Are the just jealous of not having attention paid to them?
As Cher's character Elsa would say, “Alas…No.” They probably do want attention but they also want everything their way…like the universe is their big Burger King.
What this means to you and me
Actually, this should mean very little to you and me; but the news is worth some community discussion and it does bring up points about the nature of gender, privacy and how we perceive transsexuals in our society.
There are also interesting issues about the differences in being accepted as a transgender man vs a transgender woman. I have been reading that transgendered men have an easier time being accepted than transgendered women do and I’m wondering if male characteristics and mannerisms dominate in both cases, causing the discrepancy in acceptance.
From the only show I have seen on transgendering, Transgeneration on the Sundance Channel, re-assignments seem to be brutal and grueling. One Cher scholar who wrote to me was reflecting on the news while listening to the Sonny-penned-song “Mama” and the line “will the hurt go away deep inside” popped out to him. This idea was actually discussed in the show I saw: some counselors and post-transgendered kids expressing their concerns to pre-transgendered kids that any transforming surgery can only change a life so much. There are many underlying issues of self that will go eternally unresolved and often it’s hard to find the real seed of life’s discomfort.
My friend Christopher says Chaz may just be the most famous transgender in history, and also the child of arguably the biggest gay icon of the century. He said only Liza Minelli transgendering could compete. But I wonder if Chaz would be comfortable with that title. He did not seem a comfortable anything as a she, except maybe as a child star: not a comfortable teen, not a comfortable rock singer, not a comfortable celebrity-fit-club contestant, or a comfortable activist, a role he will be thrust into now more than ever. And not a comfortable symbol — although he is symbolic of many things: the child of celebrity, the most articulate, sensible-seeming (which is not to say the others are not sensible–he just has a special talent for it), normal member of a quite extraordinary family, and now gay sexuality and gender transformation.
Which brings us to that issue of privacy again -– Chaz is too famous and too symbolic to be getting any of that. Millions of television watchers must change their basic idea of him, and that’s everyone…not just a pedestrian family and social circle like most transgenders have. Some will simply refuse to change. And some will refuse to respect his privacy.
I hope his family is prepared for somewhat of an unfortunate media circus, although Cher has been enduring this for years for somewhat less Earth-shattering issues. Cher will be dragged into the on-going debate, no doubt, but she’s not making statements for now…which is probably wise. The decision Chaz has made is a statement that pretty much speaks for itself.
The haters have a lot to hate about these days. Change in attitudes won’t be smooth sailing for still a while now. And this is a family that will be going through a lot, both privately and publicly.
Gregory on the Cher list stated the obvious the other day: that Chastity, in her physicality, has been very masculine for many years. This isn't that shocking.
Gregory also summed up the situation very well with this reality check:
“The reasons people have a hard time with this is because as you get older you become nostalgic… just as we wanted to believe S&C were the couple in love when we saw the cameras were on them, we now have to re-adjust our perception of that cute little daughter of theirs. Life is not a television show and we as fans will never really know Cher or her family or what is going on inside their head everyday. Chas did not sign up to be in the public eye so my heart goes out to her because being Cher’s daughter, she cannot do this in private.”
And it bears repeating, sometimes even someone who did sign up for fame deserves a bit of privacy, too.
My final whine
Can we get back to talking about me again soon? Because before this news came out, I also wanted to gleefully brag about how often Cher Scholar is quoted in Wikipedia. 🙂
Peace to you Chaz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1u5PTLjHyk
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