Jennifer Finney Boylan has published 19 books, including the novel Mad Honey, co-written with her good friend Jodi Picoult. Her memoir, She’s Not There, was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. Since 2014, she has been the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. She is also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College and the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She is the President of PEN America. For many years, she was a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.
What’s the big idea?
Men and women are different in so many ways, yet we are also much the same. The difficult and joyful experiences of Jennifer Finney Boylan as a transgender American have given her a unique vantage for understanding the impact of gender on our lives. Her lessons show that the space that divides us can also bind us together.
Below, Jennifer shares five key insights from her new book, Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us. Listen to the audio version—read by Jennifer herself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Gender affects everything.
Gender affects our sense of food, our sense of memory, and even our sense of self. The changes I experienced in going from male to female were not only the obvious ones, like learning not to wear pearls before five and how to do a French braid. Over time, as the obvious things faded, more subtle and important things rose to the surface.
I have been married to my wife Deirdre for 36 years: 12 as husband and wife, and 24 as wife and wife. Our marriage and the love that we share is at the center of Cleavage. We have been on a long road together. That road continues, and the changes in our marriage are worth talking about.
“As the obvious things faded, more subtle and important things rose to the surface.”
Some other things affected by my change of gender include my sense of memory and my sense of friends. I think I remember everything now. Things that used to slip my mind are now embedded in my heart forever. When I talk to some of my male friends, I’ll say, “Remember that time we were all eating pizza?” And they look at me like, “What? That was 20 years ago. I can’t believe you remember that.” My sense is I can’t believe you forgot.
Then, there’s a sense of food and body image. I didn’t used to own a scale, but oh yes, now we own one. I think about my size even here in my sixties when a very logical question to ask is, What possible difference could it make? It still matters to me, somehow.
2. Everybody should have one life rather than two.
For transgender people, there’s a clear before and after in life. However, I think it is true for everybody that if you live long enough, then there is a sense of various bridges that you crossed, after which things began to feel different. A challenge for us, though, is that sometimes we are unable to connect who we’ve become with who we’ve been. At my age now, I look in the mirror and I think, Oh my God, who the hell is that? Who’s that little old lady?
I think all of us wonder, Where did I go? Where is that child? Where is that young person? If you don’t somehow connect who you’ve become with who you were, I think you can wind up traumatized. You can end up a person without a past.
I connect who I’ve become with who I was by writing. I use storytelling to weave the fabric between the past and present. It’s one of the great things that stories do. They let us know who we’ve become and who we were.
3. Things for transgender people have become both easier and harder.
Twenty-five years ago, when I embarked upon transition, it was like finding my way through the wilderness. There was only one person in the entire state of Maine (where I live) who would be an endocrinologist to transgender people. There was one guy who was an endocrinologist, and the only way you could find out about these people was through whisperers from somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. It was hard.
“It was like finding my way through the wilderness.”
Now, that path is better blazed. There is a gender center in Portland, Maine, and centers for transgender medicine around the country. In that way, things have become easier. But on the other hand, things have become harder because 25 years ago, nobody had received formal instruction on how to hate me.
When I came out to my 85-year-old Evangelical Christian, Republican mother about being transgender, she didn’t give me a lecture about trans women in sports or the dangers of social contagions. My mother took me in her arms and wiped my tears away. She quoted 1 Corinthians by saying, “These three remain: faith, hope, and love.”
With increased visibility has come increased blowback. Now, we are on the radar, and some people use us to upset everybody. Some people say that it was the issue of transgender people that made them support Donald Trump, so did that tip the 2024 election? I don’t know. But things are much harder in some ways as a direct result of the progress we’ve made.
4. Revising a page is like the process of life.
I think about revision as both a human being and as a writer. As writers, multiple drafts are the best way to improve your work. At Barnard College, where I teach, I have a class called Invention and Revision in which I have students do the following:
- The first assignment is to write a seven-page story.
- The second assignment is to turn that story into a 21-page story.
- The third assignment is to take the 21-page story and turn it into a three-page story.
- The final draft is any length whatsoever, literally from one page to a hundred.
In making my students do this, I have them understand that a story can be revised in many of the same ways that a life can be. As Jennifer Boylan, I am embodied in a new draft from the one I was before. I’m very grateful for the changes that I’ve made. Needing to embody a new draft in life is not a process unique to transgender Americans, and that’s hopeful. A new draft does not mean that you’re a failure. It means you have an opportunity to become someone better even late in life. All of us are just one day away from our next draft.
5. Love will prevail.
This is very much in the spirit of my mother. This is part of my long conversation with her when I came out. I said, “Mom, isn’t it going to be a scandal for you when the neighbors find out that I’m your daughter now?” And she said, “Well, quite frankly, yes, but I will adjust. Love will prevail.” For my family and me, that became our mantra: Love will prevail.
Unfortunately, sometimes, the things that prevail are hatred and disappointment. Sometimes, the things that prevail are violence, misunderstanding, cruelty, or bigotry. But in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome. It has in my life. I hope it will and yours. May love in your life prevail always.
To listen to the audio version read by author Jennifer Finney Boylan, download the Next Big Idea App today:
