My New Book. The Unexpected Penis: Conversations on the Gender Trail
Last month I launched my latest book THE UNEXPECTED PENIS: CONVERSATIONS ON THE GENDER TRAIL. Most of these conversations were forged on Facebook with colleagues (independent business owners, nearly all female), some longtime friends and a few elders, who posted memes and stories defending trans ideology in support of the trans people in their lives or just the concept of a people being able to live as they chose. Some were live conversations, in particular one I had with members of my old writers group each representing a different position that served well to show how complex the topic is. Some conversations I had in person with my closest friends.
I did not engage actual trans identified contacts because it was the ideology I was challenging not the lived experience. Those contacts have my compassion and respect for actually negotiating this life with such an identity.
Through these conversations I was able to assess what people actually understood about the trans narrative and what evidence they were willing to use to defend their position. This allowed me to further challenge this evidence with the various statistics, studies and analysis provided by more qualified professionals who have also taken up this same challenge.
In the five years I have researched this topic and engaged in this practice, I have been able to assess the points of weakness in my opponents’ defenses and hone my argument. Once I understood the territory and all the social implications of legalizing this ideology, the book practically wrote itself. I only needed to embellish it with a dry humor born of the psychic warfare that comes with the territory and include my own experience as a lesbian with 35 years of participation in the San Francisco gay community. I was also able to draw from what I learned from my mother’s career as a therapist specializing in child behavior problems as well as what I experienced in my own gender non-conforming childhood, informed as it was by the third gender tradition of my home culture in Thailand.
Written as a memoir of my own journey on the gender trail, as I went to events and became acquainted with the intrepid forerunners who informed me of all that I needed to know to grasp its implications, I hoped to offer this information as a primer on the trans phenomenon. One that would help my reader get up to speed on this now hot topic. At 200 pages it is slim unintimidating package easy to pass along and with a title that is sure to evoke a response if not a chuckle.
Of my three books, this has been my most intellectually challenging project to date and the process has advanced my communication skills and social moxie considerably, so I have my unwitting opponents to thank for that and have protected their anonymity by omitting their names and details. Those of my writers’ group sportingly allowed me to use their names after reading their story in the book and giving me their writerly opinions on how I might fail my own goals. I am assured by my editor and my early readers that it is an eye opening, compelling, page turner of a read, so I offer it with confidence and pride. It is available as both an ebook and paperback on the Amazon platform. https://a.co/d/aoQpIjl