“The only true voyage…would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is…” (Proust, 2003, p. 343). This wonderful quote from Proust seems like a fitting place to begin because I wish to take you on an autoethnographic journey of discovery so that you can see for yourself what it was like for the participants and me as we found ourselves in strange and sometimes frightening territory. We realized that we were, sometimes unexpectedly, in positions of support to our friends or lovers who were uncomfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth. Most of us would describe ourselves as lesbian and, when our partners began to explore the possibility of sex reassignment, struggled with our established identity.
My friend Christopher was the inspiration for this exploration. We were domestic partners before and during his early transition from female to male. Both Christopher and I were public figures in the small town in which we lived and our lives were somewhat on display. Christopher founded an organization called Trans Connect to provide support to those who present their gender in alternate ways and to provide education to service providers as well as to schools with regard to transgender issues and is well known in that town as well as in the larger gender diverse community as a trans man. Because of this, he has agreed to waive anonymity.
The body of this work includes the entire texts of three papers I have written during the course of my studies as I navigated the path to this research. All of these papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I have used these papers to illustrate my autoethnographic journey toward the discovery of diverse gender presentations, to describe the state of knowledge in the discipline of nursing regarding this issue, and to demonstrate how autoethnography works. The centre of the work is the novel I have written based upon the stories the participants and I have shared with one another. The novel is written in everyday language and aims to show, rather than tell, the stories of ten women who love and support trans men. In many parts of the dissertation I have used dialogue, both internal as well as conversation among created characters, as a way to bring to life concepts under discussion. This is in keeping with an autoethnographic style.
The dissertation is organized into three parts. Part one is a description of the process and methods I undertook in order to arrive at the novel. It consists of eight chapters that are placed in a more or less linear way, although the process was not at all linear, from the beginning of my exploration, to a discussion of the overall voyage. Part two consists of the novel, which is the story of experiences of women living with trans men during their transition or consideration of transition, disguised as having been experienced by fictional characters. Part three contains four chapters that are the analysis, a description of how I managed the information gathered, a discussion of evaluation for such a work as this, and some consideration as to the distribution and future for the study.
My research questions were:
• What is it like to be in loving relationship with an FTM during and after some of his transition?
• What are the effects on the relationship for the female partner during this time?
• What happens to the supportive partner’s ideas of her own identity?
• Does the balance of power shift during this transition, and if so, how?
The novel poignantly addresses all these questions. To be in a loving relationship with a trans man in the early stages of transition can be very challenging, and for the participants and me, often ended in a breakdown of the relationship. It can be a difficult time for women supporters because their adjustments and struggles with identity and sense of self and community are frequently overshadowed by the enormity, and for some, curiosity of sex reassignment. Often the relationship shifts from egalitarian to one that resembles more of a male-female binary where the male exerts power over his partner. Half of the participants in this study said they would not enter into another relationship with a trans man. That leaves the other half who said they would. The novel might serve as a help to those considering such a relationship as well as to those already walking the sometimes slippery, sometimes exhilarating road of partnership with a trans man. There are no easy answers to these questions. My aim is to reveal a glimpse into the lives of people about whom not much is known. / Graduate / 0569 / merryfeather@shaw.ca
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/5439 |
| Date | 23 June 2014 |
| Creators | Merryfeather, Lyn |
| Contributors | Bruce, Winifred Anne |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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