Aug 112012
It’s a Girl, Finally
At the age of nine, Tony knew she was a girl inside and began secretly cross-dressing. Twenty years later, she took the courageous step that only a small fraction of transgendered people take: she had sexual reassignment surgery to match her body to her mind. In between those two milestones, Toni lead a fascinating life as a lesbian, detective, and police officer.
It’s a Girl, Finally chronicles her turbulent journey from being born a male to becoming the female she knew she was in
List Price: $ 4.99
Price: $ 4.99
Interesting but wordy autobiographical transition memoir.,
“It’s a Girl, Finally” chronicles the life experiences of Tony Ferelle and his ongoing transition to Toni.
The book begins with a rather explicit, detailed but condensed chapter about an actual surgery to convert Tony’s male genitalia into Toni’s vagina and associated female genitalia. From there, it presents Tony’s second generation Sicilian family in 1971 as his mother prepares for his birth. He was the center of attention in his family – considered a very special little boy
Little did they know. Around third grade, this “special little boy” became aware that he truly was different from other little boys. Shortly thereafter, he began cross-dressing in secret, as many young transgender kids do. It wasn’t until college years that Toni began to truly emerge.
Much of the first half of the book is devoted to fairly thorough discussions of the Harry Benjamin (now WPATH) requirements for transition treatment. Most importantly, the second half of “It’s a Girl, Finally” is devoted to Toni’s post- college life trying to accommodate her needs and those of her social environment.
After nearly 10 years as a police officer, several panic attacks and the advice of her partner, her therapist, and her own discomfort with police work led to Toni’s return to civilian life – and being just a girl.
“It’s a Girl, Finally” joins quite a number of transgender personal memoirs. It is not difficult to read, but seems overly long. As an educator and activist in the transgender community, I was disappointed there weren’t more current references with regard to bottom surgery and the WPATH criteria. Also, there are many more current resources available than those included in the text.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Interesting, but somewhat lacking,
One positive thing I can say about this memoir is that it held my interest, and that, after all, is a good thing. However, in terms of a rating, I would actually give it 3.5 stars and not four.
Although inconsistent in quality, with portions that are not particularly well written, I somehow enjoyed it. This memoir provides an interesting glimpse at the life of a MTF transsexual in transition and slightly beyond, while providing a clinical case study about an individual who has a history of making impulsive, anger-based, co-dependent and often self-destructive decisions. The book ultimately is about a person who frequently sees herself as a victim and doesn’t accept much responsibility for her actions, although she has certainly mastered the art of rationalization and justification.
What I enjoyed most were the parts of the book that provided rather touching reading, such as the author’s descriptions of her loving relationship with her parents and later on about the support and acceptance of her extended family. Even with the inconsistencies in the quality of the writing, there are other portions that are excellent such as the vivid description of the symptoms of emergent PTSD that our protagonist, Toni encounters, having first been convinced she is experiencing cardiac problems that are at the root of her physical symptoms.
Technically, the editing of this book is lacking, as evidenced by the use of the same phrase or statement in rapid succession. For example, the term “tipping point” is employed twice in consecutive paragraphs. There are also portions of the book that were clearly copied and dropped in from email strings and other parts that were obviously pasted in from police manuals. Then there are the frequent failures to dig deeper, such as in the case of the frightening dream described by the author while under stress from PTSD, where Toni, now a post-op transgender police officer, dreams she has “lost her weapon” and cannot find it.
To me there is some clear Freudian symbolism here, but Toni never delves into that aspect at all, instead, continuously deprecating the mental health services she received while in the process of exploring her gender issues. That said, the author is clearly and obviously no fan of the professional gender support community, which, as a group, she characterizes at best as self-serving gatekeepers, and at worst, she portrays as incompetent, greedy and often bigoted individuals, who, as a class, seem to get off vicariously by hearing the intimate stories of those unfortunates who have been unlucky enough to have been born in the wrong body.
The author relates that during the many years she spent as a client working with various therapists she received absolutely no practical advice and took away no personal insight from these experiences. Somehow, I believe her last pronouncement, although I heartily feel that that the first cannot possibly be true. One particularly intriguing aspect of this memoir is the frank and shockingly violent nature of the author’s honestly revealed thoughts and internal dialogue when under stress, which seem to lend credence to the idea that perhaps Toni should have tried a bit harder to get something out of her sessions with her early gender therapists.
Because the book ends so abruptly, just after the author’s unwanted termination from her law enforcement career, once again over an incident reflecting anger and terrible judgment, for which, the author again takes no responsibility, the reader is left with an empty and frightened feeling about what the future will bring for Toni both career wise and with regard to her relationship. Can her love partnership survive her angry and controlling behavior, or will she eventually take responsibility for her life, acknowledge her anger problem and learn to deal with it maturely and not as a victim?
Was this review helpful to you?
|