Product Description

Author Helen Boyd is a happily married woman whose husband enjoys sharing her wardrobeand she has written the first book on transgendered men to focus on their relationships and their female partners. Traditionally known as cross-dressers, transvestites, or drag queens, men like Helen's husband are diverse and don't always conform to stereotype. Many of the older transvestites are socially conservative, deeply closeted, and devout churchgoers. Helen addresses every imaginable question concerning the reasons for behavior that still baffles not only "mental health professionals" but the practitioners themselves; the taxonomy of the transgendered and the distinct but overlapping societies of each group; coming out; bisexuality; and homophobia. The book features interviews with some very interesting people, all of whom struggle and love: dominatrix and her cross-dressing husband; a crossdressing Reiki master and his son; a woman who after dating one cross-dresser wanted to date others and metand fell in love witha transsexual instead; a woman whose husband promised her he was only a cross-dresser and later realized that he was transsexual. This is a book about relationships that will engage the reader, and Helen's narrative is a powerful lens with which to examine our own notions of gender and equality. "

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39026 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

A really important book
I am very very excited ... I have just finished reading a book called MY HUSBAND BETTY by Helen Boyd. I'd like to see reading this book made a condition of admission for anybody joining a transgendered support group. It would save so much time and raise the level of debate immeasurably.

Although it's written by the wife of a Transgendered husband and cannot be recommended too highly to other wives/partners, it goes a lot further than that and i would recommend it to anybody anywhere on the Male to Female 'spectrum' or outside looking in. Basically she has set out to find out everything she can about the Male to Female Transgendered/transvestite/crossdressing scene [all these terms are explained in the book]. She does this with incredible perception and honesty. I found this far more refreshing than anything I have read by a fellow TG. Because of her perspective as the wife of a Crosdresser, she takes no prisoners and never lets us off the hook. She covers all the issues to do with gender. She boldly wades into the issue of sexuality and never once tries to cloud it. At times she doesn't try to hide her exasperation and anger but she always lets us know when she is being subjective. For this reason it is imperative to read the book from cover to cover. My only worry is that readers may dip into it and take things out of context. It's so carefully written ... it thoroughly deserves careful reading. Every sentence says something. There is no dead wood. Despite all the above it's also written with an amazing degree of affection, understanding and compassion. Above all it's a brilliantly accessible and often wryly amusing read. You might get the impression I liked it.

All the way through I kept on thinking she was going to upset me at some point but she never did. I particularly liked her insistance that if a person tells us they feel a certain way ... who are we to say they do not. After a lifetime and especially the last three years spent in intense self discovery there were not really any conclusions that I had not already arrived at ... but she sets everything out so clearly and I was just so glad that I felt she got everything right and admitted it when there were no easy answers. I think she makes some profoundly wise judgments even when she accuses TVs of not taking feminism seriously, which as she suggests most TVs are deluded in thinking they do.

There are two areas where i could have done with more but which I feel she wisely avoids because she has no first hand experience of them. She briefly touches on 'Male Admirers' but hardly comprehensively. And there is virtually nothing on the children of TG's ... an area where I feel information and support are sadly lacking.

I would like to thank Helen Boyd for this book for two BIG reasons. Firstly the untold relief of knowing that there is now a book I can unreservedly recommend to anybody who ever asks me for advice or information again. Secondly for helping me to know that it's all right to be me. I was just about there but I just feel this book is a lovely hug that reassures me it's all OK even if there's plenty of difficulties ahead. I think it's an incredibly important book even though she doesn't say anything truly original or new. What she has done is taken what's out there and made it brilliantly accessible.

Wonderful book
This is a very important book for anyone involved in the cd/tv/tg/ts scene, be they the person in question, or their partner, friend, family. It is a serious and in depth coverage of many aspects of this tricky side of society but is never pompous, never judgemental. It is honest about the good and the bad. I have learnt a lot from it and cannot recommend it enough.

The Only Book you NEED - on Cross Dressing and The Transgendered
Put aside all those learned tomes by psychiatrists and sexologists, take a rest from all the self-justifying autobiographies by the transgendered - from CD to TS. Helen Boyd's book is personal, objective, warm, compassionate moving and well researched. 'My Husband Betty' is the new benchmark for everyone who is affected by cross-gender issues. That means its for everyone who is awake to the seismic changes in our perceptions of gender and gender roles over the last one hundred years.

Helen Boyd does not shrink from thoroughly revealing the many ways in which cross-gender behaviour challenges our assumptions about sex, sexuality, self and others. Buy This Book!