Please Welcome Christopher Moss
0
comments
Posted by
Christoarpher
,
24 January 2014
·
1,343 views
Please Welcome Christopher Moss
I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming Christopher Moss to my little corner of the internet today. He’s here to promote his new book, Beloved Pilgrim. I’ve been waiting for Beloved Pilgrim for a number of reasons. First of all, it looks like a great story. Second of all, it features a transman as a protagonist. Third of all, it’s an historical romance. I know, right?
Blurb
At the time of the earliest Crusades, young noblewoman Elisabeth longs to be the
person she’s always known is hidden inside. When her twin brother perishes from a fever, Elisabeth takes his identity to live as a man, a knight. As Elias, he travels to the Holy Land, to adventure, passion, death, and a lesson that honor is sometimes found in unexpected places.
Elias must pass among knights and soldiers, survive furious battle, deadly privations, moral uncertainty, and treachery if he’ll have any chance of returning to his newfound love in the magnificent city of Constantinople.
Today, however, Christopher is going to tell us about his own journey, which I think is a real privilege. So I’ll just be getting out of the way and shutting up, now.
Christopher Hawthorne Moss
To be honest, I never was a straight woman. I was born with a female body, and as I matured sexually I knew my predilection was for men. It’s not surprising that I thought I was a straight woman. But I am and always have been a gay man. It just took me 60 years to figure that out. 60 years of feeling out of place, not myself.
How can a person have a female body and be attracted to men sexually and not be a straight woman? Easy. Be born with a male brain. It’s more common than you think. There are two times when a child is bathed within the uterus with sex hormones. The first is very shortly after conception. That bath determines what sexual organs the child will have. Even then the options are astoundingly various, with many more combinations than just boy or girl.
What has generally been unrealized is that there is a second time the fetus is soaked in a flow of hormones, and that is about six weeks into a pregnancy, just as the brain is starting to develop. The hormones do not necessarily match the earlier set. A girl baby may find herself with a male brain, and a boy baby may find himself with a female brain. MRIs have shown many babies have brains with characteristics of both males and females.
Now let me ask you something. If for strange science fiction reasons you were forced to choose either your body or your brain to survive, the other one being destroyed, which would you choose? Are you your body? Or are you your brain? Looking at popular culture it seems we see our brains as who we are. Think of stories with heads preserved alive in mad scientist labs. Your brain is essential to what we think of as a sentient being. That’s where your mind, your thoughts, your personality, your perceptions of the world, your communication is located. We never say of a person with a broken limb, “She’s out of her arm.” But we most certainly say it of someone not acting normally “He’s out of his mind.””
That should explain what’s going on with someone who is transgender pretty clearly. I’ll continue with myself as the example. My body has been female, breasts, vagina, the whole nine yards, for all of my life. So are the genes that identify me as XX. I used to have a uterus, long gone now. But I don’t have a penis and testicles, or a prostate. Which am I, male, female, or none of the above?
From a very tender age, I don’t remember how long but it’s at least from the age of four, I knew I wasn’t like most girls. I wasn’t into sports, not in the Little League way, but I was very much into swords and bows and arrows and male heroes like Robin Hood. When we played “House” I chose to be “Brother”. When I started writing stories, I never wrote about women except as side characters. The letters and later stories a female friend and I wrote that ultimately became my first novel had us role-playing: she was the queen and I was King Lawrence. As far as I am concerned, I still am.
I knew something was not fitting when I came of age sexually. I knew even then that I was not a straight woman. Given the choices I thought I had, I guessed I must be a lesbian. I tried living as one, but it never worked. I wanted to be with a man. It was not until I read gay and M/M fiction that I started to get a hint as to what was going on all this time. I found the sex scenes very hot, but not as a spectator, as so many straight female writers explain. I liked being one of the two men. I felt everything the men were feeling, wanted everything they wanted, in spite of not having the equipment myself. That’s why they call it fantasy, right? Might it be more?
I soon learned that there is a difference between your sex, your gender identity and your sexual inclination. Mix and match. Many people, and this includes many gay, bisexual and lesbian people, have the mistaken belief that a person who is called transgender wants to be the other sex than they were born. They believe the person wants it for sexual reasons, or they want it because they don’t think you can have both worlds, or they are disturbed or at best don’t really understand what they want.
Where does the mistake lie? Is it in whether a person can or should want to be other than they are? No. It’s in the assumption that the person wants to be a member of the opposite sex. You can’t turn a straight woman into a gay man. He already is one. I already am and always have been a man. My shell is as false as if I ran around in a dress. If I could take off my body the way I can take off my clothes, then there would be no gender identity disorder. You and I would see the same thing. a guy. Me.
Why do we even lump gay and lesbian with transgender people? There are straight transgender and gay and lesbian transgender. It is because our society sees us as similar. It is because we are subject to the same kinds of discrimination and violence. It is because of ignorance and fear that gay/lesbian people and straight transgender people are treated the same way.
Let me tell you that when a person has body modification to match his or her gender identity, they no longer have gender identity disorder. They are the gender they know themselves to be. The difference is only in the eye of the observer.
Perhaps the most profound example of my own confusion is my novel BELOVED PILGRIM which was released just yesterday by Harmony Ink Press. I originally made the protagonist a lesbian who took the identity of a man in order to live as a knight. I said I had written it so I could have the experience of writing a woman I could relate to. Having written it on the brink of my understanding of myself as a man, I came to realize that the only kind of woman I could relate to is one who is really a man. I rewrote the novel to reflect this new understanding, letting the protagonist Elisabeth/Elias experience the journey I had had.
I have been on hormones for about a year. Since I realized truly who I am I have relaxed, become more natural, more at peace with and at home with myself. My therapist observed that my facial expressions are now that of a male, and along with the men’s clothing I wear, my posture and movements as well. The real Christopher is emerging from the masquerade. You see, with transgendered people, the change in dress is not the costume. The clothing we used to wear was drag. Those of us lucky enough to have access to the whole process of changing our biological bodies come to be clearly visible as their true gender.
Author Bio
Christopher Hawthorne Moss wrote his first short story when he was seven and has spent some of the happiest hours of his life fully involved with his colorful, passionate and often humorous characters. Moss spent some time away from fiction, writing content for websites before his first book came out under the name Nan Hawthorne in 1991. He has since become a novelist and is a prolific and popular blogger, the historical fiction editor for the GLBT Bookshelf, where you can find his short stories and thoughtful and expert book reviews. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his husband of over thirty years and four doted upon cats. He owns Shield-wall Productions at http://www.shield-wall.com. He welcomes comment from readers sent to christopherhmoss@gmail.com and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Buy links for Beloved Pilgrim
Dreamspinner Press
Kindle edition
Share on Facebook
Source
I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming Christopher Moss to my little corner of the internet today. He’s here to promote his new book, Beloved Pilgrim. I’ve been waiting for Beloved Pilgrim for a number of reasons. First of all, it looks like a great story. Second of all, it features a transman as a protagonist. Third of all, it’s an historical romance. I know, right?
Blurb
At the time of the earliest Crusades, young noblewoman Elisabeth longs to be the
person she’s always known is hidden inside. When her twin brother perishes from a fever, Elisabeth takes his identity to live as a man, a knight. As Elias, he travels to the Holy Land, to adventure, passion, death, and a lesson that honor is sometimes found in unexpected places.Elias must pass among knights and soldiers, survive furious battle, deadly privations, moral uncertainty, and treachery if he’ll have any chance of returning to his newfound love in the magnificent city of Constantinople.
Today, however, Christopher is going to tell us about his own journey, which I think is a real privilege. So I’ll just be getting out of the way and shutting up, now.
Christopher Hawthorne Moss
To be honest, I never was a straight woman. I was born with a female body, and as I matured sexually I knew my predilection was for men. It’s not surprising that I thought I was a straight woman. But I am and always have been a gay man. It just took me 60 years to figure that out. 60 years of feeling out of place, not myself.How can a person have a female body and be attracted to men sexually and not be a straight woman? Easy. Be born with a male brain. It’s more common than you think. There are two times when a child is bathed within the uterus with sex hormones. The first is very shortly after conception. That bath determines what sexual organs the child will have. Even then the options are astoundingly various, with many more combinations than just boy or girl.
What has generally been unrealized is that there is a second time the fetus is soaked in a flow of hormones, and that is about six weeks into a pregnancy, just as the brain is starting to develop. The hormones do not necessarily match the earlier set. A girl baby may find herself with a male brain, and a boy baby may find himself with a female brain. MRIs have shown many babies have brains with characteristics of both males and females.
Now let me ask you something. If for strange science fiction reasons you were forced to choose either your body or your brain to survive, the other one being destroyed, which would you choose? Are you your body? Or are you your brain? Looking at popular culture it seems we see our brains as who we are. Think of stories with heads preserved alive in mad scientist labs. Your brain is essential to what we think of as a sentient being. That’s where your mind, your thoughts, your personality, your perceptions of the world, your communication is located. We never say of a person with a broken limb, “She’s out of her arm.” But we most certainly say it of someone not acting normally “He’s out of his mind.””
That should explain what’s going on with someone who is transgender pretty clearly. I’ll continue with myself as the example. My body has been female, breasts, vagina, the whole nine yards, for all of my life. So are the genes that identify me as XX. I used to have a uterus, long gone now. But I don’t have a penis and testicles, or a prostate. Which am I, male, female, or none of the above?
From a very tender age, I don’t remember how long but it’s at least from the age of four, I knew I wasn’t like most girls. I wasn’t into sports, not in the Little League way, but I was very much into swords and bows and arrows and male heroes like Robin Hood. When we played “House” I chose to be “Brother”. When I started writing stories, I never wrote about women except as side characters. The letters and later stories a female friend and I wrote that ultimately became my first novel had us role-playing: she was the queen and I was King Lawrence. As far as I am concerned, I still am.
I knew something was not fitting when I came of age sexually. I knew even then that I was not a straight woman. Given the choices I thought I had, I guessed I must be a lesbian. I tried living as one, but it never worked. I wanted to be with a man. It was not until I read gay and M/M fiction that I started to get a hint as to what was going on all this time. I found the sex scenes very hot, but not as a spectator, as so many straight female writers explain. I liked being one of the two men. I felt everything the men were feeling, wanted everything they wanted, in spite of not having the equipment myself. That’s why they call it fantasy, right? Might it be more?
I soon learned that there is a difference between your sex, your gender identity and your sexual inclination. Mix and match. Many people, and this includes many gay, bisexual and lesbian people, have the mistaken belief that a person who is called transgender wants to be the other sex than they were born. They believe the person wants it for sexual reasons, or they want it because they don’t think you can have both worlds, or they are disturbed or at best don’t really understand what they want.
Where does the mistake lie? Is it in whether a person can or should want to be other than they are? No. It’s in the assumption that the person wants to be a member of the opposite sex. You can’t turn a straight woman into a gay man. He already is one. I already am and always have been a man. My shell is as false as if I ran around in a dress. If I could take off my body the way I can take off my clothes, then there would be no gender identity disorder. You and I would see the same thing. a guy. Me.
Why do we even lump gay and lesbian with transgender people? There are straight transgender and gay and lesbian transgender. It is because our society sees us as similar. It is because we are subject to the same kinds of discrimination and violence. It is because of ignorance and fear that gay/lesbian people and straight transgender people are treated the same way.
Let me tell you that when a person has body modification to match his or her gender identity, they no longer have gender identity disorder. They are the gender they know themselves to be. The difference is only in the eye of the observer.
Perhaps the most profound example of my own confusion is my novel BELOVED PILGRIM which was released just yesterday by Harmony Ink Press. I originally made the protagonist a lesbian who took the identity of a man in order to live as a knight. I said I had written it so I could have the experience of writing a woman I could relate to. Having written it on the brink of my understanding of myself as a man, I came to realize that the only kind of woman I could relate to is one who is really a man. I rewrote the novel to reflect this new understanding, letting the protagonist Elisabeth/Elias experience the journey I had had.
I have been on hormones for about a year. Since I realized truly who I am I have relaxed, become more natural, more at peace with and at home with myself. My therapist observed that my facial expressions are now that of a male, and along with the men’s clothing I wear, my posture and movements as well. The real Christopher is emerging from the masquerade. You see, with transgendered people, the change in dress is not the costume. The clothing we used to wear was drag. Those of us lucky enough to have access to the whole process of changing our biological bodies come to be clearly visible as their true gender.
Author Bio
Christopher Hawthorne Moss wrote his first short story when he was seven and has spent some of the happiest hours of his life fully involved with his colorful, passionate and often humorous characters. Moss spent some time away from fiction, writing content for websites before his first book came out under the name Nan Hawthorne in 1991. He has since become a novelist and is a prolific and popular blogger, the historical fiction editor for the GLBT Bookshelf, where you can find his short stories and thoughtful and expert book reviews. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his husband of over thirty years and four doted upon cats. He owns Shield-wall Productions at http://www.shield-wall.com. He welcomes comment from readers sent to christopherhmoss@gmail.com and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Buy links for Beloved Pilgrim
Dreamspinner Press
Kindle edition
Share on Facebook
Source
-
0
