Book Review: Alice in Genderland
2:57 p.m. -- 2008-08-04
We all try to be broadminded, accepting kind of people, don't we? I mean, "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" and all that. Still, I have to say that Richard J. Novic's take on cross-dressing does not meet with my approval. It meets with the approval of a lot of other folks, though. There are fifteen glowing reviews for his book 'Alice in Genderland' on Amazon, and no bad ones. Fourteen of those people gave it five stars.
I don't like it.
It's not that Novic is a fool, or a liar. He's an M.D. and psychiatrist - and a cross-dresser of course. He's ruthlessly candid about his life, and his need to be 'Alice'. But while he's being honest, he isn't necessarily saying things that are encouraging or helpful to the newly-aware transvestite, nor the family of such a person. By page 12, for example, he's describing a teenage experiment in which he got completely dressed for the first time:
"By then, I was so revved up that I thought of doing something I'd never before dared. I needed to know how it felt to be a girl having sex with a guy. Brainstorming, I scurried downstairs and opened the refrigerator. Poring over the possibilities, I grabbed a carrot and dashed back upstairs. I penetrated myself in every kitten-like position I could imagine and then had the orgasm of my life."
Chilly!
I've never shared anything quite so spicy with you in the accounts of my own life. In fact, I'd struggle to shock as much as Novic; I simply haven't felt the need to experiment with as many taboos as he has. Presumably the author found writing all this (not just the carrot episode) to be a catharsis.
Readers will learn all about Novic's domestic situation (married with children) and a central theme of the book is how 'Alice' fits in. Specifically, she doesn't. 'Alice' appears one night a week, once the children have gone to bed. He goes to a t-friendly bar, and picks up guys. Novic's wife, Melissa is placed firmly upon a pedestal: a sainted example of a tolerant wife-of-a-transvestite who, we are told, cheerfully wishes her husband a pleasant evening when 'Alice' goes out to dinner with a man... and more than dinner. Melissa, meanwhile, has requested that 'Alice' be a "sealed compartment" - she doesn't ask what takes place when Novic is 'Alice', and she doesn't want to know.
For 'Alice', a night out generally involves going to a gay bar called the Queen Mary, where he catches up with some tranny friends, chews the fat, and flirts with the men who use the place as a cattle market. (He holds nothing back in describing his sexual encounters with these 'admirers'.)
Novic laments being given false telephone numbers by his lovers, after a tryst:
"Why no interest in courting or follow-up? Initially I figured that was just how men were, at east in nightclubs.
Later, I learned that, whether they admit it or not, many (if not most) of our admirers are married. They may only get a few nights a year away from their wives, so they're eager to take full advantage of each opportunity and careful to cover their tracks afterward."
This offers a good example of what annoys me about Novik's book, and his general approach to his need to cross-dress. It seems to involve a very selective morality, whereby he is prepared to undertake casual sex and even becomes an apologist for the bisexual adulterer who gives him a false telephone number, never wanting to see him again.
In his defence, Novic tries to be a responsible partner, by (after an early, less wise encounter) being scrupulously careful in his use of condoms, and he describes how he eventually entered into a steady relationship with a boyfriend, Frank, lasting eight years or more. When his 'going steady' is revealed to his wife, she seems to find this to be just as hurtful as the initial revelation that he is having sex with men. And why shouldn't she?
Okay, I'm clearly a prude, a lifestyle Nazi or whatever... but this is behaviour that I think most people will deem unacceptable. I dislike the idea that all those other people who have read this book will think that behaving like this is OK. If a Harvard-educated psychiatrist is doing it, it can't be bad, right?
Well, I think it's atrocious. Maybe that's just my kill-joy response when learning that somebody is having his cake and eating it? I don't think so. It seems terribly wrong to be married, and to be having sex outside the marriage - even more so when an affair is conducted, with commitment.
I suppose I should be grateful for Novic for giving the Tranny Mafia a poke in the eye, with all his talk of a sexual component to cross-dressing. I think a lot of readers all over the world will be nodding and thinking "yes... that's how I felt, too..." But you don't have to act on every single urge, people. Expecting gratification of every whim is very immature.
Some taboos exist for a reason.
Novic is also a regular at 'Girl Talk' magazine, with a column called 'Go Ask Alice'. I don't much like the idea of this sybarite giving people advice and counselling... but there we have it. I can't change the world. All I can say is that there are other ways to survive being gender-confused, and that I know for a fact that you needn't follow in the footsteps of 'Alice' to reach a happy ending.
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