APPLETON, WIS. — Author Helen Boyd discusses the evolution of her marriage to a transgendered husband and the legal and personal issues they have encountered in an address and book reading at Lawrence University.
Boyd, who is spending Winter Term as a visiting professor in Lawrence’s gender studies department, presents “Transgender Couples, Queer Heterosexuals and Marriage Rights,” Monday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. in Science Hall, 102. A reception with the speaker prior to the address will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Science Hall atrium. Both events are free and open to the public.
The presentation will examine the murky intersection of state marriage laws, the difficulties they pose to transgender couples and the possibility of states having to legally define the terms “man” and “woman.”
In her 2004 book “My Husband Betty,” Boyd details her relationship with Betty Crow, who crossdressed occasionally. Over time, her husband began to be seen as more female than male and so contemplated living full time as a woman. Boyd and Crow were legally married in Brooklyn, N.Y., although they now appear as a couple who can’t be legally married in most places.
Boyd also will read excerpts from her 2007 book “She’s Not the Man I Married,” in which she confronts the nature of marriage, passion and love. She shares observations on the ways relationships are gendered and how one copes — or not — with the emotional and sexual pressures that gender roles can bring to marriages and relationships. “My Husband Betty” was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2005 and “She’s Not the Man I Married” was recently nominated for this year’s Lambda Literary awards.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The City College of New York with degrees in literature and writing, Boyd is teaching “Introduction to Gender Studies” and “Transgender Lives” during her term at Lawrence.
