The TroubleMaker, an Interview with Author Sevastian Winters

Sevastian Winters is truly a gifted author for this generation and I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to share this interview with my readers on his current publication "The TroubleMaker". This fictional story about a triumphant transgendered person is not like any story we have read so far. I believe if this generation does not embrace the heart of this tale--a future generation will.

Sevastian is qualified to create a transgendered character because of his own journey with gender identity--which he shares unashamedly. I hope you enjoy reading Sev's responses to the interview questions as much as I did. He is an amazing person with wisdom to share with us about how diversity should be celebrated--not feared.

Magena: Sev, who is the target reader for this book and why?

Sevastian: Though the book is currently doing best within the transgendered community, the target reader is really anyone who grew up in a single parent household during the 1970s and 1980s who was scarred by some of the things that happened as a result of the naivete of our culture at the time that the family unit broke down.

Magena: How has the media portrayed the transgendered until now and how is your main character different?

Sevastian: We have seen comedic trans, tragic trans, tortured trans, angry trans, sad trans, diseased trans, pathetic trans, reserved trans, and flamboyant trans. What we have never seen is realistic and triumphant trans. There is a sense in which the three stages of the main character...from Tyler, to Candie, to Renee, encompasses all of those stereotypes, but then moves beyond all of that to wholeness and healing, and triumph. I think that's new to the mainstream, but rather commonplace to the trans community. This story is a community builder. I think the reader comes away with a sense that they have a new friend and maybe other people in that situation might be worth having as friends too.

Magena: How do you think stereotypes and prejudices about the transgendered keep us from advancing the consciousness of society?

Sevastian: Great question! I think there is a tendency in our society to look for and to focus on the ways that we are all different from each other...boys vs. girls, black vs. white, Republicans vs. Democrats, rich vs. poor, gay vs. straight, cultured vs. redneck, married vs. single, parents vs. non-parents, smart vs. stupid, Christian vs. Muslim...the list goes on and on, and in every case, the stereotypes and prejudices we have serve as barriers to community and understanding. There is no inherent value to identifying difference, but there is tremendous value in judging the people we meet by the content of their character rather than the sum of what we might think are their quirks or differences. The truth is we are all spinning on this big blue ball together, and if everyone is singing the same tune, that isn't harmony. That, my friend, is monotony!

Magena: In your interview with Angel Sharum on Associated Content, you mention that "gender happens between the ears...not the legs". Your main character, Tyler is actually a woman "Renee" between the ears, though she was born with male genitalia. Why do you think transgendered people do not identify with their birth sex?

Sevastian: That's sort of the trillion dollar question that leaves trans people frustrated and non-trans people confused. I think there is a sense in which the condition is physical and that we all fall somewhere along a continuum of gender, some of us more female than male, some more male than female, and no two people falling in the same exact place along that continuum. In most cases, the mind of the person matches the body that comes out. In others it doesn't. In a way though I think too that perhaps the answer to this question gets back to the heart of your previous question. There is a sense that we focus on the differences...males vs. female instead of just acknowledging a common humanity. We expect the women in our society to look and act like women and the men in our society to look and act like men, but I think perhaps that is a bit narrow-minded, and that the extensive surgeries and procedures that trans-people endure in order to "pass" in our society are a symptom of the larger disease of our society... the one that says women can't have beards and men can't have vaginas. I don't think it is likely to change, but as for me, if someone with a beard and a penis says "I'm a woman", I try to just believe them.

Magena: I've heard you say there is a gender continuum and that some people fall closer to the center of the continuum than others. Please elaborate.

Sevastian: Our society tends to think of gender as something that we determine by genitalia despite the fact that (thankfully) we never see the genitalia of most of the people we will ever meet. Still though, we trust the doctor when he says "It's a boy" or "it's a girl" when an asexual blob of toothless crying humanity emerges from the birth canal. We check the genitalia to confirm, and then we take the child home to raise them accordingly, never giving the idea of gender or even sexual preference another thought. We have certain expectations and that's the end of it.

We do, however, have inarguable proof that gender exists on a continuum, because now and again a person is born with ambiguous genitalia. The doctor can't make a call, because he or she doesn't know based on the genitalia at birth. We call those people "inter sex"... hermaphrodites. The truth is that there are over 100 different types of hermaphrodism currently recognized by medical science, some of which are physically apparent and some of which are chromosomal or hormonal. There are multiple ambiguities to be found in every way in which we know how to detect gender. It used to be that when a child was born with ambiguous genitalia, the child would be physically changed to female, and then taken home to be raised as a girl. Sometimes that worked out well. Other times it met in tragic results. In fact that decision is no longer determined at birth for inter sex children because of the tremendous harm it did to so many. For more on inter sex conditions, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex. It is my contention that transsexual people are another inter sex condition...one that cannot necessarily be seen with the naked eye or other sorts of biological tests that we know how to do at this point (What we don't know about the human brain far outweighs what we do know) but an inter sex condition nonetheless and further proof that gender exists in a grey area or a continuum rather than on opposite sides of some sort of gender fence manifested in genitalia.

Magena: What emotions did you face during the writing of "The TroubleMaker"? How did you cope?

Sevastian: One of the toughest things for me in writing "The TroubleMaker" was choosing to put myself in the shoes of the character at any given point. This story is fiction, not my life, and yet there is a sense in which the character came to life because I made a conscious decision not to wimp out. I made a choice to feel and record each of the various emotional conditions faced by the various characters. The truth of fiction writing is that the only stories that will ever resonate are the ones in which the author goes for broke and digs deep into the emotions of their characters. The reason we care about stories has very little to do with the activity of a story and everything to do with the emotions. My coping mechanism tends to be that I allow myself to cry while writing and while reading back through the stories I write. I am sort of bad at dealing with my personal emotions, but somehow I am able to release them all when I write the plight of my characters. I think maybe writing is the thing that keeps me emotionally sane.

Magena: Tell us about your own journey and what motivates you to write on such a controversial subject.

Sevastian: If pressed, I think I would likely refer to myself as a male to male transsexual. That is to say that while society always regarded me as male, it is a fairly new concept to me. I struggled with the issue of gender for many years and even started down the path to transition my physical appearance to be recognized as female. In my mid 30s I began Hormone Replacement Therapy which I continued for about 15 months. For me, the issue was always about finding wholeness and congruity, not about the destination but the journey. Before I went on hormones, I knew that I had to figure out the solution, because the alternative was death. (Suicide is sadly far too real amongst trans people).

When I stopped the treatment, it was because I'd come to a place where I felt like though I could continue down the path, and likely be just as happy as I am now in many respects, that a physical transformation was not going to be necessary for me in order to achieve wholeness. I could see, and still see both benefits and loss to be had, that left me in an ambiguous place on the gender scale despite my exceedingly masculine appearance. Still though I felt once I'd been subjected to the hormonal makeup of a woman, that I was likely at least a little more male than female. The interesting thing for me was that when I went off the hormones, though I had been afraid the old feelings would return, they didn't. It was then that I began to live as authentically me, without regard for how others might perceive that choice.

I have one chance to get it right on this big blue ball, and regardless of gender, or sexual preference, or religion, or skin color, or nationality, or any of the things that we use to separate ourselves in society, I am the only person who will ever be me, and so as such I am not going to spend even one minute of it conforming to other people's stereotypes. I've had no desire to put on a dress since going off hormones, but the truth of me is that if I did, I would, and I wouldn't make any apologies for it. The greatest thing about having determined for myself where I fit on the gender line is that I found my wholeness. I found my congruity. I found a place where no matter who says otherwise, I am free to be authentically me. Everyone's journey is different, and I applaud anyone who is willing to forgo convention in the pursuit of authenticity. A lot of well meaning people say they respect or admire the courage of trans people. The only way in which that is true for me is that I respect and admire the choice of life over death, because the truth of trans is that the choices truly are life vs. death, and I respect that those who transition have all chosen life. When we brush away the burdens of expectation and choose to live authentically, we will always find wholeness and happiness. Some of us need (not want. There is no want about it) to take extraordinary measures in order to make that possible.

Magena: Tell us about who your supporters were in the creation of "The TroubleMaker"--and conversely--what kinds of challenges did you meet with those who were not fans of the storyline?

Sevastian: To be truthful, because of the politically correct nature of our environment, and maybe a little bit because I'm a big scary looking man who tends to be very aggressive in my dealings with others, I haven't had any challenges from anyone regarding the storyline. My real challenge has been one of generating interest in the story line as opposed to anyone who was overtly against it. People who are fans of my writing in general will like this story and read it. Those who aren't, won't. One man's masterpiece is another man's kindling. It's always been my contention that this story is more of a sleeper...meaning that it will have a long life, but that it will find its market more quietly than some of the other more action packed thrill rides I write...and that's okay, because it's also the sort of story that sticks with you long after you've read it.

Magena: Why do you believe transgendered people are at risk of abuse by family members and society as a whole--whether physically, emotionally or verbally?

Sevastian: Though I'm not religious, I have to go back to the wisdom of the Garden of Eden here for the answer. Whether or not the story is true, its message is clear. The thing that screws us up as humans is the perception that we know good from evil. We never ascribe the word 'evil' to ourselves unless speaking of a former state of unrighteousness before we became as wise as we are 'right now'. We always ascribe that term to others. We are natured to assume that those things that are different are therefore also evil. I think trans people, gay people, fat people, people of color, people of different religious faiths, and such are at risk of abuse because we are captive, unless we choose otherwise to this insane notion that we know the difference between good and evil. The truth is that every fight and every war between humans in the history of humanity has been fought over a difference of opinion on what is good and what is evil and in the end, it is the thing that has the greatest chance of resulting in our overall demise. Dr. Einstein once said "I know not what weapons will be used to fight World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Marginalized people in our society are at risk of abuse because society is inflicted with a disease in which people assume they have a right to say for others what is good and what is evil.

Magena: Do you believe a sex change operation will bring closure for the transgendered person in their mission to make the outside match the inside, or does the battle for identity continue? If so why do you think a person may still struggle to accept the truth of their gender? Can a person be more than one gender?

Sevastian: Extensive studies have shown that post operative trans people have a more than 90% success rate in finding the happiness and sense of wholeness they sought when they first began the road of physical transition. I think we are all...every one of us, more than one gender in the typical understanding of gender. The continuum is large enough for all of us. I don't "get" a lot of the typically "guy" things. I think they are stupid...and most guys find me to be a little weird. On the other hand, my three wives have all found me to be somewhat emotionally unavailable. Gender and all of its variances are immeasurable. That is to say that we make determinations of gender in our society based on a preponderance of the evidence as opposed to on the basis of any real measurable test. It's when someone defies what we typically consider evidence that our society gets worked up.

Magena: It is commonly thought that a transgendered person is also a homosexual. What other myths do we need to undo in our view of the transgendered person?

Sevastian: For sure, the biggest myth is that transsexuals are just homosexuals who don't want to admit it. The truth is that most trans people would not be considered homosexual by our society until after they transition. Statistics prove that the myth doesn't hold water. The other misconception is that transsexual people were abused sexually or physically or emotionally somewhere in their childhood, or that their mommies or daddies loved them too much or too little. Statistically, that theory too fails utterly. While there are cases in which some trans people have suffered those sorts of abuse, the truth is that the empirical data shows that instances of abuse are the same as those for people who do not identify as trans. I hesitated to make the protagonist of "The TroubleMaker" trans because of that common misconception, but in the end it was the best way I could find to tell the story that needed to be told in a way that would give me freedom with the reader to truly delve into the nature of abuse. In the end I think I made it clear that abuse and transsexualism are not related though they may sometimes co-exist. If a person has diabetes and cancer, we do not presume that one caused the other.

Magena: When you began this story, did you know where it was going--or did the story lead you to its end?

Sevastian: While every story is different for me, in this case, I wrote the first and last chapters first, and then filled in everything in between. This was, from the outset, a story about journey rather than destination. Most stories build into a climax. This story is a series of buildups and climaxes that fit together to tell an entire story of journey.

Magena: What do you hope your readers will experience when they turn the final page?

Sevastian: I'm not really sure how to answer that, because depending on the life experience of the reader, what I hope for them is any number of things. Selfishly, I hope they experience a desire to read more from Sevastian Winters. Selflessly, I think maybe I hope the readers feel a greater kinship to humanity. Our society is dying as the result of a lack of community because of all the various barriers we construct that ostracizes anyone who doesn't fit our molds and the opposite of that is true... that we hide ourselves for fear that we won't fit the molds of others. I hope that maybe reading this book will help some to determine that life is worth living authentically, and that those who do are to be revered and cherished rather than loathed and cast aside.

In conclusion, my special thanks to Sevastian for being so open during this interview. To order "The Troublemaker" or Sevastian's other publications, please visit his blog page. I look forward to more deep work from this author.