My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser

Author Helen Boyd is a happily married woman whose husband enjoys sharing her wardrobe—and 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 met—and fell in love with—a 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.