PAPER Magazine's "Transformation" issue has generated considerable buzz as the launchpad of a newly understated Christina Aguilera, but its most important feature may be one you haven't read. In "Perpetual Transition," Brian Belovitch (previously known as 1980s New York transgender nightlife fixture Natalia "Tish" Gervais) opens up to genderqueer writer-activist Jacob Tobia about their journey "from man to woman and back again," a complicated experience that will be further chronicled in their upcoming memoir 'Trans Figured: My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man.'
An effeminate child, Brian Belovitch fled from their stifling Rhode Island home to New York City at 17 years old. Upon arriving, they found a gay community in which "you had to pick a lane," telling Tobia, "Either you were a butch queen and you looked like Cheyenne Jackson or Matt Bomer or you were in the other lane: You were a drag queen or [got a] sex change. It was very lonely and confusing to be in the middle of all of that. You were really herded into those roles."
Belovitch saw no point in attempting to butch themselves up, so after a period of gender-bending they resigned themselves to the overwhelming sense that transitioning and living as a woman was their best, safest bet. They claimed that they never felt that they were a woman, but that their femininity dictated that they were not a man: "Transitioning became a way to survive in the world. When I made that decision to transition, I thought 'I'm gonna go undercover. I'm gonna go stealth. No one's gonna ever know so they can't hurt me. So they can't make fun of me. It'll be harder for them to pick me off or exclude me.'"
Brian became Natalia "Tish" Gervais and managed to pass as a woman by day while being an openly trans fixture of the downtown scene and icon in their own right by night - "'The Bombshell of Rock n' Roll,' or 'The Girl with Something Extra.'"A home movie shot in Manhattan's East Village at the height of Tish's fame sees them roaming the streets with seemingly uncomplicated ease, grabbing a bite to eat at a bodega and pointing themselves out in the pages of Vanity Fair and Details.
Unfortunately, it was not built to last. After briefly leaving New York for what would prove to be a failed marriage to a soldier, Tish returned to find a city transformed: "There was always this underlying misogynistic, sexist view of me back then, which was devastating. I call it the 'Marilyn Monroe Syndrome,'" Belovitch told Tobia. Trans entertainers were not taken seriously outside of the club, and finding office jobs impossible to retain Tish turned to sex work, eventually testing HIV-positive.
Belovitch says that witnessing the treatment of gay men during the height of the AIDS crisis was the catalyst for their decision to "retransition," but that ultimately they never felt tethered to one gender or the other. "I never felt like, 'Oh I'm in the wrong body,' or felt like a girl, even when I was presenting as a trans woman. My idea of what a woman was or how a woman or a girl was supposed to feel was taught to me, something that I learned by observation or by other people's opinions or ideas about how they thought I should be."
Tish went back to being Brian, ceasing hormone treatment and having their breasts removed - a decision that was met with no small amount of flack from the NYC trans community. "I got a lot of flack in the beginning from my friends in the community. It was very painful. I felt kicked out of the tribe. Some of my good friends reacted badly, and I can understand why, because I'm sure they felt it was threatening." Belovitch also feared what would greet them in the mirror upon retransitioning, having grown accustomed to the glamorous, bombshell figure of Tish.
Belovitch's story is reflective of a reality of a small portion of the trans community that is viewed by many activists as a "complication to the narrative" they have worked to build. As Tobia explains:
"As trans people, we've tried to make it easy for cis folks. In order to argue that we should have access to trans-affirming medical care, in order to have our breasts removed or augmented, in order to get the hormones that we need, we've adopted an oversimplified narrative about what transition means: Transition is always medical. Transition is a one-time, irreversible, life-saving expense. Transition is a permanent affirmation of someone's gender identity.
"But like all things human, transitioning is messier and more nuanced than we often let on. Some trans people transition only 'partially,' taking hormones but not having any surgery. Some trans people transition 'all the way,' receiving hormone therapy and pursuing multiple surgeries. Other trans people — people like myself — transition only socially: dressing differently, acting differently, embracing a different gender presentation in the world without necessarily changing our bodies. And some trans people, people like Brian Belovitch, medically transition, live for years in that body and transition once again."
In truth, very little data exists to shed substantial light on retransition rates for transmen and -women. One Swedish study that examined transgender individuals from 1960-2010 found that only 2.2% of subjects sought to reverse their transitional procedures. Nevertheless, these individuals exist, and their experiences of transitioning (and "retransitioning") are no less valid than those of the men and women for whom it is a "one-time" deal.
Today, Belovitch lives as a gay man, but tells Tobia that it is because of their age and "general tiredness" that they are not assertive about not feeling comfortable with cis male pronouns: "I'm too old to switch, so I just sort of go with what's simple: I'm gay, I'm a cis male for simplicity. But I feel strongly that gender is so nonbinary. It's so much more fluid, so much more than just that."