Helen Boyd
Encyclopedia
Helen Boyd is the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
of Gail Kramer, the American author of two books about her relationship with her transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
partner. Her partner is referred to in both books as "Betty Crow", though this is also a pseudonym.
Biography
Helen Boyd graduated Phi Beta Kappa from The City College of New York in 1995 with a degree in literature. She has been a guest speaker at trans conferences, including the IFGE, First Event, Fantasia FairFantasia fair
Fantasia Fair or FanFair is a major week-long conference for transgender people and cross-dressers, held every October in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a small Portuguese fishing village and largely gay and lesbian tourist village on the very tip of Cape Cod.At its inception in 1975, Fantasia Fair...
, Southern Comfort
Southern Comfort Conference
The Southern Comfort Conference is a major transgender conference that takes place annually in Atlanta, Georgia, since 1991. It features seminars, events, speeches by prominent people in the LGBT community, numerous vendors catering to transgender and transsexual people, and more, and is known as...
, the Chicago Be-All, and also at special events like Trans Issues Week at Yale University. Helen and Betty have spoken about LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
marriage on PBS’s In The Life
In The Life
In the Life is a gay and lesbian television newsmagazine that is broadcast on PBS. It is one of public television's premiere educational programs and is nearing its 15th season on national broadcast...
. As of 2011, she is also a Lecturer of Gender and Freshman Studies at Lawrence University
Lawrence University
Lawrence University is a selective, private liberal arts college with a nationally recognized conservatory of music, in Appleton, Wisconsin. Lawrence University is known for its rigorous academic environment. Founded in 1847, the first classes were held on November 12, 1849...
.
Boyd also runs the mHB Forums, a message board for the discussion of crossdressing- and transgender-related topics. The community associated with the board is noted for its willingness to debate sacred cow
Sacred cow (idiom)
Sacred cow is an idiom, a figurative reference to sacred cows in some religions. This idiom is thought to originate in American English, although similar or even identical idioms occur in many other languages....
s of the transgender community.
My Husband Betty
My Husband Betty (2004, Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 1-56025-515-3) is a non-fictionNon-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
book by author Helen Boyd about crossdressers
Cross-dressing
Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...
and their partners. It was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
.
Unlike many other books about the topic of crossdressing, it is written specifically from the partner's point of view by a partner and takes a distinctively feminist approach. Although the author's husband was a crossdresser at the time of publication, she now considers herself "trans", a word chosen specifically because it was less well defined (and therefore less restrictive) than "transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
".