Towards the end of the movie “The Graduate”, Benjamin (played by Dustin Hoffman) frantically rushes to save Elaine (Katherine Ross) from marrying. He drives to San Francisco and across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to Berkeley, where the wedding ceremony is taking place. Simon & Garfunkel merrily sing in the background as there’s a spectacular shot of Benjamin’s car driving in the sunlight over the bridge crossing the sparkling waters of San Francisco Bay–

Except you can’t do that ...

The Bay Bridge is a double-deck bridge; the upper deck (where Benjamin’s car tootles along) runs Westbound into San Francisco. Eastbound drivers–those going from San Francisco to Oakland and Berkeley–drive on the lower deck, in the dark.

Not such a spectacular shot.

The point is, in all the years that “The Graduate” is out, very few people recognize this or point it out–other than obsessives like myself. Yet the truth is that in the Real World, Benjamin could never have driven that direction.

But it works, mate! It’s a glorious shot, an uplifting moment in the rush to “save” Elaine, and it’s not important, in and of itself. It facilitates Benjamin rescuing Elaine. It is, quite literally, a vehicle.

“The Procedure” is much the same in my stories. I try to be as accurate as possible (and murky, with a usually-sedated protagonist), according to the prevailing knowledge, as many commenters mentioned in response to T.M.F.’s blog post: the “Procedure”?

But the point of The Procedure in my stories is that it allows my protagonist to have more confidence in herself, which allows her to move on to interact with other characters on a new level, to experience more of her new life and new world, to metaphorically go from San Francisco to Berkeley in the sunshine.

Here’s my view on The Procedure: Along with the (several conflicting) comments and personal histories, there are three words that nobody considers:

Repeat as needed.

It may seem that The Procedure a permanent-until-solvent-applied–the idea that it could be done once at age thirteen and last until SRS at eighteen–but it’s a temporary fix. In stories, it’s to allow a pool party, or a sleepover, or whatever. But on whatever physician-recommended schedule, it would be repeated, perhaps over and over.

I view it as hair extensions: When a girl comes to work and we all ooh and ahh over her extensions, we conveniently ignore the fact that she's going to return again and again for tightening. The same applies to a great nail job--we are fully aware of and yet ignore the fact that we have to go back every few weeks for filling and all the rest. So the same with the surgical glue. Everything's tucked away; when the glue goes and Little Willie makes a reappearance, repeat the procedure. Just like extensions and nails; it could be viewed as just part of the maintenance of being female.

Finally, my characters tend to be middle-to-high school. They tend to be small, slight, relatively hairless (so the regrowth of genital hair is not really an issue). They're at an age where, quite literally, anything is possible because they haven't fully committed (physically and/or emotionally) to one or the other. Yes, I "stack the deck", in the sense of giving my character the best possible future as a girl, the best possibility of passing unremarkably. I'm the kind of writer sometimes branded "HE" for "Happy Endings". And I'll bypass the joke about those two letters! So I write TG-HE stories; I enjoy writing them and readers enjoy them so it matters little to me if I stack the deck. I'm also writing about what my characters face and overcome, and the people around them (often for me, more fascinating than my lead character!) and the nature of social acceptance. I also try to view acceptance at different levels from different angles, from story to story.

Finally, for a much-briefer statement on my writing (with links to my books), I posted a Mission Statement when I first joined BCTS. It’s at: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/31573/sort-mission-statement

Karin