An Oral History of Transgender Experiences in Love and Romance
From an early age we are taught that gender is an extension of anatomical sex. We are taught to dress, speak, and behave in ways that are culturally considered masculine or feminine based on our physical anatomy. Most individuals feel comfortable with this practice and will never question their gender assignment. The following are accounts of seven individuals who did.
The participants in these interviews, with the exception of Mary, are transgender. They have each taken steps to challenge their gender assignments through social, medical, or surgical interventions. While many transgender people recognize their cross-gender feelings from an early age, they are not always presented with the information or resources needed to make an informed decision about physically transitioning their bodies from one gender to another. Transfolk often suppress their gender discomfort for years in order to better assimilate to a dominant culture that encourages prescribed binary gender roles. When individuals transition later in life, there are often more intricate family and social aspects to consider. As the following accounts show, partners and children can serve as sources of support or sites of devastation
for transitioning adults.
There Was a Conflict within Myself
Julie As a child, I knew I wanted to be a girl. Fifty years ago that wasn’t something people talked about, so for about 48 years I put all of those feelings aside. In my adult life, I still felt that I wanted to be a woman, but I did all I could to suppress those feelings. I was married to a beautiful woman, and we had three wonderful kids. Why would I change anything?
Shauna Although I didn’t tell anyone I wanted to be a woman until I was 53, I have very clear memories of wanting to change my gender as early as five years old. I knew there was a conflict within myself. I couldn’t put a label on it and I couldn’t define it, but I found myself pushing the boundaries of gender to find where the limits were, to figure out what constituted the difference between men and women. I spent years trying to clarify that in my own mind, and I was never successful.
Samuel I was in relationship with Tracy for over five years, and for the first four years of our time together I was female. In the sense of sexuality and gender, we had an extremely complicated relationship. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn’t have the language for it: I didn’t know transitioning was an option.
When Tracy and I started dating, we lived in a small, conservative town. We hid the fact that we were in a same-sex relationship by simultaneously dating people of the opposite sex. She was a few years older than me, so when I graduated from high school, I followed her to college. Leaving my small town was so critical in my development as a queer person: it was the first time I’d met anyone gay or lesbian. My freshman year, my best friends were a flamboyantly gay guy and a butch lesbian. I assumed we were the only queer people in the university. Of course, I was terribly mistaken.
Jacob I’ve known I was trans my entire life. I was a tomboy as a child, and I’ve always been “one of the guys.” I’m not sure I ever really had to come out. If anything, friends and family asked me whether or not I was going to transition. It’s not something I ever struggled with: I am who I am in the moment, and that’s all that really matters.
Would It Be Worth the Losses?
Gertrude I first knew something was wrong when I was a child. I always felt like I didn’t belong in my body. When I went through puberty I was devastated: I felt so betrayed. In high school, I figured out that I was good at sports and I ignored those cross-gender feelings
for a lot of years. Yet the older I got, the less happy I became. I wanted to be a woman, but I couldn’t find any other people who were like me. I thought that transexuals were always gay men first. I knew I wasn’t gay; I just wanted to be a woman. When I finally realized that stereotype was wrong, I knew I had to change.
I was married for 18 years before I told my wife I wanted to be a woman. Prior to then, I lived a secret life. I told her I was in a bowling league, and on Friday nights I’d leave with my bowling
bag full of women’s clothing and makeup. I’d go to a drag bar and just be with other people who felt the same as I did. At first, I thought drag was just something I had to get out of my system, but the more I did it, the happier I felt as a woman. I hated the rest of the week when I had to pretend to feel like a man.
Samuel During my sophomore year of college, I started attending the LGBTQ social club on campus. I fell into a crowd of extremely butch lesbians. I rode a motorbike, wore a leather jacket, shaved my head, and started drinking and smoking. We were hardcore dykes. I finally came out to my friends and family as a lesbian and, truthfully, no one was surprised. Even though my friends and family were all very supportive, Tracy became very uncomfortable being seen with me in public. She told me I looked “too lesbian.” I think she was afraid that people would find out that she was in a gay relationship if she associated with someone who looked as butch as
I did.
Throughout that year, my gender became more and more masculine. I looked very male, but much to my disappointment, I had a very high voice. As soon as I spoke people would realize that
I was female. I became increasingly frustrated when people would call me “Miss” or “Ma’am,” even though I was a woman. I finally figured out that I needed to make sure that no one would ever call me “she” again.
Mary Julie and I met in college, though she was Jules back then. We had quite a few mutual friends, and we ended up being at a lot of the same places at the same time. I first noticed how sweet and caring he was. He was so charming. He was also on the football team, which didn’t hurt one bit. [Laughs.]
I knew something was different about Jules early on. Even though he was great at sports and very outdoorsy, there was a certain graceful quality to everything he did. I was always very attracted to that. Jules fit in really well with all of his friends and he was a fantastic husband and father. At the same time, there was always a certain sadness to him, like a pain that he couldn’t speak.
Julie With each passing year I became unhappier with my body, with my life. I knew I wanted to change, needed to change, and it came to a point where there was only one thing stopping me: the thought of losing my family. I had heard every story about men telling their wives that they’re transgender, and they always seemed to end in divorce. That was terrifying to me. I wanted to be a woman more than anything in the world, but would it be worth the losses?
It got to a point that I had to find out.
It’s About Time You Figured It Out
Shauna I had been married for 35 years before I came out to my wife. I knew it was going to be a nightmare, that she would be devastated. I spent weeks agonizing over how I was going to
explain to her that I wanted to be a woman. When I finally did tell her, she took it even worse than I imagined. She cried for three whole days, and we ended up separating by the end of the week. When we divorced, she took me to the cleaners. The judge determined that my cross-dressing was a fetish and that my wife had every right to leave me. I ended up paying an astronomical amount in spousal support.
Gertrude When I told my wife that I had been dressing as a woman, she did not take it well. She was horrified that someone might have seen me wearing drag. She was angry and called me every name in the book. She said she refused to be with me if I was going to even think about changing my gender, and she kicked me out of the house.
Enzo I came out as trans while in a lesbian relationship, which was really difficult. We had been together for eleven years and I felt like my partner was tolerant, but not embracing. She was only supportive to the extent that it was comfortable for her. She had been with men before me, but she was very clear that she was a lesbian. She wanted to maintain that label and she was not okay with me identifying as male or saying that I was uncomfortable in women-only spaces.
There were times when my partner could be compassionate and there were times when she could be really nasty and say, “Well, what if I decide to become a boy?” It felt really taunting and unfair to have her say that. I think that was just being used as ammunition for larger issues, and that became part of our dynamic. Simultaneously, she wanted to understand my desire to transition. She hosted a radio show and she interviewed a lot of my trans friends on the radio because she was curious about the topic. She wanted to be proactive on the public level, but on a personal level she really struggled.
I think the final straw was when I told her I wanted to use my last name instead of my birth name. She would call me by my last name as a nickname, but when I started using it professionally she became very uncomfortable. Ultimately, she projected a lot of her own self-esteem issues on me. She was very much ingrained in a lesbian identity and she never could get over the thought that I was taking that identity away from her.
Samuel Before I started the long journey to begin hormone replacement therapy, I knew I’d have to tell Tracy that I wanted to transition. She had been so unsupportive of my lesbian masculinity that I assumed she would leave me when I told her I was going to transition.
I was traveling out of town the day I finally affirmed to myself that I was going to go through with a medical transition. I called Tracy from my hotel. I was so nervous I could barely hold the
phone. I told her that I wanted to be a boy and her response was not at all what I expected. She said, “Yeah, I know. It’s about time you figured it out.”
Mary One day I came home from work and Jules had made a wonderful dinner for the family, which wasn’t uncommon, yet I knew something was wrong. He was very nervous and he barely ate anything. He told our sons how much he loved them and how he would always be there for them. After dinner, he told me that we needed to talk. I was terrified that he was going to tell me he had cancer or that he wanted a divorce.
Julie After everyone I’d talked to, everything I’d read, I could only assume that my wife was going to leave me when I told her I wanted to be a woman. I prepared myself the best I could: I packed a suitcase, arranged to stay with a friend, told my kids how much I loved them. Then I finally sat down with my wife and told her, “Mary, this may come as a shock to you, and I don’t expect you to want to stay with me, but I want to be a woman.”
To my surprise and delight, Mary took my hand and said, “Is that all? When you told me we needed to talk, I thought it was something serious.”
I immediately started crying. I told her how scared I had been, and I showed her that I had already packed a suitcase. She told me that after 25 years of marriage I should have known that she would stand by me through anything. We had a long talk about what my transition would look like. I don’t know which one of us cried more.
Mary When Jules told me he wanted to be a woman I was so relieved! I knew it would take a lot of adjustment for the whole family, but marriage is about adapting. I love Jules unconditionally. To be honest, I was a little offended that he thought I’d leave him over something as silly as a sex change. [Laughs.]
Jacob My husband, Matt, knew I wanted to be a boy before we got married. When we were engaged he told me how much he liked my tomboyish style. I told him I wasn’t just going to be a tomboy. He simply said, “As long as you’ll still marry me.
” We really wanted to have kids, so I didn’t start physically transitioning for another twelve years. As soon as I finished breast-feeding our third child, I told Matt it was time. I started hormones within a few months and had a mastectomy shortly thereafter. There are so many trans people who cannot wait to start their transition, but waiting never really bothered me. I have three biological children and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
Your Kids Are More Resilient Than You Think They Are
Mary One of my biggest concerns was about how we would tell our kids that their father was going to be a woman, and how they would react. We spent a lot of time talking about the best way to tell them. When we finally did tell them, we tag-teamed them: Jules went in first and told them that he wanted to be a woman, and then I sat with them and talked them through their reactions.
Julie What we didn’t want is for information about my transition to come sideways to the kids, so we decided to tell them everything before we told anyone else. We told the boys one at a
time. Our eldest, Clark, is seventeen now. He was fifteen when I told him I wanted to be a woman. Naturally, he was upset that the man who taught him how to throw a football wanted to
wear pretty dresses. I think that letting him be mad was really important. He yelled at me for about an hour, and then Mary came in to take my place.
Mary When I walked in to Clark’s room, he was pretty upset. Jules needed a break to collect himself, so I took Clark to get a milkshake. I drove to a restaurant across town so that we would have more time to talk. Mostly, he was just afraid that things would change. He told me he wanted a dad who would play basketball with him, who would talk to him about girls, who would teach him how to weld. I said, “You may not always have a dad who will do those things with you, but you will always have a parent who will.”
Julie When Mary and Clark came home, my son gave me a hug. He apologized for being so angry. Then he told me that I was going to have a really hard time beating him at basketball in a dress. [Laughs.]
Our middle child was much easier to tell. He didn’t react with anger. In fact, he didn’t really react at all. I worry about him the most because he’s never really talked it out with either Mary or
myself. I told him I was going to be a woman and he said, “That’s cool.”
Jacob My desire to transition wasn’t something that we ever kept a secret from our kids. Matt and I brought it up with the kids frequently, in age-appropriate terms. Our sons are young and they aren’t quite grasping the idea of gender yet. We thought it was very important to introduce the idea to them on our own terms, and we will keep talking about it with them.
Our daughter, on the other hand, understands that gender transitioning is viewed skeptically by most. She’s eleven and she doesn’t want me to pick her up from school, because she’s concerned that her friends might not take it very well. She wants me to attend school concerts and plays, but she’s been very nervous about her friends seeing me up close.
We took her to meet with my therapist to work out some plans. She will be attending middle school next year, and she’ll be switching to a different school that’s closer to where we live. We toured the school earlier this year, and they had a big LGBT history wall, so I think she’ll have an easier time there.
Gertrude Before we divorced, my wife and I had two wonderful sons together. They’re seventeen and ten now. Unfortunately, my wife was the one who told my sons about my transition, and she did it in a really negative way. She told them I was sick. I think a lot of her initial negativity was coming from a place of betrayal. She felt like I had been lying to her, and I was, but I wasn’t lying about being a woman: I was lying about being a man. We’re on speaking
terms now, and we actively decided that we wanted to do what was best for our children. We share custody of them and we both spend a lot of time with the boys.
My sons knew that I was living as a woman part of the time, but it got to the point where I could no longer be the other person, except for really special occasions. I sat them both down and said, “If it’s okay with you guys, I’d rather be me all the time now. I’ll understand if you have a concert at school and you really want the other person to show up: I love you and I’m willing to do that.
” My youngest son said to me, “Why would we ever ask that of you?”
That brought me to tears. I said, “Tomorrow I think I’m going to start being me always. Is that okay with you?”
Phrasing it that way gave them the opportunity to object, but they never did. They are such great kids. My take is that this generation of kids, in addition to being colorblind, is also largely gender-blind as well.
Mary We told our children about Jules’s transition over a period of about six months. He wasn’t in a hurry to start hormones, so we decided to wait until our youngest, who had just turned ten, was a little bit older before we told him. One day just Jules and I picked Michael up from school. The other boys were staying with friends, so it was just the three of us in the car. Michael got really excited and said, “Oh boy, is this it!?”
I asked him for clarification. Michael looked at me with big, wide eyes and said, “Clark said Dad was going to tell me that he wanted to have lady parts, and then you’d take me for a milkshake.
Can I get a hot fudge sundae instead?”
Obviously he already knew what was going on, but we had a talk to make sure he had the right information nevertheless. He definitely had a lot of questions, but most of them were about ice
cream.
Gertrude For the past week, I’ve been posting pictures of my son at his graduation on Facebook. I’ve received notes from transfolk who ask me, “Gertrude, what’s the secret to your success?”
The one piece of advice I could offer is when you’re working with your children, ask them for their input. Your kids are a lot more resilient than you think they are, so give them some credit.
And if you love them, and they love you, then this can work out.
I’m Glad I Was True to Myself
Samuel At first, I was ridiculously relieved and elated by Tracy’s support of my transition. She was almost more excited about it than I was, and I became increasingly wary of her actions. During the next few months I switched to wearing men’s clothing exclusively, began asking friends and family to call me “he” instead of “she,” and ultimately started taking testosterone. The hormones lowered my voice within a few weeks. I also gained a lot of muscle, and sprouted some facial hair. The more male I looked, the more willing Tracy was to be seen in public with me. Suddenly, she wanted to hold my hand in public, she invited me to her sorority events,
and she was thrilled to finally have a “real” boyfriend.
I felt really objectified. Tracy had been so uncomfortable with me finding my roots as a lesbian, but she loved the fact that I was transitioning because, outwardly, we were going to look like a
“normal heterosexual couple.” That realization jaded our relationship for me and I decided I didn’t want to be with someone whose acceptance of me was so conditional.
We had quite a nasty break-up. It’s been over four years since we split up, and she’s still furious with me. Looking back, I’m glad I was true to myself and that I was strong enough to leave such a provisional relationship.
Jacob My husband has been my rock. He didn’t bat an eyelash when I told him I wanted to transition. He orchestrated our move to a more accepting neighborhood, and he’s been wonderful at helping me explain my transition to the kids. Having open and frank communication made this period of my life, a time that is so disastrous for many couples, a complete and utter non-issue. I have a great life, a wonderful family, and I thank God for that everyday.
Shauna Even though my marriage ended disastrously, I wouldn’t change my decision. I had hit a wall and it felt like I didn’t have any other choices: transition or die. I had planned out everything about how I was going to commit suicide: I knew when, where and how.
I told my therapist about my plans one morning, and she convinced me to put those suicidal thoughts on hold and give transitioning a try. Together we mapped out a timeline for my
transition, and as I started taking hormones my suicidal thoughts started to dissipate. As people started seeing me for the woman I was supposed to be, I felt that a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Transitioning came at a price: I’ve been single for the past eleven years and I suspect I always will be. Yet losing my marriage is better than losing my life. If I hadn’t transitioned I would not be here today.
Conclusion
All of the interviewees discussed an unbelievably strong need to transition, which pushes the boundaries of societal acceptability. There is an incredible amount of sacrifice, determination, and perseverance associated with transitioning, yet none of the participants said that they would change their decision. As Shauna beautifully and summarily stated, the benefit of transitioning was definitely worth the cost.
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