Can’t You Wait Until I’m Dead? ~ Chapter 6: The Hardest Coming Out
I’d spent a year researching transgender history and treatments, and wasn’t any closer to understanding myself. The office had a new copy of DSM, DSM-5,[i] and I discovered that the American Psychiatric Association renamed “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria,” defined as “an individual’s affective/cognitive discontent with the assigned gender.” Besides “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,” I needed to have at least two of six criteria for at least six months to get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. My self-assessment went:
1) I had a “marked incongruence” between my gender and secondary sex characteristics (hair, voice, facial features).
2) Wanted “to be rid of” my secondary sex characteristics.
3) A “strong desire” to have the secondary sex characteristics of a woman.
4) A “strong desire to be” a woman.
5) A “strong desire to be treated” as a woman.
6) A “strong conviction” that I had “typical feelings and reactions” of a woman.
Six was well above the minimum two symptoms, but I didn’t know what qualified as “clinically significant distress.”
My distress returned in March when Spring Break led to a week out of the classroom, and more time than was healthy in my head. I dialled the number on the back of my benefits card and asked for someone who knew something about LGBT mental health. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone available that Monday, but there was a psychologist with an opening on Wednesday at 1 p.m. It was a lifetime to wait, and I didn’t know how to describe the mix of emotions and thoughts, so I took a long walk along the river. I knew my head would clear, and walking always helped my brain work through what I needed to do. Along the way, I stopped at a grocery store that sold organic and natural products and noticed vegan lipstick and nail polish on clearance. It was a sign. When I got home, I rushed to the washroom and tried on the lipstick. After years of joking and yearning about it, it was my first time wearing lipstick. I finally made it happen, albeit in private. I hoped I could make it happen in public someday. To commemorate the breakthrough, I snapped photos of the polish and lipstick, took a selfie, downloaded them to my computer, and then deleted them from the camera I shared with Sarah. Through the day-old stubble, I could see the real me.
The next day, Wednesday, March 16, my bliss of the previous day was gone, and I awoke in a panic. Since it was spring break, Sarah rescheduled some of her gardening customers so she could finish early and spend the afternoon with me at the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta, BC. My midday appointment with the psychologist was now scheduled when she planned to get home, and I wasn’t ready to explain what’d been going on in my head for the past year. I also didn’t want her to think I was dead when I didn’t come out to help her unload her pickup, and I couldn’t make excuses—I’ve never been able to lie convincingly. After we ate breakfast and she was about to leave, I said, “Uh, Sarah. I made an appointment with a psychologist at 1 p.m., so I might be on the phone when you get home.” She asked, “What’s wrong?” and I broke into tears. “I think I might be transgender and need to find out if there’s anything I can do about it, like take antidepressants again.” She replied, “I always thought you were too good to be true!” We instantly fell into a crying loop where my tears made her cry, and we held each other to avoid seeing each other’s tears. With my wet face draped over her shoulder, I said, “I always thought you were too good to be true, too.”
She couldn’t go on with her half day of work, and as I got dressed, she called her customers and rescheduled again. Two of her happiest places in the world were in her pickup—a beige, GMC Sierra 1500 with a waving solar-powered daisy on the dashboard—and Reifel Bird Sanctuary, so we drove to Reifel in her truck without saying a word. When we arrived, the words came slowly as we walked. I told her about the day the previous year that started it all off, and all the signs that made sense looking back. When I reminded her of the time in 1987, I put on one of her bras and a pair of clip-on earrings as we moved into a basement apartment together; she remembered it as joking around. The employee workshop in 2012—Queer Competency Training, run by the local LGBT organization, QMUNITY—came up too, where, when the facilitator asked me which pronouns I used, I said, “I don’t like pronouns.” Mostly, we just wandered the paths hand in hand, in the first warming sun of spring. Neither of us knew what the future held, and we had to live with the uncertainty.
One o’clock came around, and we decided I would make the call in her truck while she shopped in a nearby garden store. I dialled the psychologist, and after reassuring her I wasn’t in any immediate danger of harming myself or others—apparently, a requirement at the start of every phone session—I said, “I think I might be transgender and need to know if there are any treatments you know about, like antidepressants, that would make these feelings go away.” She said, “No, gender identity is an internal sense that medication can’t change.” It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but it was the one I expected.
The screenshot of her notes in the system read:
“Primary Issue: Sexuality. Secondary Issue: Depression. Client identified gender issues and depression as presenting problems. Stated transgender issues, questioning whether he would make the total change or not now…middle age. Client is married (thirty years), no children. Concerned how this could affect his relationship with his partner, with whom he has had a good relationship and does not want to lose. He stated he would not go as far as operation to become a woman...yet he talked further that possibility seems to weigh heavily. Stated fifteen years he has been aware of issue yet only within the past year did it really come up. Wants to start talking with his partner, re: issues and concerns. Employed as instructor and worries as to how this might also affect his job/career. Current risk: 2—low. Goals agreed with client: to find resources to both discuss and answer his questions, and to identify his wants and needs (as stated always looking after others and not himself). Goal attainment for this session: 3—some improvement. Resources recommended: LGBT community resources.”
I called QMUNITY the next day and was surprised by everything they had—I didn’t know any of it existed. Their offerings included Trans Gathering in Davie Village (“A weekly social gathering drop-in space, for all variations of trans and gender-variant folks.”), short-term counselling, Vancouver Coastal Health websites, Adult Drop-In Group for Gender Diverse and Trans People at Three Bridges Community Health Centre, Cornbury Society (“A social, educational and support group that caters primarily to crossdressers, their partners and loved ones, and others who support them.”), and a group for “GenderQueer, Nonbinary, Agender/Neutrois & Those Who Are Fluid Between (Societal) Gender Identities.” I didn’t identify as trans and didn’t need to be social or gather. I didn’t want any group therapy now. I wanted to understand what it meant to transition and the medical solutions available.
The next week, I found as much courage as I could muster and looked for books about transitioning. I was worried that someone at the library would see me with a pile of “those books” and I’d have to explain myself. Even a glance from a librarian would have killed me. It never happened, but in my ashamed and confused state of mind, even looking for books about transitioning was deviant and abnormal behaviour that I had to fight myself to do. I used the self-check kiosk, checked out four books, and hid them in a shopping bag for the walk home. I read every word of Trans, a memoir by Juliet Jacques,[ii] My Brother My Sister, a transition story by Molly Haskell,[iii] Redefining Realness by Janet Mock,[iv] and She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan.[v]
With those four books, and several others later, I built the foundation that shaped the next five years. In reading those books, I remembered that the seeds of my gender identity sprouted two years earlier during a conflict at work. A program head posted unflattering student comments, and I struggled to understand why a woman would do that to me, without stopping to consider that the subtext in my head was, Why would a woman do that to another woman? Afterwards, I read Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl,[vi] The Power of Positive Confrontation: The Skills You Need to Know to Handle Conflicts at Work, at Home, and in Life by Susan Magee and Barbara Pachter,[vii] and Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman.[viii] Whipping Girl was about a lesbian trans woman’s experiences with cissexism, transphobia, homophobia, transmisogyny, and Queen Bees and Wannabes, which Tina Fey combined with her own experiences to create the film Mean Girls, was about how women navigate polite confrontation and how girls fight for social dominance. Why didn’t I make the connection then? I read them to understand why women could be insensitive and bullying, and bought into the harmful gender stereotype that every woman was nurturing and supportive. It was the most recent run-in of several I had with women over the years. Each made my heart pound when I least expected it. To survive professionally, I had to study female social dynamics and figure out how to fit in better at work.
In 2016, of the four books I read about the trans experience, the one that both frightened and resonated most with me was She’s Not There, in which Jennifer Finney Boylan, an English professor, married with children, realized she needed to transition, and navigated the many changes to womanhood. Here was the story of a fellow academic from a liberal arts background, facing the same challenge before me: how to keep my profession, family, and friends, all while changing genders.
I was the same person, but everyone else would see me slowly change from looking and speaking like a man to dressing and sounding like a woman. Would they accept me? Reject me? I knew students often rate female professors lower than male professors and worried I would face more unkind reviews and unpleasant meetings with program heads and managers. My biggest worry was that Sarah wouldn’t want to live or sleep with a woman, and for me, the conclusion of Boylan’s book was devastating: she realized she liked men, and her wife wasn’t interested in sex with a woman.
When my mother left my father in 1994, he couldn’t handle living on his own and tried to take his life. He succeeded thirteen years later, following an abusive second marriage. Would I have to choose between continuing to present as a man to keep the cozy life I’d built with Sarah, or transition and move to a cheap apartment, eating every meal alone? One of the last things Dad said to me before his second marriage was, “I just can’t live like this.” I finished reading Boylan’s book and feared an uncertain future. I scoured the internet for an update on her relationship with her wife, and all I could find was that they still lived together. It was reassuring, but not the happy ending I hoped for us.
Fortunately, Sarah dispelled the first of my fears when she came home from shopping one day with a pink V-neck T-shirt for me. It wasn’t a big emotional moment with a tearful exchange—I cried afterwards—but I knew she was processing some of the road ahead and decided she could work with it. We returned to the mall together the next day, and she helped me look for a shade of lipstick that suited my complexion: Hot Tahiti by MAC. I didn’t have the courage yet to wear it in public, but just having it, and having bought it with her, made it seem possible one day.
The give-and-take in our relationship over the years followed a pattern, but not entirely predictable, where a surprise gift accompanied a purchase for herself. She was out shopping to replace some tennis gear, so I didn’t expect anything else when she gave me the shirt, but a day or two later, she revealed a plan: She always hated our 1996 Nissan Maxima sedan and wanted a new car. In 1998, we moved to Connecticut for my first professorship and needed a second car. She wanted a Subaru Forester for the four-wheel drive (fellow lesbians will recognize the significance of the Subaru brand). I wanted something larger and fancier to pick up visiting professors at the airport. She gave in, at a disadvantage in the negotiation because she didn’t have a job yet, and we bought the used Nissan. In the end, she was the one who needed to drive it for her long commute, and I drove our 1994 manual transmission Dodge Shadow. On moving to Vancouver, we kept the Nissan with her listed as the primary driver—a designation she resented a little more every year for eighteen years.
This time, we settled quickly on an extended-range hybrid and put down cash to buy our first new car. It was the second most expensive purchase we made, after our house, and marked the beginning of more open and honest communication and negotiation between us. I felt a pang of guilt as we parked our old car for the last time at the provincially mandated recycling (crushing) service, but crushing the past to build a new future was worth it.
[i] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
[ii] Juliet Jacques, Trans: A Memoir (London, United Kingdom: Verso Books, 2015).
[iii] Molly Haskell, My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation (New York, NY: Viking Press, 2013).
[iv] Janet Mock, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More (New York, NY: Atria Books, 2014).
[v] Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2003).
[vi] Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007).
[vii] Barbara Pachter, The Power of Positive Confrontation: The Skills You Need to Handle Conflicts at Work, at Home, Online, and in Life (New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2014).
[viii] Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2009).