Sydney Schakelford moved around a lot as a child, and lived in a strict household, which often led her to seek her father’s approval. In 2010 she began to identify as genderfluid, and ultimately came out as trans in 2013. In this interview, her and her wife, who supported her through her transition, discuss working together to create a loving marriage, the concept of deprogramming from past experiences and expectations, and finding support within the Transgender community.
“When I left the company there, I had a financial reset, because I went from making a lot of money to making hardly any money real quick. It was a reset for me, and it allowed me to reset myself and analyze who I am. It allowed me to look at myself, not the money, not a car, not the Infiniti I used to own or this or that. It made me look at myself. That’s when I started questioning myself. I’m like, ‘I’m not really happy being male. That’s not who I am. I’m pretending; I’m acting. Something’s not right.’ Remember, I grew up in the South, Southern Baptist. I had a lot of deprogramming to go through with my father and everything else. Eventually, I got there, and when I did, it was like the best thing ever. I’m myself. It’s wonderful. I’m me. I couldn’t be happier. I mean, my transition has been going very well. It’s been very good for me. I’m very happy.”
ANNOTATIONS
Annotations coming soon.
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Meghan Valdes and John Keller
Lodi, New Jersey
July 21, 2016
Transcription by Kathryn Tracy Rizzi
Meghan Valdes: This begins an oral history interview with Sydney Shackelford on July 21, 2016 in Lodi, New Jersey. The interviewers are Meghan Valdes and John Keller. Thank you for having us today.
Thank you.
To begin, I hope you can tell us when and where you were born.
Yes, I was born, actually, exactly forty-six years ago today [laughter] in Knoxville, Tennessee. When I was born, my mother said, as just I talked to her this morning on the phone, and she’s like, “When you were born, you looked like a little Indian child with all this black hair and everything,” because there’s a lot of Native American in my family, on her side of the family. My father was already in Germany. He was a MP [military police] in the Army. He was already there. We were supposed to go there already, and my mother decided to wait and have me in the U.S., instead of going ahead and having me in Germany. That’s where was I [born].
Can you tell me a little bit about the town you grew up in?
Well, that’s kind of complicated, because I grew up in so many different places.
Right.
My mother lived with my grandmother and my great grandmother at the time when I was born, so after I was about four months old, we moved to Germany and lived there for a little while. In fact, my first word was in German, because my babysitter was German. Then, after a couple years, we moved back to the U.S. My father, his service time was up. We moved back, and he went to work for the railroad, Norfolk Southern Railway as a police officer. Then, he was transferred to, not even a year there, he was transferred to Charlotte, North Carolina. That’s kind of where I grew up from what I can remember, so that’s about 4 until I was about 15, so a good long time. I lived there with my parents. They kind of went through some things. They eventually divorced. They called it separation. I lived a lot of different places in the same town. Charlotte’s a very cosmopolitan town. Even in the ‘70s, the ‘80s, most people weren’t from there. That’s why I don’t have a Southern accent. My mom does, and my father does, but I don’t. So that’s kind of interesting. Most of my friends were from New York, Detroit, different things like that, so I had a diverse [background] in that respect. I guess you would say Charlotte’s kind of my hometown until I was 15 years old. Then, when I was 15, I moved up here to New Jersey and lived up here in Westwood, New Jersey from 15, for my sophomore year in high school, and then my junior and senior year was in Chester, New York, where I went to Monroe-Woodbury High School. I kind of grew up there until I was 18.
The overview.
Everywhere. I love when people try to figure out my accent, [laughter] because they can’t.
On that note, how did having to live in all those different places affect you as a child, if at all?
It really helped me, I think, in a lot of ways, because especially down South, everyone you knew is either Baptist, Methodist, that was about it. There was no Muslim. I didn’t even know what that was until later on. Jewish, we had one Jewish kid in my school. He was in my class. That was it. He lived a couple blocks over from us. It was just unheard of. I mean, that’s all you knew. When I came up here, people would ask, “Are you Catholic or Jewish?” I’m like, “Neither.” It was very different, I think, being exposed to different cultures and different things. I was also– in North Carolina, in Charlotte, the school system I was in was part of the busing program, so I was actually bused to what they call, I guess you would say, the different districts to want to do integration. They were trying to do that, even though the Supreme Court said “No,” they’re still kind of doing it, but they did it in sections, like in elementary school, you did it one way. In junior high school or middle school, they switched the sides, and then you went to your own regional high school. That’s kind of how they did it. They quit doing that now, but that’s how it was in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Coming up here and seeing different things, different cultures, and you meet people from India, you meet people from different places and different ethnic backgrounds. My stepfather, his office was in Jersey City. It’s one of the most diverse parts of this state, in the country, and that really opened my eyes to things. My father has a very homogeneous-type mentality. Everyone should be this one way, and there’s no other way. If you’re not this way, then you’re wrong. He’s very strict and has that way of being. Seeing different things up here really was nice.
Can you talk a little bit about what your mother was like in that respect, your relationship with her?
My mother’s relationship has always been very good. We talk once a week. I love my mom; she loves me. She was born and raised in Tennessee, in Knoxville, also. Both my parents were. She grew up in a very poor family. She used to tell about the pet chicken she used to have in her room on the dresser. It used to sit on the dresser, her pet chicken. She never really had a clean house as a kid, because it was a farm basically, and then they moved from there to the city when she was like ten. It was a huge shock, but still that was a big change. She saw how other people lived. She was like, “I don’t want to live like that.” So, she was always very clean and neat. Take your shoes off in the house and everything else that she taught me. She taught me very well. [laughter] My mom, she’s always let me be me. My mom had her best intentions for me. Sometimes, it may not seem like it at the time, because I am a very independent woman. She likes to have that influence [laughter] and say, “I did this,” but she means well. I love her.
You have one sibling from your parents’ original marriage.
Yes.
Can you tell me a little bit more?
My brother, (Kelley), I spoke to him on the phone a little earlier to wish me a happy birthday. He’s eight-and-a-half years younger than me. He was a surprise, but a happy surprise, to my mom and my father. I’ll never forget when he was born, because he was born during this unusually large, significant snowstorm in Charlotte in February 1979. I’ll never forget it, because we had two feet of snow, which for Charlotte, North Carolina is unheard of. It was a record snowstorm. I don’t think they’ve broken that storm record since. That’s something you don’t really forget. [We] are very close. We never really had big fights, never. I was always his older sibling. I never realized it until I went to college, my mom told me when I left for college, how he was so sad when I left, because during my parents’ divorce and everything, we always were together. He was with me more than my mother or my biological father or my stepfather. We always were together. Even though when I turned sixteen, I got a car and I was driving and different things and he was going to school and had his friends, we’d get to see each other almost every day. When I moved away for college, he was affected the most, more so than I ever realized. Me and him, we’ve stayed close. We’re very close. Now, he lives in Florida, but we have a lot in common. We’re both geeky with technology and different things. It’s a good relationship.
You mentioned your parents divorced at one point. I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about what that transition period was like, because you also moved around at the same time.
I did move around. My parents separated three times, and the third time was when they divorced. My father wasn’t always faithful to my mom, which is sad. He loved her. He still loves her. Last time I spoke to him, he said that. He’s changed, he says. I don’t know if he has or not, but I hope he has. I wish him well. Each time was hard, because we moved away. The first time, he moved out, and the other two times, my mom moved out. I always went with my mom. My father, I don’t think he ever really wanted children per se. He wanted a son to carry on the name, but other than that, I think that’s really all he wanted. He didn’t want more than one. When my brother was born, he knew I was different being born male, and then my brother became the favorite real quickly. I’ll never forget one time he said something to my mom, and I was there on the couch. He said to my mom and I– I was on the couch or on the floor playing with something, and he said to my mom, “I love this child,” pointing to my brother, “more than two of you put together.” It was just something you don’t really forget. My father was very strict. When it was his house, I couldn’t get anything out of the refrigerator, unless it was water, without his permission. He was a very strict, by-the-book, as he came from his job or whatever, he was an MP in the Army. His father was the same way. He was raised very, very strictly. He showed no emotion. That’s just how he was. That’s how he expected men to be. Then, there was my mom, who’s the total opposite. One thing that did happen, I got real lucky about, and that was the third time they separated. They were separated for two years before the divorce went through, and in North Carolina you had to be separated for a year before they’ll do a divorce. My grandmother came to live with us. My grandmother was wonderful. We lost her about twenty years ago, fifteen years ago. I was very close. She was like a second mom to me and to my brother, too. We used to take trips together to Myrtle Beach. It was only a two-hour drive from Charlotte. We had enough money for gas to get there and back, and that was about it. [laughter] We had fun, you know. We really did. We had some good times with that. My father, there’ve been times we haven’t talked. Right now is one of them. We haven’t talked since I came out to him. There’ve been other times when he wouldn’t talk either for various reasons, because I didn’t always agree with him. That’s the type of person he is. You either agree with him or you’re out. He has mellowed out. In fact, his current wife, I used to joke and said, you know the character Red from That ‘70s Show, that was my father, complete with foot in ass and everything, because he used to say, he’d say it just not to me, he’d say it to anyone, he would say, “Does this mean you have to go to the hospital?” “Why, dad?” “To get my foot out of your ass.” That was his mentality. That was the way he thought. He thought it was funny. Part of it wasn’t really joking. You always were afraid. This is the way he was. My mom was always the one that kind of rescued me, was always kind of the one that if I did something wrong in school, “We won’t tell your father. I know he’ll be just furious.” That’s kind of the relationship that we had.
You mentioned that your dad had these very strict ideas about masculinity and what it meant to be a man.
Yes.
At that point, when you were a child or maybe by the time you were a teen, when did you start to question these ideas of gender?
I didn’t understand gender roles back then. I was young. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what transgender was. No one even knew it was possible to even change gender. I just knew that I didn’t feel right. Looking back now in hindsight, it’s easy to look at it in hindsight now, but then I was very feminine, just how I acted, how I was.
[End of Recording One]
He probably didn’t look at it as being trans. He probably looked at it as being gay, because, I mean, he thought I was gay, I would be gay, which he was halfway right. I’m a lesbian, so I guess he’s halfway right there, as far as being a gay male. Any time I did anything feminine, he would hit me. He’d say, “No, no, boys don’t do this,” or, “Men don’t do that.” Or be close to him. I remember I was only six years old in the car. We had the bench seats back in the ‘70s, and I wanted to sit next to him and be close to him. He’s like, “No, get over there. Boys don’t do that. Only sissies do that.” That was his mentality. My mom didn’t like that at all. He used to work in the summertime, he worked the night shift, and my mom worked during the day. So, I was with him most of the day at that age, because my brother hadn’t been born yet. He just was very strict. My mom, you know, going back, looking at things now, I didn’t know this, but until my mom and I talked, when I came out to her, she’s, “Well, it kind of makes sense.” Before, she didn’t see it, but now, she does. She told me a story how she remembered we were at Myrtle Beach, and we had just seen Jaws and how I was out in the water, waving at Jaws and it was very feminine the way I was doing it. My father said to my mother, “Well, look at that fruit. I should smack it out of him.” That was kind of how he was.
John Keller: How did your mom feel in that moment? Do you know? Did she ever express it to you?
Not then, now. My father was very strict to her, and in some ways, she was afraid of him, in some ways. My mom, she worked for a collection agency, so did medical bills, that type of thing, usually helping people, because half the time insurance companies didn’t do it right and she would actually help them with getting the insurance straightened away, so that the hospitals could get paid. She had to hand over her paycheck. My father, he handled all the money. He handled it all. He would say, “Here’s your fifty dollars a week. That takes care of your gas, groceries for the house and clothing for the kids.” That’s how he was. He was very strict with money. He is to this day himself, very, very strict, because his parents survived the depression and his grandfather owned a big tire chain in Florida when the depression hit and lost everything when the banks went under. His father was a geologist, and he worked for the (A To Zinc) Mining Company. I remember he used to do quartz they used to make for digital watches back in the ‘70s. That was a big thing. That’s what they mined for was that quartz they used. They had a big contract with Texas Instruments. That’s what they used back then. That was kind of how he went about, so my mom was really afraid. When it was just me and her, it was always good. I remember wanting to wear her high heels, and I’d walk around the house. That was when they were separated. She’s like, “Don’t tell your father this.” She kind of knew, but she didn’t want to admit it herself though. The thing is later on in life I kind of wanted his approval and all. That’s one reason I suppressed it for so long. There were other reasons too, which we can get into I suppose.
Around the time you had just come to the East Coast, you had just hit adolescence.
Yes.
You had just begun high school. What sort of changes were going on in your life at that time?
It was a big culture change, because it was like skipping a year in school, because the schools up here are almost a year ahead. I had to catch up real quick. In fact, I went to summer school for English. My math was always advanced. I’m good at math, but my English, it wasn’t bad, but I was behind because the system was different. Because I moved from New Jersey to New York, my mom wanted me to graduate with a Regents [Diploma]. In order to do that, I had to play catch up and take an extra English course that summer. I did that, and that was an experience in itself. I did catch up. Meeting different people, I was involved, I think things that got me through being involved with theater and band. I was in the band. I also was in theater, doing lights and sound. I met Buddy Rich [musician and jazz drummer]. That was awesome, doing a spotlight on him. That was my sophomore year up here. My band teacher happened to be a personal friend of his, and he came to our school to do a concert. The concert was really fun. I got to work with the stage crew. That was something else. I mean, I was fifteen years old at the time I got to do that. It was a lot of fun. Then, I remember hearing four or five years later he passed away, I was like, “Wow.” It was a big change for me, going from, you know, Charlotte’s not a small city, but going from that to here where it’s so many more people per square mile. That was a huge culture shock, being in Manhattan and even being in the suburbs. It was much, much different. Schools were different. The schools were actually smaller, which kind of surprised me. Because the schools are so regional down there, they’re much bigger. Then, when I went to New York, it was also a big school. It was kind of in the middle but still a good size.
Was theater something you had shown an interest in prior to moving to the Northeast, or was it an interest that developed?
It developed when I came up here. I was always interested in lights and sound, that type of thing. I started getting into computers a little bit before I left, too. Then, that kind of went on hold, because I didn’t have access because the library in North Carolina had four Apple IIe [computers]. That was my first experience with that small microcomputer. It had a tape drive to store data, literally a cassette tape. When I came here, I still had that, but the first year, we were kind of in a small place because we moved to a condo my stepfather had owned and making sure there was room for all of us. My brother had my stepsister’s bedroom, because they were only there on certain weekends, because their mom lived in Sayreville, New Jersey. They were only there on those weekends, and the weekends they were there, he would sleep in the same room as me. I had a trundle bed, so it had two sides to it and it would come out and up. He would sleep in that. Then, when we moved that next summer, we moved to Chester, New York, we had a big house, a real big house. I had my own room, my own bathroom and everything, so that was nice. It was kind of weird, because up there, it was more rural than it was in Charlotte. People don’t think of New York State as being rural, but it’s very rural up there. We’re forty miles from the city up there, and it’s still kind of different, not so much now, but back then. This being 1986, so, yeah, it was much different.
Can you talk a little bit about how your mother met your stepfather and what the second marriage was like?
Well, they met in Charlotte. My stepfather owned a trucking company, and he shipped textiles from the South. He was in Charlotte quite a bit on business, seeing different customers that were nearby, but Charlotte being the biggest airport. He flew in all the time. They met at a bar. The funny thing was that my mom’s named is Patricia, but she goes by Pat. His name is Patrick, and he goes by Pat. They literally met with, “What’s your name?” “Pat.” “That’s my name, too.” That was literally the conversation when they first met, and they kind of hit it off. They were together, they dated for about a year. He had two previous marriages. He even brought down two of them, my two stepsisters, (Karen) and (Janelle), and brought them down. At the time, I think (Janelle) was two and (Karen) was four or five, five. It was good to see them. I had never met them before, and then we started flying up there. He took us to a Yankees game, which I didn’t care any about baseball, but it was just to be at Yankee Stadium was like, “Wow, this is kind of cool, just to be here.” I didn’t care about the game. That was kind of neat. They got into a big fight or something. I don’t know the details of it, but then they got back together a year later. They dated for another year and decided to get married. They did their honeymoon in Hawaii. They got married in New York. They had a small, private wedding. We didn’t go to their wedding. They wanted to do it privately. He’s been real good to me, my stepfather, very understanding. He’s Italian and a Catholic, very open-minded. He does vote Republican. [laughter] He’s open-minded regardless. [laughter] We kid. You can’t get mad at him, because he’s nice. I like him.
You mentioned earlier that your dad had been very strict in keeping you in the line of what he considered to be a man.
Yes
You said your mother was more tolerant and always on your side, at least implicitly.
Yes.
By the time you were in high school and your mother had remarried, had there ever been a frank discussion about what they might have perceived as your sexuality or anything like that?
My mother thought I was gay, a gay male. She asked me once. I kind of kept busy. The question I kind of just kept putting off to the side. I really didn’t date a whole lot. I mean, I kind of did. I liked girls. I had some close friends. I was more into geeky things. One reason I never questioned it is because I was always wanting approval from my father, my biological father, because he’s not the type of person to say congratulations or you did good. He’s not that type of person. Only once in my life has he ever said I’m proud of you, and that’s when I graduated college. I was, what, twenty-three, twenty-four at the time. That’s it. He is not that type. I was looking for approval; I never was going to get it. Also, during that time, transitioning, first of all, I didn’t even know you could transition, at that age. I knew I felt wrong, but I didn’t understand why. I thought it was just something I’d grow out of. I thought, you know, eventually, I’d go to school, get my college degree, get a job, meet the right woman, and that feeling would go away. That’s really what I thought. I still saw him a lot. I mean, I spent Christmas down with him. I’d fly down to see him for Christmas or in the summer sometimes. I wasn’t totally away from him. I used to speak to him at least once a week on the phone. We had our first falling out when he promised me that when I turned sixteen, he’d help me buy my first car. My stepfather surprised me. I was actually going to save up some money, and I was going to buy from his company an old, used Datsun, Nissan. That’s when Nissan was called Datsun, which tells you how old it was. It was a little Sentra. I was going to buy that. It had nothing. It had a five-speed [manual transmission]. It didn’t have air conditioning. That’s how basic it was. I learned to drive on that car. I drove it anyway, because it was a company car. He was selling the business, and he wasn’t needing it anymore. So, I was going to buy it from him, but he surprised me. He’s like, “No, I want you to have something a little more reliable, something new,” so he actually surprised me and bought a new car. He said, “Just do me a favor.” I was like, “Yes.” I call my stepfather dad, because he’s been so good to me. He paid for my college. He paid for my first car. He always did things for me. He was a businessperson, and he tried to teach me things as well. I used to go on sales calls with him. He had said, “Would you just ask your father if he would pay for the insurance?” It seems fair. So I asked him. You know it wasn’t like he’s hurting for money. I mean, he does pretty well. He saved a lot of money over the years. He’s worth quite a bit. I asked him. I said, “My stepfather here, he surprised me with this car. You said you’d help me, so would you help me with the insurance?” His answer was to me, “Oh, no, I never said I’d help you buy the car. I said I’d help you pick it out.” I was like I didn’t need that. I know a lot about cars. [laughter]
[End of Recording Two]
We got into a fight, didn’t speak for a while, and then eventually we did. I think we didn’t speak that much for almost two years, from when I was sixteen until I was about eighteen. Then, we started speaking again, and when his father started getting sick, I went to college at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I went back to Tennessee, because I had family there. I was able to get in-state tuition. I originally went in as engineering, the College of Engineering. Then, later on, I switched to computer science. When he started getting sick, I think we started getting a little closer. I was always still looking for that approval. I never really got it, so to speak.
You decided to go to college in Tennessee.
Yeah.
What prompted that? You mentioned that it was in-state tuition.
It was in-state tuition. I was going through several different schools. I liked North Carolina, because I kind of grew up there. I looked at several different schools, Appalachian State, UNC-Wilmington. I looked at Pace up here in New York. I looked at some of the SUNY schools, Plattsburgh, but I kind of wanted to go back down South. I hated the winters in New York State. I was not a fan of the winters. The first year, we had snow on the ground from October to April. I didn’t like that. [laughter] I learned how to drive in snow. That was one good thing. I just wanted to go down there. They had a good program. The tuition was reasonable and plus my stepfather paid for it. He was looking for a place down South that he could base, he did a lot of traveling down South, so he used it as well. So, he actually bought a house down there, and I took care of it and lived in it. I took care of it while going to school. He would use it on occasion. My mom even moved down when her sister got sick with cancer. They actually stayed down there for a couple years while I was in it. The first year and a half I was alone. I have family down there. I have cousins. My grandmother was still alive. She was down there. [That was the grandmother] I had grown up with, so we were very close. My great grandmother, she lived to be 96. She was half Cherokee Indian. So, I did have family there and it kind of made sense. I was still away from home, but not too far away, because I had all the family there. There were many reasons why. The University of Tennessee is actually a good school. They had a good program, and I met some wonderful people there. In fact, a professor, I still talk with him all the time on Facebook, and his name was Dr. Doak. I used to work in his department in the College of Education. He was from Texas, and here I was from New York, speaking a million miles an hour. He would speak slower than the people in Tennessee. I’m trying to pull the words out of him. Brilliant guy, he was absolutely brilliant, he used an Apple Newton. Yeah, he was in his fifties, he used an Apple Newton. This was 1991-’92. He was just so ahead of technology, ahead of what schools would do. His wife was a teacher. It’s amazing. I saw him last summer. Unfortunately, someone we used to work with had passed away, and I went to the service for it. He was there. You know, he knew I transitioned and saw me. He’s always been very supportive of me. He’s like, “You’re one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever seen.” Even to my graduation, he came to my graduation party, and he had a speech about me. It blew my mom away, blew my father away, my stepfather. I didn’t know he was going to do this. He was like, “In my forty years up here, I’ve never met anyone like” insert old name, Sydney, I guess, but still it was an accomplishment. He’s one of those people who influenced me a lot.
JK: Did you have any idea of what kind of profession you wanted to pursue when you entered college? You said you went in as engineering.
Yes.
JK: Then, you switched.
I knew I wanted technical. I wanted computer science, and my mom kind of pushed me towards engineering. She was like, “Oh, you’ll make more money in engineering.” I’m like, “Well, the school had both, so why not? I’ll go in that way.” I went to the College of Engineering, electrical computer engineering. There was some programming there, Fortran, that was something which we used, and Pascal. [laughter] Oh, she’s laughing. [laughter] It was a scientific computing language, Fortran. [laughter] I made it through all the weed-out courses and everything else, and two years into it, I’m like, “This is not what I want to do.” So, I switched to computer science. My mom didn’t like that decision, but now she realizes that was a very good decision, because computer science majors are making a lot more money than electrical engineers. I actually made the right choice career move there. I worked on campus, too. I worked there from after my first semester, for the remaining semesters, I worked in the College of Education. I maintained their computers and got my first programming experience, which is why I switched, for multimedia. This was ahead of its time. I was first taking care of the audio-visual equipment. I wrote the software database, the software to keep track of the appointments for professors to take out equipment in the College of Education. Funny story. I was there last year, because a person I had trained, the secretary, to use the computer, she’s now the department head. We’re friends on Facebook. I was there because I changed my name, my legal name change, I changed it with the university records. I went there to make sure I could get a copy of my records in my new name, which they did. They were wonderful about it. The University of Tennessee is a very, very liberal school, so no problems there. I go there. Of course, they remodeled the building. It didn’t look anything alike on the inside, but the outside looked roughly the same. She’s like, “Here, I’ve got to show you something.” I looked at the computer. The program that I wrote in 1989, they were still using. I was like, “Oh, my God.” [laughter] Yeah, I was amazed that they still used that program to this day. They mostly check out laptops and video projectors now. It used to be slide projectors, sixteen millimeter, they changed, but they still use the same program. It just blew my mind. Working with him, it was also my first exposure to Macs. We used to do a program called CourseBuilder and Macromedia Director, and that’s where I got my experience with that. I realized I wanted to do computer science. I really liked programming. I liked working with people at solving problems for people, and I was making things work that had never been made to work before. I made a piece of software work with this video overlay card, because computers weren’t fast enough to do video yet. QuickTime had just come out. It was in its second or third year there, and even then, it was only in black and white. We had video overlay cards. We had a laser disk player, and you had a serial port and you can control the laser disk, and it would overlay into a screen to the video monitor. That’s how we did it. To have an interactive program to teach students and the video sequences would play based on their answers of where they wanted to go, so there was a lot of things in designing courses that you could do. You could take a laser disk of anything on there, whether it’s ABC News, we did one about Israel, we did one on that. Then we took it to the Tennessee Teachers Conference in Nashville two years in a row and it got a lot of attention. It was really amazing, especially when we got to demonstrate this to all the teachers. They were like, “Wow, I want this for my school.” For 1991, this was like something else. No one had ever seen anything like it, and we were doing it. That was neat, and that’s why.
You mentioned earlier that you were into theater in high school, the audio-visual aspect, and you knew now that you were into computer science.
Yes.
You mentioned that you had other geeky interests.
Yes.
What interests did you have and what extracurricular activities did you do around that time?
Well, when I was in college, I was so busy with work and everything, I really didn’t do a whole lot extra. I did aerobics. I enjoyed that, to stay fit. I did do that. I saw theater as much as I but couldn’t really get involved. It was just too much for me, because between the workload, I just couldn’t do it all. I did do things. I used to build computers, you know, just make different things work. One of the things I did, and she loves this, here, my wife does, is I took an old car radio and just made a boom box out of it. She saw it. Later on, we met at work. That’s where we met in Tennessee. When she saw that, she’s like, “Oh, I knew you were the right person” to [herself].
Leah O’Shell: Because I wanted to do the same thing.
Yeah.
LO: I had the exact same thing in my head. So, when I saw it, I was like, “Oh, perfect for me.”
Yeah.
LO: Perfect for me.
Can you talk a little more about how you two first met?
Yes. After I graduated college, I applied for several jobs. My biggest problem I had was, you’re only twenty-five years old, how do you possibly know how to do all this? Well, I have a lot of experience. I used to take care of the computers for the College of Education, and I had a lot of experience. Plus, I used to come up here in the summertime, in between semesters, to take care of my father’s company, and I would maintain some of his computers. I had a beeper, phone and everything, so if there was a problem, I’d go in remotely and take care of it. Even back then I did that. I had this experience. At The Learning Company, I actually applied for an IT job, because they didn’t have a programming job available. I really didn’t think I’d find that in Tennessee. I got there. They said, “Oh, yeah, the job, we think you’re overqualified for it.” It only pays, you know, at the time, I think it was like twenty-four thousand dollars a year or something. I said, “I can’t. No, I’ve got to make more than that. I’m sorry.” Then, they said, “Well, wait a minute. We have another position opening. Do you know Director?” I said, “Yeah, I do.” I said, “I used to do CourseBuilder.” She’s like, “Well, can you bring something you’ve done?” “Absolutely, I can bring something I’ve done.” We did a project with CSX Railroad for the safety program, and I showed that to her, to the woman who interviewed me, (Natasha Eferminko). I’ll never forget her name. She was a short Russian woman, about this tall, about this wide, but she scared the hell out of you.
LO: Personality like a mountain.
Wonderful woman, I loved her.
LO: Wonderful.
Wonderful, she was one of the best bosses I ever had. She was really impressed with the work. She’s like, “Well, when was the last time you used Director?” I said, “Well, I haven’t used Director in a while, but I’m familiar with it.” She’s like, “Okay, here.” They offered me the job that was more money, which I took. Then, I met her. She worked in the graphic arts department.
LO: I was working one day. They had been interviewing a bunch of different people, so I was used to people coming in and out. It was a very high-security building. You had to have a card to get in.
Yeah.
LO: So, Sam came over and said, “Hey, Leah, there’s someone I want you to meet.” I turned around, and I was like, “Wow, wow.”
Big and tall, I wore a suit or something.
LO: Well, at the time presenting very masculine, so she was wearing a three-piece suit, a very nice tie.
It wasn’t three piece.
LO: It was nice.
It was nice, it was nice.
LO: I remember thinking, “Wow, very handsome,” and then the second thought that I had was, “It’s too bad that she’s going to work here, because I have a strict rule against dating people at work.”
I had the same rule. We were both dating different people at the time.
LO: Yeah, but there was an instant attraction on my part.
Yes, I thought she was cute. The funny thing was, most of the women I dated turned out to be lesbians. [laughter]
LO: Except for me. I’m officially not a lesbian. I’m pansexual, thank you very much. [laughter] Big difference, big difference.
I know. It was kind of funny. So, that’s how we met. At The Learning Company, we used to write foreign language software. We used to call, you know, Silicon Valley in California there, it was called Silicon Holler, [laughter] because it was in Tennessee. There was actually another company that sounded very similar. Don’t forget Bill Appleton’s company was there, too. What was the name of that company? Something flix [Cyberflix].
LO: I can’t remember.
I can’t remember now. It’s been so many years.
You can always get back to me later. You can include it in the transcript.
In fact, I knew Bill Appleton, because he worked on one of the projects that I did at the university with CourseBuilder, and so I knew him very well. He even offered me a job at one time, but I was happy at The Learning Company and didn’t want to leave. We kind of knew each other. He was an interesting person. I lost track of him over the years. I wonder what happened to him.
By the time you had entered the working world and were finished with college, this was the late 1990s.
Yeah, this was ’95, maybe ’95, ’94-’95, early ’95, because I graduated in ’94. I did go to grad school for a little bit, and I didn’t like it. Actually, I was going into a new program called Information Technology with the Library Science Department.
[End of Recording Three]
And at that time, the state had a big budget cut and they killed the project. I would have been one of the first people in it. I didn’t want to do computer science for grad school. I wanted to do information technology, so I decided, I said, “No, it’s a sign. I’ll go for the workforce now.” I did, and that’s how we met. While I was looking for a job, I continued working at the university just to work there. I did do that for a little bit, for about six months or so.
You mentioned in your pre-interview survey that for a brief time in the mid-2000s, you had run your stepfather’s company.
Yes.
You were also working full time.
Well, what happened was that in ’97, The Learning Company got bought by another company. We were originally supposed to merge with Broderbund, and that didn’t happen because a company called SoftKey came in, which later on got bought by Mattel, but they came in and kind of did a hostile takeover. The stockholders of The Learning Company made a ton of money. They all retired I’m sure. Basically, I saw the writing on the wall. They had been known to, this was my stepfather’s business sense, I would tell him what was going on. He was right. He was like, “This is what’s going to happen.” I agreed with him, because I had seen other things like this. They had originally bought companies, got rid of the R and D department and just basically sell the product as cheap as possible, make a profit, and move on. That was essentially what they did. Everyone was afraid of this. One day, we came in. There was letters on our desk saying, “We’re not THAT company. We want to invest in you” and everything else. They did, but the problem was they came in and said, “Okay, well, we’re going to raise your salaries but get rid of bonuses.” We actually ended up making less money because of that, because our bonuses were big and they got rid of them so we really didn’t make any more money. I saw the writing on the wall. My stepfather up here was buying a new system. He had been using two systems, one I had written and one that somebody else had written, and they really needed them integrated together. So, the company did that based out of Summit, New Jersey. I won’t say the name of the company, because it’s still active and I don’t want to cause any issues. Anyway, that company, the owner of the company, had no experience with networking. He knew the programming language but didn’t know TCP/IP [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] networking, firewalls and things of that nature. He had no clue, and I did. He asked me to join and said, “I’ll bring you in as a partner.” At the beginning, it’s kind of like, “Well, we can do this, where we live in Tennessee, come back and forth,” but she continued working at that company. We had been married for not even six months.
LO: We hadn’t been married for more than four months when you took the position.
Yeah, when I took the position.
LO: Then, we maintained that back and forth for a little while, I think three months, and I said, “I’ve got to be with you.”
Yeah, it was too much, because I’d be gone for two weeks and come home for a week. It was just too much and then a twelve-hour drive every time. It was just too much.
LO: I don’t think we were apart for more, I think we officially two months into it, and I’m like, “You know what? I want to go back to school anyway,” so I put my resignation in.
Yeah.
LO: It’s very hard to get married and then have your spouse leave.
Yeah, that was hard.
LO: We leased a place in Summit, so it was close to work. The day we signed the lease, I go to him and I say, “Oh, we signed a lease.” He hands me a paper and basically says, “We need you to sign this.” It basically said I had no rights to anything. I wasn’t a partner. I was just an employee, and I had no rights to anything I wrote. I’m like, “This is not what we agreed to.” He had even lied to the woman that we were renting the condo from. I called her up. I said, “I’m so sorry.” I said, “This is what happened.” I told her exactly what happened. She’s like, “Oh, I feel so bad for you. Don’t worry about the lease. I’ll tear it up. Don’t worry about it. He lied to me too. I have no problem with it.” She was very, very nice about it. My stepfather said, “Hey, do you want to go into business for yourself? Let’s take the code you’ve written, and let’s start a company with it.” We did, and we formed that in 1998. We moved here in 1998 from Tennessee officially, because we were going and forth until we found a place. We used to have cats down there. Her father watched our place for us and everything. At the time, we had two cats. My stepfather and I did come together, and she joined us for a little bit before going back to school. We did it for a number of years. We did it for about four years. Then, my stepfather got sick with what we thought was Parkinson’s and it turned out to be myasthenia gravis, but he didn’t know it at the time. He went to Mayo Clinic. He went to different things, and he struggled for many years. Now, he’s on the right medication. He’s disabled, but at least he has somewhat of a normal life in terms of retirement, basically. He had to retire early and go on disability. He had no choice. So, he asked me to step in. I kind of ran the business. My brother, he graduated from high school and then later on he graduated from technical school, vocational school. Then, we ran it together for a little bit. It was a family business. I did the best I could. I was under a lot of pressure, because my mom and my stepfather were still depending on what I did and they heavily influenced my decisions on what had to be done. It wasn’t always in the best interest of the company. When it’s a family business, it’s tough. In 2010, I decided to get away from that, and so I did. I went away from it. My brother stayed in it for a couple years. He got tired of it, and he turned around and left it, too. Then, my uncle bought it. [laughter] He’s doing fine with it. The company’s changed quite a bit. The same people still work there. Then, they hired us. Now, they’re a client. [laughter]
LO: Do you want to tell what you switched over into when you left in 2010?
Well, okay, well, I guess it’s part of my transitioning. In 2010, I started identifying as, I actually met a friend, we had a lot in common, who was trans. I looked at transgender when I was in college, what it was, I first heard of it, but still I didn’t think it was for me because no one transitioned, because LGB had not advanced to where it is today. It wasn’t even accepted to transition and be gay. I was attracted to women. To transition to be a lesbian was just this unheard of thing in the early ‘90s. So I put it on the back burner. It did come up every now and then, it went to the back burner again. Really the first time when I realized that, a friend of mine, she transitioned in 2004, and she’s doing very well with it. She’s a lesbian, no qualms about it. She lives in the Boston area. When I met her, I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing. I didn’t know you could do that.” I was still looking for the approval of my father. Back then, it was something, she made it through. Her father quit talking to her. Her mom quit talking to her for a while, now does, but her biological father doesn’t. Her stepfather does. It sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? [laughter] It’s kind of the same experience I’m having now, which is kind of funny because our childhoods are almost identical. [laughter] We both were in AV [audio-visual]. The only difference is she went into the military. My father wanted me to go in the military to “make a man out of me.” He didn’t want to pay for my college, because he’s like, “Oh, you should go in the Army. Let the Army pay for it.” That was his answer. My stepfather was like no. Seeing that kept my eyes [open]. In 2010, I kind of starting identifying as genderfluid, and it still didn’t feel right. Then, I started feeling genderqueer. I started coloring my hair. I painted my toenails. I colored my hair, let it grow out. Then, one day, in September 2013, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m transgender. In fact, she was with me when I came to this conclusion.
LO: We were in the car.
We were in the car, driving on Route 46. I literally go to her, I said, “Holy crap.” She’s like, “What?” “I’m transgender.”
LO: I think she said, “Oh, my God.”
“Oh, my God, I’m transgender,” literally. She’s like, “Pull the car over now.”
LO: I said, “Oh, my God, pull over.” [laughter]
We had a conversation. She was shocked, looking back on it now. She isn’t shocked anymore.
LO: I was shocked but not surprised.
Yes.
LO: Because the whole thing with being genderfluid. There had been things that were commonly known to it, and I had even suspected.
Yeah.
LO: I had said, “Hey, every once in a while you do certain things that are a little bit emasculating to yourself. Is there something that’s making you want to be feminine or emmasculated?” Because I noticed. [laughter]
Well, you’re my wife. Of course, you don’t notice things. You don’t notice these things.
LO: I noticed, but I never thought you were going to say, “I’m trans.” I thought you might say, “Well, I just like to gender bend every once in a while.” I was shocked but not surprised.
A lot of our friends were like, “I’m not surprised at all.” In fact, my friend in Boston, I called her up and told her, she was like, “Well, you finally came out. I was wondering when I was going to get this phone call. Come on. I’m not surprised at all. This is not news to me. I knew you were. I just had to wait for you to come out.” It was kind of how I progressed. So, 2010 was kind of the turning point. When I left the company there, I had a financial reset, because I went from making a lot of money to making hardly any money real quick. It was a reset for me, and it allowed me to reset myself and analyze who I am. It allowed me to look at myself, not the money, not a car, not the Infiniti I used to own or this or that. It made me look at myself. That’s when I started questioning myself. I’m like, “I’m not really happy being male. That’s not who I am. I’m pretending; I’m acting. Something’s not right.” Remember, I grew up in the South, Southern Baptist. I had a lot of deprogramming to go through with my father and everything else. Eventually, I got there, and when I did, it was like the best thing ever. I’m myself. It’s wonderful. I’m me. I couldn’t be happier. I mean, my transition has been going very well. It’s been very good for me. I’m very happy.
JK: You used the term deprogramming and then finding yourself.
Okay, yes.
JK: Were there stages for you in doing that? What was that process like?
I think it opened up sexuality to me, and things were like whether it was being kinky or not thinking about terms of, down South, it’s missionary position. That’s it. There is nothing else to it, which to me was boring, and I didn’t like missionary position anyway. I didn’t like it. I never did like it. Fortunately, I think you are glad I don’t like it. [laughter] So many fun things you can do. I think thinking about sex in terms of pleasure, because down South it’s not about pleasure. It’s about procreating, and you’re only supposed to do this one thing and that’s it. You can’t even have sex until you’re married.
LO: There’s a lot of rules.
Abstinence.
LO: There’s some strange gender rules, too. For instance, as a man, there was a series of expectations placed on you in the South.
Yeah, there was.
LO: That women never have to deal with.
I never liked gender roles. From the day we met, we never had gender roles. [laughter] I enjoy cooking. I usually cook [and do] laundry. She does cleaning.
LO: Well, I’m not a good cook, but I will clean after.
Yeah.
LO: You know, because you need to participate.
She likes building things.
LO: I’m a[n] engineer.
We never really had gender roles. You do the job you’re good at and enjoy doing, not because your chromosomes say this or your birth certificate says that or whatever. That doesn’t matter.
LO: There was some deprogramming I had to do. Remember, my mom was not really about gender roles and neither was my dad, but everyone else was. When we first got married, I had a sense of expectation that I was going to have to be a certain way, too.
Yeah.
LO: I kept saying, “Well, you’re the head of the household. What do you think?” She kept saying, “I don’t want to be the head of the household.” [laughter] I’m like–
[End of Recording Four]
LO:“Okay, then we’ll work together.”
Yeah.
LO: I was willing to try to, even though it kind of didn’t fit naturally, I was willing to try to fit into that role of having a head of the household, because I thought that’s what women did.
It’s way funny, because that caused some friction with my parents, both of them, because my mom was like, “Well, the wife should do this. Why doesn’t Leah cook and clean? You do all the cooking and [laundry].” I was like, “Because I enjoy it.” I have fun cooking. I love cooking, and she loves my cooking.
LO: She’s better. You know, I try. I try to cook, and I’m not there. I’m not very good at it. What I can do is I can clean all the surfaces, pick up. I can vacuum.
All that.
LO: We may not have exactly the same gender roles, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. That was her big complaint. She thought that I didn’t love Sydney.
Right.
LO: Because I didn’t clean. I didn’t cook like a woman has to cook.
My mom, she’s like, “But, but, doesn’t she love you? All women want to do this.” I’m like, “Mom, no.” [laughter]
LO: She also said all women want big diamonds, too. That’s not necessarily true.
That’s not necessarily true, too. That’s the other thing, too. That was some of the deprogramming I had to go through. Some of it was being down South, because down South, it is a different mentality than here. Even here, there are certain gender roles. When we married, she never took my last name. I didn’t care, because she had things published in her name. I couldn’t care less. I didn’t marry her to have her take my name or own her as property. I married her because I love her. My grandfather, my step grandfather, an Italian, he didn’t understand that. He’s like, “Well, the woman always takes the man’s last name.” He didn’t understand. Even one of our family doctors didn’t get it. “That’s just strange.” No, that’s how we are. I think those steps we took along the way helped with that, because down South especially, it’s this way, you know. It’s getting better. Even down there, it’s being progressed. It’s getting better. We’ll be down there in two weeks. We go down there at least a couple times a year.
JK: It sounds like the two of you tackled this together.
[Yes]
JK: What made it easier, and what were the challenges? If you were living on your own, that would be one kind of experience. You were going through this with another person.
LO: Oh, wow. When you get to the other side of something, it’s so easy. You can just take a deep breath and relax, but, I mean, it wasn’t always this easy.
No, it wasn’t. We both had preconceived ideas of what marriage should be, what it is. What we learned was throw it all out the window, because it never is what you think it should be. I think the reason is because you’re not just growing together. We’ve always had a loving relationship. We’ve always cared about each other. One of the things we’ve always talked about is we’re both going to grow. We’re human. We’re going to evolve. If you stay stagnant and one way, no growth at all, it’s going to be very, very sad. I think it’s important, and this doesn’t matter about gender or sexual orientation or anything, I think this is for everyone, and that is you’re growing together as a couple, it is critical to have communication, really just not to have any expectations.
LO: That’s right, exactly right. The one thing that I had to do, and it’s funny because we went through a series of changes in our lives and right when Sydney was talking about transitioning, I realized that I’m going to have to transition, too. It’s not the same kind of thing. It is a big change.
It is a big change.
LO: What I realized is the more that I tried to hold myself to a series of expectations that a marriage would equal a certain thing, that a spouse would be a certain thing, the harder I tried to hold fast to this idea that I had that things outside of me would fall into alignment and be what I wanted them to be, the more unhappy I was. The more I could relax and not try to control the things that were going on around me the easier life got. I don’t know if [it was] just because [laughter] when you don’t have any expectations, it’s hard to get disappointed. I think it’s just because when you don’t feel like other people have to behave in a certain way to be acceptable to you, life just becomes very smooth. It just becomes very easy. We had to deal with the fact that there were people in our lives who were expecting Sydney to be certain ways, my parents, her parents. Everyone had a reaction to her change. The more people that had a series of expectations that she was going to behave in a certain way the harder I think it was. My lesson in all that, during that time, was to let go, let go of a sense of control or expectation, because it just makes you tired. It wears you out.
Sometimes people think they want something. You ever see people like, “Well, this didn’t happen.” “How did you reach this goal?” “Well, this didn’t happen.” “Okay, this other thing happened that’s better. Aren’t you happy?” “Well, yeah, but I wanted this other thing.” You know, it’s kind of like that mentality, and I think looking past that and, “Well, okay, I’m opening to things.” I think we both grew. I think we kind of, I know for herself, while we were sort of opening up and discovering ourselves, she actually discovered herself in many ways, having an attraction towards women.
LO: Which was something that I kind of never acknowledged before.
I sensed it.
LO: Yeah, but I was thirty-nine years old before I realized it.
But it’s one of those things.
LO: That’s late.
It’s late. I realized I was trans at forty-three. [laughter] It happens.
LO: When you changed jobs– so she was working for her family and then she came to work for the company I had started, and we started working together, which is why the money kind of dropped because small, small company. All of the people in her life that had been putting all the pressure on her to do different things, all that pressure just kind of went away, almost like flipping a switch. That’s part of the reset. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you had still been working for your father and you had still been trying to keep all these different people satisfied and happy, you may not have had the freedom to transition. I think that’s what helped.
It would have been a lot harder. It would have been a lot harder, because the pressure of dealing with employees, dealing with customers and clients and certain things. Still, we had our challenges. We had five active clients when I transitioned, so it’s kind of like coming out to five different employers and each were different. I did a seminar on that at the Philly Trans Health Conference this past June, and I did talk on that very subject, the fact that it was a challenge, but it’s a doable challenge. We didn’t lose a single customer because of my transition, and that was amazing and one of them was in North Carolina. That was pretty good.
JK: What do you think is the reason for that? Do you think it would have been different ten years ago?
Yeah, well, it was kind of a double-edged sword, because it started becoming more acceptable, but not the transgender craze now. I mean, now since January, probably since Caitlyn Jenner came out [in a Vanity Fair cover story in June 2015], it’s every day you read in the news there’s somebody transgender in the headlines somewhere. Whether it’s a bathroom thing or whatever, it’s on the news all the time. Now, I started transitioning in 2013, right before [the actress] Laverne Cox started getting really famous. I felt like if I had transitioned a year later, a year and a half later, some people would have said, “Well, you’re doing it because it’s a fad.” Clearly, it’s not for me, because I was there before. I think that’s kind of a double-edged sword in that respect, but like with gay rights, now that it’s more known, it’s being criticized more, but it’s going to be better in the long run. We’re in that point right now. Before it was not being accepted, and I think as the LGB part became more accepted, it helped with T [transgender], especially for those of us that were transitioning to be gay or to be a lesbian or trans men that like men. I think that helped on both sides, because the older generation of trans, the majority of them are attracted to the opposite sex they identify with. They’re straight. I think that’s been the big difference, because back then the whole idea of separation of gender identity and sexual orientation, they thought they were the same and they’re not. They’re totally different things. It’s only in really the last eight or nine years that that has been, maybe ten years, that that’s been accepted. Well, they are different things, and that’s even with people who write the DSM manual. My therapist was pretty heavily involved in some of the things in the DSM manual that ended up getting taken out. She was involved in getting BDSM [bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism] taken out. Now, her daughter is dealing with trans and working with it, and she works with a lot of trans youth. There’s a lot of things out there that have helped. I think there’s a big difference in the last ten years, absolutely.
JK: I wrote down a couple of things that you had mentioned as you were going along, and I thought it was interesting the whole Charlotte thing and what is going on in North Carolina.
Yes.
JK: This morning I just read that the National Basketball Association has pulled out their All-Star Game from Charlotte.
Oh, they did?
JK: The NBA cited the law in North Carolina. I was just wondering if you have reflections or opinions. You mentioned it is in the media and has become a very politically-charged thing.
It’s very politically charged.
JK: Yes.
The thing is transgender people have been using the bathroom they identified with since the millennium. No one has said anything. Why is it all of a sudden a problem?
People look at me. Yeah, I’m tall. I’m six-five. I know women that are six-nine, so what? No one knows I’m trans unless I tell them. For me to go into a men’s room is dangerous. Women do a lot of times if the women’s bathroom is crowded, but you’ll go in with another woman. You’re not going to go in there by yourself, [into] the men’s room [if] no one’s in it and the women’s room’s backed up. That’s different. To force someone because [of a law], I mean, first of all, I’ve never seen anyone’s genitals in the bathroom, especially in the women’s bathroom. There’s stalls. If someone’s trying to look at mine, I’m worried about them. That’s strange. I find it very odd that a group of people are so worried about what’s between someone’s legs. First of all, trans women are women, and these laws are basically saying a trans woman is not a woman unless she’s had surgery and even then. Really bathrooms were separated because women during the Industrial Revolution wanted a separate area for modesty. They could put on makeup. They could brush their hair. It had nothing to do with the plumbing, zero. People just assume. Then, there’s all these crazy rumors and lies they spread about, “Oh, you know they’re predators,” and this and that. It’s just wrong. Trans women especially are usually the victims. They’re not the assailant; they’re the victim. Then, they forget about trans men. Look at Buck Angel [filmmaker and motivational speaker]. He’s as masculine as could be but has a vagina. You think he should be in the women’s bathroom. I mean, you’re making women more uncomfortable forcing him to go into a women’s bathroom than someone like me being allowed in there. Then, the whole birth certificate thing is ridiculous, because they are strictly going by that. They say they want to base it on what’s on the birth certificate, but that doesn’t make any sense. If you’re born in New York, you can still be a trans woman with a penis and still get your birth certificate changed and be perfectly fine using the women’s bathroom in North Carolina, but if someone like me has surgery, who can’t get their birth certificate changed because Tennessee will not allow it even after surgery, it’s one of three states that don’t, I’m not allowed to. It makes no sense. It’s clearly discrimination. That’s what it’s about. It’s about something they don’t understand or know. [Governor of North Carolina] Pat McCrory has basically come, you know, he hasn’t said it, but–
[End of Recording Five]
read in between the lines, basically, he doesn’t believe trans women are women. In his mind, trans women are men, and that couldn’t be farther than the truth. It’s crazy, because if it was really about predators, okay, first of all, why don’t we just give out driver’s licenses? In New Jersey, you can get a driver’s license changed without surgery, but you do have to have a doctor’s note, not a note, but you have to have a form signed by a doctor. There’s something official you have to go through. You can do that for a passport. You can get your passport changed without surgery. The federal government says I’m female, the State of New Jersey says I’m female, but in North Carolina, I can’t use the women’s bathroom. It’s just wrong. It really is wrong. It makes people uncomfortable. I think I heard a quote best. It was on Fox News of all things. It was, “It’s a solution looking for a problem.” It really is, because you’re creating a problem when there isn’t one. That’s pretty much my take on the whole bathroom thing. Another thing too is then they’ll say locker rooms. Okay, locker rooms, yes, you may see someone’s genitals in locker rooms. You know what? As a trans woman, I don’t want to show my genitals in a women’s locker room. I do use the women’s locker room. I go to the gym down the street. No one knows I’m trans. I don’t care if they know or not. In New Jersey, I’m allowed in there by law, but even though I’m allowed in there, I’m fortunate enough because my doctor believes I was exposed to DES [diethylstilbestrol] and there’s a couple other things, I tuck very easily. I can wear a one-piece bathing suit. No one knows. I’m flat, after hormones, because hormones basically chemically castrate you anyway while you’re on them. No one even knows. I’m not going to strip all the way down to show people either. I don’t want to. I don’t want that attention. Trans women don’t want that. I think they just assume that they do. Planet Fitness has even private areas that you can change in. A lot of gyms have that now too. Unfortunately, the one I have is not. They do have private showers but not private changing areas. At the same time, I do understand, when it comes to kids, parents’ concerns. Last week, I was in the audience of a panel discussion with the Department of Justice in Sayreville.
One of the members of the school board of Jersey City says, “I’m for this, but put this thing up, the government, students must use these bathrooms, which is great, but how do we implement it? There’s no best practices. There’s no guidelines.” He’s like, “Look, I have a trans girl in the women’s bathroom, okay, but I also have a Muslim student who has to possibly see genitals and their parents are calling me asking what the hell and they have a good point.” There’s got to be a solution. I mean, obviously, it’s not to separate and everything else, but something needs to be allowed. Allow her a private area or the Muslim child. Ask them if they want it. Give them choices. If they want to be in a private area, let them be in a private area so they don’t see that. Different things like that, I think, are solutions. It’s a complex thing for the locker rooms. For bathrooms, it’s no issue, and it shouldn’t be. That’s my take on it.
You mentioned you had this talk in Philadelphia and you were on this panel with the Department of Justice.
Yes.
After your transition, have you found that you are more involved in this community and speaking?
Absolutely, yes. I have been involved in advocacy for a couple years now. I really got into it in more of the last year. I think I really enjoy helping people. I’m very tall. I’m six-five. When I first transitioned, I was six-seven. I actually lost two inches from hormones, which can happen. The first time it happened, you know, I go to support groups, not for me, I do it for other people, other trans individuals, especially who are just starting out. They’re scared. They don’t know anyone else trans. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know what’s right, which there is no right way, but they won’t meet someone like them. I’ll never forget. One person came in. She wasn’t even presenting as female yet. She was scared out of her mind. She was six-four. She came out, and she broke down in tears, finally at someplace to be accepted and finding a home for her, so to speak. She just looked up to me and she’s like, “My God, you’re tall. If you can transition, so can I,” because she was afraid she was too tall to transition. I said, “Well, women come in all shapes and sizes.” They’re women. There are cis women who are much taller than me. We’re Long Tall Sally [women’s clothing retailer]. Last April, buying clothes, they only do women five-eleven and taller, and there were other trans women there. Every woman that was taller than me, and there were quite a few, were cis women. I met Lindsay Hayward [actress and professional wrestler], she’s been on The Learning Channel [in My Giant Life], do you know who she is? Yeah, I met her. We talked for a while. She’s six-nine. I’m looking up at her. That was kind of wild. She used to be a wrestler in college, so she’s also bigger than me. She’s very fit, but she’s a large woman, a very fit, muscular woman. I was like, “Wow.” We come in all shapes and sizes, and some of us just happen to have penises. [laughter]
LO: The day that we were at the Long Tall Sally, I felt so short, [laughter] because I was one of the shortest women there.
Yeah.
LO: The girl that you mentioned that was afraid to transition, you should see her now. She’s totally thriving. She looks exquisitely beautiful.
She’s beautiful, yeah.
LO: I guess she’s officially transitioned.
Yeah, she’s been transitioned for about a year. She’s been full time for about a year.
LO: She grew her hair out long. It’s very beautiful, very feminine. She has a tall build, and she can pretty much wear anything that she puts her mind to putting on. It looks good on her. So, it’s nice to see somebody who was a little bit scared but realized there’s nothing to be really scared about.
Yeah.
LO: Would you like some more water or something?
Yes, please.
I think for me when I started giving back to community, I really liked it. I like the positive influence. If I can do that for the people being an advocate and helping, it’s worth it. It’s funny. I transitioned to be a woman, not to be a trans woman, but in the LGBT community, I say I’m a trans woman. I’m there to help people who don’t understand. I am kind of public in one way, but day to day life, no one really knows unless they happen to know or see me online or something. Most people don’t. In fact, we were in Cosmo in January, an article. I was sitting next to someone who was actually reading the article and they had no clue. They didn’t recognize me. My picture was right there on the front of the page. I’m like, “Okay.” That has happened.
[Editor’s Note: The article in Cosmopolitan magazine is entitled “Why I Stayed With My Husband When She Became My Wife” by Lane Moore.]
It’s worth it to me to help people. I’ve run into a few TERFs [Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist] online, but other than that, I haven’t had any issues with it. It’s been good to be able to help. Also, if I can do that through acting, that’s even better. I’m trying to do some acting on the side. I have done sides that may be considered for a movie and I was being considered for it and then they decided to change it at the last minute because they went to a different direction. Also, I was going to be in an episode of Mr. Robot, but they took the scene out. [laughter] Oh, well. Whatever I can do to help.
LO: Did you mention your website name?
I have a website tallgirlsydney.com, and it’s kind of my advocacy sight. It’s really more for advocacy, acting, speaking engagements for people, if anybody wants to use me for schools, universities. I do have a publicist friend, and she helps out. She’s my publicist, and she does really well.
You mentioned now that you have transitioned you enjoy helping people. You mentioned this one woman.
Yes.
You help others who are beginning their transitions and help them through the process. How did you come across the TrueSelves group?
Well, the TrueSelves group [at the Pride Center of New Jersey] I came across it online. I was looking for support groups. There was one in Manhattan. I had been to it. It just didn’t really click with me. It’s a good group for people. Everyone should go if they’re trans in the New York City area, but the one in Manhattan at The Gay Center just didn’t really feel right to me. The TrueSelves, I went there the first time by myself, and to me, it just hit right. It was more about support. Some of the other groups, I won’t say which ones, but some of the other groups are more about complaining. “Oh, I will never pass.” “Oh, this happened to me.” You still get that. So many bad things happen to them especially in the beginning of when you transition, but having positivity I think is important. That’s the reason why I like the TrueSelves. Nicole [Brownstein], she runs it now. She did not run it when I first started. Sam did, [Samantha] did. I knew her. She started running it. It’s been kind of a second home in terms of that. I do enjoy helping. I also help out with the PFLAG group here in Bergen County. I haven’t done as much this year. They don’t meet in the summer as much. This year they are for the first time meeting in the summer. In the fall, they kind of pick back up. That’s more for the parents and family, but trans people do go there also for support. It’s good, I think, to help the family and they meet someone who has transitioned, who has been through it. It kind of gives them an idea of what to expect. A lot of them are children. They’re teenagers in school, and their parents are like, “What’s going to happen with my child?” They’re going to have a normal life, yeah, they will. I applaud those parents, being there for them. It’s wonderful. I say it to them all the time. I say, “I applaud every parent that’s here. You’re here because you support your child.” Also, spouses, occasionally, a spouse will come, too. That’s something I enjoy.
Do you have any last questions?
JK: One of the last questions I have, and it may be too big of a question, it is interesting the things that have come up in my own work and getting to know more about transgender issues. It is a unique experience to have lived the world as both sexes. You have experiences living in the world as a man and experiences living in the world as a woman. I was wondering if there is any way you can articulate what the differences are.
Oh, yes. [laughter] There are some very huge differences, huge. It’s a different world. I’ve always been a feminist my entire life. My father was not. He was a very sexist person. I never did like that about him. I knew it was there, sexism, but once I transitioned, it was like seeing it and experiencing it and receiving it was very eye-opening. I think one of the first things that happened was I had only been full time for about three months, two or three months. I was very fortunate that even early on I passed very well. I hate using that word. I prefer the word blend. No one knew I was trans unless I told them. I was very fortunate, my voice, I learned very well. I taught myself very well. Because of DES, I always had some very feminine characteristics of me from day one, feminine hips and that type of thing, despite my height. I have no Adam’s apple, I never did. I think those things kind of helped. I didn’t have much hair, body hair. I had some, but not a whole lot compared to some people. [laughter] You’re laughing.
[End of Recording Six]
I had a customer, and they were getting a new internet line from Verizon. I had ordered the line online, the FiOS line, which is fiber-optic. My name was on the order and the manager’s name was on the order. His name was Nick. I’m there. I’m waiting on him in the office. He comes in and goes, “Yeah, I’m here from Verizon. I’d like to speak to someone about it.” I said, “I’m your technical person.” I said, “I’m the one who called in. My name is Sydney.” He basically just ignored me. He said, “Well, I’ve got to speak to the manager.” I said, “Well, Nick is the manager.” I said, “But I’m the technical person.” “No, no, I’ve got to speak to Nick.” I said, “Oh, okay, well, that’s his office right there.” I knew what was going to happen, because Nick is not a technical person. He goes in there, and Nick says, “I know nothing about it. You’ve got to talk to her,” pointing at me. His mouth dropped, because he realized he had to deal with me regardless. I said, “Look, I want the ONT [Optical Network Terminal] in this room. I want to use the Ethernet, not the coaxial port. I want a bridge.” I told him exactly what I wanted. His mouth just dropped open, because he thought I knew nothing because I’m a woman. I come home and tell her that. She’s like, “Now, you know.”
LO: Can I jump in real quick?
Yeah.
LO: When Sydney decided to transition, one of the things that I told her was, “You’re going to have a very different experience in life as a woman. It’s not going to be all great. It’s not all happiness. I’m telling you right now. You’ll be treated very differently.”
Yeah.
LO: I don’t think she realized. I think in the back of your mind, you didn’t grasp it, because really you’ve never been treated that way. Everyone has always looked up [to you]. Literally, she’s tall, so people look up to her.
Yeah.
LO: She’s always been good at what she does, so people look up to her, and as a male, she didn’t have to talk very loud. People just listened. I’ve been saying for years how hard it is. I’m a software engineer and a woman, and I have to constantly re-explain myself and constantly re-establish my qualifications on a regular basis with everyone new and it’s just how it is. Life is like that. So, she comes home and she said, “I understand what you’re saying now.” Being born male is in a lot of ways like winning a lottery. Is it fair? Not really, it’s not fair, but that’s how it is. Men are automatically trusted, even if they don’t know what they’re doing. I could tell you so many times. I’ll stop talking. This is your time.
Yes. [laughter] I was actually told by several people, “Why are you giving up male privilege?” I actually was told that and some of it by other women. You have to experience it. To be catcalled. Sometimes it was affirming because I was being seen as a woman, but I was like, “Wait a minute. This isn’t right.” The scariest experience for me was we actually were together. This was last December. We were waiting at the subway. This was around rush hour. It was around five-fifteen. This was on 14th [Street] and Seventh Avenue, and we were getting on the 1 Train. We were waiting on the platform, and this strange guy comes walking up and says, “Wow, you’re a tall, beautiful Irish woman, aren’t you?” I was kind of just, like, hoping he’d go away.
LO: You could smell the alcohol from four feet away.
He’s like, “Wow, would you ever go with someone like me?” He goes, “I want to put a baby in you.” She’s like, “Well, that’s my wife there.”
LO: As soon as that happened, I kind of got between them. I was like, “I think you need to take a walk.”
Yeah. [laughter]
LO: “Go somewhere else.”
Fortunately, he was drunk enough that he kind of got lost, which was fine and the train came. We got on the train. He didn’t get on the train. I’m on the train. We were standing, because it was pretty crowded, and I’m thinking to myself, “Wow, if I had been alone, this guy would have tried to rape me.” I mean, it was affirming in one way, but it scared the hell out of me in another. Those types of things have happened. Sometimes, people assume, because I’m a lesbian, people assume I’m a cis straight woman. A lot of times that’s happened. One time, we were at Target over here in Fairfield, in the suburbs. We’re standing in line. It’s a Sunday afternoon. We’re standing in line. This guy comes up to me, and it was kind of early in my transition. He comes up to me. He says, “Wow, you’re a really tall woman. How tall are you?” At the time, I think I was still six-seven. I was like, “I’m six-seven.” He’s like, “Oh, no, a woman can’t be that tall.” I was like, “Well, six-foot-nine women exist.” He’s like, “Let me see.” He was like six-five, six-four or six-five. He was like, “Wow, you are tall. You’re taller than me.” He goes, “Do you have a boyfriend?” I was like, “No, but this is my wife.” [laughter] He’s like still talking to me, chatting me up, like he wanted to go out with me. I’m like, “This is my wife, hey, you know.” Finally, his turn came and we stopped talking. He was real chatty and was flirting with the cashier, flirting with her. Finally, it came to our turn, the cashier goes, “Wow, that one was something else.” I said, “Yeah, tell me about it.” She goes, “Well, you won’t believe what he said about you.” I said, “What?” “I want to go out with her and turn her straight.” [laughter] That’s the thing. There have been times that I was hit on by men and it was very pleasant. There was one morning, and I thought I looked like crap, because I was going for electrolysis, I had no makeup on, nothing. This guy was like, “I noticed you on the train. You’re very attractive and very tall. I hope I meet you again. Can we go out sometime?” I said, “I’m married, thank you though.” He goes, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m sad to say that you’re married, but you must have one lucky” he assumed man. I just left it at that and be done with it. There are also some things that are nice. People tend to open doors up more for me, especially when I’m carrying things. People in some ways are nicer to you as a woman, especially police officers. They’re nicer to you. I will say that.
LO: They’re nice, because, not in a professional setting, but in most settings, they’re nice because you’re perceived as a fair, weaker sex.
True, and not as much of a threat.
LO: That’s right. You’re not a threat.
Even though I’m six-five. [laughter] In general, there are big differences, and those are just some of them. Like I said, it’s validating but sad. It shouldn’t have to be that way. There are some scary things. For me, you walk alone at night. I walk to my car if I’m at a client late. One of them is in Elizabeth, which is not the best area in the world. Yeah, you’re a little more afraid as a woman. Even though I have some martial arts background and I’m tall, it’s still scary. There is a difference for sure. It’s not equal. It’s not.
JK: Are there any questions you wished we had asked?
Okay, yes. Why do you think you’re trans? There’s [not] one particular reason why anyone is transgender. What makes sense to me that most people agree on, most medical professions, is that everyone, the body starts out female, everyone. People think that chromosomes determine what gender the child will [be], both the biological sex and the gender identity. That’s not always true. I mean, you have cis women who’ve had babies and it’s turned out they’re genetically male. What happens is certain things happened with the body that it doesn’t respond to testosterone or it’s not exposed to it, because testosterone in the womb creates those differences between male and female. The biological component, where you have an innie or an outie, happens at six weeks, whereas the brain happens at eighteen weeks. If the male testosterone doesn’t match one to the other, you get transgender. I really think they’re going to find in the future that really it’s an intersex condition. I think that’s what they’re going to find out, but unfortunately, it’s hard to say what’s the difference between a male brain and a female brain. They’ve come close; they know there’s some differences. There was a test they did on two groups of people. One was done in 2010, the other was done, I think, in 2012, where they took men and women and they exposed them to certain smells and colors. They noticed that a certain amount of white matter was different between males and females. Women who identified as women, cis women, had a larger amount when this happened on MRIs than men. What they discovered was with trans women and trans men is that they were closer to the same as the gender they identified with than the sex they were born as. Also, the hormones do play a small role, in that a trans woman, when she took hormones, got even closer. It was an additional component of both the hormones and something psychologically different about the brain. Same thing with trans men, they were closer to the men, same thing. There is something there to that. We only understand a very small percentage of the human body. There is so much more we don’t understand, but it doubles every year. It’s going to take a long time to get there, but I think [it will happen] eventually. I think the other thing that’s going to happen too is as it becomes more accepted, I’m seeing people who transition early and understand it, understand gender identity at an earlier age, and they transition much earlier and it’s much easier, less surgeries involved. I kind of hit the genetic jackpot. I’ve had no surgeries at all, but I’m one of the few, especially who transition in their forties, to be able to do that with just hormones. Most don’t.
LO: Obviously, the particular bottom surgery would be required.
Yes, I mean, I still haven’t had bottom surgery obviously. I haven’t had that yet. A friend of mine who transitioned, she just had her surgery today on my birthday. She texted me and she sent pictures of her face and she’s like, “I made it, yay.” [laughter] She’s in San Francisco, and she’s very happy. I think down the road it’s going to be happening much earlier, not surgery. They’re not going to touch any surgery until they’re eighteen, and I believe that. I think as we gain more understanding, because you do know. If I had known about this back then, absolutely. If I had supportive parents, if I had been born at a later time, yeah, absolutely. I had to go strict one way. It’s a lot different now. There’s still some parents who still are that way. I hear of people, especially in rural areas, whose parents don’t want to hear transgender. They try to pray it away and those types of things. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t. Another reason I think that I might have been was there was a chemical given to a lot of women up until 1973, when the FDA banned it, called DES [diethylstilbestrol]. It basically was given to prevent miscarriages. It’s even shown to pass on from mother to mother, the chemical. If you look up, Google DES sons, they found that these people that are born now who were exposed to DES had a much higher percentage chance, like forty-five percent chance, of being transgender. It was pretty high. My mother and I were talking. A lot of women were given prenatal vitamins at the doctor’s office, and it had DES in it and they didn’t even know it. My mom and I were talking and she believes that, yeah, I probably was exposed to it. It probably contributed to me being transgender. I’m also taller than anyone else in the family and because of certain characteristics, my doctor took one look at me and says, “You probably have Klinefelter’s.” That’s an intersex condition where you have XXY, but if I did have it, it would be the mosaic way of so many XY, so many XXY. It’s some other things, too. They don’t know them yet, but I probably will find out once I have surgery for sure. It helped me because–
[End of Recording Seven]
I had feminine hips before, the way things are placed down there are a little different, always have been, compared to cis males, even before I transitioned. It made things like wearing a one-piece swimsuit, things like that, real easy for me. I don’t have any issues with that. No one even knows. When I’m at the beach, no one knows. I’m pretty lucky. Your mom, when she was up here, was that two years ago?
[Editor’s Note: Klinefelter syndrome (KS) is a genetic condition in which a male is born with one or more extra X chromosomes.]
LO: I think it was a little longer than two years.
She was like, “Oh, you look better in a one piece than I do.” [laughter]
LO: It was closer to three years ago now.
No, that was two years ago.
LO: It was right before she got sick.
Yeah, 2014.
LO: My mom passed away from cancer. The last time they came to visit, my dad is still living in Tennessee, they came together to visit us and we went to the beach. We had a really good day at the beach. She was running around like a teenager with my dad, holding hands and running in and out of the waves and everything. Then, she got cancer, and if it hadn’t been for that cancer, she would still be here.
Her parents had a hard time. They weren’t very religious, but they had a hard time in the beginning of my transitioning because they thought I was turning their daughter into a lesbian. [laughter]
LO: Oh, gosh. I had to explain to them that I did have a little bit of an attraction to women.
There was some education, but they did very, very good. When her mom got sick, two things happened. Her mom– I had come back up here in January before she passed away, so I spent some time with her alone. She says to me, “Sydney,” she’s like, “I’m so glad I got to know the real you.” She says, “You’re a great daughter-in-law to have.” Then, her father said to me, because he had a little bit more opposition to it in the beginning than her mom.
LO: He really was not sure what was happening. He didn’t understand. At this point, he still doesn’t even understand fully.
He’s accepting of it. He’s supportive, but there’s some things he doesn’t quite understand.
LO: He doesn’t understand the attraction. He thinks that once you have the surgery, you’re going to be attracted to men. He’s really concerned about my happiness and my future and whether or not you’re going to make me sad. He doesn’t understand that it’s possible for you to be changed into a biological woman and be still attracted to women. It’s hard. He’s seventy-two. In general, everything is coming from a place of love. He wants you to be happy.
When I came down there to help, he goes, “What I want you to know is,” he goes, “a man cannot have too many daughters.” We get along pretty good though.
LO: Yeah.
We really do. He’s good. I have to tell you, one coming out story is the best. That’s my step grandmother. She turns ninety in January. She’s still alive.
LO: She’s awesome.
She’s awesome. She’s a short Italian woman, about this tall, about this big around, wonderful. We call her Nanny. I came out to her. I was at a restaurant. She knew we had big news. I had already been out to my mom and everything else, so she knew something was up. She thought we were moving to California or something like that. [laughter] She’s like, “What’s going on? Are you moving to California?” “No, Nanny.”
LO: She knows that it’s my dream to eventually go to California.
Yeah, it’s a dream. One of her granddaughters had been to California and came back at that time. I explained to her I’m transgender. I’m transitioning to female and everything else. She’s like, “Okay, okay, I just have two questions for you.” I had no clue what she was going to ask. [laughter] I’m like, “Just two.” The first question was, “Does this make you both lesbians?” [laughter] That was her first question. So, I said, “Well, for me, yes, I identify as lesbian.” I said, “For Leah, here, it’s up to her what she identifies as.” It was undetermined at that point. Then, her second question was, “When can I call you my granddaughter?” I about cried right there. That was the best coming out story, and to have that from a, at the time, she was eighty-six or eighty-seven.
LO: Well, she’ll be ninety, so she was eighty-eight, eighty-seven.
January, yeah, eighty-seven. She was eighty-seven. [laughter]
That is amazing.
She’s good. I see her all the time. Every time I go there, no one knows I’m trans, when I go visit her. She lives in assisted living. The women there, some have figured out we’re a couple; some haven’t. It’s kind of funny.
LO: “You look alike. You look alike.” [laughter]
That was the most bizarre thing. Here I am, six-five, six-six at the time, whatever. When her mom passed away, we were going to [pick out] urns. This was in Tennessee. Gay marriage wasn’t allowed, [unclear], this was right before that. The guy’s like, “Wow, are you two sisters?” I’m like, “No.” We just didn’t say anything. We just let it go. Finally, finally, the guy kind of figured it out, because we started talking about we’re going to put this in our house, that in our house, he finally figured out we’re a couple. It was Tennessee, so what can I say.
LO: My dad is so terrific. You know he’s seventy-two, and he’s got the house. He’s all by himself in it. He keeps wanting us to move in, and it’s a very generous, wonderful offer. We would totally live with him if he didn’t live in the middle of “let’s-hate-all-gays” USA. Tennessee is a terrible place to be gay. They have a rule, they have a law called Don’t Say Gay. Have you heard of it?
In school, you’re not allowed to say gay.
LO: In school, you’re not allowed to say the word gay. Let’s say you’re questioning. You’re youth who are questioning, and you need help. You can’t tell a counselor you may be gay. You can’t get help. Now, there’s even something worse too, which is that if a counselor decides they don’t want to deal with you for any reason, they can refuse to help you.
They can say no.
LO: If they suspect you’re gay, they can say, “I’m not going to counsel you or assist you or help you in any way.” The youth who are questioning, I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re under attack, but they might as well be because they can get no assistance from anyone. They can’t get help. I would say it’s one of the worse places in America to be gay.
That and North Carolina and Texas. It depends. The thing is if you’re still near cities though, you’re still okay. It’s where her father lives, it’s not in the city, but it’s about thirty miles out, so it’s kind of questionable there, kind of iffy, depending on where you are. In the city, like Knoxville, it’s better. In a lot of school systems, like Charlotte, HB 2, they totally ignore it. They’re like, “We don’t care what the state says. We know transgender policy and allow kids to use the bathroom they identify as. We’re ignoring North Carolina, even though we’re in North Carolina.” Some school systems are doing that, and it’s a good thing, defying the state. The state has no way of preventing them. There’s no law that says, “Well, this is what’ll happen if you do this.” They can’t do that. There’s no way to enforce it. That’s what they’re doing. I think it was more a fight that’s going to eventually go away, but I think some things have helped. Tonight, during the Republican National Convention, they’re supposed show a commercial. That’s supposed to be tonight. I actually want to see it go on. It’s probably going on now. I think that’s going to help a lot. There’s different types of things and then putting a human face to it. There’s so much fearmongering. If you take that away, most people understand. You’re going to get a few who are not. There’s still people to this day who are against mixed race marriages. You’re going to still always have opposition, but it’s a minority. I think that’s going to happen with being trans, and I think the last frontier has become civil rights.
JK: Thank you so much.
You’re welcome.
I think this is a great place to leave off. There is so much here. It was such a privilege to talk with you.
Thank you. There is always so much information. It’s a lot. There’s so many things out there and so many different stories. My story’s not the only one. There’s so many. Everyone’s different. I’ve felt I’ve been very lucky. Yes, here’s one more question. I think one question the gets ask sometimes that’s a good one is do I have any regrets. Well, I mean, especially transitioning later in life. There’s a part of me that would have loved to transition a long time ago, but I have a lot of life experiences, a very unique perspective on things. I think that’s really made me a much more evolved person to be able to have lived both genders, even though I’ve always felt like I was a woman. Looking back on it now, not really understanding it back then, I’ve never felt male, never. Having lived both genders really opens up your eyes to certain things, whether it’s inequality. There’s some inequalities for men. Why can’t a man wear a skirt if he wants to? That’s stupid. Some clothing was actually designed for men to wear, like leotards, one-piece swimsuits. They were designed for men, not women, but if one decides they want to wear it for fashion, they’re ridiculed. I think there’s a lot of inequality. It’s there on both sides really, more so for the women, but it’s there for men. Society has a very binary way of looking at things, and I don’t understand that because there’s a lot of variations in between. It doesn’t mean being one way is wrong or right, but there’s so many shades in the middle. I think anyone should be able to present how they want. What is gender anyway? Is it a social construct? Partially, but it’s also how you identify, it’s who you are. There is this dysphoria involved when one is trans, which is a little different than genderfluid, because dysphoria really is there. Someone who is genderfluid doesn’t want to change their genitalia or grow breasts or have them taken away, but someone who’s trans does. So, there is a difference there. There is a line, a fine line there, but still I think having seen both sides really opened up my eyes to a lot of things.
I think that is a great place to leave off. Thank you so much.
JK: Thank you.
You’re welcome.