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SHE'S NOT THERE: A LIFE IN TWO GENDERS |
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| She's Not There: A Life in Two
Genders" she just couldn't put it down. Oprah was so taken by
Jennifer, Christine and Noelle, Christine's daughter; she decided to
make what started out as one show into two. The following is from
Oprah's web site www.oprah.com. From "James" to "Jenny": What it Means to be Transgendered By the time he was six years old, James Boylan knew he was different from the other boys. "My awareness of being transgendered is my earliest memory. But I also knew it was something that other people would find bizarre and hilarious. So I thought, 'I am going to make the best of things and be a boy, be a man." When dreaming of being a girl wasn't enough, his feelings turned into a profound sorrow. James began dressing in his mother's and sister's clothes in private to comfort himself—but he never told anyone. "It was tremendously sad. Even I knew it was creepy, sneaking around, having a secret. You know that there is something very wrong; you know it intuitively. I think people know what their gender is based on what is in their hearts. If you have this condition, you know it." In college, James tried to keep up the front that he was a regular guy, but the need to be a woman was always on his mind. "When I was in graduate school, I was living this double life. I was living as a woman most of the time, except when I would go out in the world. It was painful to go from one world to the other." Dressing in women's clothes was not sexual for James—it was about trying to find his identity. "It would make me feel for a few moments that I didn't have to think about it. It was like I wasn't distracted…all of the background noise was suddenly silent." |
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All along,
James thought that love would cure him. "I'd pray, 'Dear God, make
someone fall in love with me so that I can stay a man.'" Then he
met a woman named Grace, and they fell in love. "What I had always
prayed for my whole life had come true. It was the first time in my life
when the feelings of being transgendered really disappeared." Grace and James married, moved to |
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novels. Their lives were nearly complete until thoughts of being a woman
came crashing down on James again. "Nothing was going to make it go
away. Not therapy. Not a good stern talking to. And worst of all, not
love. Grace didn't know, because I didn't want it to be true. How was I
going to tell her?" The turning point came one day in January 2000 when James says he froze at a railroad crossing. "I couldn't go another inch forward. That was the night I came back and I told Grace, 'I need to get back into therapy because I'm dying.' I had to be true to myself. To survive meant being the woman that I was meant to be. And the price of that was the loss of a great marriage." After long tearful discussions with his wife, James began the transition to become a woman. James was still teaching English classes, but no one other than Grace knew what he was considering. "I would teach my Colby students, 'Believe in your dreams. Have the courage to become yourselves.' And then I would go back to my office, close the door, put my head down on the desk and just weep, because I would think, 'I'm telling my students to learn a lesson I have not learned myself." Under the guidance of a physician, James began a two-year-long process to transform his physical body. James's wife Grace made the decision to stand by him while he became Jenny. As his hips, breasts and hair grew, James had to hide what was going on with his body. All the while, James was aware of what his decision was doing to his family. "The price of my being complete is the loss of something very precious for Grace. She lost a husband." During a year-long sabbatical from teaching at |
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| Jenny still
plays in the same band she was a part of when she was James. One
bandmate says, "I almost separate the two people. I loved Jim, but
Jim was guarded. Jenny is herself and a lot more outward. Nothing has
really changed; it's the essence of the person that we fell in love
with." Although Jenny jokes about getting used to carrying purses, she knows the difficult times are far from over. Jenny and Grace are raising their two sons together. "Grace and I have a family, |
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| and I don't want to jeopardize that. My boys
are extraordinary. Their lives have not been made easier because of
this. They have lost a father. That's a pretty serious thing. But they
do have me. And they do have two loving parents." Still legally married, Grace and Jenny now refer to each other as partners. "Grace and I are soul mates. It was very hard to lose that marriage. We don't have an intimate relationship now. We are friends. We're sisters. When Grace told me she wasn't a lesbian, I had to accept that. After living as a woman for a while, it's not impossible for me to imagine a relationship with a man, but I'm not looking, quite frankly." Jenny Boylan says throughout her 40 years living as a man, she knew that she was really a woman trapped in a man's body. Being transgendered was a burden that grew heavier and heavier until it finally crushed her, her body did not match her spirit. After trying to be a man, a good husband and a father for 40 years, in 2000, Jenny made a life-altering decision to stop living a lie and began her transition into womanhood. Why Does This Happen? "I did not want this other life. I thought it was as strange as anyone.….You think you are the only person in the world that has this. In fact, we now know that there are tens and tens of thousands of people in this country alone who have this. One scholar says that it's as common as multiple sclerosis, it's as common as a cleft palate. It's something that many people in the country and across the world have, but these people are living in silence and shame because they are afraid to speak the truth." How does this condition occur? "No one really knows," says Jenny. "I think there has to be a medical component. It's something you have from the age of two or three. Some people think that it has to do with the secretion of hormones in the mother's womb around the sixth week of pregnancy. Other researchers think that it's triggered by something experiential." |
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The Transition Process: The Benjamin
Standards of Care Jenny explains that to make the transition between sexes, one must go through a very serious process called the Benjamin Standards of Care. "It is a rigid set of protocols that transsexuals go through to go from one gender to the next. They are trying to weed out nutcases and to make sure you know what you're doing and you know what you're getting in to. There are a lot of people who say they are the wrong gender, who |
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| aren't in fact transsexuals; some of them are
schizophrenic, some are heterosexual cross- dressers, some of them are
just nuts." The process includes: Psychological Testing Jenny went through more than six months of psychological testing. "My [counselor] was amazed. He said, 'Jenny, you seem so well adjusted. You seem so normal.' And that was odd that I was so normal, I just had this condition. At the end of that he said, 'It's pretty clear to me that you are a transsexual and you are a very strong candidate for gender shift." Hormone Therapy To begin the process of changing her body from one sex to the other, Jenny started hormone therapy. She says, "That changes you profoundly, physically and emotionally. The first thing [that happens] is something they call 'fat migration.' [My friends] thought I was very ill. My breasts grew. My hips grew. And I had to start covering what was happening to my body with big baggy shirts. The general rule of thumb for transgendered people on hormones is that you come to resemble the body shape of your nearest female relatives, ”your mother, your grandmother, your sister. And that was largely the case for me." We think that there are huge differences between the male and female body, but Jenny explains that they are really only a pill or two away from each other. "For a while, I was taking two pills. There was the estrogen and an anti-androgen to reduce the testosterone. I used to joke, 'One pill makes you want to eat salad and talk about relationships and the other pill makes you dislike the three stooges." "It's worth saying that anyone who is thinking that this is their problem and this is the answer to their problem should be advised to do this according to the standards of care and through an endocrinologist because hormones are dangerous and people have died from getting hormones off the Internet and things like that," warns Jenny. |
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| The Operation The final step in the process was going through the physical change, an operation to change her genitals. "I think 'gender shift' is a better term than 'sex change operation.' 'Sex change' sounds like 'oil change.'" Jenny has had the full operation and now has a vagina. "For me, [the operation] was like being let out of jail after 40 years of being behind bars for something I didn't do." |
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After 20 years of marriage, Angelita thought she knew everything there was to know about her husband, Tom. However, he had been keeping a secret for his entire life: Tom was struggling with his own gender identity—inside he felt like a woman. One day, while cleaning their garage, she came across a bag full of women's clothing and makeup. She explains, "I thought I had a perfect marriage. … I called him and said, 'I found a bag of women's clothes, is this yours?' He started crying, and he told me he felt like a woman inside. … It was devastating. The man I married, the husband that I know, is going to become a female." |
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Tom now lives every day as a woman, Tami. Although his new life has been a strain on his family and his marriage, they continue to love each other through this difficult situation. "I've been struggling with gender my entire life. Deep in my mind, I always wanted to be a girl. I kept it a secret from everybody. … I love [Angelita] with all of my heart…the hardest part of this whole thing is seeing what she's going through. I feel so guilty—I'm asking my family to do a very difficult thing, to change | |
| their lives to accept me as a different person
than what they've known all these years," Tami says. Five years after revealing her secret, Tami has decided to physically become a woman, |
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| but her top priority with Angelita remains keeping the family intact. "The number one thing was trying to keep my family together, trying to be responsible to them, because that's what I signed into. I felt so much love for her and my boys, and I didn't want for that to end. It was a big concern for me," Tami says. Angelita remains committed as well, explaining, "I have no intentions of divorcing him, but it's heartbreaking, because it's like my husband is dying slowly, but I'm gaining a best friend." |  |
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As a teenager, Noelle learned that her father,
Dick, had wished he were a woman since the age of three. He seemingly
had everything he'd ever wanted in his life, but living as a man was
driving him to withdraw from his loved ones. Dick knew that deep down,
he needed to be Christine. |
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As a teenager, Noelle learned that her father,
Dick, had wished he were a woman since the age of three. He seemingly
had everything he'd ever wanted in his life, but living as a man was
driving him to withdraw from his loved ones. Dick knew that deep down,
he needed to be Christine. |
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that's the big regret of my life. I knew once I
became a woman I could show her how much I loved her, and if I remained
a man, I couldn't." When Christine decided to undergo a sex change operation, Noelle was right by her side at the hospital. At first, she had misgivings about losing a father, but she then came to a realization. |
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"[After the operation,] she looked like she belonged in her body. Suddenly it became clear to me that I needed to support her. We were both trying to figure out how to be women. The hardest part was that this really meant that I would never see him again. … In some ways it felt like a death," she says. Six years later, it was Christine's turn to come to
Noelle's side, at her wedding. Jenny Boylan, who appeared on the show The Husband Who Became a Woman, found her greatest support in her
wife, Grace. Although their relationship is no longer romantic, Jenny
and Grace have made a commitment to each other for the sake of their
family. |
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