These stories are under RED headings, GAY, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDER MEN, TRANSGENDER WOMEN, SPIRITUALITY. Scroll down to easily find a story that will speak to your need.
Emily. A Transit of Grace: A Theological Journey with my Transgender Child
I graduated from college in the early 90’s, studying Philosophy and English Literature. I loved creating theories, weaving and finding my way through a paper. I didn’t like the classes that were all about right or wrong answers, black and white, yes or no.
My experience growing up with gender dysphoria is, I am sure, very similar to others of my generation. We did not talk about it, however. We were coerced into clothing that was wrong, had our mannerisms corrected, were dissuaded from engaging in play activities deemed inappropriate for us, etc.
My first recollection of being aware of this incongruence is also my first memory, or fragments of a memory. I was being posed for a photographer in July 1969, so I was not quite two years old. I was wearing a red velvet dress and it felt wrong. I kept looking down at it. When I finally looked up, the photographer got the picture. My mother mentioned many times over the years that I was uncooperative with the activity; I wouldn’t pose with the toy phone the way I was supposed to.
I recently purged my family’s collection of 99% of pictures of me as a child. They depict me in inappropriate clothing with hair accoutrements that I resisted, even though my parents were fairly strict. Contradicting them or showing any disrespect at all was forbidden and this line was not crossed without consequence. However, I could not make myself tolerate the narrow definition of how I was to wear and display my gender, let alone embrace it, as my mother would have much preferred.
When I was seventeen I was outed to my parents as lesbian by a well-meaning family friend. (That wasn’t quite right but it was good enough for twenty-seven years.)
What occurred next was a decade plus of intense family struggle. I moved out due to the conflict while I was still a teen and my mother requested that I not remain in their town, for fear of repercussions to my father’s professional reputation. This was not a problem. I did not like their town and much preferred the larger metropolitan area within close proximity, where I correctly figured I would have better opportunities as an LGBT person. I did, however, lose one job for not conforming to expectations associated with my assigned gender. My parents were furious with me for testing their liberal values. They were certain that I was making choices to annoy them.
When I was nineteen years old and in college, I was in counseling to process all that had happened with my family over my identity as an LGBT person. I was walking back to my dorm when the thought hit me, clear as day, that my problems did not stem from being a lesbian. “Your problem is that you’re transgender.” I stopped walking. I looked at the ground and thought about all I was going through at the time. I had passive suicidal ideation and thought many times about “falling” from heights. I was once pulled back from crossing the street in front of a bus caroming through the intersection. I didn’t want to die as much as I wanted to be free of so much pain. I thought of all this and said out loud to myself, “NO!” I did not believe I could handle the repercussions of a yet more shocking disclosure. I retreated from that thought back into a lesbian identity, where I took refuge with countless other transmen for another twenty-five years. Being a lesbian would have to be good enough, and it would also be bad enough.
I had an intricate symphony of mental somersaults and thought-rearranging I would engage whenever the thought popped up again, as it often did over the decades. When the thought of being transgender percolated all the way to my frontal lobes, I would gently put it back in its cage by convincing myself that treatment would not be accessible to me, that to change one’s sex and name one must be transgender and I couldn’t possibly qualify, that I did not want to be dependent on pharmaceuticals for the rest of my life, that I would lose friends who felt I had betrayed them, etc. We were not using the term “gender nonbinary” at that time, but I did start referring to myself as “gender nebulous”.
In 2009, when I was forty-two, I was working with an elder transman patient. He told me about his transition in the 1960s. He told me that transitioning was the best decision he had ever made, even though doing so in the 1960s was a much more socially isolating process than it is now. I went home and read the paper and a story about Chaz Bono caught my eye. He was in the process of transitioning, having started taking testosterone several months before. This held a certain irony for me, as my mother used to want me to take note of Chastity Bono when she appeared sometimes on his parent’s variety show in the early 1970s. He is slightly younger than I am, and always appeared on the show in long dresses made of chiffon, tulle, and lace. My mother hoped that I would want to emulate the child of literal rock stars. (It didn’t take.)
But what DID take was Chaz’s comment about his decision to transition, which is that it was “the best decision [he had] ever made”. Twice in one day. I got up to brush my teeth and while doing so, I let some thoughts roll around a little in my head, where I would usually engage my retinue of logical gymnastics to convince myself that transition wasn’t for me. I was forty-two years old. I could very easily live another forty-two years and then some. I was very uncomfortable in my body, with my name, with feminine pronouns, and all of it. This had always been the case. My trying to will away my realization that I was transgender when I was nineteen years of age did not work. It just wasn’t going away. I realized that I was in very real danger of going to my grave wondering what it would have been like to have been comfortable in my own skin. I had tried. Hard. For as many years as I was aware I had a gender I hated the one I was given. Not because I hate women in general; I truly do not. I just am not a woman and I decided to no longer continue my unsatisfactory existence in the poor fit I was enduring.
Besides, the amount of alcohol it took to keep myself cajoled into keeping this charade up was increasing and that road never goes anywhere good.
It was another three months until I went to a meeting in my city for transgender men and said my actual name aloud for the first time. I met Sister Luisa Derouen there, as well, and we started a dialogue then that continues to this day. She had been ministering among the transgender community for many years by then. She was instrumental during my transition and remains a dear friend. I have been out as a transman now for ten years, and on testosterone for nine years. I have changed my name and all my documents and have had several surgeries. My appearance is now completely different from how it was before I started.
Also, and very significantly, my mental health is far better than it ever has been. This is undoubtedly the best decision I have ever made. I regret daily not beginning the process of claiming my true identity when I was nineteen and finally realized what all my angst was about.
Since transition, I have been able to find and integrate parts of myself that I could not previously reconcile, since nothing about the way I knew myself made sense. I could not trust any of my self-perceptions, and therefore could not believe what I saw or felt. I have realized lately that before I started transition, I could not even have declared with authority things that I liked, since I knew nothing of myself.
If I could do it all over again, I would have done this so many years ago. It just didn’t go away. But slowly, as I transitioned and underwent my surgeries, the anguish did go away. I no longer hate to see myself in a mirror, no longer hate the sound of my voice. I feel like myself for the first time in my life. I am now fifty-two years of age and I intend to live a long, healthy, and fulfilled life, now that I can.
Colt Meier St. Amand ( he/ they )
Colt Meier St. Amand is a clinical psychologist and Texas’s preeminent researcher on transgender issues. Just 30 years old, Colt was the first researcher in the country to demonstrate the psychological effects of testosterone therapy in trans men over time, and his findings informed the American Psychological Association’s first guidelines for the clinical care of transgender patients. He currently is finishing medical school and plans to work as a family practice psychologist-physician. Colt’s story was originally reported by Francesca Mari and is found at https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/gender-bender/. Reprinted with permission from Texas Monthly, March 2016.
Boy. Girl. Man. Woman. These terms reflect a binary, two options only, view of gender. Our language doesn’t allow for the in-between or outside of. As the trans community has become more visible, it has become clear that gender, like sexuality, exists on a spectrum.
The very first thing that Colt’s parents, Bob and Pam Meier, learned about their only child was which distinct category he fell in. “It’s a girl!” the obstetrician announced as she delivered Colt into the arms of his mother one August day in 1983. And it was on this bit of information that Bob and Pam began hanging their dreams and expectations.
Colt’s understanding of himself would turn out to be considerably different. Like many who are transgender, he felt the devastating disconnect between, as he put it, “the gender others tell you, you are, and the gender you know yourself to be.”
As a child, Colt hated Barbie dolls, long hair, and anything overtly feminine. Because he wriggled out of dresses as soon as his mother had slipped them over his head, Pam got permission from the principal of his Catholic school to fashion him a modified school uniform: overalls made of the same plaid fabric used for the girls’ pleated skirts. Before his first confession, at the age of seven, Colt prayed in his pew: God, please don’t make me a lesbian.
In high school, Colt was a straight-A student, a Eucharistic minister, and a black belt in tae kwon do. He still refused to wear dresses, but to avoid scrutiny, he grew out his hair. Though he had boyfriends, he never wanted to be intimate with them. It wasn’t until the summer after his sophomore year at Rice University that his best friend, a girl in his Catholic youth group, helped him figure out why. Standing in the upstairs hallway of Colt’s parents’ house late one night, the friend leaned in and kissed him. Then she ran down the stairs, afraid of how he might react. He stood in shock for a good minute, his body lit. Then he ran down the stairs to kiss her back.
Colt was ashamed of what this meant because the church had taught him to believe that “homosexuality” is a sin. Yet the love he felt suggested otherwise. More than a year later, when he told his parents about the relationship, they were accepting, though Bob was certain it was a passing phase.
In 2006, several months after Colt graduated with a degree in psychology, he and his partner attended a one-man show at the Rice Student Center. Scott Schofield, an actor on The Bold and the Beautiful, took to the stage to dramatize how he had come out as a lesbian and then later as a trans man. Colt had only ever heard the word “transgender” used as a slur, but looking at Schofield—who was blond, Texan, and transgender—Colt saw himself.
Later that fall, Colt phoned his father, a psychologist, and told him that he’d read the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—at that time, the fourth edition, known as the DSM-IV—and found that he met every single criterion of what was then called “gender identity disorder.” His dad tried to comfort Colt. Then Colt told his mother. “That makes sense,” she said. “I never had a little girl.”
In the spring of 2007, Colt began six months of therapy in Galveston. He also underwent ten months of counseling in Houston. “It was overkill,” Colt said, “but I wanted to be really sure about transitioning, because the church said that God will always see you as your assigned sex.”
Colt started wearing a “binder,” a nylon-and-spandex vest, to compress his breasts. He attended his first trans support group, and while everyone went around the room introducing themselves, he racked his brain for a masculine name, quickly picking “Colt.” Faculty and students at his graduate school addressed him using male pronouns. He used the men’s restrooms on campus without any issue.
Finally, in October, after Colt’s sixth month of therapy in Galveston, a psychiatrist handed him what people in the trans community call “the letter,” which permitted testosterone therapy, and Colt received his first prescription.
Over the next year, Colt kept an online journal about his transition. After three months, fuzz sprouted on his arms and legs. A small cropping of acne burbled on his face. By six months, his shoulders had begun to broaden and his voice had deepened. Less obvious were the subtle changes to his mood and personality. “When you’re transitioning, it’s like you’re going through puberty.”
Bob and Pam, meanwhile, went to Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) meetings in Houston and attended monthly gatherings at a church in Nederland for Catholic families of LGBT youth. “Knowing you’re not the lone ranger is very helpful,” Bob said.
Though Bob had been slower to accept Colt’s gender identity than Pam, he had eventually thrown himself into researching trans issues and was now educating others through videos he posted to YouTube. Meanwhile, Pam, an OB-GYN, opened her Beaumont office several Saturdays a year to Colt’s trans friends so that they had a safe and respectful place in which to receive gynecological exams.
At his therapist’s recommendation, Colt penned a letter in which he came out as trans. He sent it to members of the community he had grown up in, including his childhood priest.
“This has not been easy for me, as things that are true for me are not mainstream nor are they socially acceptable in many parts of the country,” he wrote. “I am very different, and I did not ask to be.”
His parents sent out their own letter as well. Though a couple of Bob’s fishing buddies maintained that changing genders was a choice, and a self-destructive one at that, the majority of people whom Colt and his parents heard back from were supportive.
“I will try my best to walk with you,” wrote a friend of the family. “We are led by God in this to where He wants us to be.” Another friend sent Bob and Pam an email that said, “Thanks for your willingness to educate others by sharing your experience. I believe God has a plan for all of us and this seems like it may be part of God’s plan for you.”
But the biggest solace came from Colt’s childhood priest. “That is a brave letter by a brave person,” the priest wrote. “I have never particularly paid attention to your gender, but you have and that is entirely what you must focus on.”
Sitting in a pew on Palm Sunday in 2008, Colt listened to the reading from the Book of Mark. In it, Jesus commands two disciples to untether a colt on the outskirts of town so that he may use it to ride into Jerusalem. Colt leaned forward—a colt!—so as not to miss any of the words that followed. “Untie it and bring it,” Jesus instructs. “If anyone should say to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ reply, ‘The Lord has need of it.’” Colt knew then that the name he thought he had chosen for himself had really been chosen for him.
“My work is nowhere near done. We are just getting started.”
Like many, I am a multifaceted person. One facet is photography, which has become a semi-professional hobby. The photos with the most character are taken in the moments of twilight, sunrises, sunsets, or not far from it.
My other facets include being Catholic, an engineer, a musician, an actor, an outdoorsman, a literary critic, a mentor, and an amateur theologian and historian. I am also a transman, also known as a female-to-male transgender. That’s the facet that has tended to be problematic for me and for others. I have always been male, but, when I was young, I was not always seen as such. In fact, there were constant expectations made by those who “knew better” for me to be someone I wasn’t, namely a female. I never met those expectations.
I never knew what was “wrong” with me as I was growing up. I was myself as often as I could be, as soon as I could be. I went by male names in grade school. I felt most alive and validated in every moment that I was seen as a boy and called by the correct pronouns. In those moments, I felt that I was in the light and not invisible. When others would take me for my father’s son, my dad made a point of correcting them, a way of shaming me and trying to make me stop being so boyish. He was a military officer and having a kid like me embarrassed him.
The onset of female puberty was hell and a half. I hated everything that happened, and was despondent. When I was in seventh grade, I searched the library to find what was “wrong” with me. I didn’t find the name for what I was until I went to college and spent a Saturday researching in the library. That’s when I found the word transsexual. While it was great to be able to finally name “it,” I was also terrified. There was so much stigma and pain to anticipate.
There were moments in my later teenage years and early twenties when I was suicidal. There were many dark nights when I despaired for my future, of ever being able to find employment after finishing my electrical engineering degree, of being alone. My identity was trapped in the eyes of my beholders; my reactions dictated in that split second whether they decided if I was male or female. Job interviews were often decided in that split second. Dating wasn’t even a possibility. I was a great friend, but not a romantic prospect.
I started medical intervention at twenty-four, shortly after starting that first job out of college. My first few years of employment were tough. There were no protections and I was the hottest rumor at the company. I had to work harder to make my performance and my other characteristics more visible than the second puberty I was undergoing.
Presently there is no mistaking that I am male, so that facet, which used to be a blinding, disabling part of my daily existence, is now a shadowy part of my history. But I bear the physical scars; anatomical differences compared to a cis-gendered man; the memories of a frustrated youth, of being invisible in my own life; the emotional scars and wounds, some of which lie dangerously close to the surface. I wouldn’t be the man I am without them.
As a Catholic, I am somewhere between a convert and revert. My parents were both raised Catholic, but I didn’t know that until I was almost fifteen. I grew up between my dad’s hostility towards religion and my mom’s exploration of different faith traditions. When I was eight, I was baptized and received my First Communion in the Episcopal Church. However, when I was a sophomore in high school, my parents told me that I was supposed to be Catholic, sent me to Confirmation classes and I was confirmed the following spring and taking the name Patrick.
In college, I drifted back to the Episcopal Church. When I finally went back to the Catholic Church at the age of 30, it was a breeze. I had been confirmed, never married, and I didn’t feel the need to volunteer my past at the re-entrance interview. Subsequent confessions, where I
did mention that I was trans, did not go poorly. While I was consistently the “first one” that each priest knew that they’d spoken to, they were all kind, and sent the message of “go forth and live.” I stayed quietly in the shadows.
I lived what trans folks call a ‘stealth’ existence for years. Eventually, I met Sister Luisa Derouen, a Catholic nun who ministered to the trans community. I started dating a woman who would not let me stay in my shell. In large part because of them I started to expand my horizons, confronting issues over friendships, stealth, intimacy, and my own sexual orientation that I’d left buried.
Having Sister Luisa in my life was a Godsend. Not only did she become my spiritual director, she became a beloved friend. She challenged me to accompany her to a national Catholic gay and lesbian ministry conference. One of the speakers was a Mexican bishop. I have never met a man who so personified Jesus incarnate. He was loving, accepting, and had an uncanny knack for appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, to personally talk with people. Later, I had an opportunity to speak to him. Our conversation was one of the most spiritual I’ve experienced. I felt enveloped by the Church after that weekend.
Two months later, at a Christmas address to the curia, Pope Benedict made comments that slammed the church door in my face, saying that there needed to be an ecology of the human race, and those like me needed to be pruned like weeds from the rainforest. To say I’ve been heartbroken is an understatement.
I once attended a lecture by a rabbi regarding Jewish tradition and gender. The Hebrew language in the Talmud allows for six different genders, including intersex. The rabbi explained that Hebrew thought and language makes allowances for things that are neither one nor the other, such as day and night. This was important in many ways, including defining the parameters of the Sabbath. The language for the other genders that were not fully male or female was akin to the language that defines twilight…not the fullness of day or night, but a beautiful space in between that is both and neither, but distinct, beautiful, and of God.
The photographer in me has seized that concept. I am twilight, I am a sunrise, I am a sunset. I am not a weed to be pruned. I am not “less than.” I am my history; I contain the shadows and the light of what I have seen. I am a physical living embodiment of that moment that allows for striking images, fleeting visions and perspectives that are not possible during the fullness of day or night. I am of God and I have beauty in this world that can only be viewed by those who choose to seek it.
From the time I was a little kid I had always felt hatred toward who I was. I felt like a stranger in my own body. My physical body was that of a girl, but I knew inside my heart and soul that I was a boy. My female anatomy was an obstacle I would have to reconstruct before I could feel complete and “at home” within my body. I have begun my journey to reconstruct my life and physical body to match my inner gender.
Ever since I was able to talk and socialize, I have always been more accepted by the boys in my neighborhood. I would always participate in the neighborhood baseball, basketball, and football games, which I was very good at. I would do anything and everything the boys did without any consideration for fear or danger. These were the happiest times of my life. I would wake up with a smile on my face every morning and be prepared for the day’s activities. During this time I was also dressing like one of the boys. No one suspected anything besides the fact that I was a tomboy. However, I knew there was something more. I was always convinced I was a boy and that I just so happened to be born without the male organs. I tried everything to fit in with the boys; I even tried going to the bathroom like a boy until I eventually gave up trying at age twelve!
Unfortunately, I had to grow up and continue my education in middle school. During this time, classmates began to call me a lesbian. I became convinced that I was a lesbian and that was the end of it. I was made fun of constantly by classmates and people who were supposed to be my friends. The hatred that I felt about being in my body was growing more and more unbearable by the day. I would not want to wake up in the morning. It had gotten so bad that I did not want to wake up at all. I wanted to kill myself so badly. I wished and prayed that someone would just take my life and release my heart from under what felt like a two ton brick. I cried myself to sleep on many occasions. Night was the only time I could let out what I was feeling. I wanted to cry all day long, but I wouldn’t show my emotions to anyone, not even my parents.
The longer I held in my feelings, the more my head would throb. I could feel the blood rushing to my head quickly. My head pounded from all the thoughts going through it. I can honestly say that if I wasn’t too scared to die, I would have killed myself and I would be freed from all the hatred and disgust that I felt toward who I was. It was at this time that my parents began sending me to therapy.
As soon as the therapist and I began talking, I was introduced to a new word: “transgendered.” For me it meant a female who has a brain of a male and believes should have been male. I knew as soon as I heard this, that I was not a lesbian, but rather, transgendered. From that time forward, I spent my life explaining that I was not a lesbian and that it was perfectly normal to like girls because I think, act, and have the brain of a male.
As I expected, people were too rigid and could not open their mind to accept me for who I really was. My parents, however, were very accepting. They agreed with the therapist right away that this was the perfect explanation for who I was. My father was able to let go of his youngest daughter very quickly. On the other hand, my mother took just a little longer to get used to having a son instead of another daughter. My mother did always wish for a boy and now tells me that I am the boy she always wanted. My parents began going to meetings for parents and friends of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people. They are now a very active part of the GLBT community and I could not be more proud of them.
I struggled through high school trying to find a place where I fit in and a place of acceptance. Some people tried to understand who I was, but to others I was still a lesbian. I was constantly explaining to my classmates that it’s not like that and that I would become a boy soon. In fact during the summer of my junior year, I received the okay from the endocrinologist to start taking testosterone and to research surgeons for breast removal. I met with Dr. Johnson, and I was so excited to have this surgery but was disappointed to hear that she would be on maternity leave until September. It was then I believed God had not wanted me to be a happy male. I began to hang my head down low again. A couple days later the surgeon’s office called.
They don’t usually do this, but when they saw my disappointment, they had moved me to the top of the waiting list and scheduled me to see Dr. Stueber who was the “in charge” doctor and did not usually see people like this. My happiness immediately reappeared. Over the summer I underwent breast removal surgery. I went back to senior year as Christopher John Garber who was on testosterone and was now without breasts!
Immediately after graduating from high school, I decided it was about time to get my female organs removed. I made an appointment as soon as summer began. Next thing I knew I was preparing for a complete hysterectomy. I feared that the procedure would hurt, but in reality there was very little pain and the recovery period was only three weeks. I was excited to start a new life in college as a legal male, but there was still one step left to complete. My mother and I went to the birth certificate office in Boston City Hall only to find out that the endocrinologist’s letter stating that I have been living completely as a male and that I underwent breast removal surgery and had received a complete hysterectomy and currently was taking testosterone, and that I fit all the requirements to legally be male, was not on his standard letterhead. My mother and I were so irritated that we went to the doctor’s office right away to get another letter. We then decided to try the birth certificate office at the Bay Side Expo Center only to find out that they would not accept the letter because it did not include the phrase, “Sex reassignment surgery has been completed.” Now we were really mad because the doctor literally wrote everything the phrase said just in a different way. My mother and I were almost in tears; I could feel my heart throbbing again. I ran outside; I felt the need to be alone. My mother refused to leave without talking to the attorney’s boss. He took us into a private room where he apologized profusely and agreed that the letter the surgeon had written for us was fine. The anxiety I was feeling had to be let out and I burst into tears. My sadness rubbed off on my mother because she began to let out a couple of tears also.
The man promised that he was planning on taking it to his lawyer the very next day to get her approval. He replied to us the next day as promised to tell us the letter had been accepted. Two letters from the endocrinologist and four employees later I had finally received the big “male” on my birth certificate. This was the first time I had actually felt closure and happiness for who I have become.
It was finally time to get into college mode. I was excited for once in my life. I was faced with another chance to live my life, but this time would be in the body of the boy I had always felt I was. It was a new beginning as a legal male. No one would know my past and I might actually be able to make some friends. In addition, I would hopefully never have to hear the same, “I am sorry, you are a girl, and I am straight” excuse that I had been getting from girls ever again. I would finally enter the dating world as a straight male and hopefully be given the reciprocated love that I had always wanted for once in my life.
The next hardship I would have to endure was whether I should tell my classmates or not. This is a huge internal struggle for me. On one hand, I feared that if I told people they would not want to have anything to do with me. On the other hand, I might make a lot of friends who I could educate about who I really am. When it comes down to it my heart, soul, and brain are torn between whether I should disclose my secret or bury it inside myself. I really do want to be liked and have a lot of friends. My heart thrives on finally being accepted and liked. At the same time I want people to know what I have gone through in my life to become a male. I am really scared to make this decision and if it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to and people do not accept me, I am fearful for my life. I cannot take anymore disappointment in my life and I am terrified for what may happen if I have to experience this amount of pain again.
Becoming male has given me a whole new perspective on life. I no longer have suicidal thoughts, and I could not be happier. I enjoy waking up each morning knowing that I will not be tortured by my classmates because of my sexuality or my gender. I am now being accepted for the man I have always felt I was! This has been a difficult journey for me, but with the support of my parents and wonderful sister I am getting through it successfully.
C.J. Garber
I remember Fr. O’Reilly standing behind his large desk, pushing himself upright on fingers splayed out on the green blotter, imposing even without the stark, black cassock. He seemed to be so very tall, as most grown men are to a five year old. “Why are you here?” he asked in a not unkind voice. “I disobeyed Mother Superior,” I mumbled, quickly averting my eyes to the floor. “Yes, but why?” he pressed. “I wanted to play with the girls.” I said. “But you are not a girl,” he said, “and you should be thankful God chose to make you a boy. It is much better to be a boy and you should do as Mother Superior says and play with the boys.” “I don’t want to play with the boys. They make fun of me and I don’t like their games,” I cried. “You must play with the other boys. That is how you will learn to be the man God wants you to be.” “No, I will not be a man!”
“It is sinful to not do what God wants us to do. God made you a boy and you must be a boy. You must put away these sinful thoughts and pray that God gives you the strength to obey his will for you. If you don’t, you will go to Hell.” He moved out from behind the desk and walked toward me, exposing the wooden paddle he often used to reinforce his commands. “I’m going to help you remember this lesson, help you understand the pain of disobeying God’s will.”
That day in 1951 I learned that being different was dangerous. That day I learned the feelings I had of being a girl were wrong and not according to God’s will for me. I learned the way I felt was unnatural, that the feelings I had not asked for nor cultivated, the feelings that were just there inside me, were evil, something to be ashamed of and thus hidden away. That day I began to construct the façade that allowed me to hide in plain sight for over fifty years.
I am a cradle Catholic, second boy of parents who converted as adults. My mother was extremely devout and saw to it that her children went to Catholic school. She believed in and loved the Catholic Church and taught her sons to love it, too. And I did love the Church. I trusted that if I did as Fr. O’Reilly had demanded I would be happy being a boy. I began to pray the rosary each night asking Mary to help me feel happy that I was born a boy. But still in my heart, I really hoped I would wake up a girl. But all the prayer did not help. I failed at being the boy I was supposed to be. The other children, boys and girls, sensed I was different, called me “sissy” and shunned me. I became a loner, a small wisp of a boy inhabiting the margins of the playground. I succeeded at the only thing I could. I made good grades.
My parents were very focused on my older brother who was born with severe asthma and had barely survived rheumatic fever and polio. My mother knew our faith had saved him. As long as I brought home good report cards and no bad notes from the sisters, they were happy with me and didn’t noticed that I was always alone. My effort to plaster over the ache in my heart worked until my brother was diagnosed with bone cancer.
Dean had just turned fourteen and I was eleven. Mother and I said the rosary together each night, asking Mary to intervene, but Dean did not get better. His leg had to be amputated, but mother urged me to continue to pray for him, and I did. My parents began to spend every available moment at the hospital with him. Being such a good, quiet child, I was allowed to stay home alone after school. One afternoon I happened to see an article in the newspaper about Christine Jorgensen, the first well-known transsexual. Doctors had turned a man into a woman. All my stifled dreams and wishes came rushing back. If God let doctors operate on a man and make him into a woman, how could it be a sin for me to want to be a girl? For the first time, despite Fr. O’Reilly’s warning of God’s wrath, I crossdressed in my mother’s clothes. And it felt good. I looked in the mirror and finally liked the person I saw. That night I prayed for God to let my brother live and to let me find a way to be a girl.
But neither prayer was answered. One day, after I had again worn my mother’s clothes, she came home and told me Dean had died. Suddenly, I knew Father had been right. I knew God had taken my brother as punishment for my grave sin. At confession the next day, the priest told me that my sin had not caused my brother’s death, but that it would lead to my damnation if I did not live as the boy God made me.
I tried. Though I had been a wimpy boy who never played sports, I decided to become one who did. I discovered that God had given me a body that responded well to exercise. I found a neighbor who was a gifted athlete in many sports, particularly football, the sport a real boy must play. I soon impressed him with my desire to learn from him.
A year later, I began high school and earned a starting position on the junior varsity football team. Suddenly, I became part of the in-crowd, a jock, and a desirable date for all the right girls. By the time I graduated, I had earned letters in football, track, and tennis, was elected to numerous leadership positions, was voted a senior favorite and won a congressional appointment to the US Air Force Academy, which was all-male at that time. There I excelled again, playing football, soccer, rugby, as well as earning academic honors. I was doing all the things a cadet was supposed to do. And I did them far better than most. I became engaged to my high school sweetheart and we planned to marry in the Cadet Chapel graduation day. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t.
All that time, I prayed for God to hear the pain in my heart, the ache that would not go away. Daily Mass and Communion did not seem to help. No matter how hard I tried, a moment’s lapse in concentration and a small voice that seemed to come from my soul would tell me I was not really happy. I assumed I had not yet made up for my sins, that I had not yet become the man God wanted me to be. I prayed that marrying my soul mate would be the answer. But again my prayers were not answered. The morning after our wedding, I awoke to the familiar ache. Two months later, as I began flight training, having achieved the dreams of so many young men, I plunged into depression and made my first attempt at suicide. After I was released from the base hospital, I went to Mass often, hoping that receiving communion would help.
But it did not. God did not seem to care that I was hurting, even as I earned my Air Force wings, a most manly accomplishment. I began to feel nothing at Mass. I had done everything a boy and man are supposed to do and still the ache was in my heart. I was becoming angry with God and the Church.
I left the Air Force and began a new career as an engineer. My wife sensed my unhappiness and hoped that a child would strengthen our marriage. I became a father and worked hard to be a good one. I think I was, though I would not let my wife have our daughter baptized in the Catholic Church. I was too angry with a church and a God that would reward my long struggle to be a man with such unhappiness in my soul.
I began to run away from life. I put in long hours at work and rapidly rose through the company ranks. I provided well for my family. Though I was falling away from the Church, I continued to pray to Mary, asking her, a woman, to intervene. A callus built up on my soul, but nothing would stop the ache. Finally, I no longer went to Church because it became like sixty minutes of institutionalized pain, each time slowly reopening the wound on my soul only to pour in religious salt.
Gradually I fell into depression, spiraling ever downward. After thirty years of marriage, I finally told my wife why I was so sad in spite of all her efforts and all my successes. She quickly withdrew from me and I descended further into depression. The engineering firm I had worked so hard to build began to struggle since I could not maintain the level of effort it had come to depend upon. I was unable to prevent our purchase by a larger firm which also foundered. I lost all the investment I had made in my company. Then I lost my job and soon after, our financial stability. A year later, after several suicide attempts by both my wife and me, our marriage ended.
I was alone and lost. I had nowhere to turn except back to the Church. I returned to Mass and prayed for healing. And once again the Church let me down. I found a priest in my small town and told him I was a transsexual and I needed to feel that God would understand I must live as a woman if I am to live at all. He blandly told me that I had been born a man, would always be a man in God’s eyes, and that I should just look between my legs and I would know that. He told me I must not act on my feelings, that altering my body or living as a woman would be sinful, that I should work harder at being a good Catholic, at attending Mass, at prayer, asking for strength to follow God’s will. The words of Fr. O’Reilly all over again. My fifty years of trying to follow them was still not enough to satisfy the Church.
A few days later, I was in the mental ward of the VA hospital in New Orleans. I felt rejected by God; unable to be the man he wanted me to be. I was in a spiritual Catch-22, a Catholic double bind: I could not continue to live as a man and my Church would condemn me to Hell if I tried to live as a woman. I wanted to die, to stop the pain, but that too was a mortal sin. It seemed no matter what I did, I would be forever in pain.
It was at that point that Sister Monica entered my life. A friend tried to persuade me for many months before I finally agreed to meet her. Somehow my heart overcame my fear of once again being hurt by a member of the Catholic clergy.
I will never forget that night when her ministry began to impact me. I wrote in my journal the next day: “Since I left you Saturday morning, I have had such a feeling of joy and hope for the future. You touched something in me, perhaps finding a small ember of faith in the Church still glowing after all those years.
With Sister Monica’s help, I began to believe that I could come back to the Church as Dawn, and subsequently I attended Mass with her at her church in New Orleans East. The pastor and the congregation accepted me and welcomed me to their fold. That day I began to feel welcome in God’s house. Coming to terms with my Catholic faith at last freed me to move forward with my transition. Instead of waking each morning regretting that God did not take me during the night, I am anxious to get up and face the day, for being alive is now a miracle instead of a curse. I like what I see in the mirror, a fifty plus woman who will at last be able to enjoy her true spirit. My friends tell me they can see the difference in my face and hear the happiness in my voice.
But being a transsexual and trying to practice my Catholic faith is not easy. The church fathers continue to parrot Fr. O’Reilly’s words. Though intellectually, I now know that the men in Rome are not the entire Church, their words can still hurt me/
I am a transsexual, yet I am many things. I am a sissy, a crybaby, the butt of jokes and fodder for the Catholic school bullies. I am a high school jock, a college football player, an intramural boxer and rugby player. I am a warrior, an Air Force Academy graduate, a Vietnam veteran, a GIB, the guy in the back of an F4 Phantom “Goose” flying behind Tom Cruise. I am a professional engineer registered in six states. I am a businessperson, executive vice president of a large engineering company that provided livelihoods for over a thousand people. I am a leader, active in my community and profession, serving in chambers of commerce, charities and professional associations. I am a teacher, instructing future teachers how to use computers and the Internet to improve their classrooms. I have a doctorate in Instructional Design and Development, which clarifies how the way we think influences the way we learn on the web.
I am a transsexual, sixty-five years old, yet just a few years into my new life as a woman. I am also a cradle Catholic, raised in the Church according to the Baltimore Catechism, missing Latin and not understanding Vatican II. I am a husband, wed in the Catholic Church to my high school sweetheart and married for almost thirty-four years. I am the father of one child, a now thirty-five year old daughter who is not a cradle Catholic because I would not let her be baptized as an infant. I am a fallen-away Catholic, though I am still desperately trying to find a spiritual home within the Church. I am all of these things at once. But for the Catholic Church, the only thing that has mattered all my life and all that still matters is that I am a transsexual.
Can I choose not to be a transsexual? Let me answer this way. Friends who are not Catholic often ask me why I want to be part of a Church that does not value me for who I am, a Church that declares me, like they do gay people, to be something disordered, an abomination. The answer is that I can be no other. From my earliest memories I have known the Catholic Church as the Church. I cannot change my faith and I cannot change my being transsexual. I have always been a Catholic and I have always been a transsexual. I can only choose to die trying to live a lie, or to live the way that makes my soul sing.
Could I have chosen not to have surgery? I feel strongly that I had to have this surgery if I was to have a body that is one with my soul. Though the Church considers this surgery “superficial”, changing nothing, for me it is life giving. At long last I see a body that truly reflects the person I am. If I am blessed to find another soul mate, that person will see me the way I want them to see me. I am, at least in the state’s eyes, for at least some of society’s legal necessities, a woman. Two not inconsequential examples: I can at last be able to go to the bathroom without breaking the law and my hormone prescriptions are covered by insurance. Still the Church considers this “choice” sinful, disfiguring the body God made for me.
I still pray that someday the Church fathers will open their hearts and truly welcome my trans brothers and sisters and me home, home to the fullness of our wonderful Catholic faith.
Dawn Elizabeth Wright
A daughter comes out in college and starts her mother and father on a path of understanding.
Twelve years ago my daughter Gretchen invited me to come to Purdue University for dinner to celebrate my birthday. She was taking summer classes and working at Whirlpool so she remained on campus. The next semester she would begin her senior year.
Following dinner she gave me my gift, a book titled Straight Parents; Gay Children. I couldn’t believe my eyes. After an uncomfortable period of silence, I asked her if she were trying to tell me something. As she nodded, I asked her if she were sure to which she responded, “Mom, are you sure you’re heterosexual?” Since I had never questioned my sexuality, I was certain she had and now understood what had been puzzling her for some time.
I hugged her, told her that I loved her and it didn’t change my feelin
gs for her. The only thing different was I had more information about her now. She asked me to prepare her dad because she wanted to talk to him soon. She wanted to talk to her brothers individually.
When our children “come out of the closet,” we as parents go in. For several years I remained silent on the subject but did read a number of books to try to understand and accept. I was dealing with the death of a dream I had of my daughter marrying some day.
Late in October seven years ago, my husband and I traveled to Boulder Creek, California to have an early Christmas visit with our daughter, since she would not have enough vacation days at her place of employment to be able to come home. I selected a simple cross with Chanel set diamonds on a gold chain for Gretchen’s gift. She said she really appreciated the thought and the gift but that she could not accept the cross because it was not about who she was any more. My eyes filled with tears; I could hardly speak. I could see the disappointment in my husband’s eyes. Feeling rejected by our church, Gretchen felt her only recourse was to leave the church.
This was the beginning of a journey by my husband and me to learn as much as we could about homosexuality. My husband saw an announcement in the newspaper of a meeting being held where clergy from local churches were invited to speak on their particular denomination’s vision of gays in their church. During the Q&A period of the meeting, my husband asked, “When you don’t use the pulpit to preach against homophobia, aren’t you contributing to it?”
Those attending immediately applauded bringing my husband to tears. The panel of clergy agreed that they were remiss and, yes maybe they were part of the problem.
Like many other conscientious and concerned Catholics, we feel called to be voices that question and challenge.
When members of faith communities gather and sing the song, “All Are Welcome,” do we really mean that? Does the church not understand the need to have a ministry that includes all people regardless of their sexual orientation? My husband and I pray and work towards the day when all are welcomed as full and equal members in the sacramental, spiritual and social life of our Church and local communities.
Rita Wagner