Living the T with Transgender Teenagers

A friend named Michele also helped me to adjust my assumptions. Michele was a lesbian fire captain in Los Angeles, a male-to-female transsexual who transitioned on the job when she as in her forties. Now Michele and her partner Janis run transgender awareness workshops. In their classes they hand out sheets of paper with four lines drawn across them, with an M and an F at opposite ends of each one. The lines are labeled “biological sex,” “gender identity,” “gender expression,” and “sexual orientation”—indicating that these notions aren’t fused—and students are told they can mark a spot on the lines where they think they fall. Most people feel they embody a mix of male and female qualities and will place themselves somewhere more toward the middle on at least some of the continuums. We all float a little.

I also started thinking about accidents and surgeries. A friend had a mastectomy around this time, and while the operation certainly made her feel less sexy, it didn’t make her question her sex. I asked myself if a man lost his penis in some kind of accident, would he be any less male—and, conversely, would I be any less female if I, in an odd hormonal surge, grew one? I began to understand that the brain and the heart are the only organs with a gender, and that all genital modification or lack thereof is simply a personal aesthetic choice.

As the confidence Tatiana instilled took hold, Foxx no longer wanted to dress as a girl part-time. She wanted to live, day and night, as a woman. Foxx told me she was working at a telemarketing firm during this period, and when the company announced they’d be initiating casual Fridays, Foxx leaped at the news. That very next Friday, workers showed up in jeans and khakis. Foxx showed up as a woman.

“It all came down for Foxxjazell. She just couldn’t take just dressing up at night; she couldn’t take just dressing up on weekends. So Dwight Eric had to go,” she explained, adding that while she wasn’t fired from her job, she was required to use an unmarked bathroom

on an abandoned floor of the building. “In a way, it was like I got in the car and I saw Dwight Eric and just ran him over; that’s how I looked at it,” she said. “For a lot of years, I hated Dwight. I hated his short ugly hair. I hated the way no one understood his pain. Foxx is more courageous, more bold.”

Excerpted from TRANSPARENT © 2007 by Cris Beam. Reprinted by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc.

Cris Beam’s website: CrisBeam.com

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