'Born in the Wrong Body'

“What happens is, you’ll hear about a doctor’s wife from Florida, or you know of somebody who’s a vet who knows how to do it or something like this,” Beam said. “And she’ll show up and she’ll rent an apartment for two days, and she’ll do, you know, a whole bunch of young women.”

The practice is called “getting pumped.”

“It’s really dangerous,” Beam said. “But it’s cheap, and it looks good. So they’re young and that’s why the do it.”

Alex

Alex is the first openly transgender student in the history of the University of Virginia, and he has his own way of dealing with his body. He hasn’t started hormones yet and he hasn’t had any surgery, all of which leaves him, physically, still female.

Because of this, Alex plays Rugby on the women’s team.

“For him to play on the men’s team would be suicide,” said his coach, Nancy. “Just because he’s built still like a girl. He’s got girl muscles and girl shoulders, and he would get murdered.”

But each morning, Alex goes through a routine to mask his feminine features. He binds his breasts every day, and packs. A packer is a silicone prosthesis used by transmen to create a bulge in the crotch.

“One time I accidentally left it at home after coming home for the weekend,” Alex said. “So I immediately called my sister as soon as I realized saying, ‘Please god, if you see any clothes on my floor, pick them up, throw anything that is associated with them into my closet. I will tell you later.’

“She asked me whether I had any drugs stashed in my pants that I needed to get rid of. And I didn’t. But my mom actually found them first. And she never mentioned it, thank god, because that’s an awkward conversation.”

Alternative families
The decision about when to come out as transgender can be extremely difficult and painful.

“Transgender kids form these alternative families with one another often because their own biological families, or families of origin, have thrown them out,” Beam said. “Or their own families have become so intolerable that they run away.”

Deajsa

Deasja, who was raised as a boy by her church-going grandparents in New York City, became estranged from her family when she came out as transgender as a teen. She found another family of sorts in the underground scene known as ballroom, described by those who know it as a kind of national sorority with chapters all over the country.

“Except that in a sorority … it’s the elite, it’s the select,” said New York Times reporter Guy Trebay who has covered the ballroom scene for more than two decades. “And here it’s the opposite. I wouldn’t say they’re misfits. No, I would never say that. I would say that they’re people who don’t have another outlet.”

Ballroom houses are named for famous fashion houses, like Prada, Moschino, and Dior. Most kids don’t actually live in these houses; they just come to hang out with their ballroom friends whom they call “brothers and sisters.”

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