By David Johnsrud
Being posed for a photograph in a red velvet dress, both the photographer and my mother had difficulty getting me to look up and smile, to hold the phone next to my ear as if I were talking on it. They wanted me to look up, but I kept looking down at the expanse of brightly colored dress, white leather baby shoes, and especially the itchy strangeness on my upper arms where the gathers held the fabric close in bunches. I was aware of one thing: This was all wrong. The date on the photo puts my age at 22 months.
It was a feeling that would become so commonplace as to almost be tolerable at times: The strangeness and humiliation of being literally forced into feminine-appropriate attire and behavior, coupled with the realization that not all girls were uncomfortable being girls, which was my first lesson in gender dysphoria: Not everyone has it. It shocked me to realize that most girls indeed liked being girls.
Sometimes I got by on fantasy: Perhaps my body would just slowly morph into a more recognizable boy’s, with muscular arms and maybe even the quintessential male feature. In the fifth grade, I saw one of the boys at school draw a line in ink over the midsection of a knuckle and cup the other hand around it, and the result was amazingly suggestive of a prepubescent phallus. In private, I did this many times myself, imagining wistfully actually having one; being able to urinate standing up was my only goal at the time. Ironically, now that I do pass as a man, urinating from this position is not at all important.
When the bus pulled up to my elementary school in the first grade, the fantasy I indulged as I got off and plodded toward my classroom was that today might be the day when my mother would receive a phone call from the hospital where I was born, bearing an apologetic explanation: there had been a mistake. I had a name ready for this occasion, to ease the transition from girl to boy for my parents. I would be called “Joe”, and I would finally be allowed to use the boys’ bathroom, would finally learn to urinate from a standing position, and people would no longer attempt to correct my behavior, my stance, or my mannerisms; these attributes might even be encouraged. I could wear clothes that suited me, play with toys that suited me, and I would finally be at ease.
I got my first pair of jeans when my mother’s head was turned, retrieved from a large bag of clothes outgrown by a family friend’s daughters. Periodically, these bags came to our house for the express purpose of clothing me, and my mother allowed me to go through them and choose what I wanted and overlook things that I didn’t, which was much of it. When she and I actually shopped for clothes, a not-common event due to my parents’ difficult finances, the selections were closely monitored and rarely chosen by myself and ultimately deeply resented by both of us, straining our relationship that had as its cornerstone my mother’s delight in finally getting a daughter, even unplanned, after two boys. That her daughter had no interest whatsoever in what interested her, those being mostly traditionally feminine pursuits, both disappointed and frustrated her, but she persisted, hoping that one day I would catch on to the delights and joys of femininity. I wondered myself whether I would ever come around.
The occasions I was coerced into wearing overtly feminine clothes, the dreaded skirt or dress, were fraught with so much anxiety and loathing that usually only threats and verbal abuse from my father would eventually break me down enough to drag myself into my mother’s bedroom for her to adjust, pull, straighten, scold, and smooth a polyester knit dress with tights and ridiculous impractical features such as sewn-shut faux pockets, oversize collars and buttons that did not fasten anything and black patent leather shoes. I sometimes fought back tears as my mother firmly brushed my hair and tacked it into place with barrettes. This angered her and my father and was interpreted and labeled as “stubbornness”–my inability to embrace what to her was the most natural expression for a girl, what any girl should want to be. I associate—still—little girl clothing with raised adult voices, silent tears, humiliation, and defeat—the feeling of being crushed.
My ability to tolerate my discomfort served to put off my coming out as a transman up until middle age, despite living in a progressive city and liberal arts college town. I was 19 when I realized what that discomfort represented. I was walking back to my dorm room after a session with a counselor who was helping me navigate my world after disclosing, under duress, to my mother that I was a lesbian, or so I thought then. While leaving the session, the thought came to me—crystal clear and stark: “Your problem is not that you are a lesbian. Your problem is that you are a transsexual.” I literally stopped in my tracks, briefly considered all I had been through since coming out, which had also included passive suicidal ideation with two very close calls. I said out loud to the thought, “NO.” I doubted very much I could survive the repercussions of a yet more shocking disclosure. I was a lesbian; it would be both good and bad enough. I pushed the thought back to the furthest reaches of my mind where it would stay submerged, yet still in my awareness for another 23 years.
And good enough it was, though not always a good fit. I took refuge in a lesbian identity for a total of 25 years. There, I could wear my gender how it pleased me, as gay people in general tend to have a greater tolerance for a wide range of gender expressions, but not always for stated gender identities, at least not at that time. Most discussions of my nebulous gender identity ended in argument, so I learned to engage in this topic sparingly. I made friends and lived in a community where I was mostly comfortable.
I got by.
Occasionally, comments were made about my lack of conformity to my natal sex. My mother loved to say that when I had to wear a dress, I was “in drag”. A friend said to me one day that I would “butch up nicely” on testosterone.” Calling another friend with news, he said, “Let me guess—you’re transitioning!” I told him no, that he well knew that really wasn’t for me. And at least five years before actually coming to terms with my dysphoria on my own time, my then-partner said, apropos of nothing in particular, “If you decided to change your gender, it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker.” I thanked her, and I was surprised, but I assured her and myself out loud that that would not be necessary, that I was not actually transgendered.
I was at work when it started unraveling. I was with an older transgendered man who came out to me when I met him; he did not want to deal with questions or surprised expressions if during the course of changing the dressing on his inner thigh, his privates had to be exposed, which they didn’t. While I worked, he told me his story, and that he had begun treatment with hormones in 1967. At one point, he looked very deliberately at me and declared that transitioning was the best decision he had ever made. I tried to remain nonchalant, though by then my hands had started shaking.
When I went home that day, I read in the newspaper that Chastity Bono was going by the name “Chaz” and had by that time been on hormone therapy for 8 months to change his gender to male, which was for him the “best decision” he had ever made. Twice in one day. It began to reverberate.
Reading about Chaz the same day I met with my patient who transitioned the same year I was born finally shook something loose in me. I was 42, aware of my discomfort on all levels with my presumed gender for almost four decades, and despite all my patience, compromising, and tolerance, it was simply not going away. If anything, it was getting worse. It occurred to me that I was in danger of going to my grave wondering what it would have been like to be comfortable in this life. And then, liberation: during the most mundane of activities–brushing my teeth–I let some thoughts roll around uncensored.
I had tried for a very long time to conform, to at least get used to if not actually embrace femaleness. I had come out before and survived. I now had more resources, better self-knowledge and would probably have a support system, unlike before. This was an option available to me, I was fairly sure. I no longer had to live within a precarious balance of tolerance and resignation, helped along with copious and regular amounts of alcohol.
I finished brushing my teeth. Yes, this made perfect sense. Of course I will transition. The relief and sense of resolution I felt confirmed both my suspicions and my hopes. I walked out of the bathroom and only then did I realize that I had released the thought that I had kept under lock and key since I was a teenager, and the truth was not going to go back into a cage.
It was three months later that I attended my first support group specifically for transgendered men. I was late, having been held up in a meeting, and I thought they might not let me in. When a very kind transwoman opened the door for me and welcomed me inside, still I worried that they might throw me out for being a fraud.
They did not throw me out. It was at that meeting that I met Sister “Monica”. It was also at that meeting that I said my name out loud for the first time. Ten months later, I began testosterone injections, and the next summer, I walked to the courthouse downtown and changed my name legally in a seemingly effortless and smooth process.
Since beginning transition, I have made other positive changes in my life: I ended a long-term relationship that was a poor fit for both of us, I stopped drinking after finding I no longer needed alcohol, and I have elected to stay in therapy past the requisite six months for medically assisted transition.
Being so accustomed to living contrary to the way I felt, it has been a process to understand and embrace other parts of myself, to not automatically reject and attempt to mold myself the way I think I should be rather than the way I am. Sr. Monica has been more than influential in this regard; she has, in fact, been instrumental. She taught me that “doing God’s will” is actually to live in accordance with what is in one’s heart, that living a spiritual life is to be honest with oneself and God.
When studying biology and reviewing the structure and function of DNA, I was overcome with the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of the molecule, its sublime genius: the presence and certainty of God. When I met Sr. Monica a couple of years later on my first visit to the support group, and she said to me specifically, “I am so glad you came!” I felt this certainty and presence again, even much more profoundly and this time personally, as well. It was overwhelming, the outpouring of love and instant total acceptance, and I had to look away. After she left the center, I knew I would be contacting her. I had never before wanted to have any spiritual kind of life, believing as many do that a spiritual life is one based in piety, correctness, and general priggishness. I didn’t get any of that from her, and no sense that she was there to bear witness to our depravity, either. She was there to support and uplift us as we were, and further, and even more amazing—to help and support us to get to where we wanted to be, believing as she did that God wanted this for us. This was astounding; I am not even Catholic. I didn’t even identify as a Christian, and none of that mattered. I just knew that I had experienced something essential, and there was nothing required of me to be worthy of it. I wanted to talk with her.
When I asked her if I could meet with her, she said, “I always make time for my trans people!” At our first meeting, she asked me for my story, and I spoke it for the first time. She is the first person to call me by my correct name, David.
I am continuing on my transition path and my spiritual path, which I now understand is the same thing. I have been sober for two years, and now I facilitate the transgender men’s meeting at the center. I have been taking hormones for almost 2 years, and I hope to have my first surgery sometime in the next year. Becoming the man I am meant to be is an ongoing process and is the focal point for my personal, spiritual, physical, and professional development, and is certainly the best decision I have ever made.