Transgender

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK AT THE "T" IN GLBT

To get a better understanding of the transgender world, let’s start with the basics – a glossary of terms. Here’s an abbreviated trans-dictionary.

Gender Identity: How people see themselves - as either male or female.

Transgender: An umbrella term used to describe people whose gender identity or gender expression differs from that usually associated with their birth sex. It includes cross-dressers, transsexuals and transvestites.

Note: Gender identity and sexual orientation are totally unrelated. Transgenders can be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, etc.

Transvestite: Someone who wears the clothes and wants to adopt the appearance and behavior of the opposite sex.

Gender Dysphoria: A medical term describing the feeling of being "trapped in the body of the wrong sex."

Note: According to the diagnostic standards of American psychiatry, people who experience persistent gender dysphoria can be given the diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder. This "disorder" diagnosis is highly controversial among some mental health professionals and transgender people.

Transsexual: When someone has a strong feeling of gender dysphoria, they may undergo the transition process from one gender to the other. This can include cross-sex hormone treatments and sex reassignment surgery.

Jennifer Campbell (then James) was one of those girls who felt trapped in a boy’s body. "I always knew there was something about me that just didn’t feel right," she says. When Jennifer was 12 she recalls watching an episode of The Phil Donahue Show about transgenders, then feeling her father out about the topic without revealing her secret. "He said it was against The Bible, so I never really said much to him about it after that."

Jennifer started dressing up in women’s clothes and putting on make-up – but only in private. "It never felt foreign to me. It felt like the most natural thing in the world," she says. Still, it would take years before she would ever walk out of the house like that.

"I had been struggling with the whole thing for so long, the pressure finally got to me. I was on the verge of suicide. I knew I couldn’t pretend to be something that I wasn’t anymore," Jennifer says. After some therapy sessions with counselors she describes as "like talking to a brick wall," she found Marsha Malone Bell, a Lexington therapist with clinical experience at UK’s former sex reassignment program. Marsha helped Jennifer find her path to self-acceptance. Jennifer has been taking female hormone treatments for three years and hopes to have sex reassignment surgery (SRS) next year. Jennifer, now 36, "lives full-time" as a woman and says she is happier than ever.

Jennifer plans to have her surgery in Thailand, where it costs under $10,000. In the U.S., SRS averages between $20,000 and $50,000, and is only available in about a handful of cities. The process is not only costly; it involves extensive counseling, and patients aren’t always satisfied with the outcome. Surgeons have had much better results overall with male-to-female SRS than with female-to-male transitions. Unlike procedures like vasectomies or tube-tying, sex reassignment surgeries are totally irreversible.

Christine Leigh Belle Maxwell is the director of TransKentucky, a support, social and resource group for transgenders based in Lexington. Christine identifies herself as a trans-woman – a male to female transsexual. Like many transgender youth, Christine says she lived in fear and uncertainty for years.

"Every trans person has an epiphany. I’m miserable, but I’m scared. What is my family going to think? What are my co-workers going to think? What’s going to happen in my life?" She believes transgenders often face even more challenges than gays and lesbians. "It’s harder for a trans person to come out to their family than a gay person because you’re becoming a different person. Your personality is the same, but your appearance is totally different."

As for the transgender community as a whole, Christine says, "We are invisible. More trans people need to come out and we need to be more vocal." A blatant example of the invisible nature of the transgender community is the recent controversy over the ENDA bill – a proposed employment anti-discrimination measure to protect gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. When the transgender language was dropped from the bill to try to help it pass through Congress, was there a resounding protest from the transgender community? Was there even a strong enough opposition from the GLB community?

Lisa Hartley, clinical social worker and author of "The Tempest Over Sex Identity," says the real problem lies in our society’s attitudes. "It’s our culture that suffers from dysphoria, in that it refuses to understand and accept the transgender person."

For more information about TransKentucky, go to www.groups.yahoo.com/group/TransKentucky. In Louisville and Southern Indiana, contact Sienna, The Louisville Gender Society, www.tg-sienna.org, 502-894-1048.

  By Chip Alfred

chip@g3illustrated.com