Teenage and Transgendered

This is precisely the problem facing transgendered people every day: How do you live your life and find happiness when the neatly drawn boxes into which most of humanity fits don't apply to you?

"They're going to map male or female onto you because they just want to see you that way," said Renee, who wore gold hoop earrings and pink toenail polish and had her long brown hair held back with a black headband. Unlike Diane, who keeps her male birth name secret, even from her husband, Renee uses hers—Scott—as her middle name. "To honor my male past," she explained.

Several people emphasized the difference between sexual identity—e.g. straight, gay, transgender—and sexual orientation, which refers to attraction.

One teenage biological female whose femininity was evident in her facial features and short pink hair just returned to using male pronouns and his chosen male name. For a couple of months, he had gone back to using the name Sarah and pretended to be a lesbian so the girl he was dating wouldn't judge him. But he felt like a fraud. "Even my dad knew I was bullshitting everyone," he said.

As the session came to a close, Tori, the firearms expert with long, blond hair, turned to Burden. Her voice wavered slightly, still struggling to hew to its newly high pitch. "If you're androgynous, that's fine," she told the teen. She mentioned the years she spent pretending to be happy as a man, trying to please her wife, working construction. "I was suicidal," she said. "My main message to you is to be true to yourself."

Six months after Liz's conversation with her friend Jure, she cut her hair short, got rid of all of her feminine clothes and requested people call her Jay James, not Liz Flowers. Jay's mother, who also bears the family name Missouri and goes by Missy, wasn't surprised. "I knew she was different," Missy says. "I knew she wasn't straight—I thought maybe she was gay." Yet she was concerned her daughter's desire to change sexes may have been a phase. "As a mom I wanted to make sure there weren't emotional issues, mental issues," she says. "I told her, 'We can go to all the best therapists in the world—I'll be there every step of the way.'" Eventually, she became convinced that it was not a phase, but a natural expression of who her child was. "Having come out of the closet myself, it's enabled me to be more understanding," she says. "It's a lot of letting go—you kind of have to let the reins go and let him follow his own heart. He's got a long way to go, but I'm proud of him."

Missy decided she would support Liz, though she made it clear she wouldn't pay for the hormones and surgery, which can cost upward of $100,000. Aside from being costly, the operations aren't done in many places. Porter, the counselor, says she knows of only a few surgeons in the world who specialize in doing female-to-male "bottom" surgeries, or phalloplasties. None live in the area.

Jay and his mother met with the vice principal before the beginning of his senior year, and the administrators said Jay's choice to live as a boy was fine, as long as he didn't use the boys' restroom. District policy forbade it. So, aside from continued avoidance of the bathroom, the transition from Liz to Jay was fairly smooth.