Tomorrow Will Be Different

by Sarah McBride

  I told him that Carla should feel free to call me. And he closed by asking if he could call my parents. The answer was yes, of course.

  While I talked with Carla for over an hour, Jack talked to my parents. He reached my mom first, catching her as she walked through a bustling shopping mall just outside of town.

  “Sally,” he began, “it’s Jack Markell.” He told her we had just talked and repeated the message he had expressed to me. “Carla and I love you all and we will be there for you,” he told her.

  Overcome with emotion, my mom fell to the ground. Sitting on the bright white tiles in the middle of the mall with shoppers walking around her, she began to cry. It was probably the first time she had cried from happiness rather than sadness in our family’s still-short journey.

  When I had told my mom I was trans, she confessed that she feared our small but tight-knit community would disown us, but here was our governor—the symbol of our state—standing firmly beside us. It was a sign of things to come, and it immediately became a powerful tool in our family’s quest to remain an integral part of the community we so loved.

  Most people are good, no doubt, but when we are faced with issues we haven’t yet thought about or interacted with, we often look to one another for how we should respond. Our behavior models for others the acceptable reaction; acceptance creates an expectation, while rejection provides an excuse.

  My parents knew this, and in discussing it as they sleeplessly lay in bed the night after I came out, they resolved to make crystal clear to the world that they loved and affirmed me. They created a standard for others to meet. And with Jack and Carla, we not only kept valued friends, we also gained visible allies who amplified that standard to our state.

  In the weeks after I came out to Jack and Carla, we grew even closer than before. Despite being governor of an entire state, Jack would call me every two weeks to check in.

  “Sarah, it’s Jack,” he’d start, using the name my friends and family were slowly adopting. “I just wanted to see how you were holding up.”

  Each time I came out, it felt like another step in becoming myself, and each step made me feel a little bit more whole. But telling people did only so much. People now knew about me, but I was still hidden.

  By now, our fears of rejection were slowly diminishing, and while my parents had come to know that I wasn’t going away, they were still a long way from truly feeling that way. With each hug, I could feel that they were squeezing just a little longer and harder. With each look, I could tell they were taking me in “one last time.” And whenever I’d hang out with a different friend, my mom would ask hopefully, “You aren’t going to tell them, are you?”

  I thought I was done with secrets, but the secrecy had shifted to my parents, particularly my mom. The shame and fear she initially felt as I slowly shared my news was hard to bear. I had been so used to my parents being proud of me.

  When I returned to Wilmington one weekend during the months between coming out to my parents and coming out publicly, I drove up wearing a women’s pea coat and ring.

  I called my mom in advance to prepare her. She sighed at my clothing choice.

  “Pull into the back,” she told me, referring to the empty and secluded alley behind our house that we never use.

  They still didn’t want it to be real. It had seemed like they were making progress, but now it felt like my mom couldn’t even handle a jacket and a ring. What would happen when I started living every day, totally, as the woman I had always known myself to be?

  These comments hurt. But honestly, I couldn’t blame her. I’d had twenty-one years to overcome the shame.

  I had constantly told them that I was still the same person, but I was starting to feel like I was competing with myself. The sense of living someone else’s life that had become so unbearable persisted. I wanted them to love me as their daughter, not as the person they thought was their son. I wanted them to see and love me as me.

  Each of us has a deep and profound desire to be seen, to be acknowledged, and to be respected in our totality. There is a unique kind of pain in being unseen. It’s a pain that cuts deep by diminishing and disempowering, and whether done intentionally or unintentionally, it’s an experience that leaves real scars.

  Within most cultures, when a baby is born, we look at the child’s external anatomy and make a determination. Anatomy that looks one way means the child is a girl and anatomy that looks another way means the child is a boy. For the vast majority of people, the assumption of their gender identity largely aligns with the reality of their gender identity, but for a portion of the population—those of us who are transgender—we are assigned a gender identity that doesn’t fit.

  Even for the most well-intentioned person, it may be difficult to separate an individual’s gender identity from the sex assigned to them based on the appearance of external anatomy. We’ve been taught and raised to believe that these two concepts are inextricably joined, that one not only leads to the other, but that they are actually one and the same.

  This challenge—to decouple concepts previously perceived as permanently and inalterably linked—is not a new one. In the nineteenth century, the notion of “gender roles” would have seemed redundant, as a person’s sex inherently came with certain roles. In the first half of the twentieth century, the terms “straight” or “heterosexual” didn’t exist because one’s sex and who they loved were inseparable parts of each other. The words “straight” or “heterosexual” were unnecessary—the words “man” and “woman” covered it.

  Slowly but surely we have learned to separate what was once deemed inseparable. Increasingly, we are coming to grips with the reality that the sex someone appears to be at birth does not dictate their gender identity.

  It is this trend that links the fight for gender equity with the fight for gay rights with the fight for trans equality: ending the notion that one perception at birth, the sex we are assigned, should dictate how we act, what we do, whom we love, and who we are.

  When we finally separate that perception from those expectations, we allow ourselves to witness the wholeness of other human beings. This effort—coupled with the overlapping fights for racial justice, disability rights, and equality for religious minorities—shares a similar thread. We are fighting to be seen in our personhood, in our worth, in our love, and as ourselves.

  And while I was now out, I still wasn’t seen by my parents, by my friends, and by the broader world. I couldn’t blame them; when I looked in the mirror, even I still didn’t see myself. And after finally checking off the last part of my “coming out to-do list” (telling the AU and broader Delaware communities), I was finally ready to take the steps I felt I needed to take in order to no longer feel hidden and to have my gender identity expressed to the world.

  Not everyone in the trans community may know exactly what steps, if any, they need at the start of their journey. Transitioning, the term used to describe the process of having our gender identity seen by the outside world, isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience. For many, this likely includes adjusting aspects of our gender expression, such as clothing and hair. For others, it may include taking hormones or undergoing different kinds of surgery.

  I started hormones shortly after coming out to my parents. Slowly, they began to have an effect on things like my skin and my fat distribution, but mostly on my psyche. Even though I had started on hormones and they were having an effect, I was still presenting as someone I was not. I had held off on adjusting my gender expression until I had come out to my school and the public. Now that was done and I was ready to live as myself.

  Again, it’s important to note that this process looks very different for everyone. Some transgender people may already feel comfortable with how they are expressing themselves. For instance, a transgender man—a person assigned female at birth but who is and identifies as a man—may already be presenting in a
more masculine way before he comes out as trans. And just as a cisgender woman may wear her hair short, many transgender people will not express their gender in strictly feminine or masculine ways.

  For me, it was a rather stark and abrupt change. I had set the date that I would begin living as myself more visibly: five days after posting my coming-out note. It was a day I had looked forward to for a very long time, so I decided to throw a party and be surrounded by some of my best friends. I was starting a new wardrobe from scratch, a surprisingly significant undertaking, so I also asked friends to bring presents: an old top, a new dress, a cheap necklace. Anything that could help me fill my closet.

  When the night of the party finally arrived, my new apartment in a town house in central Washington, D.C., which I had moved into a week earlier, was filled with people. They were mostly friends from college, but also many of my best friends from Delaware.

  My ex-girlfriend, Jaimie, who I had dated for about a year, had remained my friend after our breakup and was there. A beautiful and smart brunette with a strong resemblance to a young Katie Holmes, Jaimie had broken up with me a few months before I came out to my parents. We were both very understanding people and never found ourselves mad at each other, but in the somewhat rocky weeks leading up to the end of our relationship, she made the apt observation that she felt more like she was dating a girl than a boy.

  Our breakup was a turning point in my path toward coming out. It was the first extended period of time in years that I had been single. For a while, the presence of a girlfriend had been one of many factors keeping me in the closet. Sparing others from humiliation was a constant theme in my mind.

  Jaimie and I had hung out a few times after our breakup, and so when we hung out in the days after my Christmas coming out, I told her my news. As we drove in my mom’s old Toyota Highlander, I started by telling her that I was dating a boy, a classmate who had served as my chief of staff during the first half of my term as student body president. And like my gender identity, which I had known for as long as I could remember, I had always known that I liked boys. While they are two distinct concepts—sexual orientation refers to who you love, while gender identity refers to who you are—I kept both inside, knowing that grappling with the first would almost instantly precipitate the second.

  “Oh my God, we’ll be like Will and Grace!” she exclaimed, referencing the iconic television characters who had dated and remained best friends after Will came out as gay.

  “Well,” I cautioned, “I’m not gay. I’m actually transgender.”

  “Oh. Oh! Okay!” she responded, working to quickly turn her shock to excitement and then to support.

  Jaimie echoed my brother Dan’s comments while we were dating, adding, “I guess this makes a lot of sense. I was actually just learning about gender identity and trans issues in my gender-studies class.”

  Jaimie, along with a few friends from college, would help teach me to do my makeup during the following months, and she was with me in the hours leading up to my coming-out party.

  As I greeted my guests in a white lace dress I had purchased online, the atmosphere at the party was euphoric. No more secrets. No more hiding. It was a pure celebration of love and authenticity, of friendship and life. I felt liberated. It was a true birth day. And my smile, which had faded over the previous year, was back in full force.

  And in the weeks following the party, finally living as myself, my euphoria gave way to an almost meditative state. The constant homesickness that had cluttered my mind for years was finally gone. I hadn’t come out to create a positive, but to remove a negative and to alleviate that nearly constant pain and incompleteness. Transitioning wouldn’t inherently bring me happiness, but it had allowed me to be free to pursue every emotion: to think more clearly; to live more fully; to survive.

  And while I had experienced fleeting moments of this freedom growing up, with the Cinderella dress or on all those Halloweens, it was now permanent. I didn’t have to dread that stroke of midnight.

  This. This is what it feels like to be yourself, I thought.

  I had never felt that way before.

  Coming out and transitioning was a decision that I had no choice in making. I had to do it. And while it helped me in many ways, there is no question that in living my truth, I faced a new set of obstacles. I was stepping into a world built for men as a woman.

  There is no question that my path to womanhood was unique. Every woman’s path is different. Each of us travels with different kinds of privileges and challenges.

  I had always been someone who tried to think about the prejudice and bigotry in the world. So I thought I generally understood what to expect. But in the end, I was so focused on the transphobia I might face after transitioning that I didn’t fully realize just how pervasive the sexism and misogyny would be.

  And it truly was everywhere. From the subtle to the blatant, I had entered a world of impossible double standards and endless contradictions.

  In exploring my own womanhood, it became clear that if I was “too feminine” I was inauthentic, a presumption in even progressive spheres that masculinity is some sort of natural state of being, a preference. But then, if I wasn’t feminine enough, I wasn’t a “real” woman. Television, movies, pop culture, fashion, and politics are all trying to tell us what it means to be a “real” woman.

  The experience of each woman—cis or trans—is different, but a similar thread underpins it all: the policing of gender. The devaluation of lives, hopes, and one’s body. The threat of violence.

  It took me some time to find my own niche in the infinite ways to express one’s gender. Young women and girls often work through this in middle and high school. I was doing it in my twenties. Like many young women, my first burst of individual gender expression was a kind of hyperfemininity—pink dresses, more makeup than I needed, and jewelry. Part of this was a release of the pent-up femininity that I had not felt free to express before, and part of it was the imperfect actions of an imperfect human living in an imperfect world that so often demands conformity from everyone.

  Over time, though, I eventually landed in my own sweet spot: a gender expression that was my own and where I felt comfortable. Feminine, still, but more muted. But navigating my own gender expression—and all the expectations, prejudices, and double standards that come with it—only began to scratch the surface.

  The first few months after coming out were a rude awakening. I could no longer merely exist in the world. Now I had to actively navigate through it, every minute of every day. Every decision carried with it a greater weight, consequences that would impact everything from my emotional well-being to my physical safety. And going anywhere new added additional stress.

  Growing up, my default face had always been that smile, but now I had to consciously train myself not to smile anymore, lest I invite unwanted attention from men on the street. And I’ll never forget the feeling the first time I experienced street harassment.

  I never realized just how disempowering, unsafe, and unsettling it would feel to have a stranger assume they were entitled to comment on my appearance or my body. Walking by a man could elicit an unwelcome comment, an invitation for objectification for having the audacity to walk down the street. If I’m not smiling, I’m told to smile. If I am smiling, it’s seen as a request for more comments. And then there was the man in an airport who repeatedly chastised me for smiling too much. The sexism had come full circle.

  Somehow society manages to treat women like both a delicate infant and a sexualized idol in the same moment. Our thoughts are dismissed and our emotions minimized. And the mundane decisions that I never had to think about when I would wake up before I came out—the clothes I’d wear, the route I’d take, and all of the other tiny decisions one makes just merely going about their day—now became central to avoiding a thousand judgments or, worse, violence.

  I finally had come out
of the closet, only to find myself stuck in the kitchen.

  And while the pain and mental clutter of being in the closet was gone, I also became hyperaware of my identity as a transgender person. Much like stepping into a world built for men as a woman, I was also stepping into a world built for cisgender people as a transgender person. And with each new person, I’d wonder, What do they think of people like me?

  Walking down the street, I could feel the stares as I went to the grocery store or to my summer internship at the Victory Fund, an organization dedicated to electing LGBTQ candidates. The smirks on the faces of passersby would sometimes turn to laughter as they walked past me.

  After moving into my new apartment with friends far away from campus, I found myself jumping through hoops to hide my transition from the landlord, who had first met me before I transitioned. I worried that I would become one of the many trans people—one in five—who has lost their housing due to their transgender identity. Coming home from my internship, if I saw the property manager’s ominous white pickup truck in the driveway, I’d circle the block in my car for thirty minutes until he left. I’d do anything to avoid him finding out that I’m trans, a realization that leads to discrimination for so many.

  And then there was the fear of violence. That nearly ever-present worry as a trans person was often wrapped up in the harassment and experiences I faced as a woman. These two identities—being a woman and being transgender—interact with each other in a way that serves to compound the animus that comes trans women’s way. This reality, referred to as intersectionality, recognizes that we all live our lives with multiple identities intersecting with one another, creating a mix of privileges and challenges that all people carry with us. Race, gender, economic background, religion, immigration status, family acceptance, and so much more create a complex matrix that sometimes erects obstacles but other times ensures support in overcoming barriers put in your way.