Gender history plays a big role with family members. In my case, I was a deep closet transgender. A deep closet transgender is a person who has successfully hid being transgender from everyone. I was out to many people, but I kept it very hidden from my family, and it really caught them off-guard. Your family—and I am talking about parents and siblings—only know you as one gender. You can say that you are the same person, but they really don’t see it that way. I look different, I smell different, I talk differently, and most of all, I act differently. I express my feminine side now that I am out; all my life I may have had feminine tendencies, but I suppressed them as much as I could. You are transgender your whole life, but they are seeing it for the first time, so it does look as though you have changed. From their perspective, you have.
Coming out to my siblings and parents did not go well. I had come out to my wife; she had known for most of our marriage. I had to come out to my parents. My parents are part of an ultra-conservative religion where it is their way or it is wrong. Not only is Christianity the only true religion, but only their version of Christianity is correct. Everybody else is wrong. Their standing in church is more important than the religion, and to have a gay child was an abomination and would make them look bad. They were about to find out they had a child who was transgender.
A child who was gay would have been bad enough: they probably would not have disowned me, but they surely would not have told anyone, instead hiding it the best they could so that their standing in the church would not be tarnished. They could not hide the fact that their son was now a woman. I knew that once I came out to them I would get the “repent” speech. I needed to get on my knees and ask God to fix me—I had been doing that for 35 years by then and found it to be ineffective. It is not a psychological disorder or a choice. You just are.
I knew this was going to be a hard sell to my parents. I needed to get support, so I thought I would start by coming out to a sister. My sister was the black sheep of the family—I have since taken on that role. I figured that she would be the best one to come out to first. She was married three times, she was a nurse, and she often was talked about by family members in not a very positive light.
I started to email her. I asked her if I could tell her something that she must keep quiet for now. She felt honored that I would confide in me and assured me that I could tell her anything. My parents used to tell me that as well. When people say you can tell them anything, you can, but you will also be judged and condemned by them as well. I came out to my sister. She saw the opportunity immediately. I don’t think she could have printed and given the email to my parents any quicker. I knew my parents, and I wanted one more Mother’s Day and one more Father’s Day with them without drama. So I had a plan to tell my parents after Father’s Day, that year.
My emails were my sister’s ticket to get back into good graces with my parents. I was outed by my sister early April 2009, and have not seen my family since. My sister was a poor advocate and did not tell my parents as a “favor” to me, but it was just an act of self-centeredness. Nonetheless, my parents found out, and they reacted the way I expected. I knew they did not have the capacity to understand or accept such a large concept, but I had hoped for was a little compassion. I received none.
My parents called me several times, but they were not interested in talking with me, only at me. Within twenty-four hours, they went from hardly ever hearing the term transgender to being experts on it. They had lived their lives in a very small bubble, and anything that was not within the confines of a 20-mile radius was considered foreign territory. Without hesitation, they explained to me how perverse this all was. Their definition of perverse was related to some bizarre sexual activity. I calmly explained to them that this had nothing to do with sex, this was gender; I had not had sex in years.
Once they could not hang it on some type of deviant sexual activity, they switched to body mutilation, and mutilating my body was an abomination to the Lord. My mother has pierced ears; I asked if that was body mutilation. It was not. I said if God had wanted woman to wear earrings, would he not have put holes in just the girl’s ears? They said pierced ears were different. During this process, my father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and had his prostrate removed. I asked them, Is that not body mutilation? God gave him a prostrate and cancer—you are getting rid of both? Well again, that was different. I explained that being transgender is not a choice, either, and it was how I was born. Of course, that did not go over very well, because that would make them look as though they were the cause. They could barely accept the fact that they gave me the genes to go blind. They still probably don’t believe that, either, and just think I masturbated too much as a child.
This is the point when the conversations stopped being marginally productive. They started to attack me on my beliefs against global warming, the fact that I am a liberal, that I spent too much time in Las Vegas as well as, of all places, Canada. I needed to move back to west Michigan and talk to their minister; after all, he had a PhD in divinity. I reminded them that I have multiple degrees including two PhD’s. They quickly explained to me that my problem was I was too educated. This coming from parents who have only a high school diploma and live in a house where reading consisted of the Bible and Reader’s Digest. Readers Digest always had condensed stories so you did not have to read the whole book. A library card is worthless: if you had all that time to read, you could be working or going to church to show how pious you are.
I do love my parents; however, I learned that I needed to love them from a distance. I quickly realized that if I continued talk to them on the phone—let me rephrase that, because they had no interested in what I had to say—if I continued to listen to them on the phone I was going to say something, however true, I might regret. I gave them my address and told them that if they wanted to communicate with me, they would have to write. As much as I expected it, being rejected by my parents really set me back.
I had been my parents’ trophy child; I was educated, I never let blindness get in the way, and my whole career focused on helping individuals who had disabilities and the students who were the square pegs that the educational system kept trying to pound into the round holes. I knew what it is like not to be able to fit in, and it gave me a way to connect with those who are different. The instant my parents found out that I was s transgender, everything I had done and continue to do was meaningless to them. I was suddenly perverse and mentally unstable.
I wrote them many times and in most of the letters—I wrote, I did not send—I expressed a lot of hurt and anger. I could have sent them, but I am not sure doing so would have done any good; writing them helped me work through the pain. I did not expect them to accept me—that was beyond their personal growth capacity. I only hoped for a bit of compassion and some degree of understanding. Anger would permeate every letter I wrote for a while, so I would wait twenty-four hours before I would send them. This would give me a chance to read them over and tone them down a bit to soften the bite.
Each letter I did receive from my parents was about the same. A single page telling me how evil I was and that I needed to repent. I needed to get on my knees and beg God for forgiveness. I asked them to specifically tell me what I should be asking God to forgive me for. I did not choose to be transgender. They were totally hung up on the fact that because I had a penis I must be a boy, because God only makes boys or girls. I sent them an article about a South African runner who had both male and female organs. I then explained that there are individuals, not a lot, who are born with both genitals, but even though these individuals have both genitals, they are only one gender and many of them have the genitalia removed that do not match their gender. I asked is that wrong. Of course, I did not get a response to the question.
I did get them to agree that gender is assigned in the womb, but they tied gender to the genitalia between one’s legs, not what is between one’s ears. I explained to them that I always knew I was different s
ince early childhood, and I took them through all the things I did as child. When I was young I did not understand enough about what I was feeling to articulate to them that I was transgender. I just lived with the intense guilt that it must be wrong. I showed them all the clues that I had given them as a child, but I am sure they had just thought it was a phase and I would grow out of it.
My parents must think that being transgender is some kind of cult I had joined, and that if I talked to their minister, he would convince me how being transgender is a evil thing. I explained to them that being transgender is not a disease that someone can get; you don’t get bitten by the tranny bug, thus there is no way to cure it. I was in therapy to help me find a way to deal with being transgender. The main treatment for being transgender is transitioning the genital to match your true gender. Most individuals discontinue therapy and live happy, productive lives once the transition is complete. My parents then proceeded to tell me that my doctor was a quack and had convinced me that I am a woman.
I was a smart child, and I knew what I could and could not tell my parents. I knew that these feelings were something I could never disclose. I can only imagine what kind of religious concentration camp they would have put me in until I got rid of those impure thoughts. They were taken aback when they found out my wife knew since we were first married and that I was the president of a support group in their home town when I was in my early twenties.
Phone conversations between my parents and I would start out with a hello and within minutes would deteriorate into religious preaching, so I chose to only communicate through letters. In my first letter to my parents, I gave them the address where I was living at the time. I told them to address it to my new name; if they could not do that at least address it to Dr. S. A. Timmer. They refused and all the letters came addressed to “Steve.” I knew it would take time for them to adjust, so I let it go for the first year. In the last letter I sent before my SRS surgery, I told them that if they did only use my legal name on the envelopes, the letters would be returned to sender with “No one by that name at this address” written on the outside. I have never heard from my parents since. All my letters have gone unanswered.
The saddest part about the letters I got from my parents is not what was said. I knew that their beliefs would not have room for me, so telling me to repent or ask for forgiveness was expected. The guilt trip they gave me of how I needed to honor my parents and respect their wishes again was expected. The part that hurt the worst was not in any of the phone calls or letters; they never asked how I was doing. They only asked where I was, as though I was some misplaced trophy.
I guess it would have been harder for me if they had acted as though they cared for me. Since their only concern was where I was and never how I was, their opinion was not weighed very heavily in my decision to transition. To this day out of all the individuals whom I have known or cared about, the only rejection I have received has been from my siblings and parents.
The irony to this whole story is that the only thing my parents condemned me for was body mutilation, and how that it was such an abomination. You are a transgender whether or not you have sexual reconstruction surgery. Laws are based on the belief that the genitalia defines the gender: the only way I can get an F or mark off that I am female on a form is to have the surgery. Yet the sister who outed me prematurely had breast implants and later had her children removed from her because of abuse was somehow better than I was with my transitioning.
I have a form of blindness that is caused from a genetic defect that causes the optic nerve to die. My younger brother and I both have the disease – there is no known cure. My eyes have never opened very wide, so I always had this sleepy look. That, accompanied with other eye problems, magnified the effect on me earlier than my brother. Well, during facial surgery, the doctors made my eyes open wider, and it improved my sight significantly. I still had my eye disease; it did not improve the clarity at all, but it was like going from a 40-watt light bulb to a 100-watt light bulb. The increase in light coming in increased my ability to see contrasting objects. My parents never commented on it when I explained that transitioning gave me the gift of sight. All the while when my sight was getting better, my brother, who never strayed far from the herd, had significant setbacks, and the husband of the sister who outed me became nearly totally blind.
That is too bad, because the company I own makes a wide range of tools for individuals who struggle with blindness and other disabilities. They are tools I made for myself. I would have gladly helped them out, but to do that they would have to talk to me. So I guess it is better to suffer from the effects of blindness than to ask a sibling who is transgender for help.
I did have a plan to come out to my parents and siblings. I was going to wait until after Father’s day. I had more reasons than just to have one last Mother’s Day and Father’s Day without drama. My children were still in school , and I wanted to be the one to tell them first. I did not want them to find out from someone else, especially someone who was ill-informed or a religious fanatic. I was going to tell my children at the beginning of the summer so that if they had trouble, it would give them the summer to adjust when they were not in school. Once I was exposed by my sister, I had to tell my children during the school year.
My wife and I had only a week earlier had told the children that we were getting divorced. We did not want to have the children deal with both issues at the same time. Our marriage was on the edge for several years, and the children knew it. They were more perceptive than we probably gave them credit for. As a couple we really never argued or verbally fought. The children never heard us use angry words to each other; our marriage simply dissolved away into a dependency relationship.
I traveled so much that having me move out did not change the situation a whole lot, and the children seemed to deal with it. Of course it was not easy, and there were some bumps that came up. However, transitioning would change things. They would not have a mother and father; they would have two women as parents: Mom and Steph. My wife and I braced for the worst. We had worked together to get as much literature as possible to have on hand that dealt with transitioning and children. There was not a lot but we were able to pull a package together. We contacted the counselors at their schools and informed them so that if our children needed someone to talk to, they would have a heads-up.
We sat the children down in the family room, and we told them together. I think it did help them understand why we were getting divorced. We had raised our children to be open and understanding of people who are different. We were both taken back by how well they took the news. I think the divorce was harder for them to take than the fact that I was transitioning.
It was decided that I was the one who was moving out. I am blind, so it is not as easy for me to live by myself as it is for others, so I moved in with a very good friend of mine. She eventually went with me to Thailand for my final surgery. The main reason I moved out was that, even though my children accepted me, their friends might not. It would be hard for my teenage boys to bring friends to a home where their dad is a woman. That is a lot to ask of them. I still see my children as often as I can. I feel I have better relationships with them now than I did before my transition. One of the things that changed is that they now feel that they can tell me anything. In the past, as a defense mechanism, I never let anyone get close to me. It is a way of protecting my secret. Now I don’t have something I am hiding from them, and since the transition I have spent more dedicated and quality time with my children than I did before the transition. I may have lost my parents, and my brothers and sisters, but the people who mean the most to me—my children—I have gotten closer to.
Yes, I did pay a price for transitioning. I lost a wife, two brothers, four sisters, and two parents. It was hard. It was like waking up one day and having your whole family die in a plane crash. I think it is easier if they do die, because that is not a choice. I am still dealing with the rejection. On the positiv
e side, the people I have feared losing the most are still with me.
Coming out is the hardest thing I think I will ever have to do. If I can give advice to anyone who is thinking about transitioning, it is to work on self-acceptance. Be confident in yourself. If you come across as not being ready or unsure, it will be very hard for others to accept you. They need to be able to look you in the eye and see that you are comfortable with who you are and know that you are not wavering They need to know that transitioning is something you need to do.
Going It Alone
Going it alone is one of the more difficult topics I cover in this book. This is my experience and it worked for me, but please understand that it may not be the best option for others. I really wish I had better options at the time of transition, but because of who my male persona was at the time, my options were limited. I think most therapists who work with transgender individuals will strongly disagree with my transition. Not that I transitioned, that was the best thing I have ever done, but the fact that I did it without them.
This is my story, and this is what worked for me. The first thing to remember is that I transitioned later in life at the age of 40 and completed it one month after my 43rd birthday. My rebirth date is December 29, 2009. My birthday was the beginning of my transgender struggles, and my rebirth date is the date of freedom. The only way to start this adventure is from the beginning.
I am a transsexual; many people get hung up on terms, but I guess that is the best term that fits me. I use the generic term transgender in this book, but I did have sexual reconstruction surgery so that technically makes me a transsexual. I have known I was transgender for many years, but knowing and coming to terms with it are two different things. My trans-sisters and I have known we are transgender for as long as we can remember. I used to buy Playboy and Hustler magazines more often than I care to admit. I would look at the naked female bodies and dream about them. Now a teenage boy found with adult magazines under the mattress is not that uncommon, but this was before the days of the internet. The main difference between me and other boys is what they thought about when they looked at the pictures: other boys wanted to be with the woman; I wanted to be the woman.
The Great Elephant Ride Page 10