Transgender world sees hope

"I think we're making significant progress regarding basic understanding."
By Karen Auge
The Denver Post 

The redhead in the brown T-shirt and strappy sandals doesn't want to give her name because at work — she's a mechanic — they think she's a guy.

Which, technically, she is. Straddling the gulf between what she has outside and what she is inside requires a juggling act whose toll is evident in the coins that jangle in her hands, in the crossed leg that never stops swinging.

Julie is fidgety too. In seven days, she'll board a plane for Philadelphia, where she'll be wheeled into an operating room and emerge a new person. But no one at this Tuesday-night "in transition" support group is more anxious than the youngster of the gathering, the college student with a habit of pulling one sleeve over her fist. She's afraid

For them, especially those going from male to female, stepping so young into high heels is no less risky than it was for the previous, hesitant generation.

But the risks are different.

Their older peers risked friends, families, careers. This generation risks beatings in high school and on dates. It risks being killed by the Allen Andrades of a world that is still squeamish, disapproving or downright hostile.

Zapata's murder — Andrade was convicted last week of killing the 18-year-old Greeley resident — is where the generations meet, at the intersection of the fear that kept one generation pretending for decades and the younger generation's fear of being the next victim. Despite fear, many young people are forging ahead with changes they say will make inside and outside match.

"The average age of a person I see has dropped by 20

Transgender person Christy McCleary in the workshop of her Parker home. McCleary, like many transgenders, served in the military, as a crew chief on B-52s in the Vietnam War.
years," said Karen Scarpella, a clinical social worker who treats those in transition.
Signs of acceptance? The aggressive prosecution and resounding verdict in the Zapata case may — or may not — signal that doors of acceptance may be opening a crack.

"I think we're making significant progress regarding basic understanding and education on transgender issues," said Kate Bowman of the Gender Identity Center of Colorado. "We're about 10 or 15 years behind gays, lesbians or bisexuals. Not that that community is accepted wholly." Transgender activists say that before acceptance must come understanding. Being transgender does not mean being gay or lesbian, said Mindy Barton, legal director at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Unity Center of Colorado.

"Transgender is the inner sense of being male or female, or that your gender expression differs from what was assigned to you at birth," Barton said.

As one transgender woman at the Tuesday support group put it: "Sex is what's between your legs. Gender is what's between your ears." And when the two don't match, transgender people say, life can be hell. How that happens is a mystery that science has yet to solve. "It certainly is biological," said Dr. Marci Bowers, who performs 140 to 160 gender- change surgeries each year at the Trinidad clinic founded by sex-reassignment pioneer Dr. Stanley Biber. About 80 percent of those procedures are male-to-female.
"What has not been clarified is where the biological effect is coming from," Bowers said. "Is there a component of nurturing? Is it all genetics? Is it hormonal?" Religious intolerance

Not everyone buys that, of course. Many religious groups assert that transgender people choose a deviant lifestyle. Even among those who treat them, debate rages over whether children can be "cured" of transgender feelings. As a boy of 5, Bowman had no clue what gender meant. "I just knew that I was different. I knew I wanted to live as a girl," she said. But when Bowman, 61, was a child, the word "transgender" didn't exist. "Then, if you told somebody, your parents would lock you up or get you shock treatments," she said. "Now, society has come to the point where youth is more open and parents are more educated."

Somehow, many kids seem to sense that and tell parents their bodies feel wrong. But if open-minded parents can make childhood less painful, they can make life challenging for schools. Last year, parents of an 8-year-old boy who wants to live as a girl approached the Doug las County School District about allowing the child to attend school safely. District spokeswoman Whei Wong said at first there was "negativity."

But, she said, the district did a lot of research and had a lot of conversations with the child's parents and teachers. "We had protocols in place to make sure our student knew who to contact if they felt in danger," she said. "We put in place process and procedure that will be a reference in the future."

That's a far cry from the experience Carol Ganow, who lived as a man until her mid-40s, had in high school. "I remember walking through the halls hoping not to get killed," she said. That sort of baggage has kept the volunteer gender-identity center, its support groups and education humming along for 30 years.

Inside its cozy basement, a pair of posters sum up the gamut of issues that clients grapple with, from the monumental to the mundane. On the mundane end of the spectrum: Bold words "how NOT to apply makeup" float over a picture of a trowel with a red slash through it. Of more importance: a flier announcing a meeting of "Trans And Sober."

Substance abuse is a problem, as is suicide. The GLBT's Movement Advancement Project estimates that as many as 51 percent of transgender people have considered killing themselves; 26 percent have tried. But these women didn't come this Tuesday to discuss the past. That's what months of therapy — required to begin the gender-change process — are for.

Advantages of youth

These women have more immediate concerns, such as how to help another young woman, Rachel, perfect the movements, walks and gestures that signal femininity. In one sense, Rachel is lucky. She's young; she won't have decades of working at masculine carriage to unload. And it typically is easier for those who transition younger to "pass," in the parlance of the trans world. But she's not as lucky as Stacy Kilpatrick. At 29, Kilpatrick has a lean body and a natural talent with an eyeliner wand any woman would envy. When she was in what she calls her "butch" phase, "trying to say this isn't real," she trained to be a firefighter and an EMT. That's a common thread in her patients' histories, Bowers said. A large number served in the military, like Christy McCleary, who was a crew chief on B-52s during the Vietnam War. Lately, Kilpatrick has done office work. Until she was laid off in January, she worked for a mutual fund. Now, with her new, legal name on her resume, with her hormone treatments in full swing, she's job-hunting for the first time as a woman. And she's desperate to fall from the ranks of the transgender unemployed, estimated at 40 percent.

A couple of weeks ago, a law firm called her for a second interview. That's when she told them about her background. "He said, 'Well, honestly, I'm not comfortable having you interface with my clients.' I was devastated. I really thought this could be the one," she said. The first time Kilpatrick went out as a woman, on Halloween in 2006, she wound up in the hospital, with a concussion and a shattered wrist.

She filed a complaint against the bouncers who beat her and hopes a settlement might someday pay for her surgery. The process isn't cheap. There are hormone treatments and therapy. For men becoming women, there are breast implants, electrolysis and maybe facial surgery to reduce manly browlines. Then there is the reassignment surgery, which can cost $20,000 in this country. Virtually nothing is covered by insurance. A week from her surgery, Julie estimates her transformation will cost $100,000. Still, Bowers has a 10-month wait for surgery — down from 14 months before the recession. But Julie feels she has no choice: "You reach a point where you have to do this. It's lifesaving."

Karen Auge: 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com