Queercents

About a year and a half ago I unexpectedly lost my health insurance coverage.

As you may have read in my posts about transitioning on the job, the client I was working with when I transitioned initially told me they could accept the revelation that I was a transitioning Transsexual.  Then after two months they found an excuse to cancel our contract.

Obviously, I was concerned about the sudden loss of income, but I was more concerned about having lost my health insurance.  (As part of the contract, my client covered my health insurance and in return I gave them a steep discount on my fee.)

As we all know, healthcare in this country is insanely expensive if you aren’t insured.  (It can even be expensive if you have health insurance, as anyone out there who pays for their own will tell you.)

I had, of course read of the difficulty we Transgendered have in obtaining health insurance.  I had most certainly heard the stories first-hand in various support groups I attended.

All of a sudden I was uninsurable, simply by virtue of being a transitioning Transsexual. Read the rest of this entry »

Redemption came to me on the evening of Monday, November 7th, 2005 between the hours of 6:30 and 7:30.  It was a long time in coming, 47 years.

As I sat, waiting to meet the woman who would become my therapist, I thought about all that had happened during those years; all that had happened on the journey that had brought me to this time and place.

It was a long, dark and lonely journey.

It began on a bright, sunlit afternoon as a little girl who looked like a boy sat on her mother’s bed playing and watching her as she did the day’s ironing.  I couldn’t have been very old, perhaps three.  My mother said something to me, I can’t remember what, but I do remember my response.  I remember hesitating for an instant and then saying: “I’m not a boy.  I’m a girl.”  My mother was startled beyond words.  She stopped, put down the iron and swept me up in her arms, saying over and over: “No, no, you’re my beautiful baby boy!”

My revelation set off a firestorm in my house.  And thus I began to learn that the world wouldn’t let me be me; that it did not want to accept that such as this was possible.  I learned that I could never talk about what really goes on inside of me.  I learned I must live a lie so that those around me could feel comfortable and secure with society’s faulty assumptions about gender identity. Read the rest of this entry »

How many transgendered persons are there in this country?  I don’t remember ever seeing any real research on that.  I keep reading and being told that there aren’t very many of us at all.  I keep reading and being told that Gender Identity Dysphoria is a rare and exotic condition.

What I do know is that in the years since my transition I have met, at most, several hundred transgendered people, and this only because I was on the Planning Committee of the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference this year.  (The attendance was approximately 1,200, but that included family, friends, health care workers and vendors.)

I would venture to guess there are, at most, one or two million of us in the general population.  (And if anyone out there has more definite data on this, please speak up.)  One to two million is a big number.  Numbers, however, are relative.  When you match that number up against the general population of the United States, it’s not that big at all.

Now, how many of us are post-operative?  On this one I have heard a number.  I have heard this number: 40,000.  At any one time there are approximately 40,000 post-operative transsexuals in the general population. Read the rest of this entry »

Back when I actually had health insurance I used to get these elaborate monthly account statements from my endocrinologist.  I could never figure them out.  They were page after page of debits, credits and adjustments.  I just used to go to the last page and write a check for whatever it said next to “Pay This Amount.”

What I did understand was that my doctor’s staff was playing an elaborate cat and mouse game with my insurance provider to get as much of my expenses covered as possible.  (It’s amusing: the first page of my chart lists my diagnosis as “M to F TS.”  The monthly statements always listed my diagnosis as “hormonal imbalance.”)

But there was one thing they couldn’t get my insurer to pay for: estrogen.  (And that’s the most expensive part of Hormone Replacement Therapy.) My particular regimen (before surgery) consisted of an anti-androgen (Spironolactone) and an estrogen (Estradiol Valerate Injectable). Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I visited my endocrinologist he took what seemed to be a gallon of blood. He ordered more kinds of blood test than I ever imagined existed. About a week later I got a call from one of his nurses. They wanted me to see my internalist. They were worried about two of the test results. My cholesterol level was slightly high and the results of the test for prostate cancer were troubling.

I called my doctor and made an appointment. I had yet to tell him what was going on in my life. (I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I only saw him once a year. He would give me the once over and write a prescription for a year’s worth of my hypertension medicine.)

Let me tell you a little about Dr. H. He had been both my personal doctor and my family’s doctor for 20 years. He knew me when I was a graduate student. He knew me when I was starting my career. He knew me when I got married. He knew me when I got divorced and moved back in with my parents. He was there with me through both of my parents’ final illnesses and subsequent deaths. Read the rest of this entry »

Given their high degree of education, you would think that doctors, and healthcare givers in general, would be quite forward thinking and accepting of the transgendered.  I have not always found that to be the case.  In the years of my transition and since I have had two less than ideal experiences with healthcare givers.  One I would simply call curiously educational.  The second one I found genuinely troubling.

Let’s start with curiously educational.  (Next time around I’ll talk about genuinely troubling.)  When I was about three months into my therapy my therapist agreed to recommend me for Hormone Replacement Therapy.  We both did a great deal of research on endocrinologists in the Philadelphia area and selected a reproductive endocrinologist with a long record of treating transsexuals and who had an excellent reputation in the transgendered community.  I called his office and scheduled an appointment.  When the receptionist asked me the reason for the visit, she didn’t miss a beat when I said I was a transitioning transsexual.  (She asked all the right questions (M to F or F to M, what name is on the health insurance, what gender is on the health insurance, etc.)

I’ll never forget that first visit.  I was the only man in the waiting room.  I was on the way to a meeting with one of my clients, so I was wearing a suit (charcoal grey pinstripe with a red patterned power tie).  I was surrounded by women desperate to become pregnant.  They were probably all thinking: “why’s he here?  He isn’t with his wife.  He came in alone.” Read the rest of this entry »

No sweat. (Really!)

One of the important things I learned during my transition is this: a great many of the issues I perceived as “barriers” preventing me from being my “true” self only existed inside my head.  In point of fact, many of them were excuses I used for years to deny the truth of my transgenderism.

But I learned to overcome them.  I got to a point where, before I transitioned, I could routinely go into department stores presenting as male and buy women’s clothes.  Never once did anybody say anything or give me an odd look or whisper about me with a co-worker.  Quite the opposite.  They were very respectful.  Some even complimented me on my taste.  (I think it only right to mention the stores that treated me this way: Macy’s, J.C. Penny, K Mart and Wal-Mart.)

Merchandisers, or at least their marketing departments, are aware that the transgendered exist.  We are a target marketing group they can sell “stuff” to.

You also have what the politicians call the element of “maximum deniability.”  You could just be one of those few men who actually do buy clothes for their girl friend, wife or even an elderly mother who has limited mobility.  In the course of my job I once met a very wealthy woman whose husband bought all of her clothes for her.  He had the fashion sense and she didn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

Last time, I shared with you the story of my friend’s very positive experience coming out on the job.  This time, I’m going to share with you the story of my coming out on the job.  This is the story of how not to do it.  It was an unmitigated disaster: painful, humiliating and insulting.  It left me high and dry both professionally and financially.

As you might have read in my biography, these days I’m a self-employed fundraising consultant.  This wasn’t always so.  When I transitioned I was an associate with another consulting firm.  I was managing a contract with a small non profit which was in the early stages of a sizeable multi-million campaign.  I was working with another of my firm’s consultants who lived in the area and was a close friend of the Chairman of the organization. The non profit was located 150 miles from my house.  The client provided me with an onsite apartment and I spent three to four days a week working with them.

I was at a crucial moment in my transition.  I was Ashley everywhere except at work and it was getting more difficult to “be” Craig. When I first joined the firm, I had short brown hair peppered with grey.  I now had blond hair that was getting longer and longer.  The hormones were doing their job just fine, which meant that all those power suits I wore just plain didn’t fit right any more.  And I always had to wear my suit jacket.  If I didn’t, somebody was going to notice that I was developing breasts. Read the rest of this entry »

You just got a new job. Great work Jane. There’s just one problem. Your legal name is still Jim. What happens when they ask you for your social security number? Then they’ll know the truth: that you’re a transitioning transsexual. And that opens up a whole new can of worms.

What to do? Unfortunately, our social security number is a de facto universal ID number. Everybody asks for it and once you give it to them they can find out pretty much everything there is to know about you.

I’ve had many a background check done on me over the course of my career. And with little more than an address, birth date and social security number they can find: education, employment history, credit history, even the speeding ticket I once got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike complete with date, time of day, how fast I was going, the mile marker where it happened, the fact that I didn’t contest it and the date I paid the fine.

It’s one of the realities of being us. No matter who we’ve always known we are the rest of the world has always known us as somebody else. All the rest of the world cares about is who we are legally. If you present yourself as anything other as your legal self in a job, applying for a bank account, credit card or loan, they’re going to find you out. (And you probably broke a couple of laws along the way.) Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all had it happen to us. You’re in a store or restaurant and you see the bemused stare, the two clerks across the room looking at you, whispering and giggling or, worst of all, the dreaded, sneering “have a nice day sir.”

There’s a certain type of person and a certain segment of society which doesn’t understand or very much like transgendered people. There is a certain subset of this group that actively dislikes, even hates us. They’re usually, but not always, male. They’re usually, but not always, poorly educated. They are usually, but not always, employed in low-paying dead-end jobs.

Why do these people treat us this way? I can’t say for certain. I’m a fund raising consultant, not a psychologist. But it seems that they somehow see in us the embodiment of all that is wrong in their lives: all of their failures, all of their broken dreams, all that they wished they had had the courage to do and did not. They look at us and see people who have somehow found the courage to be ourselves regardless of what those around us think or say. In discriminating against us, in trying to embarrass and humiliate us they vainly attempt to find relief from the pain of their existence.

For this I pity them, but it does not justify their behavior. Read the rest of this entry »