Jennifer Mahoney
May 9, 2001
This is the first of a multi-part series on going full time and coming out. I'll be going through this process for the next few months, and I thought I'd share it with the Transgender Forum readers. Doing so means that these columns will be a little less polished, a little more like journal entries than my usual screed, but I hope this will prove interesting to some of you. The story so far: I'm a professor at a New England college, somewhat well known, and definitely popular in the classroom. I've been married for thirteen years and have two children. And, of course, I'm transgendered. Like most of you, I've been struggling to come to terms with this business for a long time. I started on the voyage to living full time in January 2000, commencing therapy, and since then have moved through the various stations of the cross that you're all familiar with-breaking the news to my wife, to my family, to my friends, beginning electrolysis, beginning hormones, having "voice lessons," growing my hair out; assembling an appropriate wardrobe; monitoring my slow but dramatic progress forward into this new body and a new life. Which brings us up to the present. So here's who I am today. My beard is 90% gone. My body has the right female curves, although these are not so dramatic that they can't be hidden by big shirts and baggy clothes. My hair is styled and falls below my collarbone, but is kept tied back for "guy mode." My wife, although heartbroken, supports and loves me, and my children accept me. All of my good friends know about me now, and have been compassionate and understanding. (You may read about some of these earlier milestones at my web page, hometown.aol.com/Jenny19999.) My transition, then, so far, has been of the "slow and steady" variety. I know that each person transitions in her own way, and that's fine. For me, though, I felt that it would be easiest on my children and wife if my metamorphosis was extremely slow and gentle. As a result, I think they-not to mention my other friends and family-have been able to get used to this idea slowly, and to see clearly that although I am changing on the surface, most of the person they have known and loved is still there. I should also say that my wife doesn't think of it as slow and gentle, and has felt at times like I'm on a freight train thundering off without her. Still, we are all together, doing our best, and all in all as a family we are a lot less offbeat than most of the ones I see on television. Now, I face three or four months of telling the rest of the world, changing my name, IDs, and so on, and watching my children adjust to a world in which other children know their daddy is named Jennifer. Tomorrow, May 10th, is my last day as a man in front of a classroom, and thus my last "official" day as a guy. I must say that I have a lot of mixed feelings right now. I too am mourning the loss of my life as "John", even though I am thrilled and grateful for my change. This process, as miraculous as it is, is not without loss, even for me. I'd compare it to the feeling you might have if you were moving to a new city, to a new house, to a place you'd always wanted to go. On the last day before you moved, you still might walk though your now-empty old house, and feel a sense of melancholy and nostalgia. In terms of orchestrating my coming out at school, I've recently changed my strategy, and I'll wrap up this first entry with a discussion of this. I wrote a rough draft of the 'coming out letter' about a month ago. It was similar to many such letters you've probably read on various folks' web pages. It was long-five pages-and quite full of the awareness that this news will be hard for many people. My original plan was to post this letter as a web page, and to then email the entire faculty and student body with a note, "Professor Mahoney has some important news for you; to read it, please click here," etc. I've recently changed this strategy, in a number of ways, largely as a result of input I've received from friends and other members of the transgender community. I now feel that telling the whole faculty and student body isn't necessary. Why do incoming first year students need to know my past? Why do faculty in the Biology dept. need to know my private struggle? I've decided to send the letter only to those people that I have a personal relationship with-and to send it to their homes. I haven't quite figured out what to do about the students yet-but currently I'm thinking I might email only those students I've had over the last year or two. And I might not even do that. And the letter itself has been significantly changed. It's down to two pages now, and I've changed the tone. Wherever possible, it's upbeat, positive, and professional. I've taken out as many of the "tears" as possible, and told people only what I think they "need" to know. In college teaching we often refer to something called the "teachable moment"-and coming out, I'd hoped, would be a teachable moment for the community, to learn something about gender. But now I think, gee whiz, let someone else do the educating. What I need to do is get on with my life, protect my privacy, look out for my family. So as much as I hate to lose an opportunity to teach people about "the cause," I'm going to keep a lower profile. I guess I feel that the best way for me personally to teach people about transsexuality is to keep my head high, and to continue to do my job well, as a woman. I hope setting a good example will be "teachable" enough. In other words, as a friend suggested, I'm going to "come out as a woman, not as a transsexual." I came out to the college's affirmative action/equal opportunity officer about a month ago. It was totally, totally scary for me, with my heart pounding in my breast--but I did it. And her response? She didn't blink an eyelash. She said she was proud of me, that this was not the first time transgender issues had been raised, and that the administration would do whatever it could to support me, and to make this transition something that the college could be proud of. She said she'd propose adding the phrase "gender identity" to the college's non-discrimination policy. She said she'd suggest the president and the deans write a letter saying my contracts would continue to be renewed on the basis of my performance as a teacher alone. She looked at a picture of me with my family (as Jenny) and smiled and said, "The only problem I ever forsee for you is in buying shoes." Then she mentioned that she is also the head of Women's Services at the college, and asked if there is anything else she could do for me, "as she considers [me] her newest constituent." So that's where we stand. Just before graduation, on May 27th, we find out if I've been promoted to Full Professor. Either just before or just after that, I will come out to my Department Chair, and my program head. On June 12th I am slated to have the big talk with the Dean of Faculty and the President. The next day I talk to the Dean of Students and the Head of Personnel. Between then and the end of the month I will try to have as many in-person talks with other faculty I care about, and on or before June 30th I will send my letter out to everyone else (on the "short list"). The weekend after the 4th of July my wife and I are scheduled to climb Mt. Katahdin in Baxter park in Maine. I am looking forward to all the mountains I am to climb this summer. I'll try to keep Transgender Forum readers informed as we proceed.
May 10, 2001
It's Thursday morning, about 7:30 AM, and as I write by the lake I hear loons and feel the warm sun of May. Got up at about 5:30 this morning. It was a strange night-I had a dream which was so funny I woke up laughing. I got back to sleep after that but I awoke in the morning with some of those nocturnal humors intact. I did what I usually do in the morning. The only difference is that today I did them for the last time as a man. Of course, the melodrama of a line like that belies the reality. By tomorrow I will still have my male "unit" and there will be a number of occasions between now and GRS that I'll have to pretend to be a guy to satisfy the needs of various transphobes. But today, my friend, is my last day of college teaching as John Mahoney. After today, I begin a yearlong sabbatical (well, first there is grading and graduation and all that)-and then a fall of no teaching-and then in spring 2003, back to the classroom as Professor Jenny Mahoney. Anyway, how does one begin such a day? Well, I went into the bathroom and took a handful of pills-premarin, spironolactone, a vitamin, an aspirin. Then I went downstairs and turned the lights on and walked outside and down the driveway. The sun was shining on the dew on the grass, and I felt the gravel from the winter's snowplowing on the driveway beneath my bare feet. At driveway's end I reached into the blue newspaper mailbox and got the paper. Then I walked back to the house and poured two cups of coffee and put half and half in each. Next I carried one of those cups upstairs to sleeping Mary and said, "Good morning, love." I went back downstairs and gently called to my two children. "Wake up, girls." I went back to the kitchen and made myself a scrambled egg sandwich and I sat down and ate it and read the paper and drank coffee. Julia was the first up, and she walked into the kitchen with her hair all crazy from sleep and her eyes tired. Melanie crawled in after her, wrapped in a blanket, and I made them both bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. When Mary came downsairs, I went up and showered. Didn't wash my hair today, as it will be tied back, one last time, for "boy" mode. Then I put on blue jeans and a bra and a black scoop neck t-shirt and earrings and went downstairs and I mostly watched as M. choreographed the final preparations for the 7 AM school bus. The bus took Julia off to first grade, carrying the lunchbox with the lunch in it I made last night, and M. came back inside and said, "Are you going to wear another shirt with that?" and I said, yeah, why do you think I need one? And she said, you have breasts. Plus that's a scoopneck, it's a woman's shirt. I said I was intending to wear a button down cotton shirt over it, and better camouflage my figure. Then we hugged, for a long time, and she said, softly, "Are you having trouble with the idea of today?" and I said, "No. It's just emotional." We made plans for me to pick Melanie up at preschool and then I loaded myself into the car and headed out. I came out to the lake here and got out of the car and there was a neighbor woman I know with her child and she nodded at me and said, "Hi, Jenny." And that's how my "last day as a man" began. There will probably be lots of "last days" like this. Perhaps the most important one began some time ago, maybe years and years ago, who knows? It does feel like, whatever happens today, I left the world of men behind a long time ago.
Jenny Mahoney is an author and a professor who lives in New Hampshire. You can email her at Jenny19999@aol.com.
