Growing up, I was taller than most girls and incredibly thin. As I got into my teens, I kept waiting for the magic of femininity to strike. It did not. I felt disconnected from my body. I became a lesbian and yet still I was unhappy in my body. I wore clothes that hinted I was female. It was the highest order of shame to not be easily identified as female.
When I came of age, it was 1976. At 18, I felt my options were limited. Having struggled with mental health issues since I was twelve, I tried to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. I didn't feel like I was a woman. I gravitated to the idea that being a man make my life better. My then lover (that's what we called them then) and my best friend urged me to pursue changing my gender. It was a giant leap, but I thought perhaps at last I could fit in the world.
In the summer of 1977 when I was 19 and living in Seattle, I met with a counselor with Seattle Counseling Center for Sexual Minorities on Capital Hill. He was a man who had changed his gender several years earlier. He counseled me and screened me to determine if I was a good candidate for the gender change process. After meeting with me several times, he said I met the criteria for a gender reassignment. It was incredibly easy for me to convince him my internal self identity was male and that it would be appropriate for my outside to match. The center gave me guidance, draft legal paperwork for a name change, and a referral to a doctor who would prescribe hormones for me. In July, I started hormone injections from a doctor who cared not for my wellbeing but just for my money.
During the course of the year, I became David Alexander Moore. I dressed as David. I worked as David. Everyone began awarding me the pronoun "he”. At the same time, I learned about the differences between men and women in our society. These were things people of both genders knew. Many were things unspoken and unshared between genders.
Because of my slim frame and naturally male affect, I passed easily as a male. In restaurants, waitstaff started giving me the check. In stores with my female partner, sales people spoke to me. Using the men's restroom was easy. My car insurance company increased my rates based on my new gender. When I passed a man on the sidewalk, we gave each other the nod signaling we were not a threat. The nod was something I was unaware of as a woman.
At work, women brought broken office items to me to fix because I was a man. I had grown up in a family of male mechanics. I lived with my grandparents. They owned and lived behind a gas station. My grandmother refused to let me pump gas because I was a girl. I didn't have a clue how to fix things. But, the power of an older woman looking at me expectantly caused me to think about how to fix things. I looked at the broken item. I thought to myself, "Okay, how is this thing supposed to work? Okay, what is not happening that should be happening?" I later learned this thinking was basic troubleshooting that I had never been taught. Amazingly, I learned to fix things.
We had a microfiche reader (yes, you can look it up) which had a lens that needed regular cleaning. It took a mild amount of disassembly. One woman in particular, Geneva came to me every week to fix the reader.
I said, "Geneva, let me show you how to do this. It’s really easy."
She responded, "No, you fix it. I can't fix it. You do it," as she nudged me toward the machine. This from a woman who had raised six children and managed to do god knows what manner of things I didn't know how to do. She was unable to allow herself to learn a four step method to clean the dust off a small lens.
At first when I changed my gender identity, I retained my exceptionally high female speaking voice. I quickly learned that people knew I was a man right up until I spoke. Then, they appeared unbelievably shocked and confused. After three months of hormone injections, my voice started to lower. I began to completely fit into my male identity. It was a great relief. I became stronger and could pick up and carry my lover. I could run faster than I had ever run.
I worked with people who did not know my history. I liked it that way. As David, I was a middle of the road man with a penchant for feminism. It made me slightly likable. However, I did nothing in the extreme. Other than being a feminist, I was not remarkable. I was a kind guy that no one would write home about.
I realized that I was missing something in my life. I didn't joke any more. I wasn't unusual or particularly interesting. I didn't play around. I felt I was missing an important part of myself. I became friends with other men. They told me things about their struggles in life that they would never have shared with me as a woman.
In Olympia, Washington, at The Evergreen State College, this was a time when feminist women were working on creating women only spaces. There were women only groups, concerts, and dances. Essentially, I became frozen out of this part of being a woman. I realized I was in danger of trading the sisterhood I had appreciated for the brotherhood I had never known. In addition to loosing personal parts of myself, I was loosing the sisterhood as well.
Also, I was no more happy or satisfied than I had been as a woman. When I started contemplating suicide just as I had prior to my gender change, I knew it was time to regroup. I thought about changing back to being a woman and stopping the hormones. It would reverse the course of the process I had just put over a year into.
The big question was how could I live as a woman in this world that favored men? How would I make my way in this convoluted world of privilege, identity, and segregation?
I decided the only way was to allow myself to be the kind of woman I really was. I made myself two promises to live by as a newly minted masculine woman. 1) I never had to wear clothes other than what I wanted to wear. This meant male clothes only. That was my preference. If I felt the need to dress up, I would wear a tie. 2) I never had to correct someone's incorrect usage of my gender assigned pronoun unless I wanted to. It was not my job to make sure my gender is clearly identified to others. I did not have to fit in as either gender.
In 1978, I began the year long process to change my gender back to female. It actually took longer to reverse. For a long time, Joceile was David's dependent on my health insurance. It took years for the IRS to get on board. I lucked out in early 1979 when I came out as a woman at work in that out of 90 coworkers on my floor only two refused to speak to me. That was incredible and unexpectedly supportive. My bosses asked if I would dress a little more feminine to help my coworkers adjust. I didn't explain to them that was not going to happen.
I returned to the sisterhood. I still got the nod from men on the sidewalk. I still often got the check at the restaurant. But, I insisted salespeople talk to my partner. I would fall silent and wait them out.
With regard to my two rules, clothing was not a problem. However, I learned that if I was going to have any kind of lengthy relationship with someone, it was in my best interests to correct their pronoun use as soon as they used the incorrect one. I learned that people decide two things instantly upon meeting me: my gender and my race. I am Caucasian. However, as a woman, the longer they thought I was male after meeting me, the harder it was for them to correct their thinking when learning the truth later. I realized if we were going to have multiple interactions it would be helpful if I corrected them as soon as they made it verbally clear what they were thinking.
Of course, the public restroom was the bane of my existence with upset women, security guards, and the wall of silence greeting me as I entered the women's restroom. As a result, I primarily used the men's restroom. No one bothered me there, and I have never been in a men's restroom that didn't have a stall. In all my experience, only one stall didn't have a door. I learned that really if I just acted like I was doing the appropriate thing no one looks.
There was one thing that didn't change back. My voice. When hormones lengthen your vocal cords, they do not shrink back. My voice remained reliably male sounding. This could be inconvenient in such times as when I actually needed to prove I was female such as over the telephone. I once made a collect phone call and the operated insisted I was not female. The operator said to the party I was calling, "Will you accept a collect call from a male who says he is..."
On the other hand, I was also grateful my voice stayed low. This was because I wanted and needed to be able to pass as male. I was comforted by my ability to safely step backward into my male identity. I have always called myself androgynous. That is a correct assessment of my identity. However, the sad truth is that I do not feel safe being identified as a woman in the anonymity of being in public.
Some folks would say I'm a sell out or one who does not support women. I can certainly understand and even agree with that assessment. Yet, I do not feel safe in public as a woman. This is sad to me. It was a truth in my experience of the world that being female was not safe from the first year I was born. Some men feel the right to comment, cat call, approach, and attack those who they believe to be the weaker sex.
Hiding my gender can be viewed as telling women they should not wear revealing clothing because men cannot control their response. I do not believe this in any way. It is just a troubling fact that the victimization of being female as a child makes me unable to feel safe in public as a woman even though I have worked on the abuse for decades in therapy. It is a loss for me and for our society. But, I don't want to hide in my house because being in public is so scary. As a consequence, I rely on the perception of my appearance as a man which is confirmed by my voice.
When I had my daughter at 29, I realized to some degree it was time to face the music. I wasn't going to drag my infant or toddler daughter into the men's restroom. I had to take a stand to protect my daughter and defend her right to be safely female. I learned to deal with the disturbance in the women's restroom when I entered and decided it was not my problem.
Amazingly, as time has progressed, I feel more comfortable being identified as a lesbian in public than a woman. That doesn't really make any sense. It is a symbol of just how threatened I feel as a woman alone. Of course, it is not always clear that my partner and I actually are lesbians.
I pledged not to expose my daughter to any kind of preventable abuse. My daughter is now 29. She is a strong, proud woman learning to find her place in the world. Her struggles, though, do not have to do with being identified as female in the world. I only hope she and her cohorts can help to make our society safer for women. I do what I can. But, it takes more of us to make this change. It takes both genders to create a society where it is completely safe to be a woman. Still, I have my voice both figuratively and, as it stands, literally.
Joceile
2.26.16
[Picture of my former partner, Elizabeth, with long, straight brown hair in a skirt with me as David standing in a parking lot in front of Red Lion Inn circa 1977.]
