State of the Union

Oprah: Can you take us to the day that Jim came to you and said I want to be a woman?

Deedie: I don't remember Jim ever actually saying the words, "I want to be a woman." There was a gradual process that I didn't really understand. There was a time when Jim wanted to cross-dress, to dress in women's clothes. I saw that as, like, role-playing. I used to be in theater. I thought, you know, whatever, you can do that, but it's not going to be part of our social life.

Oprah: When I read that in the book I thought, well, you are some kind of liberal wife.

Deedie: That may be true. Well, it wasn't just okay. I said…I didn't want to do it publicly. I didn't want it to have to do with our married life. I didn't want it to have to do with our sex life. I wasn't making out with a girl, you know. But as I said, I didn't understand it as an identity thing. I understood it as a role-play.

Jenny: I didn't really understand it either, in a way. I was still trying to see just how much of this I could express because, in a way, I didn't want to mess up my marriage either. But it's also true that if you're transsexual, you have this…neurological condition. And if you have it, you're born with it. And no amount of making a bargain with it is going to change that.

Deedie: I think I realized where this was going before Jim was even able to say this is what has to happen. Because we went through a process, because we talked to specialists and all of that, and I was reading the books about transgendered people, and I realized [what was going to happen].