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From "James " to "Jenny": What it Means to be Transgendered
Jenny Boylan says throughout her 40 years living as a man, she knew that she was really a woman trapped in a man's body. Being transgendered was a burden that grew heavier and heavier until it finally crushed her—her body did not match her spirit. After trying to be a man, a good husband and a father for 40 years, in 2000, Jenny made a life-altering decision to stop living a lie and began her transition into womanhood.
Why Does This Happen? "I did not want this other life. I thought it was as strange as anyone. … You think you are the only person in the world that has this. In fact, we now know that there are tens and tens of thousands of people in this country alone who have this. One scholar says that it's as common as multiple sclerosis, it's as common as a cleft palate. It's something that many people in the country and across the world have, but these people are living in silence and shame because they are afraid to speak the truth." How does this condition occur? "No one really knows," says Jenny. "I think there has to be a medical component. It's something you have from the age of two or three. Some people think that it has to do with the secretion of hormones in the mother's womb around the sixth week of pregnancy. Other researchers think that it's triggered by something experiential." The Transition Process: The Benjamin Standards of Care Jenny explains that to make the transition between sexes, one must go through a very serious process called the Benjamin Standards of Care. "It is a rigid set of protocols that transsexuals go through to go from one gender to the next. They are trying to weed out nutcases and to make sure you know what you're doing and you know what you're getting in to. There are a lot of people who say they are the wrong gender, who aren't in fact transsexuals; some of them are schizophrenic, some are heterosexual cross-dressers, some of them are just nuts." The process includes: Psychological Testing Jenny went through more than six months of psychological testing. "My [counselor] was amazed. He said, 'Jenny, you seem so well adjusted. You seem so normal.' And that was odd that I was so normal…I just had this condition. At the end of that he said, 'It's pretty clear to me that you are a transsexual and you are a very strong candidate for gender shift.'" Hormone Therapy To begin the process of changing her body from one sex to the other, Jenny started hormone therapy. She says, "That changes you profoundly, physically and emotionally. The first thing [that happens] is something they call 'fat migration.' … [My friends] thought I was very ill. My breasts grew. My hips grew. And I had to start covering what was happening to my body with big baggy shirts. The general rule of thumb for transgendered people on hormones is that you come to resemble the body shape of your nearest female relatives—your mother, your grandmother, your sister. And that was largely the case for me." We think that there are huge differences between the male and female body, but Jenny explains that they are really only a pill or two away from each other. "For a while, I was taking two pills. There was the estrogen and an anti-androgen to reduce the testosterone. I used to joke, 'One pill makes you want to eat salad and talk about relationships and the other pill makes you dislike the three stooges.'" "It's worth saying that anyone who is thinking that this is their problem and this is the answer to their problem should be advised to do this according to the standards of care and through an endocrinologist because hormones are dangerous and people have died from getting hormones off the Internet and things like that," warns Jenny. The Operation The final step in the process was going through the physical change—an operation to change her genitals. "I think 'gender shift' is a better term than 'sex change operation.' 'Sex change' sounds like 'oil change.'" Jenny has had the full operation and now has a vagina. "For me, [the operation] was like being let out of jail after 40 years of being behind bars for something I didn't do."  Talk about this show.
From the show The Husband Who Became a Woman |
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