Trapped in a man’s body
The life and struggles of a transgender woman

ADVERTISEMENT

“I knew something was different when I was 5 years old. You can try to suppress it, but it never goes away,” Jackson-Edney said. “For me, I tried to be the uber-male. ... It was pretty shocking to a lot of people when I came out. I was just as male as I could be, but I didn’t feel that was me.”

Three and a half years ago, Jackson-Edney, now 60, chose to undergo surgery to become what she always felt she was: a woman.

“Transsexuals, at an early age, believe they have the mind of the other gender trapped in the body they were given at birth,” she said. “The current theory now is that every fetus starts out as a female, and, at the point of conception, the sex is determined, the physical sex.

“However, the gender-mind, the mind of the fetus, doesn’t start to develop until around the eighth to 12th week of pregnancy, and, during that period of time, something happens with the mother. It may be an emotional episode. It may be chemical. But a male fetus may be bathed in estrogen, or a female fetus may be bathed in testosterone.”

Delivering a presentation Wednesday at Treasure Valley Community College’s Diversity Dialogue in Ontario, Jackson-Edney, a co-Convener of Boise’s Idaho Equality Committee, used the visual aid of a spectrum with a cardboard cutout of Marilyn Monroe on one side and a “G.I. Joe-type,” as she referred to it, on the other to illustrate the range of gender identities, which is different than sexual orientation (to which sex one is attracted).

“Gender identity is a social construct that divides people in natural categories. Most people’s gender identity is congruent with their assigned sex, but many people’s is incongruent,” she said. “ ‘Transgender’ just means a person that identifies with another gender. It’s not a lifestyle like it’s reported to be. It’s just who that person is. What they do about it is ‘choice.’ They can live in complete silence, or they can live authentically.”

With an identity quietly hidden in “the deepest, darkest places of (her) closest,” in the depths of clinical depression and on the verge of suicide, Jackson-Edney sought clinical help from a psychologist about six years ago.

“I felt I had two choices. I had a choice to die, or I had a choice to face my demons and address those and do what I needed to do in order to survive,” she said, adding she spent more than a year and a half in therapy, dealing with the depression before the gender issues.

“(The therapist) used to hammer me. She put me through the wringer, asking ‘Why?’ which is what you have to do, especially if you’re going to have surgery,” Jackson-Edney said. “One day, I yelled at her and said, ‘This is who I am.’ ”

Jackson-Edney said, at that point, the therapist was ready to diagnose her with gender dysphoria, which is currently classified as a mental illness (though a panel is working to change that), but referred her to another gender psychologist in Portland, adhering to transgender standards of care.

“One of the requirements is psychotherapy. You have to be diagnosed by a professional, usually two, that you are gender-dysphoric,” Jackson-Edney said. “Once you get a diagnosis, if you choose, then they will prescribe hormone replacement therapy. For males to females, it’s testosterone blockers and estrogen, and for females to males, it’s testosterone, usually shots.”

Jackson-Edney said another requirement is making the transition to living as the other gender.

“In my last year of employment �” I retired three and a half years ago �” I transitioned and lived full-time as a woman in the workplace,” she said. “This friend of mine, this supervisor I worked with, came into my office and sat down and said, ‘You know, we used to sit and just talk back and forth. Now, when I talk to you, I don’t even know where to look.’ I said, ‘Look, why does it have to change?’ ... I’m not an aberration. I’m not something to be feared. I’m just a person like everybody else. I have my identity just like everyone else.”

Jackson-Edney conceded, though, when trans people are open about their identities, they “often pay a horrific price for it,” in terms of un- or underemployment, severed relationships, religious ostracization, discrimination and even violence.

“I’d say, for the last 15 years, my marriage was probably one of convenience. My wife was shocked when I came out to her. I said, ‘My heart is good. My presentation is just different, and I’m probably a better person because I don’t have secrets anymore,’ ” Jackson-Edney said. “I’ve been divorced for four and a half years, but I was married for 36 years �” one woman, monogamous �” but the marriage didn’t work, unfortunately.

“I lost my religion, or my religion abandoned me, I guess, but I’m spiritual. I’m Christian, and I still have faith, faith-based principles. I believe in God and hell and good and evil, and I believe in love, unconditional love and acceptance,” she said.

Though Jackson-Edney said she has acquired “a whole new community of friends,” she admitted much of her former life was gone.

“I lost a lot of people I thought were friends. The condemnation because I’m different is very hurtful. Because of that, it will incite other people to discriminate ... No one is born hating gay people or transgendered people. It’s learned.

“People think sexual orientation or gender identity is a choice. It’s not a choice. Nobody in their right mind wakes up and says, ‘I’m going to be gay today, or I’m going to be transgendered, and be a second-class citizen and be discriminated against and hated and maybe murdered.’ What I am is an affront to their masculinity, and the way they react to that is through violence, not that I’m trying to defeat anyone. I’m just trying to live authentically in my identity.

“Everything that was dear to me, I sacrificed to get where I am.”