My Transgender Story

CHILDHOOD

1. I knew at age 3 I was transgender in a time of no internet or books on the subject, so I had no word for it until age 9 when I learned about it on the news my mom was listening to while cooking. A basic truth for all people is innate aspects of gender are unchangeable. Societal norms do influence gender expression, so there is a learned component to gender such as long hair, shaving ones legs, and acceptable types of clothing. Ultimately though, the brain determines gender and the brain develops during pregnancy at a different time from sexual anatomy. The best we know at this point with studies is that during pregnancy a person's brain develops as either cisgender (98.5%) or transgender (1.5%).

2. I came up with Stephanie at age 6 in the silence of my own room as a derivation of Stephen.

3. As a child, I hid my innate "femaleness" or what I felt might come across that way. I learned very young that boys had to act certain ways or be admonished by adults and even friends.

4. As a child, I was a girl in my dreams. I used to try desperately to go back to sleep so I could continue being a girl in my dreams. One of the most vivid dreams I had was going in to have my tonsils removed and the hospital making a mistake and making me into a girl.

5. Also as a child, I had a captain's bed which had a wood base with two drawers in it. I used to take out the drawers and hide clothes I would borrow or steal from my sister's room and my mother's closet. I was very careful to only grab something that looked like it was in storage, no longer used, or in a bag ready to go to Goodwill. It is important to note though that my being transgender was never about clothes, but about feeling like I was a girl.

PUBERTY

6. I was 14 when a drawer on my captain's bed broke. I came home from school to discover the clothes I had hidden we're neatly folded and put on my bed. I was faced with a choice to either talk to my parents about my feeling like a girl or to not talk to them. I felt the clothes were on the bed to give me that choice. I chose fear and pushed all of my clothes into an athletic duffel bag and put them high up on a shelf. In 2011, I brought this up with my mother who I had assumed left the clothes on the bed. She said she did not. She also said she never knew I was transgender. We did have a maid at the time, but I seriously doubt the maid would have pulled out a broken drawer and looked underneath my bed. It remains a mystery to this day.

7. At age 15, I took a sharp serrated knife into a locked restroom and considered performing a self-castration to stop male puberty. I could not do it. Besides, I had a crush on a girl at school. How could I be female and yet be attracted only to females? I rationalized my thoughts away and took the only path I felt I had .... to live my life as the world saw me - as a man.

8. The first time I ever put on an article of female clothing outside of a locked room at my home, I was 16 and just started driving. I had a button up green skirt my sister had in a bag for Goodwill I stole. I drove to a cornfield. Walked to a clearing in the middle and put on the skirt. It felt so amazing and freeing to me. The emotions were so strong, I just starting bawling. I must have cried for an hour before driving home. I was already 6'2" tall and saw no way I could ever be me in this world.

SUPPRESSION

9. I played three sports. My football teams never lost a game when I started at quarterback. Academically, I was always strong. I also started Bible Studies at my school and taped a cross on the back of my helmet. I think I buried myself into athletics, academia, and religion to not think about and hide being trans. I found out later this was common among trans.

10. My nickname in high school was Superman. While it was a compliment by my peers, it hurt my soul because inside I knew I would rather be Wonder Woman or Supergirl if they had to give me a superhero nickname. I felt like a fraud.

11. Because I felt I needed to suppress I was trans, I became very religious as a teenager. I considered becoming a preacher. It was the nexus of my later becoming a staunch Republican, voting against gay marriage, and marrying a Catholic to seal the deal. Of course today I am very liberal, agnostic and refuse to date someone very religious.

12. I was handicapped for five years from a weightlifting injury at OU trying to keep up with some far stronger linemen. I finished college laying down on tables at the back of classrooms as I could not sit. My second back surgery was successful in relieving pressure on my nerves going down to my right leg. My back has been fairly good since. It is best when I do yoga.

ADULTHOOD

13. I grew up in part in Leuven, Belgium where four languages were spoken in my neighborhood. I have also lived in San Francisco Area (Palo Alto and Hayward), Pittsburgh, San Diego, Houston and Ann Arbor (Michigan).

14. My PhD was earned under two prominent scholars, a Nobel Prize winner (Herb Simon, CMU) for Artificial Intelligence and the pioneer of Operations Research (Thomas Saaty, Pitt). It was a rare joint scholarship with Carnegie-Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. I had full ride scholarships through my MBA and PhD.

15. My books have grossed nearly $4 million dollars. I have published 65+ academic, conference, industry, and magazine papers.

16. I co-developed 7 Masters Programs in the USA, China, and Singapore, as well as corporate training programs in those countries and Australia and South Korea.

17. I developed several corporate university programs for companies, the largest were AT&T and Raytheon. At the peak of those, I was the highest paid professor in the university due to percentages of the program's going to the developer. My earnings even exceeded the president of the university one year when I was an untenured professor.

18. I served on a Washington DC Thinktank as a PhD and Supply Chain Management expert. We advised the Bush White House and Congress - mainly on supply and manufacturing issues for our wars and economy.

Why bring up my career? Trans people that suppress who they are often excel in their careers before gender affirmation. We tend to focus on our careers to help up ignore our gender.

MARRIAGE

19. My ex-wife and I met in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania while I was working on my PhD. She was the most amazing person I had ever spent time with in my life up to that point. She was smart, kind, and beautiful. We were married for 18 wonderful years. Had she wanted to stay together, I would have remained in male presentation the rest of my life. I think that is what trans people did for thousands of years before the medical community could define and treat us.

20. In the early 2000s, my wife and I had two children. I was the happiest I had ever been in my personal life despite suppressing my being transgender. But something changed with my wife after our children were born. She feared someday people would find out I was transgender and discriminate against our kids. She told me if anyone ever found out I was transgender, she would divorce me. Once a conditional seed like that is planted in a relationship, there is little chance the relationship will survive.

THERAPY

21. In 2010 I was formally diagnosed as transgender. I hoped a therapist might make my marriage stronger. My wife was sitting next to me as my therapist told us the diagnosis. The therapist was a PhD and the top person in Oklahoma in the field of transgender care. She told us in our first therapy meeting that: A. I was born transgender, B. there is no cure other than gender affirmation, C. I was a lesbian due to my sexual orientation. We were in shock. I knew I was transgender, but I was hoping for coping methods and for my wife to understand that I loved her so much I could overcome by being trans and all would be fine. I was wrong, all would not be fine.

22. I fired my first transgender therapist because I did not hear what I wanted to in order to save my marriage. I went by myself to the next two therapists. Both independently confirmed the same diagnosis as the first gender therapist. I ended up going back to the first therapist for continuing sessions since she had the greatest knowledge in Oklahoma. My goal with therapy was to manage my being transgender to ensure my marriage continued.

23. According to my wife, our marriage was over that first day of therapy when she sat next to me and heard I was effectively a lesbian. I had not changed. I was still me, the person she had married, had children with, made "For Better or Worse" vows with, made love to for 20 years, etc. I did everything I could to try to assure her that I would remain the "man" she married.

DARKNESS

24. In May of 2011, my wife wanted a divorce. I was devastated. I was immediately outed as trans and the news quickly spread in our community. I lost many friends and my job was clearly in jeopardy/ Societal pressures caused me to move out of our house despite my wanting to stay. Even the PTA at my kids' elementary school discussed me in a meeting despite my never presenting as female in Norman.

25. Although my wife had wanted the divorce, it was me that ultimately filed for divorce when I asked her to return from a trip with someone else and she would not. Filing for divorce was the most difficult thing I had ever done in my life.

26. Divorce Court is a particularly horrible place for a transgender parent wanting to remain in their children's' lives. Knowing this, I had three different medical professionals ... two PhDs and one doctor ... evaluate me and write letters to confirm I was not mentally ill. Mental illness is a common accusation trans people get and it is damaging in a custody battle.

COURT

27. I was in the fight of my life to not lose my kids in court battles over the next couple of years as my wife wanted full custody to move to Kansas City to be with her new love. I always sought 50-50 custody. I loved her and my kids too much to try to remove her as their active mother. She did not give me the same respect.

28. In my wife's efforts to win full custody of our children, she managed to get the principal of our children's elementary school to write a letter stating that the principal had seen what she felt was a sign I was potentially abusing our children. The basis for this was Santa Claus landing in a helicopter on Campus Corner a local shopping area across from the University of Oklahoma. My daughter was afraid of Santa Claus and grabbed onto my thigh in public to hide. Although I did not lose custody, I compromised and gave up all final decision making power with our children along with alimony in addition to child support.

29. I never gave up through the legal battles, but I also was no longer the unflappable person I was before my divorce. Nothing can crush your spirit more than the person you love most in the world doing their best to defame and destroy you so a court will grant them the right to remove your children from your life. I know fear and despair too well now.

EMERGENCE

30. Three months after my divorce in July 2012, I went to a bar in Moore , Oklahoma as Stephanie. I summoned the courage to walk in, buy one drink and planned to leave before I could get harassed. But instead, a beautiful lesbian walked up and introduced herself no more than 5 minutes in the bar. We ended up closing the bar six hours later and then dated. In part through her I became accepted in the lesbian community and developed many new friendships.

31. I had read horror stories of other trans never getting a date the rest of their life. I was happy to discover it was not true for me. When we finally did break up, it was the day after Norman Artwalk. In Norman I was still presenting as male to protect my family. Seeing me as a male was apparently too weird and the next day she broke up. I learned that it is very difficult for anyone to know me in one gender and then see that flip into the other gender later.

32. In December 2012 I invited about 120 lesbians I had become friends with to my house for an annual Christmas party I used to host with other married friends. About 40 lesbians showed up and at the end of the night when there were only 5 of us left. We came up with an idea that I fostered with questions about why the lesbian community often failed to help each other. The idea was to start a social club for lesbians to gather at events outside of gay bars. We created a group called Lclub Okc on Facebook.

33. LClub was an overnight success. Within a week we had over 200 women in the group and about 3 events planned for every week in the Spring. LClub held dinners, bowling, movie nights, dancing nights, roller derby and more. We even put together a plan to help homeless women.

34. I did not want to lead Lclub since I wasn't cis, but some things happened with the other Founders and I ended up President. Lclub peaked at roughly 800 women. I was the only transwoman.

CLOSET

35. I lived full time in female presentation outside of Norman, Oklahoma from July 2012 through to May of 2013. To facilitate this, I took a job teaching online for the Masters in Energy Management for The University of Tulsa. I would leave Norman for Oklahoma City in darkness and return in darkness. In Oklahoma City I could set up in a coffee shop and work on my course.

36. Something most people probably never think about is the "5 O'Clock Shadow" facial hair trans women that went through male puberty must contend with until they can get permanent facial hair removal. Every morning before I would leave Norman, I packed shaving cream, razor, and makeup to reapply after shaving. My go to place was Starbucks' restrooms since they had single person restrooms I could lock. I learned how to shave and reapply makeup in roughly 3 minutes just in case someone started knocking.

37. In February of 2013, my ex wife filed in court for another attempt at getting custody and moving my kids out of state. I knew of no transwoman that had ever won a custody battle in court. My kids were far and away the most important part of my life.

38. I decided to go back to male presentation in May of 2013. I resigned as President of Lclub, cut my hair, and went back to presenting as a man. Cutting my long hair was traumatizing. Putting on a male suit to go back in court felt icky. I was effectively back in the closet, a term used by LGBT meaning I was hiding my being transgender again.

39. In August of 2013, my ex wife and I went before a judge again. I had once again prepared well and the judge maintained the previous court orders in our Divorce Decree. I had won, but the financial and emotional toll was expensive. I decided to not go back to presenting as female. My focus needed to be on my kids.

COPING

40. One way I coped with living in the wrong gender was by doing yoga. In April of 2014 I did my practice in a park. People wanted to join me ... and boy did they ever! Yoga in the Park, has been wildly successful with park locations all over Oklahoma and over 6,000 members. What people don't know is YIP was modeled after Lclub in how it leverages groups in cities and towns across Oklahoma.

41. I searched for a cure for being trans for many decades. I had an early computer connected to the internet by 1992 that I hoped would let me find more information. I am pretty sure I have read most research papers across the globe. The only "cure" I found was gender affirmation, accepting who you are and living as such. The research clearly shows trans are born trans.

42. From 2013 to 2020, I served as President of a company that provided the most accurate natural gas measurement software in the world. The job had nothing to do with my earlier career teaching and consulting in business management around the world. But it has allowed me to stay home for my family and maintain an income without fear of being fired because someone discovers I am transgender. I also got to work with my father who was an equal intellectually with two Nobel Prize winning academics I have known. Dad passed in November 2019.

BROKEN

43. In June of 2017, My daughter's 15th birthday wish was to sit down with her mother, me, and her brother for a family dinner. Her mother and I agreed. We went to Hideaway Pizza in Norman. I was heartbroken that missing our family was clearly going to be an issue for my kids throughout their lives. I missed it too.

44 Recall that in May of 2013 I had returned to male presentation to raise my kids in peace. Once you are outed as transgender, no matter how you present moving forward ... you will receive discrimination. The peace I wanted to just raise my kids would not last. In March 2018, I was triggered by an evangelical family that heard I was transgender despite my presenting as male. They banned their daughter from my house. Their daughter was my daughter's best friend.

45. My daughter started living with her mother full time after that so she would not be constrained on hanging out with friends. I was also in fairly deep depression at this point and it showed in how I was maintaining my house and yard. Wanting to live at one home was also part of her just being a teenage girl and wanting one house to focus on with her things.

46. I remained in male presentation from May 2013 to March 2018. This was time of great depression and despair. My income suffered because I was locked into living in Norman or lose custody of my kids. My kids suffered in seeing their parents never even sit down to eat again together as even a broken family.

REEMERGENCE

47. On February 26 of 2019, I decided to fully gender affirm everywhere. Prior to that, I felt the need to protect my children and parents by presenting as androgynous or male in Norman. But since I had already lost my daughter to her mother's house there seemed little point in continuing the charade. Most trans people from my generation did not gender affirm until they reached a point where they saw no other option in life to achieve happiness. That was the point I had reached in February 2019. I held out longer than most people from my generation because overall other factors in my life were happy and I feared losing it all: career, wife, kids, family, friends, and even financial security.

48. I had been taking pill form estradiol (estrogen) and finasteride (testosterone blocker) since 2013 to feel happier. The feminization of my looks is noticeable and I was glad I no longer had to hide my new boobs in loose men's clothes.

CONFIDENCE

49. I am just under 6'3" inches tall. Before I ever stepped into that bar in #30 above, I had intentionally sat in the same bar as a man and studied reactions to tall women over 5'11" or so. They turned heads...people would gawk a bit. So I knew if I ever went out in public I would always have a spotlight on me. I had to rationalize it was not necessarily about my being trans, but about my being different than the norm. I had to be confident and "own my presence" to survive scrutiny and thrive. And I do.

50. A positive of my height is it is sort of a "calling card" for open minded people to come up and chat with me. Almost all women I have dated as Stephanie have approached me, I believe due to my towering over others in a crowd. It rarely works well for a trans woman to first approach a cis woman they are interested in dating. Although we are not men, there's still a visceral reaction reserved for men by some cisgender women to a transwoman approaching them. So my approach has been and still is to let a woman reach out to me first.

THIS-AND-THAT

51. I have only been asked two times to use a men's restroom when I have tried to walk into a woman's restroom. One was in 2013 when I still wore wig and it was awkward. The last time was in March 2019 in Ardmore after a man heard my family misgender me multiple times. He was ready to pounce when I moved towards the bathroom. The bathroom issue is largely political and not real except for the occassional freakout by someone pre-programmed by .... as I see it .... the Evangelical Right.

52. I co-owned Sopraffino Gallery for 5 years in the San Francisco Area with my wife when I was a professor at California State University. I love art. Grew up with my mother owning the first full service art store in Norman. I have visited most major art museums in the world.

53. I am just as likely to be friends at an equal level with a janitor as a pro football player (yes...I have had both as friends). Something I learned from my father....the kindest man I ever met.

54. I can write computer code in seven languages but probably will forget someone's name 5 minutes after meeting them. I need to work on that more.

55. Allergies and Addictions....I am allergic to cat dander. I do not have an addictive personality. I have never been "high" but did try marijuana. Marijuana attempts ended in coughing and getting sick to the stomach. Drugs are just not my thing. I also rarely have a glass of alcohol. If you see a photo of me drinking it is likely my only drink of the night. Photos seem more fun with a glass of wine or beer. My favorite drink is water with lemon slices.

56. I was a male model for a very short time. I was asked to model after a photographer saw me shoot halftime shots at an OU basketball game to try and win a car. I failed to win the car, but he tracked me down in Lloyd Noble stadium and offered me a job. I quit during a bathroom shoot for "Men of OU" calendar where they wanted me in just a towel doing the mirror reflection thing (in the Beta House fraternity). I didn't quit because of the shoot, but because a photographer took a razor and started shaving my chest hair without asking. I had a phobia about looking female back then as I was in total suppression of my female brain. So I quit.

ANATOMY

57. The most common questions I get are pesky anatomy ones. Few people ever ask a cisgender woman if her boobs are real, so why does that seem to be okay to ask someone trans? I've also been groped several times while in bars. It seems trans bodies are not off limits to many people.

58. Yes, my hair is mine. I do not wear a wig lol. Hormones made hair regrow in a bald spot....bonus!

59. No, I don't need to shave everywhere. Hormones made me mostly hairless in the right places. Win for hormones. Facial hair is biggest problem for trans women. Although as the years progress, my facial hair grows slower it seems.

60. Yes, my boobs are real and not implants. I prefer to have small boobs so I am good.

61. Yes, your body changes everywhere on hormones: butt gets bigger, calves narrow, arms thin, upper thigh get wider while lower thighs thinner. Shoulders get smaller. Veins show less due to that soft layer of fat that hides them. Even your scent changes.

62. No, I have not had any surgery. I luckily don't have a visible Adam's Apple. My face is okay as it is, so "no" to facial feminization surgery. I have not had nor care to get bottom surgery. Only 33% of trans women have surgery. About 10% is bottom surgery. The surgery prevalence is a myth on the Far Right and children are certainly not getting surgeries!

63. I am weaker since taking hormones. It's been frustrating to have to grab a knife to open a bag of chips at times. Losing strength is all part of the trade-off.

DATING

64. One of my biggest shocks since I gender affirmed, is the ease of which I've been able to date. I imagined that it would be very hard to find women interested in such a unique blend of a person. My fears were hugely unfounded. While it is certainly harder, I am able to date.

65. Prior to the word "pansexual" becoming a well known term, I dated lesbians, straight, and bi women that I am pretty sure would define themselves as pansexual today.

66. Not into men, but that is always a question people ask and then look at me puzzled when I say I am just not sexually attracted to men. Wish I had been as my dating pool would have been 10 x what it was and I would have blended into the world better as heterosexual couple. But none of that matters much today as women being together as couples is accepted by nearly 100% of people.

67. Someday I would like to marry again.

HYBRID

68. I kind of prefer the term "hybrid" over "trans" but that never stuck as a mainstream term. I have some maleness left both physically and mentally from nurturing. Think of it this way.....if a cisgender woman were raised as a male, would she have some "maleness" in her? Yes, she would. So "hybrid" seems logical to me.

69. A person is born trans, not made into trans by body modifications. Although modifications might make life easier with respect to reducing discrimination for many of us. I'm still debating whether to train my voice to fit in better. I have not up to this point for my family's sake because voice is something that defines us. I am not that concerned about passing since I am so tall and big and figure I will never pass like some of my smaller trans girlfriends

BLUE

70. In 2021 I moved from Oklahoma to a blue state. I won't disclose the name of the blue state since what I do more these days is protect my location from those that want to hurt transgender people.

71. Living in a blue state is definitely better for a trans woman that is a lesbian. The LGBTQ+ community though is certainly less tight since they are accepted pretty much everywhere. That ironically presented a problem for me since I could not simply go to a specific bar or event and find new LGBTQ+ friends.

72. To solve the problem, I started holding women-focused coffee get togethers for LGBTQ+ people in my city. That has gone quite well and now I literally have thousands of new friends. The rest of that story is best told on the WClub web site!

FORWARD

73. I want to note a word of caution for other trans reading my story. There is great danger in being public. I have had the police called on me twice by cisgender women that hate transgender women. The police have to investigate and the haters know that is the case. I recommend never publishing your phone number, address, and don't use your real name on social media. But do live your life boldly as possible otherwise. We can't let hate win.

74. As of this edit, I am 3+ years being myself, aka Stephanie. Zero regret and let me be clear on that issue. Transgender affirmation has an approximately 2% regret rate, which means 98% do not regret. Those that regret are rarely someone that declares "I was misdiagnosed!" as you see in Right Wing publications. Usually someone that goes back does so under duress of: loss of family, loss of spouse, loss of job or income, and the huge levels of discrimination.

75. That is it for now. This list started long ago as 10 factoids and it kept growing. I believe in being open with who I was and am today because it may help someone else and I don't have to explain who I am as much. Thank you for reading. Let me know what you think?