by Eleanor Hubbard

Ten years ago I was a professor of Gender in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Almost every semester, I taught a course in Sex, Gender, and Society and several times during that course I invited a M2F post-operative transgendered person, “Terri,” to discuss transgender issues with my students.  I had several conversations with Terri outside of class, and she told me about feeling like a woman trapped in the body of a man, who went through counseling, cross-dressing, hormone replacement therapy, and costly operations to become the woman she perceived herself to be.  I used to joke with Terri that she was more female than I, which meant that she wore stilettos, clothes that showed her curves, and talked in a high voice, none of which I did.  From Terri, I learned about being transgendered from a person, not a textbook.  She told me about family, work, and personal relationship issues that she faced in her transition and about her daily decisions whether or not to tell people she encountered about her “secret.”  Terri also told me about the danger and fear she lived with daily as a woman who passed, but whose secret might be revealed to someone who perceived her as a threat. As a woman and an intellectual, I was well-informed, I thought, about being transgendered. Read more »