Morgan McCormick always felt something was out of place, even when she was a child in kindergarten. She liked the idea of being a girl better than a boy even then, but also knew it was wrong and would inconvenience other people, so she pushed her feelings down.
McCormick is a transgender, a person whose gender identity does not match his or her birth sex. Born as a boy, she had an instinct telling her she should have been a girl.
According to McCormick, she kept suppressing herself until she was 22 years old. All throughout school she buried herself into work and various projects such as developing a social network so she wouldn’t have to think about herself and what was bothering her. At this time, she had overwhelmed herself with work so much that she would sleep only two to four hours every night.
But when she graduated from N.C . State in 2009, she finally had to think about her life and how she was living it, and realized that she could not go on as a boy anymore.
“I realized what a big disservice I had done to myself all these years living like this” she said. ” I was sure I would become horribly depressed if I would continue to lead my life like this, until of course I continued to drown myself in work and ignore all my other feelings. “
The decision to change to be a girl, of course, required a lot of courage.
“I didn’t know of anyone else who felt the same way I did, and thought I was probably one of a kind.”
When McCormick made this decision, she said she braced herself for abandonment by her family and friends. She was even prepared to leave North Carolina if need be.
“I made a pact with some friends in Boston who agreed to give me a place to stay ‘till I could find a job and settle down there,” she said.
Luckily none of her fears came to pass. The only problem she faced with her parents, who had always been very liberal, was their confusion with what her problem was.
“There is very little education and information available on what transgenders are,” McCormick said. ”More than anything, my mother was scared that somebody would kill or rape me because of my coming out.”
McCormick has a very supportive girlfriend whom she has known for five years, and they have been together for two years, before McCormick underwent her personal transformation.
“A few months into the relationship, I told her about my problems and she was very understanding,” McCormick said. “In fact, initially when I started taking estrogen supplements and testosterone blockers, my face and body was totally out of my control. I even used to look down while walking the whole time. At that time my girlfriend used to hold my hand and walk with me. Even now, if I ever get stares from people when we are outside together, it is she who stares back at them to make them stop.”
She gets the feeling sometimes that she is rejected from jobs because of who she is, even though there is no way to be sure. However, it doesn’t bother her much at this time.
“At this point in life, I am taking only minimum wage jobs which don’t have much work load as I need time to figure out other things about myself. It is a conscious decision to let my career goals take a back seat for now.”
The right terminology
But McCormick’s story isn’t unique, as she thought at one time.
Ian Pike, a senior in computer science, had the same uncomfortable feeling of not identifying as a girl, the gender he was born into. He too had felt this way since childhood, but really started questioning things around last Christmas, followed by counseling at the University. According to Pike, friends and family accepted his change easily.
“You know it throughout your entire life but keep it to yourself until you can’t handle it anymore”, Pike said. “But there are also people who have a normal childhood but start sensing things to be out of place when they grow up.”
According to Pike, people need to be educated about these terms as most of them have a negative perception of transgenders .
“It’s hurtful for our community that many people just think we are pretending, trying to fool people into something we are not,” Pike said. “Gender and sexuality have a whole spectrum, not just black and white. Most people want to put you into neat little boxes, but things don’t always work that way.”
Nicole Ware, a junior in education, said she identifies as a genderqueer . She never felt quite like a boy or girl, but somewhere in between. Although born as a girl, she didn’t identify with the typical girl things people expected her to be excited about. She waited 20 years to get comfortable and grow into a girl but she said it never happened.
“I was tired of waiting to become something,” Ware said. “It was awful to feel so wrong all the time. Finally about two years ago I started my own research on the Internet, and talked to people about genders and what it means for them. I realized that I didn’t identify strongly with either one, so decided to go with ‘ genderqueer.’ It was more a discovery of me rather than what people feel about me. It was a relief to find the term genderqueer . I wasn’t waiting anymore to be something, finally I had an identity.”
According to Ware, not enough people are interested in learning about the many different ways there are to be a person, other than just a boy or girl.
“Transgender is about gender, not about sexuality,” Ware said. “People defined me as a lesbian because it was something they could understand, but that does not completely define who I am.”
Social Ramifications
People at the University aren’t just dealing with the issues the transgender community faces through counseling and therapy, but also through research.
Kami Kosenko , an assistant professor of communications, recently conducted a study dealing with issues regarding sexual communication in the transgender community. She decided to research this when she found out that AIDS rates were relatively high in the transgender population.
According to Kosenko , sexual safety for transgender individuals consists of a lot more than preventing sexually transmitted diseases. This safety encompasses their emotional health and physical safety.
“Transgender individuals face a high risk of violence at the hands of their sexual partners, if they reveal they had their gender changed,” Kosenko said. “In fact, hundreds of transgender individuals are murdered every year in such instances of violence.”
In reference to Kosenko’s research, McCormick said she doesn’t agree she’s heard of transgender people facing violence, although not at the hands of their spouses or partners.
“Kosenko has interviewed only a small set of people, and issues such as not revealing their sex change to partners cannot be attributed to all transgenders ,” McCormick said.
Introspection
McCormick advised to anyone who is as confused as she was once to take time to work it out themselves. According to her, it is very easy for someone’s opinions to sway while in a fragile state. Rather than talking to a lot of people, she said she recommends introspection—to figure it out for oneself. Researching on the Internet and visiting support groups are a way to start.
“The world is not as scary as you would think,” McCormick said. “The U.S . in particular has grown up a lot in terms of these issues.”
And the most important thing, according to her, is to accept oneself and sort out the issues personally.
“Don’t rely on surgeries or drugs to fix you,” McCormick said. “Coming out will surprise you. People you wouldn’t have expected to support you will be there for you. Of course, don’t expect everything to happen at once. It is best to find strength within yourself.”
Sitting alone, senior in computer science Ian Pike shows his struggle being a transgender student. Pike recently started taking hormones to complete his gender transformation, but wants people to see that gender is a gray area that is not well understood. "Gender isn't binary," Pike said. Many people confuse the terms "sex" with "gender," but they are not the same. A person's sex refers to the biological characteristics of a person while gender describes social attributes. Photo by Jordan Moore.
