Transgender lives: Affirming your 'authentic self'

Two truths draw nearer each other. One moves from inside, one moves from outside
And where they meet we have a chance to see ourselves.
— Tomas Transtromer

SAGE

He remembers breaking through. 

The bodies were flying around him, helmets and shoulder pads crunching with each play, the white jerseys with big purple numbers edged with gold converging on him again and again in practice. At first he’d been picked on, targeted during plays to test his toughness. He wasn’t as big as the other boys, but he didn’t care.

He just loved the game and wanted to play. 

He earned a spot at wide receiver because he was speedy, and also played safety on the defense, covering receivers and tackling ball carriers who had dozens of pounds on him. 

At a certain point the game takes over and you’re part of a team. Sage remembers that after a period of trial, the team just accepted him. At halftime, players would get together to prepare to hit the field again. “We’d all get our adrenaline going. We’d smack helmets and head-butt each other. Nobody hit me any less than anybody else.” He was heading out with his teammates to do the thing he loved to do, being who he was, and taking the hits and delivering some that came with his job. 

The noise of helmet clacking against helmet is loud and unforgettable. It is the sound of everybody striking the same note. It’s the sound of a team.

Within that sound, almost invisible, was the breakthrough.

It happened not by him standing out, but by becoming a seamless part of the world between the lines. “When you’re under the helmet and you’re in shoulder pads, everybody’s the same,” Fisher says.

And that was when he was a girl. 

Sarah Fisher was the first female to play a full year for the Waynesboro High School football team.

But for Sarah, the breakthrough was not because she was a girl playing a boy’s sport.

It was because she felt like she was where she belonged. A boy playing a boy’s sport.

“It was just always a feeling. The questions didn’t cross my mind until later on, but I just felt like a guy, like one of the boys.”

The childhood of Sarah Fisher was spent doing boy things: driving a four wheeler at her aunt’s home; playing sports. “I always felt more in tune with boys. That’s who I’d hang out with.”

She didn’t feel awkward expressing herself that way. In fact, confusion set in more when she tried to adhere to how girls were supposed to express themselves. “I tried to wear girls’ clothes, and it was really awkward.” 

The young Sarah actually felt more ‘transgender’ doing that than at any other point. 

Nearly eight years to the day after a story was published by The News Leader about Sarah Fisher’s ground-breaking football journey, 25-year-old Sage Emerson Fisher sits comfortably outside at a Waynesboro coffeeshop.

In a dark blue sleeveless T-shirt, muscular tattooed arms bared and a dark baseball cap worn backwards on his head, Sage’s appearance is not purposefully masculine or feminine, but definitely not androgynous.

Sage looks like a person who is now comfortably himself.

For much of his childhood as a girl, the person named Sarah was behaving like a boy, enjoying more masculine sports like football and wrestling. She was already engaged in what therapists call gender expression, healthy in her case because it matched her inner comforts and interests with what she did in front of other people.

Though the youngster's behavior was not “appropriate” for a girl, Sarah was simply considered a tomboy. 

“I don’t really feel out of place around anyone,” Sage explains, leaning back in his chair. “But I felt more in tune with the boys I would hang out with.” He begins to list the details.

“I didn’t like doing my nails, I didn’t like boy bands. I didn’t like girl colors or playhouses, or any of those things. I’d much rather go catch snakes, and fish, or play in the dirt, or ride four-wheelers.

“I tried to wear girl clothes, and it was really awkward. You can tell the awkwardness, looking at pictures of me. I never felt comfortable in my skin in women’s clothing, or wearing makeup.

“It felt like I was trying to be somebody that I wasn’t.”

Sarah’s father appreciated his daughter’s strong sense of will and interest in things he liked, so he didn’t try to force any changes in her behavior, according to Sage. But inside, Sarah was much more than a tomboy. Though the name would not come for years, Sarah was already Sage, a boy. Interested in traditional boy things, including girls.

He cites a telling example. “We went to my Aunt Betty’s house, I was probably 10 or 11, I was old enough to know the difference [between girls and boys and how they traditionally behaved]. I would hang out by myself and go around on the four wheeler, and I would stop and pretend I was picking up girls for dates.”

“When the girls started wanting to get to know the guys, I wanted to get to know the girls. I knew very early that I didn’t care for men in a romantic way.”

Again, there was an available — if less mainstream — identity type for others to perceive her. She likes girls? — she must be a lesbian. And since she was boyish and enjoyed masculine activities, she must be a butch lesbian.

“I was never bullied for it,” Sage says. “It was already known. When I started dating a girl, it was like, ‘Well, that’s just Sarah.’ 

“And sort of the same thing when I came out as transgender. I posted my name change form on social media, and from there on out it was me being me.”

But that didn’t happen right away.

CHYNA

When she was in the hospital on life support in 2016, one thing kept Mama Lynn Bolling connected to the waking world. Her daughter Chyna.

“The only voice I could hear was hers.”

That’s the voice speaking now. Chyna’s voice. “I was born in Waynesboro. My mom was an evangelist, my daddy was a deacon. I worked in church, very Christian. Pentecostal, actually,” she laughs. It’s a deep, rich laugh, and in it you can hear the sweeping transformation of the entire person she once was into who she is now: a deep male voice smoothed out by a decade of hormonal therapy.

Chyna's not dressed up or made up. She looks like any other mid-20s young woman on a Monday in Starbucks: a bit tired, her hair up, comfortable enough in a tank top and hoop earrings and a very large cup of iced coffee.

She made her decision to become what she calls her “authentic self” at age 15.

“I put on a pair of girl jeans and just never looked back,” she says, clapping her hands and smiling. “In eighth grade I was one person, and ninth grade I was somebody totally different.”

How did she handle using restrooms in school 10 years ago?

“I used the women’s restroom. I haven’t used the men’s rest room since I was 15.”

But things were not that easy. They never are.

She takes care of her mother, who lives with her and has a multitude of health problems.

She’s been looking for work. She is waiting to hear about a managerial position after an interview she feels good about, but she’s been down that path before. Successful interviews, but no phone call, no email, no job offers.

Some of that she attributes to being a bi-racial transgender woman.

And like her decision to confirm her identity as a female, it started early.

“Straight out of high school I went to cosmetology school.” Teachers called her “he” because her state ID was still male and her doctor hadn’t written a letter to DMV yet to get her ID card changed, she says, though she was well into living her life as a female. “My clients would say ‘she.’ They’d say, ‘She did a fabulous job.’” 

Despite the fact that she dressed and behaved as a female, the school wanted her to wear the male uniform — “but I didn’t. That was the last thing I would have expected from the beauty industry.”

Like Sage, Chyna’s earliest self-expressions were not consistent with cultural expectations for her gender.

“If you are really trans, you have that ‘this is who I am,’” she says. “When I was little, when we played house I was the mom. My room was leopard and pink and smelled like perfume. My mom said, ‘Better than smelling like dirty feet!’ Ha! In school in the locker rooms I wouldn’t dress out (for gym).”

A dozen years into living as a female, Chyna looks like a woman. Is she past getting strange looks?

“No. When I’m like this and not made up, and during the day, it’s more easier to tell,” she says. “In the evenings if I’m going out or dressed up to go someplace I never get looks.”

Chyna still feels the lack of acceptance, and says it’s more pointed in a place like the Shenandoah Valley than in more urban areas.

She’s felt judgment from all sides, even from other minority groups. She says trans-people and LGBT people in general are not very welcomed by the African-American community.

“I’m too dark to hang out with white people and too light to hang out with black people. But in my experience all my Caucasian friends are more open-minded,” she says.

“I would think they would be so different because of slavery and the oppression that we were under,” she says about African-American culture.

“But I was raised in church, and God knew who I was gonna be before I was born.”

On the other hand, here in Waynesboro, it’s also a lot safer than in big cities, she says. She rattles off statistics about black transgender women being targets of violence in urban areas. In some cities the life expectancy of black transgender women is only 31 years.

Having traveled and lived in larger cities like Chicago, she’s made many transgender friends, and not all of them are still around. The list of those robbed, raped and killed only gets longer.

Chyna Black says without a hint of exaggeration, “Every day I wake up to Facebook and it’s “Rest in peace, so-and-so.”

More: Families of transpersons

Understandingthese gender terms  is easy.

DEFINES

The nametag at work reads "Dustin." And the nametag's owner has a calming, deep, masculine voice.

But those two things — name and voice — have been sources of anxiety and gender dysphoria for the former Staunton resident who may be dressed in male business casual clothes at work and then at a social event later with the same friends wearing maybe a dress and jewelry, with painted nails.

And being called by a teenager's nickname that is neither male or female.

Meet Defines Fineout.

“‘Defines’ is a shortened version of my full name, Dustin Fineout. It’s a nickname my friends gave me back in high school.” Defines says the nickname is “gender nonbinary, whereas ‘Dustin’ is pretty clearly a male name.”

And Defines has never felt comfortable with a gender identity as a male.

Gender dysphoria started early.

“When I was six years old I had this gemstone ring that I really loved. I remember wearing it to school and getting picked on for it. Your understanding of gender happens very young — by 2 or 3 years old you really start to have those fundamental concepts established. I  always liked what at the time people called girly things.”

Defines is 31 years old. “So I was assigned male at birth, you know I grew up raised as a boy. My family is very open and supportive and accepting.” 

Growing up he didn’t have the language to think about these things he felt, or put any definition behind it.

“I would say my gender identity probably didn’t change a lot, I just didn’t have the words. I became more comfortable with my own identity as I got older,” and in his early 20s finally understood how he felt about himself.

Still, Defines didn’t encounter ideas of what it meant to be transgender until his mid-20s. For the past five or six years he has identified as a nonbinary transperson. 

Nonbinary? “Nonbinary pretty simply is not male or female identity,” Defines says. “Some people use ‘gender-fluid.’”

Defines still goes by “Dustin” at work, and dresses business casual. He’s perceived as a male by others in business who do not know him, and he’s learned to be OK with that.

It's important to him that people who know him understand: he doesn't feel like a male and also never wanted to transition to a female gender identity.

Likewise, he does not define who he is attracted to sexually by their gender, either. So he defines his orientation as pan-sexual.

You would think that a well-adjusted person with this level of patience with others would not experience gender dysphoria. But there is still discomfort.

It's his own deep voice that makes him uneasy.

"Most people probably perceive me entirely as male. That’s just natural. I’ve sort of gotten more comfortable with that fact and just come to terms with it, but there are days when people call me sir, and I prefer that they didn’t.”

“Most days it really doesn’t affect me too much. There’s nothing I can do about my voice, it will always be deep. It’s so deep that trying to talk any differently just sounds so unnatural.”

As for the name change, being called by a traditionally masculine name started to feel discordant. So Dustin reached back for the relatively neutral “Defines.” 

“For so many of my friends, that’s just what they knew me as, so that’s not a change for them.” But for Defines it makes a big difference. 

At the same time Defines is aware that a transition for an individual is also a transition for those around him or her.

“I even stumble and say the wrong thing sometimes, and these things are changing so rapidly,” he says, referring to the language wrapped around gender-diversity, both clinically and in public.

"But even like my parents know and accept that I’m trans, but of course they raised me, have called me Dustin their entire life. It’s just natural for someone you’ve known for 30 years.”

Defines understands the difficulty. “It’s just because most pronouns are male or female specific. Some people are creating new pronouns or using the singular ‘they.’ For me the easiest way to say it is transperson.”

No matter what term is used, Defines knows that an evolving, supportive culture — no matter how this hopeful trend continues in Virginia — is what matters.

“I’ve had the benefit of a great community," he says, "so I’ve had it much easier than some other people do.”

More: Trans options for therapy, hormones, surgery are individual choices

Gender identity. Gender expression. Sexual orientation. Gender dysphoria.What do these phrases mean? Therapists have developed terms to discuss the experiences of people like Sage and Chyna. While the language can get confusing, these terms can help differentiate the internal and external pressures that we all feel.

More: Discovering Emma

More: Mom and daughter come out together as trans

More: Bullied trans teen found help and made video about her experience