Chapter Five
What advice would I give a young transsexual person? Instincts told you who you are. You listened, trusted your instincts, and had the courage to go on to realize your true identity. Don’t let your transition be your only bold endeavor; use those same abilities again and again throughout your life to fulfill each and every dream you can imagine.
—Dean
Dean Kotula was born in the Midwest and now lives in New England. He is a writer, an antiques dealer, and a fine art and documentary photographer who owns a commercial gallery. He has lived in many different places throughout the world and says he’s “not only straddling genders, but centuries. I feel as though I’m [living] in contemporary culture with a nineteenth-century sensibility.”
Early Life
Early in his life, Dean felt different. “I began defining myself by taking charge of what I wore. By age six or so, I refused dresses and skirts and demanded to choose my own clothes. I lucked out in that I was the first kid in the family who didn’t have to attend parochial [religious] school; that meant I didn’t have to wear a sex-specific uniform.” Dean was one of seven siblings and “began to isolate and feel lonely because I began realizing I was different and this difference made others uncomfortable.”
Dean also discovered that his childhood crushes on other girls were different from his siblings’ love interest in kids of the opposite sex:
I remember discovering my attraction for girls when I got on the bus for the first day of kindergarten. There was a girl seated across the aisle from me who had bangs across her forehead and shoes the color of butterscotch. I decided she was from Holland, and I was in love. Even at that age, spoken or not, I knew there were boundaries I couldn’t begin to cross, but I also knew I could feign childhood innocence while walking home with her hand in mine.
When Dean was a teenager, his family returned to the Midwest after living in Hawaii and Thailand for some time. Dean’s experiences in both places had an enormous impact on him. He began to think with a broader, more global perspective. This viewpoint clashed with the narrower worldview of his hometown peers. And then there was a matter of adjusting to sexual feelings at a time when same-sex attraction was viewed as wrong. Dean says:
I hated the changes to my body and the implications behind those changes. And I hated having to suppress the sexual attraction I felt towards some of my girlfriends. I never said a word to them about how I felt. Overnights (yes, there were overnights, since we were both considered girls, after all) proved torturous; lying beside someone I was intensely attracted to and not being able to act on it. Listening to girlfriends talk about boys they liked supplied [plenty of] mental torture. I hated myself and my circumstance.
Dean’s father was the mayor of the small town where the family lived. For this reason, Dean felt pressure to hide who he was so he wouldn’t call attention to himself or his family. Dean knew he was male, but suppressing his male identity had consequences. Dean says, “I didn’t know where to turn, so I turned to drugs, ingesting handfuls of hallucinogens and amphetamines on a daily basis. Before long I was in a drug treatment center, where I stayed for nearly eight months. In the end, I went to an alternative high school and received my GED...[and went to college] some years later.”
Dean didn’t find workable resources to help him make his transition to male until he was thirty-eight years old:
I visited a gender identity program at the University of Minnesota when I was in my early twenties. They could have helped me and a far greater percentage of transsexuals if they hadn’t charged exorbitant fees for their services. They had a long, drawn-out evaluation process, and I couldn’t afford their services. I moved, and finally, fifteen years later, connected with a psychiatrist in Portland, Oregon, who had a lot of experience evaluating transsexuals. I was a classic female-to-male (FTM) transsexual. He recognized the signs and wrote out a prescription for hormones during my second, one-hour session with him.
Once Dean began his transition, reactions from family were mixed. One sister declared “I can’t relate” and walked away. Dean was hurt and angry. He said to her, “Of course you can’t relate; I didn’t expect you to understand. I can’t relate to space travel, but it doesn’t mean I can’t show some interest in it, particularly if a brother of mine is heading to the moon!” Another sister was very understanding. “We shared a bedroom growing up, so she saw, more than anyone else, the pain I was suffering. Talking [to her] about my need to transition finally explained some of my puzzling behavior.”
Making History
In Oregon, Dean faced on-the-job discrimination related to his gender identity. He tells the story with pride of how he helped bring about historic legal workplace protections for transsexuals.
I was hired on as one of two female shipyard machinists just prior to receiving my long-awaited prescription for testosterone. I said nothing to my employer regarding my transsexual status or intention to transition. But a short time after introducing testosterone to my system, the physical changes were apparent. Around that time, I was featured prominently in a national pop-culture magazine. The son of one of the shipyard electricians saw the article and gave it to his dad, who passed it around among the two-thousand-plus employees working in the yard. So, the company saw the changes in me and read the explanation—the whys and wherefores—in the magazine, but no way did they accept it (there were a few exceptions).
I began to be harassed in both subtle and obvious ways. [During work slowdowns], I was usually one of the first to be laid off and one of the last to be called back to work. During one layoff, I called the company and asked the secretary to send me a copy of my work record. Handwritten in the record were the words “was F[emale], now M[ale]. When?” along with a notation stating that I should not be called back. Since I was a union employee, they had to begin to falsify a record of poor performance on my part, or some such thing, in order to justify a dismissal. When I saw the layoff notation linked to their knowledge of my transition (was F, now M) I felt that was proof positive of their decision to discriminate, so I filed a lawsuit against them.
The Bureau of Labor and Industry in Portland, Oregon, investigated and found a positive finding of discrimination against me. I was the first transsexual in the state of Oregon to have a case with a positive finding of discrimination, and my case was instrumental towards gaining statewide protection for transsexuals in the state of Oregon.
Fulfilling His Dreams
A gifted photographer, Dean processed his first photographic images in his father’s darkroom when he was ten years old. Today he owns a gallery where he exhibits more than three decades’ worth of his photos. He is currently working on a book and has recently won local and national awards for his photography. Dean also owns and works in an antiques shop that caters to summer tourists. Sometimes Dean thinks about running for local office, but “in the same moment I decide against being in the public eye as a token transsexual.” His life is peaceful. His partner, Diane, lives in another state, where she runs a psychotherapy practice, and they see each other often. His gallery and antiques business overlook the ocean and a working harbor, which fondly remind him of his days as a commercial fisherman on a shrimp boat in Oregon. Dean says he has learned to love himself and to appreciate the elements of his complex journey. When asked about his identity, he says,
What do I love about the transsexual part of my identity? Knowing I am far more complex than most people would ever suspect. (I’m sure that I’m generally perceived as just being some boring, middle-aged white guy.) My own experience always reminds me to assume and respect the complexity of others.