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We are all on a journey from who we once were to who we will be tomorrow. This process can be stressful, confusing, and terrifying; however, it can also be filled with joy, hope, love, and acceptance. For generations, transgender women have been there for the younger generations starting along the same path they walked decades before.  

In celebration of these women and every woman who has contributed to our community’s history of love and support, we have compiled some wisdom from 10 fearless women across generations who are thriving in their golden years.     

All of these stories and photographs were collected from 2013 to 2017 by photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre, and are featured (along with the stories of transgender men and gender nonconforming people) on their website To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults. Please check out the site and give it all the attention this amazing collection deserves.  

 

I Live Openly To Keep The Door Open for The Next Generation | Cassandra, 50

I identify as Cassandra. I’m a trans woman. I’ve always identified as female, but it took a while to get to that point, because I am originally from the Caribbean and the church is very strong there. I always knew that I was different. I remember going through puberty and asking my mom, “How come I don’t have breasts?” and she said, “Well, it’s because you’re a boy.” That didn’t seem right to me. It just didn’t match. So that’s how I identify. I identify as female. And that’s how I live my life. I have always felt that way, but I never truly expressed it until I left the islands, just before my twenty-first birthday. 

I needed to leave the Caribbean. All through school I was bullied and picked on. I had been attacked a few times, beaten up, and had people throw stones at me because of who I was. I knew that if I stayed there, I would not survive. So, I had to flee. I went to immigration and filed for political asylum. Two or three weeks later, I got a call to come up to the office. I’d never ever been in one of those offices, one of those waiting rooms with a sea of people sitting there. They were calling people up. There were lots of families coming from the Middle East and different countries, trying to stay together. One by one, their cases were being denied, so I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to have to go home.” I started to get all sweaty and scared. And then when I came up, she said, “Well, good news, your application has been approved.” I almost hit the floor. 

One of the biggest struggles is the discrimination we face of not being able to walk into a place and get a job. A lot of times, even in this day and age, a lot of girls are still being forced into sex work because they have to survive, you know what I’m saying? And I don’t want to say I am lucky, but I didn’t have to do that. I was able to transition on the job, which was good for me. That’s the path my life took. But I’ve been out there in the street walking and being stopped by the police because they thought I was a prostitute. They see a person of color and assume they’re a prostitute, you know. A day that I’d like to see is a day when we’re not judged by the color of our skin, but by our character. People say they don’t see color, but that’s an insult. Because I’m a woman of color, so if you don’t see my skin color, then you don’t see me.   

Last year more than twenty trans women of color were murdered, but nothing has been done about that. We have to stand up and say something and do something about it. You see all these things happening with gay rights and marriage equality. Ok, well that’s fine, that’s you, but as a trans woman, what’s in that brown bag for me? There’s nothing. At the end of the day, they still slam the door in my face. At the end of the day, we’re still forced to go stand on the corner to make ends meet. And possibly, probably, be murdered. That’s very upsetting, when you look at that and say, “Wow, that could have been me.” Some people just don’t seem to care. Because if they did care, they would do something about it. Whenever there is a fundraiser and they want to have somebody perform, they reach out to the girls because we’re entertainers. But then when my sisters are dying in the street, I don’t see you marching in the street to help me, to bring attention to it. See, I know what it’s like, and that’s why I live openly, because I know that by my keeping the door open, and conversation open, it’s going to make it easier and better for the next generation. 

 

For My Birthday, I Want My Name | Freya, 51

I’ve been lobbying lately to my family that for my birthday, I want my name. I was saying, “We can have this party, but it’ll bum me out if we sing ‘Happy Birthday’ with my old name. I just don’t want to hear that.” Early on it was hard because they had no reference at all, but all the media coverage of trans people has been helpful. It gives me a way to make the reference. Now, when someone will address me by my old name, I’ll say “You haven’t heard? I go by Freya now. Caitlyn was on the top of my list, but somebody got to it first.” 

We go to a reform congregation that’s just about the most liberal and inclusive group that you can imagine. We’re very involved in social action, and this year, my rabbi has been extremely supportive. If my wife and I need a sounding board, his door is open. After I changed my name, and did so publicly, he invited me to have a small ceremonial role in one of the high holiday services. There’s a moment in the service, where after the Torah is read, it’s open so it’s three columns wide and they take it up off the table and hold it up. Then they rotate it around to display it to the congregation, and close it up and put the cover back on. It’s a ceremonial role, and for some reason that’s printed in the program, who does the Hagbah. I think that the rabbi was looking for a way to print my name in the program and that’s what he did, and a lot of people were like “Hey, congratulations! You changed your name!” and “Oh, that’s wonderful.”  It’s been so affirming that they’ve been so willing to accept me and who I want to be. So our faith community has been huge for all of us in the family. 

Right now, for me, everything is filtered through gender. For example, I feel very female when I’m cooking. Of course, there’s nothing about cooking that’s inherently male or female. Everybody knows this. But I feel it when I’m in my kitchen, that’s for me. Maybe I’m connecting with my Jewish mother thinking, “I want to feed you.” 

I’ve thought a lot about what happens when you’re not transitioning anymore, but you’ve just “arrived.” Part of me thinks that you can never really “arrive,” but part of me also wants to get “there,” wherever that is. But to use a math analogy, it’s probably more like asymptotic progression. You get closer to something, but you never really get “there.”

 

My Activism is An Act of Self-Preservation | Andrea, 54

I think all of us are in some state of transition, no matter who you are, but particularly if you are a trans person. Overcoming the social challenges of being trans can sometimes be even more challenging than overcoming the physical struggles. Nobody knows what’s going on between your legs except for the people who you want to know, and so what people are really dealing with is how you present, how you act, and how you are in the world. That’s where people experience a lot of the pushback for being trans, in those daily interactions. It was certainly a challenge for me.   

I’ve always been politically-minded. I was concerned with broader social justice issues, particularly as they relate to African American people, but I was not necessarily activated around LGBTQ+ issues until they became even more personal. But once I came out, I started getting involved with activism because I was trying to build support for my own journey. I’m thinking to myself, “I’m coming out. I need people who are going to be supportive of me, and so in order for me to gain that support I need to give support.” This process helped me understand a lot of issues that trans people face, and that’s when my activism really took off.  It was an immediate response of self-preservation. And, to a large extent, it is still why I want to create a better world, because I’ve got to live in this world and now I have grandchildren who need to live in this world. 

Another important aspect of my journey is being bisexual and being trans. I actually hid my bisexual identity for a long time after I came out. I thought, “You know, if I’m going to be a good trans person I have to be heterosexual.” Everybody assumes that I’m going to be with a man. Otherwise, why would I transition and do all of this stuff if I’m going to continue to date women, right? So, coming out about my sexuality in the African American community was the most dramatic coming out. There’s this saying, “strictly dickly,” that’s what you should be about. You know, finding a man, but some of these guys are full of shit. They want to hang out at two o’clock in the morning and not be seen with you in the daytime and then they are the main people out here actually murdering trans women because they still can’t deal with their own internal attraction to beautiful trans-identified women. It’s so caught up in the patriarchal, machismo kind of thing. 

What advice would I give to young people? Go to school. Understand yourself. Be authentic with yourself. And love yourself. Try to be a productive, contributing member of our society. And guess what? That comes back to you. Get engaged in politics, if for no other reason than your own survival. That’s what we have to do at this point in time. I can appreciate that some people just don’t want to be on the front lines, but support those of us who are, because that’s what’s going to get us our liberation.    

 

My life relies upon me being able to give to my community | Caprice, 55

I’m a fifty-five year old woman of trans experience and I’m a woman of color. And my life is amazing. I am the eighth child of twenty-three. I remember back, starting at the age of three, my mother used to buy these Tonka trucks. Santa Claus would bring all the little toys and I always got the boy toys and I was not fond of them. I always played with the teapots and the baby dolls, and so she always knew, always had an inclination, and she just waited for confirmation. I had sisters that were older than me and they had birth control pills that they never took. As early as twelve, I swallowed the pills and got my little baby bruises.   

I remember coming out the bathroom with the little booster bra that the girls taught me how to wear. You know, you cut the insides out so that your boobs could just grow out perky and what have you. I had the stereo up real loud, and my mother had left for work, and I came out spinning around with my bra on and I hadn’t noticed that she had come back in. She noticed the boobs and I said, “Oh Ma, I didn’t know you were here.” She says, “You’ve got raisins. I’ll see you when I get home.” And I was terrified. But when she got home from work she says, “We need to have a conversation.” She says, “Are you gay?” I said, “I think I’m attracted to guys.” She said, “You don’t like girls? And where did you get those raisins?” And I told her I took my sister’s pills. 

Before trans was even labeled as trans, it was sissy. I was a sissy. But my mother knew enough to be supportive. And anything that was major that disrupted our family dynamics was brought to the dining room table. We had one of those big tables where you had to add a leaf and add chairs around it because we had twenty-three in one household. I was terrified because I had to reveal my truth to my family. A lot of them were younger than me. You know, the older ones, they had a general idea. My twin always knew and I didn’t know how to verbalize it. And I was like, “Well, you know, I’m living as a girl now.” And my mother said, “We are not going to say living ‘as’ a girl. We are going to say you are living in your womanhood, your sisterhood. It gives you power, it gives you authenticity.” It was amazing for me. And just her saying that boosted my whole confidence level.    

Experience is the greatest teacher. You have to give back. I have been working in the field of social service for seventeen years. I have been an activist and advocate for trans women of color and trans-identified individuals for the majority of my life. My sisters are dying. My sisters are not being connected. And I am connected. I got connected through community. I remember when I was getting food stamps and no Medicaid, and I was buying black market hormones. But once you have it smooth, it is important you grab one of your girlfriends, one of your boyfriends, and tell them “Look baby, somebody showed me how to get through this block here, come with me and let me show you how to do it too.” My life relies upon me being able to give to my community, and my reward is when I see people take what I have given to them and do something constructive with it. I want people to say, “She showed me how to do this. She taught me how to do that.” That is my gift. My mom taught me how to open my eyes to this particular gift. God blessed me with the whole thing. I am the greatest gift I have to offer.  

  

It Just Clicked That I needed To Transition | Linda, 60  

I identify as a trans woman. I’m fairly open about my status, but unless there’s a good reason, I won’t disclose it. Somewhere in grade school I had the first feeling that I was a trans female. I researched it more in high school. That was back before the internet, so, I’m that old. I didn’t do anything because I knew it would be cost, time, and trouble. I wasn’t really worried about people’s reactions, but just about all the practical stuff. I never thought I was gay. I just wished I was female. Then, in 2010, it just clicked that I needed to transition. And then, oddly enough, or maybe appropriately enough, it seemed that everything kind of fell into place and confirmed my decision. 

At work, everyone who knew my status got it right. I asked about using the restroom and they were unclear, but I just started using women’s restrooms and there was no issue. I tell people, I’ve had the smoothest transition of anyone I know. I haven’t lost any friends or family. I made lots of friends as Linda. I can’t say I actually lost any job opportunities because of it. 

My parents immigrated from China. They came here to study before the communists took over, so even if they wanted to go back, the FBI would not let them. And, of course, if they had me and my brother while in mainland China, my life would’ve been totally different. My dad was pretty much deaf and blind for the last couple of years, so it was hard to communicate with him. I figured I wouldn’t tell him until I had to. I wasn’t surprised when he finally died because he was outliving everyone, all his friends and classmates. So, it turned out, I never did tell him. I do regret that he didn’t know his daughter, but on the other hand, to try to explain this when it was already hard to talk with him about normal stuff would be too much trouble.   

I actually wrote a letter to my brother and mom, and I mostly had to explain it for mom, who has senior dementia. But she was accepting. She actually offered to pay for my surgeries if I could continue to stay here and help her. Sometimes, out of habit, she would use my old name, but I knew it wasn’t deliberate. It would puzzle other people because they were seeing me as Linda. So sometimes I’d say, “Oh, that’s my brother’s name,” or I’d just make something up. My brother really didn’t have much to say, but he did have trouble using the right name and pronouns. He took a long time, but I think he’s finally getting it right. 

I’ve been happily single, but a few years ago I started looking for a long-term partner. My experience with online dating is, boy, it’s a minefield! I’ve communicated with so many fakes, flakes, and lookers that I wonder who’s real now. And forget being transsexual, just finding a solid relationship is hard. Because of helping my parents, I don’t want to be a nurse to a partner. I’m still in pretty good shape and active, so, if anything, I want someone younger than me. I’ve had enough of taking care of someone. I want someone to take care of me. I guess I may also be a little bit curious about what I’ve been missing all these years. And the thing is, I’m pretty open. I’m equal opportunity. I don’t discriminate based on whether you’re pre- or post-op, or if you’re cis or trans, or whatever your gender identity or presentation is. I’m open to pretty much anyone. 

 

Women’s Oppression is My Oppression | Alexis, 64

I remember I was four years old when I first told my mother – well, no, it was actually my grandmother – that I was a girl. My heritage is Mexican and Apache, and they have very rigid binaries for gender. I mean, they just yanked away anything that they thought might be feminine. It was devastating to me. And the fact that I was Apache meant that this was never talked about in my house, because back in those days social service agencies would yank the kids and put them in Indian schools.   

As I grew up, I guess you would say I was genderqueer or gender nonconforming. But when you’re twenty-something and you’ve been on hormones – and I was 115 pounds and five foot four with hair down to my butt – it was real hard to not get attention. And men were real strange to me. On the one hand, they would call me a fag and a pervert and everything else, but then they would come on to me. And when I would tell them no, that would enrage them. They were like, “You’re gonna deny me? I’m giving you a gift.”   

So to me, those experiences started really connecting me to women’s oppression. That’s when I began my feminism thing. I started to see that my oppression was similar to what my mother and my sisters were going through. I began to connect it. To this day, I still preach that women’s oppression is my oppression. In terms of trans activism, I was recently talking to some of the girls that were at Stonewall back then. They’re old timers like me. They look at the word “tranny” the way I do. We empower ourselves rather than let that trigger us. It’s like the Dyke March. “Dyke” was also a word we took back. To me, if you’re out on the battlefield, you have to be able to take the booms and the bangs and everything else and keep pushing forward.    

The activism keeps me young. It really does. But I love my age, and I love when I can mentor somebody else. I love it because – and I never thought I’d say this – my age gives me a perspective that youth denied me. Because when I was seventeen, I knew everything. By the time I was thirty-five, I started figuring out that, “Well, you know just about everything.”  And I think by the time you get to be sixty-five, you realize how little you really know and how precious those things are that you do know. 

 

I’m Finally Complete in Being Me | Rosalind 65

I always knew there was something different about me, but I didn’t know what it was.   

As I was going through school I found out there was other people like me. One of my best friends said to me, “You are a woman.” And I was like, “Okay! I know that.” She was actually the first one to take me to a doctor, with my mother and father’s consent, to have my first hormones when I was fifteen. Which is amazing. Everybody always asks me, “How did you do that at fifteen?” You know, considering the way things are today, that’s something in the extreme. But I did it. And I wouldn’t change anything. I just wanted to be me.   

My mother was my rock. She was the one that said, “Listen, that is my daughter, that’s who she is, and that’s that. You’re going to give her respect just like you give me respect.” So, unbeknownst to me, the family little by little did. After my mother died, my whole family kept looking at me, and I kept saying, “Why are you all looking at me like that?” And they said “Because you are the spitting image of your mother.” And I am. The older I get, I look at myself and I be like, “Ooooh, it’s like looking at her all over again.” Like she’s here, you know, and I know she’s proud of me. I’ve done everything I have to do and I’m happy. That’s all she ever wanted for me.   

Everybody’s journey is different. You know, some of us have good journeys and some of us have bad. I had a good one. Which is totally out of the norm. Most of us, you know, we’re thrown to the wayside, our families don’t want us, so we create extended families. I’m out, and if I didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know and that’s been my experience my whole entire life. I’ve always put my cards on the table, always. And some people accept it, some people don’t. You’re putting your life out there, which can be dangerous. You have to be mindful of your safety because people can be cruel. I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t like to put myself in certain situations. I really don’t like riding the trains and buses if I can help it, but I do. There’s so many women of color of trans experience. They’re killing us like its nothing, and they don’t care. It’s like “Oh, it’s just another transgender person who got killed, so what?” The humanity is not there. We’re human, first of all. You bleed, I bleed.   

I want the younger people of trans experience to live in their truth as best as they can and that’s it. If you feel that it’s for you, it’s for you. You should pursue whatever needs to be to get you to where you need to be. Somebody was telling me “Ever since you’ve had this surgery you seem like you’ve got this little glow about you.” I was like, “What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to look sad or upset?” My medical transition is done and I’m happy. I’m finally complete in being me. Through this whole entire transition I’ve lived my life, I’ve enjoyed it. It’s had its ups and downs, but I’m grateful for it because I was finally able to be who I needed to be. 

 

I Wish I Could Have Started Sooner | Kendrah, 72

In 1952, when Christine Jorgensen appeared, I was ten. She was there on television and my mother and grandmother were looking at me like she was Satan, and I thought, “Yes, that is what I want to be.” I started changing over when I was forty-eight, I guess a child by comparison to some other people, though I must confess, I wish I could have started sooner. I have been on hormones since May of 1990. When you change over, you go through hell.   

I tell you, when a person goes through all of that they have to be sincere. You lose. I didn’t have the good luck to be like some Ts that were able to have their spouse be with them after the change. And, of course, the income. Everything took a nosedive. There wasn’t any money coming in. All I had was unemployment. So I ended up being evicted from this place and, before that, there were times when I would go a week or two without eating.   

It is so funny, when I first started on hormones, I was saying, “God, give me breasts!” I was as flat as the wall. And like a year later they came out. I first started out by getting things at Filene’s Basement. Through Mass Rehab Commission I was sent to this place called Vocational Readjustment Center and I met this woman there who gave me all these clothes. I mean, she just gave me tons of clothes, clothes I couldn’t afford, couldn’t buy in a million years. I had a Neiman Marcus coatdress and that was so nice.    

When I decided to change over I just jumped in the water to try to learn swimming. It can be very demanding on your soul. I think the most important thing is your presentation. If your main goal in life is only to pass, it is like you are just at the foot of the mountain. I have a number of books over there on Ts. One really good book is by a woman that changed over and she said, “I knew I was a woman the day someone opened the door for me.” I went through so much and it finally took me a while to realize they were talking about me when someone said, “Here ma’am, do you want to sit here?” 

 

I Knew I needed To Do Something | Amy, 77

I identify as a trans woman, or just plain woman. In everyday life, of course, it’s woman, but if people ask, I tell them I’m trans. I don’t hide it exactly, but I don’t wear it on my forehead either. The first time I realized there was something fishy going on was in second grade and we were having a school play and doing Heidi. I wanted the lead part and the teacher said, “No, that’s only for girls.” And of course I knew I was a boy, but I didn’t realize that boys couldn’t do things like that. At the age of fourteen, I was left alone in the house for a summer and went up in the attic and found some of my mother’s old clothes and discovered I enjoyed dressing in them. After college, I went abroad to Denmark and decided to try denial. You just get busy with other things and then you don’t have to worry about your identity.   

I met a woman that summer, Edith, that I eventually married. After we were married for about a year and a half, I realized, “This is not working, I need to be who I am.” So I outed myself to her. In those days, of course, the only label we had for it was transvestic. By 1980, when I was forty years old, I knew I wanted to transition, but I didn’t tell Edith. Somehow I got wind, I think through a television show, that if you wanted to transition you are required to get a divorce first. They didn’t want to foster lesbian couples being married legally. So, I wasn’t going to do that. I was too much in love. The two of us were married altogether forty-six years. So I waited, and then in 1993, she found out she had cancer. Of course, then I knew that this was not a time to transition. She died in 2008. I came out publicly as transgender in 2012. 

After Edith died, I was alone here in the house. It just got empty, very empty, very fast. And so I knew I needed to do something. I met Stephanie, a transgender woman, at the Emerald City Social Club. She was homeless at the time, so I said, “Why don’t you move in?” And then we started taking in other girls, too. Since then, I’ve had over thirty girls go through the house at one time or another, some for shorter periods, others for longer periods. I think it’s a worthwhile effort. I’m trying to give people a little bit of safe space and respite from the anxieties of homelessness. 

As you grow old, you fear the unknown. You can end up needing care. By inviting people to come stay with me, I have someone to at least look after me on a daily basis and make sure that I’m not falling through the cracks. This whole house has served in some ways as a model because, as far as I know, it’s the first trans house. The model is simple: if you can, open your house to others. As I say, we don’t have a homeless problem, we have a hospitality problem. We can still be effective doing what we can even if we regret it’s not enough. 

 

I Never Thought It Was Possible | Joanne, 90

I always felt on the outside, different from everyone. But I was a very hard believer in reality, in what’s possible. I was born in 1925 and being a woman was not possible. I never felt I was female; I felt I wanted to be female. When I hit puberty, I knew I wanted to be a girl, but I kept it a secret. I didn’t know I could leave the house as a woman until I was in my eighties! But once I did, there was no stopping me. I was in therapy for a year, and I found out my big problem was shame. I was afraid to go out in the street as Joanne, so one time I went out at two o’clock in the morning to mail a letter. I couldn’t get back in the car fast enough! I thought I used up all the heartbeats for my whole life right then and there. Once I got home, I said I’d never do that again. But I had to. It was something that was burning in me for years. I didn’t know there was a whole community out there. I didn’t know anything! 

This was fourteen years after my wife died. I had a wonderful relationship with my wife. We were made for each other. I can’t say I transitioned because of my wife passing. She died and I was still drawing the blinds every time I put on women’s clothes in the house. It was fourteen more years before I found out it is possible to do what I’m doing, that there are other people doing it. I mean, I read books and stuff, but I thought it was all fiction. I never thought it was possible to be anything but a man. 

I have a son and a daughter. They both have their own families. It wasn’t easy telling my daughter, but it was the hardest to tell my son. I’m rather methodical in the way that I think. An important step like that, I contemplated it for two weeks. I might have cried every time that I thought about it, but I planned for two weeks what I’d say, when I’d say it, where I’d say it. And I also wrote down what I feared. I feared I’d lose his respect. He reacted very much like his father would: no reaction. He read what my fears were and said, “I didn’t lose my respect for you.” When I told my daughter, my eyes were watering, the tears were running, and she hugged and kissed me. She could see the pain. 

It would have been nice to transition when I was very young and not have had to hide and sneak and lie. But then again, I wouldn’t have had my life as a guy, and I wouldn’t have been married to a super wonderful woman and have terrific kids and wonderful grandchildren. Some trans women have a very bitter experience and they want to forget they were ever a man, but I enjoyed my life as a man. I don’t want to forget that. If you want to know what a ninety-year-old thinks of life and what keeps her going, it’s fun and happiness. Everything has a humorous side to it. All you have to do is be creative enough to see it. I tell myself jokes all the time. Sometimes I tell them out loud, and even though I’m home alone, I burst out into laughter! 

 

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