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Jordan: Across the Gender Border—and Back Again “It really makes me happy when I realize that I finally found, you know, the one thing that identifies me the most.” T he story of Jordan begins as the story of Matt, a female-to-male transgender youth I met at YouthWest in 2004.1 Although still biologically female, Matt presented himself at the time as a young man, with his brown hair cut short, the use of a typically male name, and the oversized flannel shirt and carpenter jeans typical of late adolescent boys in the rural community in which YouthWest is located. During our initial interview, Matt shares with me his plans to start taking male hormones within the next several months and to work toward a biological sex reassignment in the near future, although he still has many questions about how he will pay for the treatments and procedures involved. He seems to view adopting a male identity as a sort of “coming home to himself,” a release from a prior state of confusion and discontentment: “I do like being so in tune, you know, with myself and who I am. It really makes me happy when I realize that I finally found, you know, the one thing that identifies me the most.” 1. Definitions of the term transgender differ. One used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Leadership Campaign on AIDS offers a useful starting point: “Individuals whose gender identity, expression, or behavior is not traditionally associated with their birth sex. Some transgender individuals experience gender identity as incongruent with their anatomical sex and may seek some degree of sex reassignment surgery, take hormones, or undergo other cosmetic procedures. Others may pursue gender expression (masculine or feminine) through external selfpresentation and behavior” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2005). This definition presumes, however, that gender expression can be only masculine or feminine, whereas many transgender individuals argue that transgender identity need not be defined in terms of one or the other binary gender category (e.g., Bornstein 1994). 5 94 Chapter 5 For Matt, the sense of feeling “different” in some way went back as far as he could remember. Before identifying as transgender, Matt used his traditionally female given name and identified as lesbian; later, he wondered if the way he felt and the way others responded to him meant something else: I have always known my whole life I have been attracted to women. It’s just something that has always been there, so, you know, when I was old enough to understand it and I started to, you know, realize that there were other people out there like me, I was less afraid of it. . . . You know, but now it’s just nice to have people call you “sir” and stuff because that’s how you want to identify. But before, it was more like funny to me. Like, I didn’t realize the significance of it. You know, I was kind of like, “Well, I do have really androgynous features,” and I started to realize more and more, the more I got mistaken for a guy, that I actually really felt like I was a guy and wanted to be a guy. Two aspects of “being a guy” that became particularly important to Matt once he realized his transgender identity were having the physical attributes of a man and having a man’s name. Matt mentions his desire to have chest surgery at several points in the interview. (“I would love to get chest surgery, but it’s expensive.”) He also explains his decision to adopt what is typically considered a man’s name as preparation for his eventual transition to being biologically male: “Once the hormones start kicking in, you know, you can’t go around with a girl name.” Although Matt exudes an easy sense of pride about his sexuality and gender identity during his Phase I interview, which took place shortly after his twentieth birthday, a story he shares illustrates that his early adolescence was marked by significant emotional turmoil around these same issues. When Matt was in sixth grade, he had a physical and emotional breakdown that he believes was in some way related to a growing realization: When I was younger I used to get that way [deeply depressed], because I was very sick when I was younger. In sixth grade I was sick for at least six months straight, and...

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