I’m just an average, ordinary, everyday, superhero, trying to change the world. I’m a photographer. An artist.  A writer.  It’s these powers I tap into to influence, touch, impact, educate and to communicate.  I have photographed million dollar weddings, two million dollar corporate events, Presidential Inaugural Balls, hundreds of celebrities and have been published hundreds of times around the world. I have shown at major art galleries and have written for publications. I have been honored with many awards for me and for my work. I have been a Police Officer and Television News photographer, a high society photographer and photographer of the stars.  I have seen what most only see on television,  the best and worst of humanity! I have smelled death, held death, seen death, faced death and cheated death!

I also have a family, a spouse I love dearly and a huge set of kids and grandkids who I wouldn’t trade the world for. Six kids and 13 grandchildren,…to date!

Once upon a time I was born,… I was born a boy or so they thought… But no!  I was actually born a girl! This is my first dress…

Like many on this planet, I am transgender, meaning the gender between my ears does not match the gender between my legs. Of course, society determines gender based only on what is between the legs and ignores the feelings “inside” that are at war with how we present on the outside.     As it turns out, I am also intersex, meaning I have anatomy that can be identified as both male and female. As far back as I can remember, it was confusing… I was supposed to be a boy since I had a penis on the outside but on the inside I felt like a girl. Well, we discovered I have female anatomy on the inside as well, including a vagina almost as deep as my penis is long… I think if I had gone public before that discovery, some people would have seen it as a choice;  whereas,  those same people see it as a medical condition, a freak of nature.  It is as natural in the animal world as everything else about us but  it is the societal stigmas that change the truth and we should not be afraid of the truth…

For me, it’s the 1950’s… no internet… no support groups… no accessible information. There is only fear and confusion. In the 1950’s & 1960’s a person couldn’t be gay much less transgender. Even having black skin, being a “negro”, was rejected and worse by a lot of society! Please keep in mind, there is always a point where it is popular, even expected to condemn others, to be prejudiced, to have phobias, to treat people like “lepers” and history is full of this. Then there comes a time when people become less ignorant, more informed, less condemning, more tolerant. In the mean time a lot of damage is done to innocent people, fellow human beings. Tens of millions of people have been killed over the centuries for no other reason than  for who they were or what they believed. Society can and does get it terribly wrong… a lot! If you haven’t been a victim of this you may not  completely understand, but in order to stop these seeds of hate from being planted you must try.  Lives depend on it!  One day it will be you, one day your child will come out, your spouse will get cancer, you will be paralyzed from a car accident, you will declare bankruptcy, you will face your own death. Don’t kid yourself, your shit stinks just like the rest of ours! If, on the other hand, you do understand and you do support people hated and oppressed, then God Bless you.

Okay… so, here I am, growing up in a society concerned about “what will the neighbors think”.  Being only 6 years old how do I connect with the outside world, a world based totally on girls, on boys, on their anatomy.  After all, it is the men’s and the women’s restrooms, the boy’s  and girl’s clothing department, the pants and the skirts… black and white. The problem was I LIKED GIRLS THINGS.  I was nice,  I was painfully shy, gentle and very polite.  My parents never had any trouble with me growing up. I was a very timid and quiet little girl after all but a girl for sure. There was no question in my mind and that was so confusing at the time of no internet or support system. In a way, it completely isolated me from society.

At that tender age of 6 is when I secretly began wearing my mom’s clothes & her makeup. Especially her bright red lipstick! To this day the smell of lipstick and the feel on my lips prompts a powerful memory for me. My only recollection of seeing my reflection in the mirror is when I was wearing Mom’s makeup… it made me feel good… it made me feel normal… MY NORMAL!  Not anyone else’s normal…  I wore her clothes as best I could. There was no way I would dare get them perfectly folded from the dresser drawers. They had to come from the dirty clothes hamper. I would smile as I saw myself in the mirror.  I twirled as I held up her dress at my waist,  loving the feeling  as it swished around my legs.  It was bliss, all the while fearing I would get caught.

Also at age 6, I developed the onset of Tourette’s Syndrome. When the tics began it isolated me even more. This is also your body at war with itself.  I remember in the first grade my teacher sending me to the school nurse, who then called my mom. This spurred a trip to the doctor. My parents never came down on me for my tics… not once!  Home was a sanctuary for me. I was totally loved but not as the girl I desperately needed to be. Without a doubt they would have loved me anyway but I was paranoid, the thought of anyone finding out was terrifying. I couldn’t let anyone know my secret.  After all, it wasn’t “normal” was it? A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. Pretty basic, huh? A binary world. And no one else had tics they couldn’t control. What was wrong with me???

By age 12 it had become apparent that I did not fit in and I began to struggle with thoughts of suicide.  Self-hatred had become an integral part of who I was. I was unable to talk to anyone about what was inside of me.  Even though I was surrounded by a family who loved me, I felt completely alone. I was about 10 years old when I hand made a “spanking stick”. I presented it to my parents because I wanted to be punished. Punished for who I was. My parents never once spanked me or even said anything about my tics. At that time, Tourette’s Syndrome was seen as a behavioral issue and sadly some people did get punished, even arrested.

Only recently have I become aware of the suppressed memories of three suicide attempts but in looking back I came to the realization that I could not reach the clinically depressed state that some do, that some never come back from… I remember sitting on the roof of our home, next to the bathroom pipe that protruded through, around that pipe I had tied one of my dad’s  ropes and put the other end around my neck, begging God to let me die, to give me the courage to jump off.  When my dad passed I found his ropes and I believe one of these is the actual rope. This is extremely painful,  however,  I want everyone to get a sense of the indescribable pain I was going through at the time and in some ways, still go through when looking back. You need to know that according to  the research of Vincent J. Felitti, MD,  time does NOT  in fact heal all wounds, that we carry that pain forward. It impacts us in ways we do not always see or understand.

I could visualize my parents finding me on the ground.  That  made me realize this was something I  simply  couldn’t put them through. Even though suicide is really a desperate scream for help, I just could not do that to them but I still needed help… something, someone, but there was nothing, just the sense that I was completely alone… One day I was standing at my dad’s band saw with the thought in my mind that I could quickly slice my hand off at the wrist so I would slowly bleed to death. That blade moved so very fast, it would cut through most everything… but I found myself unable to do that. I can hardly step on a spider, I inherently value life in all its forms and besides, I knew it would really hurt.  Finally, one night I took all the pills from the medicine cabinet down to my room, I laid there for several hours, crying most of the time, it was late and everyone was sleeping. I worried that I would fail, not enough pills, not strong enough, not something… The fear of failing was overwhelming!  I was so bashful there was no way I could explain who I was inside if it didn’t work.  I think few people know what it is like to be that alone, especially as a child of 12.  I now know that I wasn’t alone at all, that there are many others like me, many still hiding, still afraid, horrified of being rejected, hated or worse…  it is a real threat, a threat that will make you retreat, want to escape via death.

At that point I was convinced I was a complete failure, I couldn’t even kill myself.   Still, I had to figure out where to go from there.  After a great deal of gut wrenching struggle, I felt my only way out was to give the world what it demanded and created the male persona people came to know as “Steve”.  I promised myself that Steve would be strong, would protect me.  Steve protects me to this day.  As Steve, I set out to be the very best man I could be.  Becoming highly successful at everything I did  became an obsession with me.  I was very tenacious and this was about surviving, coping with who I was, how I was born…  It was my last hope!  In many ways I overcompensated.

I was blessed by growing up in a family of photographers.  It gave me an identity… I could be anyone or do anything with that camera… hiding behind the lens.  At 13 I got my Ham Radio license and talked around the world with Morse Code and could hide behind that as people could just accept me as a fellow ham operator.

 I  learned how to play the guitar, ending up in several rock and roll bands, I could hide behind the guitar. My dad built me a 6 foot bass speaker system and  I really rocked!  Receiving a lot of accolades for my talents and achievements allowed me to fit in.  I became a police officer and a television news photographer, I could hide behind the badge and the camera..

Today we have discovered Tourette’s Syndrome is a neurological dysfunction and that intersex very much exists in a medical sense.  At the University of Kansas, they are doing research that ties intersex and Tourette’s together. They suspect an over production of the Adrenal Hormone and an under production of testostorine hormone in the womb.  We know there is a significant percentage of the population that is Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual and Transgender (GLBT) and many other gender presentations.  Many are born where you can’t look at the anatomy between their legs and definitively say “this is a boy” or “this is a girl”.  We know that chromosomes greatly impact gender and I am certain also determines things like sexuality.  We also know chromosomes impact Down Syndrome, Autism, Dwarfism, even leukemia.  What will we learn tomorrow, especially in a medical or scientific sense, that will change how we view the world?  It wasn’t that long ago when those with Autism and Down Syndrome were institutionalized.  What will our perceptions and actions do today that will negatively impact people with gender related issues and what light bulb will go off  in our head tomorrow that will totally change these viewpoints, give us clearer insight.  This is not about God or nature, it is about societal mores.  They fooled you again!  Hmmm, I think this is the same society that continues to get it wrong a lot….as the song asks, “when will we ever learn”… If you judge any of this, when will you ever learn?

Good for you if you were born within established societal standards, depending on the society you live in of course.  But consider yourself condemned by many if not.  We are all born without prejudice and phobia, it is a learned behavior, a taught behavior.  One can be condemned only for the color of their skin or their gender or their religion or fill in the blank. It does in fact plant seeds of hate and those seeds grow into conflict, even wars.  To me it is not just some innocent “opinion” that others are inferior to you, it is an attack on humanity itself as it enables some other group to hate who you are, to hate your normal, your religion, your big nose, your red hair, your politics, your small penis…Your whatever!  “They” are looking for something to hate, they will follow the leader, they will be a hypocrite, they won’t care! Are you one of “them”? You likely know one of them. Again, God bless you if you are not a hater…

So, what is normal anyway?  When we conform, when we go along with the hateful “Pied Pipers”  and when we ourselves condemn, we are no better than those that condemned the lepers, the 6 million Jews, those that supported the witch hunts, the genocide of the races such as the American Indian.  History is full of this sad and hateful thought process that becomes those societal mores, the norm, the determination of what is accepted and what is condemned.  We become a part of the same mentality that was in Hitler’s Germany, we insist on our version of the blue eyed, blonde haired person.  You can call it something else if you want but the association is clear to me.  It may seem harmless, just an opinion, but collectively it sets the stage for the condemnation of others, groups of others not like you.

 

Just like many of you, I could not be who I was because someone,  somewhere along the line in this social order,  decided who I was supposed to be, who many are required to be.  This is just unacceptable! Where does change begin?  It starts with your conversations, your Facebook posts, what you teach your children, how you live your life, how you demand that everyone else’s normal be your normal.  The fact is we grow as human beings when we reach out to others not like us.  When we surround ourselves with like looking, like thinking human beings we lose sight of the larger world, that the world is made up of a lot of different kinds of “norms”.  How many of you just conformed? How many of you did exactly like I did and detached from your very soul.  How do you see others, those that do not conform, whose normal is NOT your normal, those of us who just want to live our lives as who we are and not what we have been told we are supposed to be. Who decides, who should decide and who is responsible for being wrong so much?  Aren’t we all responsible!

Of course there has to be standards.  What is a society without standards, a set of rules?  One of the most important “standards” of a decent and humane society should be to protect those less fortunate, those born differently, those who are hated and oppressed by others because they are “different”.  Otherwise it seems to me we are no different than Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Stalin’s Soviet Union.  No mass death here but nevertheless, people being killed, people killing themselves just because of who they are and how society treats them .

I do find people are basically good. In my opinion, too many worry about what others think and so initially, people accepted me but many stopped hiring me. There were many who fully accepted me as who I am and I will forever be thankful.

They are my heroes and because of them, other began to accept me as female and business greatly improved.

The principle is the same!  As Rodney King once put it, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  Good question isn’t it?  Why do we have to look back on history to realize the damage these attitudes/opinions and the society norms they create have done?  Just as importantly, why is history so easily forgotten? Why does it keep repeating itself with the condemnation of others?  Why is there no association between those millions and millions of people hated and oppressed in the past and those who are oppressed and hated now?  Why do we not band together and stand up to the concept of oppression?  It shouldn’t matter where, when, how or who is being oppressed and hated.  Supporters and hated alike, what if you actually cared about the bigger world and not  just about your tiny piece of it.   What if opposing the hatred and oppression of others became just as  important as remembering to pick up that loaf of bread on your way home from work?  What if…

The answer?  We are more concerned about planning vacations and the weekends than we are our lives.  We establish strong opinions based on what we know at the time even after knowing that learning new information can completely change our opinion on something. Think about that, even a small piece of information has changed something you believed as true.   We become sensitized to things like cancer when someone we love has it, we become sensitive to birth defects when we have someone like that in our family, we become sensitive about Gays when our brother comes out, we become sensitive to someone transgender when we actually know someone who is transgender.  All of us are human, we hurt, we love,  we cry, we can even hate.  Too often we are just a label.    I am not a label!  So what if, what if we just stop condemning something we do not understand.  What if we could all just get along and that meant people would also accept you as you are since it truly is a two way street.  What if you decide that most of the other humans on this planet are as frail a human being as you are? And, what if you decide you won’t judge that “man” until you have walked a mile in “her” heels?  What if…

I now present as my true female self on the outside, it makes me feel good, it makes me feel normal.  Again, my normal not your normal…

In 2012, my story went viral all over the world. The headline was “man goes to hospital and discovers he’s a woman”. The story has been in every language from Vietnamese to Arabic.  It was during a kidney stone attack that the ultra sound indicated my interior anatomy was female.    Of course, I always knew but now my wife of 30 years was in the room and heard as well as saw it on the scope. At the time it was both scary as well as a relief because it validated who I was. Once the media got a hold of it, the world knew and that was very scary.

 

In reality though, the fact is,  all of you also present differently on the outside than you used to  since you don’t look at all like you did when you were ten years old.  Is it the shell of our physical body how we know others or is it who we are on the inside, that part that never really changes. I am still the person I have always been, just more at peace. Finally connecting with my soul, completely me.  I have not changed, you just didn’t  know me.  I live in a so called free country but have not been free to be me.  When you think about it, this is true with most of us as we are always asked to conform in order to fit in. Rejection can result in death from murder or suicide and so fitting in is not just something, it is everything! We are defined before we are even born based on what is between our legs while ignoring what is between our ears and in our hearts and soul. When body and soul do not match, it is hidden because exposing that reality is so life changing and not always in a good way.

What if we become the leaders, insist that others “conform” to being less judgmental and challenge traditional thinking on things like gender expression.  Sweden recently eliminated the gender pronoun. Instead they use a term that means “friend” for both male and female. No stereotype, no gender role to live up to, just an air of equality. Remember, there are those who will not want equality. They will prefer to perpetuate the status quo, to maintain their power base, their control. They will define people like me based on what is between my legs, they will see me as a freak, they will demand I be just like they are.  “They”,  plant the seeds of hate and the blood of many is on their hands. It even comes from religious leaders. We cannot as a society condemn the results of hate without coming to terms as to the source of it. It begins with labeling and creating sub humans so we don’t have to feel the things we do to them.

Tolerance is knowing and understanding that we are all the same and yet we are all different. It is the hot and cold, the black and white, the dark and the light, it makes the world go around!  Let’s enjoy the ride with each other until we get dizzy!  Everything doesn’t have to be so serious! Let it go. it will help with the blood pressure and you, too, can be at peace with yourself and  the world..and your neighbor! We are stronger if we encourage the individual while working together with the collective.

Above is a photo of me wearing my mom’s glasses from the 1950’s. I love being me and I work toward self-actualization where I am completely free to be me. That only happens when society allows it, the same society that used to think the world was flat. It is time to evolve to a new level of thinking. It is time to love each other. Not just say we do but actually love each other. Many say the Lord’s Prayer “forgive my trespasses” but never ask themselves how they are trespassing. If you condemn people you don’t even know, if you began to hate the spouse you once loved, if you fail to love, you are trespassing on others without even realizing it. I once thought God hated me but then I realized, why would God create us as such imperfect human beings and then punish us for those imperfections. If we keep screwing up then it must be a design problem. Either that or we are missing the core reason for why we need to stop judging others and start paying more attention to our own trespass/sin…

In that way, I love all people. Rich or poor, black or white, good or evil. It doesn’t mean I have to like everyone or what they do but it does mean I do love them. Jesus did everything right and because of this same condemnation, still got nailed to the cross. While there, he said “forgive them for they know not what they do”…guess what? They still don’t!  Just make sure you aren’t one of them…