Monika: You do not like lawyers? Please do not go away because today I have invited a nice lawyer and an amazing woman. Jessie McGrath has been a prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office since 1988. Her areas of expertise include consumer protection, cyber-crime, narcotics, and juvenile law. She has been lead counsel or co-counsel in consumer protection cases against Apple, Uber, Sony BMG, Choice Point, Honda of Santa Monica, McKenna BMW, and Gunderson Chevrolet. In April 2002 she was named Deputy District Attorney of the Month. Ms. McGrath has served on the Board of Directors and was Executive Vice President of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, the union representing the more than 900 rank and file prosecutors of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. She is the happy parent of five children, three of whom will be lawyers too. Hello Jessie!
Jessie: Hi Monika. Thank you so much for reaching out to me and asking me to participate in your amazing work.
Monika: One of my favorite albums by Bruce Springsteen is Nebraska. The songs on that album deal with ordinary, down-on-their-luck blue-collar characters who face a challenge or a turning point in their lives. You were born there and you are a white-collar character but your life is also full of turning points.
Jessie: Nebraska is also one of my favorite Springsteen albums too. I have the name of my hometown and the state name tattooed on my left shoulder in the same font and color that he used on that album.
While I am white-collar now, like Springsteen, I came from humble beginnings. Growing up I worked a number of jobs including working on the family farm, on an assembly line for a farm equipment manufacturing company and pumping gas and changing oil at a gas station. I knew that I did not want that to be what I did with my life. I was able to get some scholarships and I also joined the Army National Guard in order to help put myself through school.
There were so many turning points in my life that had I made a different decision my life would be so much different. Early in my college career, I was getting counseling and I tried to voice my gender identity issue but because of the shame I couldn’t. There were decisions about jobs, marriage and family that played a big part in getting me to the place I am today. Sometimes what seems like a very minor thing can have incredibly profound consequences.
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| "There were so many turning points in my life that had I made a different decision my life would be so much different." |
One such turning point was my accepting an invitation from an online friend to attend an event in Houston while I was visiting family in Corpus Christi, Texas. That decision changed the trajectory of my transition and my life. Because of that trip I became friends with so many amazing people who are a part of my chosen family. I met the extremely talented Angelica Ross who lived with me for a year before she got her big break in Pose. Another person has been one of my roommates and my sister for over five years. I got to know and become friends with trans activists Nikki Loyd and Jessica Taylor. All of these amazing women have helped me grow and learn about what it means to be a strong and proud transgender woman.
Monika: You call yourself a unicorn. Not just because you are trans, which entails a very unicorn status, but you are a woman to have been with one employer for over 35 years, which is quite unusual these days…
Jessie: I never thought when I accepted the job with the LA County District Attorney’s office that I would still be working there 35 years later. It's something I have in common with my dad and my brother. My dad worked for State Farm Insurance for over 39 years. My brother worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for over 33 years. The work that I was allowed to do in the DA’s office was so interesting and rewarding that it was something I couldn’t walk away from.
I did try after about 7 years there to move to Colorado and practice law because I am also licensed to practice law there. I had seven years of felony criminal jury trial experience including two years in Major Narcotics. It was during the time of the OJ Simpson trial. That case negatively affected my ability to get a job offer (basically none) and so I stayed with the DA’s office. I ended up going into consumer protection work and was known for taking down crooked car dealerships. I helped build the computer crimes unit into what is now the Cyber Crimes Division. I’ve taken on Apple, Uber, Sony BMG, Time Warner and many other large corporations.
I guess when you love what you do it isn’t really even a job. So I guess I am a bit of an employee unicorn.
Being trans is like being a unicorn, so many people have never interacted with us, some people don’t believe that we exist but those who know us know that we are real and that we are very magical.
Monika: If I came to your office and ask why there are so many legislators who feel that allowing my true self to emerge and live an authentic life is something that they should legislate against and condemn?
Jessie:: I think there are many reasons why we are currently under attack and being used as a political football. First, some politicians feel that because we are such a small minority group attacking our existence is politically acceptable.
Secondarily, there is a religious belief that being transgender is somehow defying God and they want to impose their religious beliefs on us. I am a Christian and believe that God made me a trans woman and I am embracing God’s will.
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| "Being trans is like being a unicorn." |
I also believe that a reason is a fear of the unknown and a refusal to accept the science surrounding our existence. I am constantly outing myself to people I meet and when we connect they almost always come away with a different and more positive view of what it means to be transgender. By being open and willing to engage with people I try to make a difference one person at a time.
Monika: I guess that it is a pity that transgender people were not vocal enough when the US Constitution was born, maybe the status of transgender people would be different?
Jessie: It was a very different time and even if there were more vocal trans voices at the time I don’t think it would have made much difference in how the constitution was worded.
Monika: We represent less than 1% of the whole population, so we will always be in the minority whereas politics is based on the interaction with different interest groups that wish to pursue their specific goals. How can we be successful in such a competitive environment?
Jessie: We will never be a force in the voting booth but what we can do is be vocal and try to spread as many positive stories and messages as we can. We need to enlist our family and friends to become more vocal in supporting our right to exist. We need to develop clear and compelling narratives and get these messages out to as many people as we can.
Monika: Given my own experience as well as that of many girls and women that I interviewed, I wonder whether we should be called ‘runners’ instead of transwomen. We run, run, and run away from our feminine self until it catches up with us. The only difference is how long we can run away. Was it the same in your case?
Jessie: I spent the majority of my life running away from my true self. It took many forms and it was exhausting and difficult for me to do. I would try to bury this part of me and thought that I was successful, but that was a lie. You can’t bury it or pray it away. Even if you feel that you have done so consciously, your subconscious will find ways to make it known. After 53 years of running away I just couldn’t do it anymore. Once I was able to finally understand it and realize that I couldn’t make it go away life became easier for me. Realizing I was trans suddenly made so much of my past life make much more sense.
Monika: Why did you choose Jessie for your name?
Jessie: When It came time to change my legal name I chose Jessie and not Jessica. Jessie was a name I used when I was a child and it just made sense. The first person I came out to was my cousin who I am very close with and had grown up with. I was discussing my potential names (there were only a couple) with her and when I said Jessie we both immediately knew it was who I was and from that moment on I was Jessie.
Monika: We all pay the highest price for the fulfillment of our dreams to be ourselves. As a result, we lose our families, friends, jobs, and social positions. Did you pay such a high price as well? What was the hardest thing about your coming out?
Jessie: The hardest part of my coming out was admitting to myself that I was transgender. I had known as a child that I was different and that I was a girl but as I got older I pushed those thoughts away and tried to man up. There were periods when it would reappear but I was always able to make them go away, or so I thought. So when the feelings reemerged when I was 53 I looked into why this kept happening. Coming out to myself and admitting that I was trans was extremely difficult but that admission explained so much of my life.
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| "The hardest part of my coming out was admitting to myself that I was transgender." |
I have been asked by a number of nonprofits to join their Board of Directors and I am doing valuable work to help protect the trans community. I feel very blessed that I can use my status and privilege to give back to so many people who need help. But make no mistake, I knew, when I publicly came out as trans, that I could lose almost everything and that didn’t matter. I had to be Jessie.
Monika: Was your family surprised by your transition? You wrote that your mother taught you a lot and helped you become the woman you are today.
Jessie: The first person I came out to, my cousin Lori, was not surprised when I told her. Much like me she said “that explains so much.” Other relatives were very surprised. I really hadn’t given off many clues as to who my true self was. I had done a lot of things to hide myself. Most were surprised because to them it was just out of the blue. They had no idea of the struggles that I had been going through my entire life. They had known about the episodes of depression and the thoughts of suicide but not what was causing that. I had never told anyone of my secrets because of the shame I felt for having those thoughts.
My mother was a very special lady who was a very good role model for me. She divorced my father when I was fairly young and for almost 10 years she was a single mom. She got involved in Republican politics and when I was 14 she was the National Chair of the Young Republicans. When I was 16 she got remarried to an amazing man that she had known since her childhood. She eventually opened a small chain of boutiques that mostly sold women’s clothing and accessories. She had a great sense of style and I think I picked up a lot of my mom’s talents in that regard. It is unfortunate that she passed away from a stroke in 2011 and never got to see me as Jessie. A lot of her friends have told me that she would be very proud of the woman I am now and I think they are right.
Monika: We are said to be prisoners of passing or non-passing syndrome. Although cosmetic surgeries help to overcome it, we will always be judged accordingly. How can we cope with this?
Jessie: There are things we can change and things we can’t. I’m a firm believer that trans surgeries are not so much cosmetic as they are corrective to reverse the effects of a wrong puberty. As such, they should be covered by insurance. Unfortunately, in many places they are not. The only way to cope is to find a way to minimize as much as possible those things that get us outed. We need to remember that our beauty comes from inside of us and is not dependent on our outside appearance. But that can be so difficult at times when faced by a hostile world.
I always assume that people know I’m trans and I don’t run away from that fact. I love that I am trans and have been able to live the life I have. I’m not sure why, but I rarely have any issues in public being gendered correctly. I don’t know if it's because I mostly pass or if it’s my confidence level but I don't let other people define me. I live my life as a woman and because I am confident in myself and my femininity others see me that same way. A lot of it has to do with attitude and confidence.
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| "I love that I am trans and have been able to live the life I have." |
I was very lucky that I had a lot of feminine traits. When I was looking at getting FFS early in my transition I went to Harrison Lee who is an incredible surgeon. I was very surprised that his suggestions were so minor. Most of what you see is an unaltered me after 8 years of HRT. I had very little facial work (hairline advancement, brow lift and brow bone shave and eyelids) done. I also had breast augmentation and I went from an A cup to a B cup. So what you see is mostly original equipment. I was blessed to have good genetics.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Jessie McGrath.
© 2023 - Monika Kowalska
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