Monika: Victoria Kolakowski is a true pioneer in the legal world. Since 2011, she’s served as a judge on the Alameda County Superior Court, making history as the first openly transgender person to hold a trial court judgeship of general jurisdiction in the United States. But she didn’t just break barriers, she crushed them, probably while wearing fabulous heels. After coming out as transgender, she had to sue just to take the bar exam in Louisiana, but that didn’t stop her from pursuing her passion for law. Her impressive journey includes degrees in science, engineering, law, and divinity, as well as major roles advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. On top of that, she’s been an ordained minister and a prominent figure in the LGBTQ+ community, serving as the president of the International Association of LGBT Judges.
Victoria, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. As a fellow transgender woman, I truly admire your groundbreaking work and the impact you've had on the legal field and beyond. Welcome to my blog, Vicky!
Monika: Your surname sounds very Polish! Do you have Polish roots?
Vicky: Absolutely! Six of my eight great-grandparents were born within the current borders of Poland. My hobby is genealogy - I am a past president of the California Genealogical Society. When I was elected judge, the first message I received from someone in Poland was to explain that my name was wrong because I spelled it with an -ski. I agreed - I know it should be Kołakowska, but people in the United States don’t understand these things, and I was worried my family would think I was disowning them.
Monika: You graduated from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center in Baton Rouge in 1989, and you began your transition during your last semester of law school. Was that timing intentional? Or was it a “Why not add one more challenge to my life?”
Vicky: It was somewhat intentional, but not to add one more challenge. I wanted to have the same name throughout my career as an attorney so nobody could accuse me of changing my name to hide something. Also, I didn’t want my dead name showing up as I went through my career.
Monika: Nothing ever comes easy for us. You actually had to sue just to take the bar exam in Louisiana after coming out as transgender. What was going through your mind at that time? Were you prepared for that kind of fight?
Vicky: I didn’t see myself as a warrior, just a woman trying to fulfill her personal and professional dreams. I’ve always been an optimist and expected to live happily ever after.
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| "I hear the term “trailblazer” a lot." |
Vicky: I hear the term “trailblazer” a lot. What I like about that term is that it highlights that I have cleared a trail for others to follow. And I believe that has happened. Now, we must fight to keep the trail cleared because some people are trying to fence it off and erase it (and us).
Monika: I read that you got into all the colleges you applied to, including MIT, but tuition costs held you back. Do you ever wonder how different your life might have been if you had gone there? Any regrets, or are you relieved you didn’t have to deal with Boston winters?
Vicky: I am glad that I didn’t go down those routes because it would have fed all of my perfectionism. I needed some space to figure out who I was. Although I came out while in law school, I first started investigating my gender identity and seeking counseling as an undergraduate.
Monika: After transitioning, you found yourself in a kind of career limbo. You once said, “I didn’t have the same range of career options as I might have had, had I either stayed pretending I was a guy, or if I was a proper cis[gender] woman. Instead, I’m trans and nobody knew what to do with that.” That sounds really familiar to me. When I came out at work, some of my male co-workers acted like my transition had somehow lowered my IQ. It was so frustrating!
Vicky: One thing that really impressed on me how sexist people could be was going through a graduate engineering program as a woman. Some of the other students treated me like I could never understand the material.
Monika: You also became an ordained minister in the Metropolitan Community Churches, a majority queer congregation. What drew you to ministry? Was it faith, or a search for answers about why God placed our minds in the wrong bodies?
Vicky: I always believed in God in some manner. I was raised Roman Catholic, but I left.
As a kid, I had a prayer card for a saint that said that if I prayed a prayer every day, my wish would come true. It didn’t happen, so I kept saying it in case I missed a day. I didn’t realize that it would come true, but much later!
I came to think that I couldn’t make it on my own, and I came to lean on God to get me through.
I once preached about the New Testament story of the man born blind. The authorities tried to trip up Jesus, asking who sinned, the parent or the child. Jesus said neither.
I know that if I weren’t transgender, I would have been a far less understanding, caring person. And I would’ve probably missed out on how amazing transgender people are in general. I wrote a piece in the Huffington Post, The Courage of Being Transgender in Public. I still think we are an awesome group of people.
Monika: In the article, you also mentioned that some transgender women turn to sex work because they have no other means of survival. I believe it's crucial to emphasize how important having a stable job is during transition. This has always been something I've deeply thought about.
Vicky: When I talk with people in authority in the business and legal world who say they want to be allies, I tell them the best way is to hire transgender people, and mention us when considering people for important assignments. They need to stand up for us when we are not in the room.
Monika: As trans women, we’re part of the LGBTQ+ community, but let’s be honest—sometimes we feel like we’re at the very end of the line, the “T” in LGBT, the least protected and the first targeted. Do you think that’s why we’re often singled out for attacks? Because we don’t have the same political or social power as the first three letters in the acronym?
Vicky: People don’t know us; we are such a small group. Even some of the LGB people don’t know us. Also, our community is very broad - there are all sorts of ways to be gender nonconforming. The broadest definition of trans swallows up the entire LGB community!
So, when we talk about transgender, what do we mean? Do we mean just the people we used to call transsexual, like me? Does it include crossdressers? Drag queens? People who are nonbinary? People who are genderfluid? Even people in our community don’t all agree.
Monika: Why did you choose the name Victoria? Is there a special story behind it?
Vicky: There indeed is a story. I recounted it in my essay “Wrestling Like Jacob” in the anthology Otherwise Christian 2, which was about names and Jacob wrestling with the angel to claim a new name.
In short, I didn’t want anything that started with the letter of my dead name, which I sometimes regret because I like Megan and Margaret so much. I couldn’t choose Susan, because I had a cousin with the name by the time I selected it - so I used it as my middle name. So I chose a strong name, an aspirational one, an encouraging one, a regal one: Victoria. It is a warrior name. I’ve needed that strength over the years.
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| "Victoria. It is a warrior name." |
Monika: The journey to womanhood changes everything, including our relationships. The people who support us through our transition often grow with us. Did you experience that shift with family or friends?
Vicky: I like to say that I am not a solo act, and I wouldn’t be here without the support of many wonderful people, some of whom are family.
That said, I lost many people I expected to stand by me and gained friends I could never have anticipated.
I’m bisexual, but men were rarely interested, which is probably because I wasn’t out about liking men. My long-term relationships since transitioning have all been with women or non-binary people, and the lesbian community had enough problems with my being transgender for me to add on the whole bisexual aspect.
I am married to a woman, and not married to another, so that probably doesn’t matter.
Monika: You married Cynthia in 2008. Was it love at first sight, or did your connection grow over time? How did you two first meet?
Vicky: We met in 1994 when I ran for a local transit district board of directors seat. A local gay newspaper assigned her to write a story about me, and we spoke after a political meeting. We moved the conversation to a restaurant, and eventually, she stopped taking notes. I asked myself, “Was that a date?” There was a message for me when I got home asking if I wanted to have dinner again.
My previous girlfriend had just dumped me, and the timing was good.
It has been an interesting journey for me. She is wonderful, and I couldn’t have accomplished all this without her. She is a best friend and life companion, and I love her. That said, in time, I realized that I could not rely solely on one person to meet all my emotional and social needs, so my family of choice is a bit bigger than just one person.
Monika: For me, there was a specific moment when I finally felt free, like I could take a deep breath and say, “This is the real me.” Did you have a moment like that?
Vicky: I’ll let you know if that happens. I am mostly past my dysphoria, but there is always a part of me that is afraid that everyone is laughing at me behind my back and thinks I’m nuts. My two deepest fears are that the transphobes are right about me and that the people who think my success is unearned are correct.
Monika: Transitioning comes at a cost. Some of us lose friends, family, jobs, there’s always a price to pay. What was the toughest part of your coming out? What did you have to sacrifice to live your truth?
Vicky: It took me a long time to reconnect with my extended family - my parents and brother were OK. I had no contact with people from my early life - I have reconnected with a few through social media, but they are not close to me. I felt cut off from my past. I sacrificed having a stable career. Nobody wanted to hire me. One of the scariest realizations that I had after transitioning was that there was no guarantee that anybody would ever hire me. In school, if you do a good job, then you get good grades. In the workforce, you can do a good job and still nobody might hire you.
Monika: Do you remember the first time you saw a trans woman on TV or met one in real life and thought, “That’s me!”?
Vicky: Mostly, I was thinking, “That isn’t me.” So many representations on television and film are negative. If you haven’t seen the documentary Disclosure, please do - last time I checked it was still on Netflix.
Rene Richards, the tennis player, was the first one I saw on television that gave me a framework and language for thinking about all of this.
Monika: A lot of us struggle with “passing” and how society perceives us. I know I spent a lot of time feeling like I was in a never-ending game of “Is she or isn’t she?” being played by strangers at the grocery store. Did you have similar worries? How did you handle them?
Vicky: Always. As I mentioned earlier, that was because of my gender dysphoria - I looked in the mirror and saw everything masculine about myself. I had facial feminization surgery five years ago, and although I don’t think I objectively changed much, the dysphoria mostly melted away. Now I can look in the mirror and just see an obese woman!
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| "I want to continue to teach, mentor others..." |
Vicky: I don’t think I had any expectations. I had hopes and dreams, some fulfilled, some not. Some things I wished for cannot and will not happen. I couldn’t bear children, and my relationships didn’t lead me to have any with them.
Monika: It seems like every trans woman I know is writing a memoir these days! Have you ever thought about writing a book about your journey?
Vicky: I started one, but I wasn’t sure what parts of my history to reveal. My story intersects with many others, and I must be sensitive to their concerns.
I don’t want just to do the traditional story of self-discovery leading to transition and surgery. I reached that point when I was 31, and it left me thinking, “What next?” That was less than half of my life!
Some of the more interesting parts of my life are not appropriate to discuss as a judge, such as my love life.
I have also considered trying something different, like a graphic novel or musical. Although I think I am a pretty good writer, I sadly lack the artistic or musical skills to do either (I don’t know how to find a collaborator).
Monika: If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice about being a transgender woman, what would it be?
Vicky: I’m torn between two choices.
My inspirational part wants to say, “It is going to be great!”
My practical side would say, “Exercise and eat better.” Before the hormones, I was skinny. I was a nerd who just read all the time. I got used to being inactive. I come from a long line of diabetics with cardiovascular problems. Now, my knees are bad, and I struggle with my weight.
Monika: And finally, what’s next for Vicky? What dreams and goals are you working toward now?
Vicky: That’s a tricky question. I recently received the American Bar Association’s Stonewall Award, and I doubt I will be getting any honor more incredible than that one.
I will continue to advocate for greater access to justice for all people.
And I want to continue to teach, mentor others, and be a role model for another generation.
Monika: Vicky, thank you so much for sharing your journey and wisdom with me! Your story is proof that sometimes, to break barriers, you have to bulldoze right through them, with style, of course. From pioneering the legal world to contemplating a musical about your life (which I’d totally watch, by the way), you continue to inspire us all. Keep trailblazing, keep mentoring, and if you ever do write that book, please include a chapter on how to handle naysayers with grace (and maybe a well-timed eye roll). It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you!
All the photos: courtesy of Victoria Kolakowski.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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