Monika: Tell me about any discrimination you have faced personally.
Kelly: The discrimination that I personally face is access to my health care insurance benefits. It is currently legal for my employer to deny any claim regarding any transgender health care. Any therapy, doctor visit, medication, procedure, or surgery will be excluded from payment. Thus my wife, a cis woman, and I could visit the same therapist, and her appointment would be paid for, and mine would not.
I think the unfortunate reality is that unless transgender rights are guaranteed by the federal government and enforced by the legal system, transgender humans will always face some discrimination. As transgender people are estimated to be only about 0.6% of the total population, we are a very misunderstood group. We are easily discriminated against due to unfounded fears, and unless we have strong allies, we will always struggle.
Monika: Fashion often says a lot about a person. Do you like it, and what kind of outfits do you usually wear? Are there any designers, colors, or trends you favor?
Kelly: I love fashion! Well, I suppose accurately I love personal style. I look at fashion as the larger fashion world of designers, manufacturers, fashion shows, etc. I really don’t keep up on things like that. However, I am interested in my personal style and the style of others. I am more concerned with how others can take any clothes, from any era, and make them look cool, fresh, and relevant for today.
My personal style preferences are for classic lines and patterns as well as a very large amount of black and white. I have a wide variety of other colored items in my wardrobe, but most of my clothes are black or white. Typical outfits for me are dresses, matched with black leggings in the winter, and a variety of heeled shoes. I love boots, booties, Mary Janes, and sandals for the most part.
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| "I am deeply in love with my wife and have been so for the vast majority of my life." |
Monika: Makeup is another way to express yourself. Do you often experiment with it?
Kelly: With my makeup I follow a fairly standard routine. I have my foundation, setting spray, setting powder, eye shadow primer, and blush that are all almost the same thing every day. However, I love playing with my eye makeup. I have blue-green eyes that tend to pair well with earth tone shadow colors, but I will try a variety of things on my eyes to mix it up from time to time.
Monika: On a related note, how do you feel when someone compliments your looks?
Kelly: I love being complimented on my looks. I have vast anxieties and insecurities, and most of them are centered on my appearance. Thus I love it when anyone helps to quell my inner critics by complimenting my looks. There are many who may think that behaving in such a manner is nothing but vanity. However, for many transgender people, receiving compliments on our appearance is highly affirming.
Being able to see my image finally accurately reflect who I have been on the inside is intensely valuable for me. I know that to many I appear as though I am filled with very strong confidence. But the reality is that I am like many transgender people who are in the middle of their transition, and I struggle with my mental health and staying positive. Every bit of outside help is greatly appreciated.
Monika: Do you remember your first job interview as a woman? Tell me how it went.
Kelly: I am a middle school math teacher and have been at my current school site for the last 15 years. I transitioned over the summer break. Some of my students had me as Mr. Denithorne in 7th grade, and then in 8th grade they had me again, but now as Mrs. Denithorne. It was actually the best school year I had had up to that point.
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| "Being able to see my image finally accurately reflect who I have been on the inside is intensely valuable for me." |
Monika: Many transgender women search for employment and face an uphill battle. What advice would you give them?
Kelly: I would advise transgender humans looking for employment to understand that most employers are first looking for someone to be professional, and most other concerns are secondary.
Discrimination against the transgender community is a known fact, however many transgender people are very gainfully employed. Be a professional, be prepared for the interview, and be prepared to work hard at the job. Be prepared as well to work twice as hard as others and get half of the credit. That last one tends to just be a female thing, but it still happens to most trans people actually.
Monika: How involved are you in the life of your local LGBTQ community?
Kelly: Where I live there is not a large LGBTQ+ community presence. I am involved somewhat with some of the transgender programs offered by a local LGBTQ+ center in a town that is about an hour away from me.
Monika: Love is a theme that runs through many life stories. How important is it in yours?
Kelly: For me personally, love has been very important. I am deeply in love with my wife and have been so for the vast majority of my life. We first met each other when we were just 8 years old and our parents had enrolled both of us in the local swim team. We started dating about 7 years later, when we were about 15, and we got married 10 years after that, when we were about 25 years old. So for me personally, love is a very important part of my life.
I think it is that way as I struggled to feel loved by my parents while growing up. Part of that was that I was trans and in the closet, and part of it was that many parents during that time struggled to bond deeply with their children. So as an adult I vowed to make love an important part of my life. However, I can see that for others, it could possibly not have any importance whatsoever towards their happiness, and that is great.
Monika: Many transgender ladies write their memoirs. Have you ever thought about writing such a book yourself?
Kelly: Yes, and actually I just completed a rough draft of my book. Right now it is ridiculously too long, and I need to work on cutting out all of the boring parts of my life, hahaha. My hopeful publication date would not be until about two or three years from now, if I can ever figure out how to pull it all together and get it finished.
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| Kelly's website "Unordinary Style" |
Monika: Looking ahead, what is your next step at the moment, and where do you see yourself in the next 5 to 7 years?
Kelly: My next step in my transition will be GCS in the summer of 2022. For now I am working on electrolysis and trying not to lose my mind while I am waiting. For the next 5 to 7 years, I see myself continuing to teach and figure out who I am. I have spent so many years trying to hide from my own reality that sometimes I am not totally sure that even I really know who I am underneath all of the layers. It is sure to be a fun process trying to figure it out, though.
Monika: Some transgender women are held back by the fear of transition. What would you recommend to them?
Kelly: I too was super afraid. That is why I didn’t even try to transition until I was 45 years old. What I am upset about is that I didn’t try sooner, but I am thrilled that eventually I did. I got myself to actually act on my gender dysphoria by telling myself that I wasn’t going to transition, that all I was doing was trying estrogen, which is really true.
You can try things like estrogen and hormone blockers, and if you don’t like it, you can stop. It does not have to be an all or nothing situation. You can try it, it’s okay. It won’t immediately do anything, most likely. The thing that happened with me, though, is that by the end of day one, I knew I would never go back to operating on testosterone ever again. I liked estrogen that much. So, just be aware, you may like what you try so much that you will end up changing just about everything in your life and deciding that transition is in fact the very thing that you need to do.
Monika: My pen friend Gina Grahame once wrote to me that we should not limit our potential because of how we were born or by what we see other transgender people doing. Our dreams should not end on an operating table; that is where they begin. Do you agree?
Kelly: I completely agree with that. Though I have yet to have my full bottom surgery, transition itself is way more than just a mere surgery, or even a set of surgeries. The mental changes that I have gone through over the last four years have been huge. But the bigger picture, that our dreams should be bigger than simply transitioning, is totally true. What are you going to do with your life once you have finished transitioning? So many transgender humans focus so much on the transition process that they end up lost, alone, and confused once everything is said and done. Don’t let the entire process end up being a letdown for yourself.
Monika: Kelly, it was a pleasure to interview you. Thank you so much!
Kelly: I super appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me. Thank you for allowing me to babble on about my version of being transgender.
END OF PART 2
All the photos: courtesy of Kelly Denithorne.
© 2021 - Monika Kowalska
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