Monika: Are you satisfied with the effects of the hormone treatment?
Lucy: Yes I am, although I wish my tits could get just a little bigger.
Monika: I guess most of us have the same wish. Did you have any transgender sisters or mothers that supported you during the transition?
Lucy: Yes, my guide was (then) 24, a recent graduate of the college where I taught. Despite the 43-year age difference she really was my trans mother. She gave me advice and tips and things to read and a great deal of conversation time, but her example was even more potent–her absolute self-confidence, which helped to boost mine.
Monika: Absolute self-confidence? How did she show it?
Lucy: By just being normal, manifesting no neuroses, and not overplaying anything. She taught me how to ignore gawkers and plow through crowds. She’s an extremely charismatic person.
Monika: As you mentioned she is much younger than you. How did you approach her about your transness?
Lucy: She was the prize pupil of one of my closest friends on the faculty, who died of cancer just as my egg was cracking. She delivered the closing eulogy at the funeral, which I watched on Zoom because of COVID restrictions, and the next day I invited her to lunch.
Monika: I must say I am amazed with the young trans generation. My best friend’s daughter is trans and she asked me to help her. I supported her during the whole transition, I even accompanied her to Thailand for her gender reassignment surgery to the same clinic where I had mine 20 years ago. She underwent the surgery at 18, and I did it at the age of 29. The changes are unbelievable.
Lucy: Yeah, it’s incredible. My son is 24 and “straight as a highway in Texas,” as I often say, but he’s known trans kids since he was 11 and had no problem with my transition, and still doesn’t; he’s currently living with me.
Monika: And in many cases, we are not alone anymore. You mentioned J, your friend of more than 40 years who transitioned two or three years before you. Is her story similar to yours?
Lucy: We are very different people - she’s from the Anglo-Irish upper class, for one thing - but there are many many rhymes and echoes in our trans stories. We both started out thinking we were the only people in the world who had ever wanted to change genders.
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| "I discovered when I started transitioning that my subconscious had been taking notes all my life." |
Monika: Was she living in the closet for all those years before transition or she was more open than you?
Lucy: She was more open. In fact, we both dated the same woman around the same time, and she told me about Jamie’s trunk of girl clothes, which she would change into for sex. That scared me so much that I barely spoke to Jamie for the next forty years, despite the fact that we ran in the same crowds.
Monika: You wrote that we are lepers, and if we are vulnerable we are preyed upon and often killed. What do you think about the present situation of transgender women in your country?
Lucy: It’s just awful. I turned in the manuscript of my book in December 2022, and things have gotten exponentially worse in just that one year. I’m a dual citizen, and I keep thinking that if Trump gets reelected I will have to move back to the EU, and that’s hard because in many ways my life is so settled here.
Monika: I find it difficult to understand such politicians but I find it even more annoying when it comes from other women, for example, women espousing trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERFism) who reject the concept of transgender identities. Why are they afraid of us?
Lucy: I don’t get that either. Early (1970s) proto-TERF sentiments from feminists were another thing that delayed my coming out, since women’s approval was everything to me. But the only reason I can find for upholding the gender binary is to maintain male supremacy, since blurred lines - not to mention desertion from the ranks - makes nonsense of it. Why would feminists want to serve that? Biological essentialism - reducing everything to the question of reproductive faculties - is one possibility, and that comes out as “You can’t have babies, therefore you can’t suffer as much as we have.”
Monika: Transition entails a total revolution in our wardrobes and the way we take care of our looks. This is the type of knowledge that a woman collects throughout her whole life whereas we need to learn it fast. Have you been a diligent student?
Lucy: I have. I discovered when I started transitioning that my subconscious had been taking notes all my life. My wardrobe essentials were established pretty quickly. Makeup took a bit longer, but not that much. What struck me, in fact, is that in retrospect I’d swear that my male style was itself put together with a female eye.
Monika: Do you have your favorite colors or models that you love to wear?
Lucy: I’m both Belgian and colorblind, so my colors are black, charcoal gray, and navy blue.
Monika: I remember copying my sister and mother first, and later other women, trying to look 100% feminine, and my cis female friends used to joke that I try to be a woman that does not exist in reality. Did you experience the same?
Lucy: My mother was no style guide, and I’m an only child, so I modeled myself on my cis women friends.
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| "Will I ever find love again?" |
Monika: By the way, do you like being complimented on your looks?
Lucy: Obviously! Does anyone not?
Monika: When I came out at work, my male co-workers treated me in a way as if the transition lowered my IQ. Did you experience the same? Do you think it happens because we are women or because we are transgender? Or both?
Lucy: I never had that problem, luckily. I was a college professor – very part-time and I’m now retired - at a very liberal school, so I had the support of the president and the faculty. And I’ve always made my primary living from writing, in places where gender was not a factor.
Monika: Are you involved in the life of the local LGBTQ community?
Lucy: No. I have some long-distance older trans friends with whom I correspond, but otherwise I’m 40 years older than anyone in the trans world as I’ve experienced it. I do not belong.
Monika: Could you tell me about the importance of love in your life?
Lucy: It is the most important thing, and that is my obsession now: Will I ever find love again? The single biggest reason for my not coming out until I was 66 was because I thought it would repel women; I’m not interested in men. I tried very hard to make my book not sound like a naked plea for love, but that’s what it is. (And trans women are women.)
Monika: Have you tried online dating? Some of my friends found it useful in finding a partner. Otherwise, we are limited by our location and few people we can meet. In addition, we do not have to come out on the first date because we can notify it in our profile.
Lucy: No, no, no, and no. I joined a few at the suggestion of my ex, and I was horrified by the people they tried to match me with. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I do that again. For that matter, “dating” has never been my thing, and it isn’t how any of my relationships have ever formed. I’m public-facing and meet a lot of people, so I’m hoping for luck that way.
Monika: Are you working on a new book now?
Lucy: Yes. I know what my next three books will be, and none of them are about transgender matters.
Monika: What would you recommend to all transgender women who are afraid of transition?
Lucy: I really can’t adequately convey the satisfaction and serenity I have felt since transitioning, so they will have to take that on faith. It has sustained me through many periods of intense dysphoria. Now and then my dysphoria is so bad that I ask myself: Would you rather go back to being a man? And the answer is always: I’d rather die. To be a woman is worth all the heartbreak and self-doubt and bad mornings.
Monika: This is the best conclusion of the interview! Lucy, it was a pleasure to interview you. Thanks a lot!
Lucy: Thank you, Monika! It has been an honor and a pleasure.
END OF PART 2
All photos: courtesy of Lucy Sante.
© 2024 - Monika Kowalska
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