Monika: Do you remember your first job interview as a woman?
Shelli: Oh yes, I was terrified, terrified! But I had very good credentials and references (my former bosses in Saudi were quite sympathetic, they had liked me and my work as a male for the two decades I worked and lived in Saudi Arabia, so they gave me good references, using my new name, and said nothing about me having been male). But I thought I would die. Still, I got the job, to my amazement. But during the full year that I transitioned back in San Francisco, I did not work at all, luckily I had savings from the years working for the oil company.
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?
Shelli: Oh yes, I had some eye-opening, conflicting experiences! I have a degree in electrical engineering with a focus on computers and eventually grew into a focus on software development. In Saudi Arabia, I became a Microsoft Certified Software Engineer and led a team of developers to roll out an amazing application that was used all over the company for a few years. It took a lot of legacy data from the mainframe and processed it into the PC platform. It was called “MIS95” for Management Information System ‘95 and ran on WIN95.
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| "One thing about creativity, it is always evolving if you “get out of the way” and let nature take its course by working through you." |
My experience was always that if there was a technical problem to solve, I would almost invariably come up with an elegant solution and bring it up at a meeting. Usually, it was the route that was agreed upon. However, back in the USA and now Shelli, I recall sitting around a big conference room table with the other software engineers on our team, all male of course, and we had a problem to solve. I quickly saw a great solution and began talking. I noticed some of them were not even paying attention, but looking at their laptops!
When I finished articulating the design that would solve the trick, there was a long silent pause, then one of the guys started discussing what they had been talking about prior to my contribution, in other words, my proposed solution was completely discounted and ignored! Well, my reaction was also surprising, I thought, “Wow, I’ve actually made it, they are treating me like a woman!!” ... ironic eh?
Monika: What would you advise to all transwomen looking for employment?
Shelli: I have no idea what to advise others. Just have courage and keep trying, and eventually you will find a job. I had actually thought when I began transitioning, that I would never have a good software job again. So as a failsafe, I planned to learn how to do nails and work at a nail salon! I would have done that (at least I speculated in my fantasy of transitioning) because I would feel “whole” at being able to work and be seen as a woman! A bit stupid. But you know, coming off of testosterone (via spironolactone) and taking estrogen, we all initially are thrust into puberty again, an even more intense, accelerated puberty, which clouds of thinking a great deal, makes us feel more optimistic but has a lot of downsides too.
Monika: Are you involved in the life of the local LGBTQ community?
Shelli: No, not at all. For the last 12 years, I lived in relative isolation in the mountains in northern California, completing my Ph.D. dissertation and then writing books. I lived there with my wife, Susanne, who is also an m2f transgender woman. We met when I was in Saudi Arabia and she in San Francisco, via an early online email chat group called “The Saturday Night Sewing Circle” of about a dozen of us in transition, most of them in Canada and the USA.
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| "For the last 12 years, I lived in relative isolation in the mountains in northern California." |
Monika: Could you tell me about the importance of love in your life?
Shelli: Love is very important, not the physical kind so much, but the emotional, empathic kind. Susanne and I are still deeply in love, though the flavor has changed and matured (like a fine wine?) since we met in 1999, my year of transition. She began her transition a year before me while supervising a crew of hard hat emergency services tow truck drivers on the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland to San Francisco. She had a more difficult time than I did in her transition, which was “on the job.”
In fact, we grew close when one Christmas even I read her email about her considering suicide, stepping into the bridge traffic, because her family and her ex-wife would not see her for Christmas. I talked her out of it and thus became her partner for life, somehow! When I flew back a few weeks later to see my therapist and have some electrolysis, we met physically for the first time and it was love at first sight! I don’t know what I would have done without her companionship and support. We share the same sense of humor and high level of intelligence and many interests.
Monika: What would you recommend to all transgender women that are afraid of transition?
Shelli: Get over the fear and just do it, one step at a time! It will make all the difference in your world.
Monika: My pen-friend Gina Grahame wrote to me once 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’s where they begin. Do you agree with this?
Shelli: Yes, I agree.
Monika: Shelli, it was a pleasure to interview you. Thanks a lot!
Shelli: Thank you for your work in offering this platform for some of us to express ourselves.
END OF PART 2
All the photos: courtesy of Shelli Renee Joye.
© 2023 - Monika Kowalska
More info about the book.
The book is available via Amazon.
The book presents the transition story of Shelli Renee Joye, an American scientist and academic. The publication is "an intense journal covering two years of transitioning from male to female, including a year of "telehealth" counseling daily correspondence with a world-leading gender therapist."
Shelli Renee Joye is the author of 10 books exploring the practical links between the physics of consciousness and Perennial philosophy. Dr. Joye attended Rice University on a physics scholarship and after graduating with a BS in Electrical Engineering, she met John Lilly and joined him in his work to explore interspecies communication.
While living in New York, Dr. Joye was a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and after moving to San Francisco to do graduate work for an M.A. in Asian philosophies where she studied Patanjali’s Sutras in the original Sanskrit with Dr. Ramamurti Mishra. She recently completed her doctorate at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the interdisciplinary Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program.
For more info on transgender biographies, visit TRANSGENDER BIOGRAPHIES.
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