My first real experience with transsexuality happened in late 1999. I flew up to Boston [1] to visit G & E, a couple I knew in college (said trip was also the impetus for the name of this journal, but that's another story) and one evening, both G & E approached with perhaps the four most dreaded words in our language: “We have to talk.”
The “talk,” as it turned out, was G coming out to me as a transsexual. At the time, G had just started undergoing hormone treatment and counseling so G still looked pretty much like I always knew G, so it was a bit of a shock to find a friend of mine who've I known for (at that time) seven years was no longer a “he” but a “she.”
At the end of the revelation, G asked if I had any questions.
I thought for a few moments. I've always been a “live and let live” type of guy and as long as what you do doesn't hurt anyone and everyone involved is of legal age and consents, so be it. If G feels better as a woman than a man, okay. I didn't feel it was my place to ask why, and having just started, the when was still a ways off. Their Bostonian friends were cool with this. In the end, I asked the only question that I felt I could ask: “So, are you changing your name?” (answer: no. G kept her birth name; and I still sometimes think of G as “he”—old habits die hard. Katelynn [2] I have always thought of as a “she” but it was easier since I've only known her as a “she”)
I also thought, Cool! Two women who are legally married!
[1] http://www.cityofboston.gov/