Transgender Life

The following is an article I wrote...junior year, high school, I believe...that would have made me sixteen. I remember the interview like it was yesterday - it was an amazing experience, especially since just a year or so before I was in school with the daughter of Risa Bear. I want to note that I did take out the name of the daughter and the name of the school we went to together because I wouldn't feel right having her name here for anyone to see, and the school's name is removed for...well, my own paranoid security reasons.

I do beleive that this is the unedited version - just to warn you.

--------

When he was six years old, Richard Bear discovered something about himself.

He was at a summer camp. On the boys side of the camp, he was severely abused by his campmates. His mother - who worked at the camp - brought him over to stay in the women's lodge. While he lay in bed that night, he watched the shadows on the ceiling cast from the next room. The were shadows of gracefully moving women folding clothing. He heard soft, gentle voices. It was such a gentle and comforting sound, like soft singing lullabies. After spending a painful day with the guttural growls of boys who harassed and tormented him mercilessly, this sound was like another language.

"I realized that this was my language. Some how, some kind of mistake had been made," said Richard Bear, who now goes by the name of Risa and works as a researcher at the U of O Knight Library.

Comparing a picture of Richard to Risa Bear, one wouldn't be able to tell if they are the same person.

In many ways, they aren't the same person. One picture portrays a man with a thick, dark beard, large sunglasses, a stained white tee shirt and a CAT Equipment baseball cap. This is Richard.

The other picture portrays a thoughtful woman with neatly combed hair and a soft smile on her face. This is Risa.

"After [the events at camp], I began secretively dressing up as a girl whenever my parents weren't home," said Risa. "I was an only child, so it wasn't difficult."

Richard Bear was born in Atlanta, George in 1949. He was married three times and divorced three times while living in Atlanta. He had one son before moving to Oregon, where he met Patty Buff. They married, and have been together for twenty-nine years, and have had three children.

"During all those years, I needed to be somebody other than I was pretending to be," Risa said. "That can be hard on a person."

At the age of fifty-three, Richard "gave in, so to speak. I thought, 'OK, I have to look into this [gender identity].'"

Three years ago, Richard Bear decided to become Risa Bear. He began taking hormone replacement therapy and seeing counselors.

"It's not an easy thing to get to do," said Risa. "Only just two weeks ago I received my two counseling letters to the surgeons saying we should go ahead."

But more than just hormone replacement therapy and counseling must take place before a man can officially become a woman. The decision came slowly, a process that took nearly fifty years, through three divorces and four marriages.

"I took a picture of myself...just to look at it, and to think. When I was done looking at that photograph, I said 'OK, I'm going to have to do this."

As things progressed, there were inevitably results. Reactions from people, new interactions with family and old friends.

"I came out to a few people in the [Knight Library] in...'03, '04," Risa said. "And as I began to progress [with hormone therapy] my face changed a little bit, my body changed a little bit, behavior changed a little bit."

Hormones are one of the most powerful chemicals in the human body. Hormones can shape one's physical features as well as important aspects of a person's mood or personality. Hormones can be responsible for teen depression, for acne, for hair loss, growth, and, of course, sexual urges and responses. The effects of hormones can be seen in the use of steroids. Steroids can build up the body, bring about violent mood swings, enhance masculine features on women and feminine features on men; cause anger and depression. Hormones are what develop the female body to its shape and the male body to its shape. Similarly, they shape the female and male minds.

"Hormones are psychotropic," Risa said. "They're among the most powerful psychotropics known, and they create their own universe."

As the hormones began to take their effect, it become obvious to people working with Richard in the Library that he was serious about this.

"Someone said to my boss in the department 'He's not kidding, he's really going to do this,'" said Risa. A meeting was set up among the coworkers and the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bi Transgender) advocate on campus, "and it went beautifully."

Soon after, the University sent out an email to notify Risa's coworkers of the change - she was now a woman and to be treated accordingly, even before the operation.

"It's rough out there," Risa said. "I want to blend in as well as I can and not be a problem, and I haven't been a problem in this building and I regard the three hundred people here as allies."

Her family has always been very close. She describes her family as "a tight family in the sense that everybody defends everybody else from the outside world."

Nine years ago, Richard told his wife Patty Buff that he was transgender. "I was able to reveal more and more of it as she got used to more and more of it." She told Patty that she was going to go through with the whole process of becoming female, and Patty didn't leave.

Because Patty and Risa were married before Risa began to go through her gender change, the marriage will remain legal. A legal marriage can only be ended by one of two things: divorce or death. Since Risa is not dying and Patty is not divorcing Risa, the marriage continues to be legal, because when they were married they were man and woman. "We continue to pay taxes together and the works. She gets my Social Security when I kick off."

That law about marriage - "once correctly married, always correctly married" - is one of the only laws that holds true throughout all fifty states. However, other laws involving gender changes can differ from state to state. "While most states will permit a post-operative transsexual to marry a member of the opposite sex...as a girl in Oregon I could marry a boy, but I could no longer marry a girl."

"In some cultures...if they noticed that a boy wanted to be a girl or a girl wanted to be a boy, they would have a tribal meeting and they would say 'OK, here's the dolls, here's the bows and arrows, what are you going to reach for?'" Risa said. "It was decision time. This was at eight or nine years old. They were given the opportunity to choose and they would live accordingly, and nobody thought it was a bad thing."

However, in Judeo, Christian, and Muslim traditions, while there is not a lot of scripture on transsexuals or inter-sexual people, there is a lot of scripture on how to handle gay men. Many are now familiar with this Scripture due to last year's Amendment 36, which forbid gay and lesbian marriage and was passed in Oregon. Scripture on gay men was cited from the Bible often in debates over whether or not this amendment was appropriate for today's society. This argument worked, despite the fact that individual religious beliefs are not supposed to be incorporated into the government or have a hand in controlling the population's private lives.

"The idea is to take [gay males] out and stone them," Risa said. "Now we have the dominions coming along who would like to reinstates the Old Testament as the law of the land and do some stoning."

In today's society, transgender people are seen by some Christians as "an abomination...If you look at the television culture - boys, girls. Boys are always boys and girls are always girls. People will say, 'Well, sure. It says right here in the beginning of Genesis 'Male and female made He them.' But it's not that simple."

"In the Netherlands, scientists and physicians [were] looking at the brains of people who, in life, were transsexuals. In the middle of the human brain...is a structure called the hypothalamus. Far back in the hypothalamus is a little structure called the bedstriasmus... Male to female transsexuals, such as me, have a bedstriasmus half the size of males."

In the nine months of the fetal stages during pregnancy there are two hormonal peaks. The first peak has part in determining the sex of the brain. "Male and female brains are a little different in how they're laid out," said Risa. The male bedstriasumus is larger than the female's. During the first hormonal peak in pregnancy this part of the brain is developed. The second hormonal peak in pregnancy determines secondary sexual characteristics.

"You can't tell by looking at people," said Risa. "You would have to go after something inside the hypothalamus no bigger than the head of a pin in order to be able to find out that there is an actual physical basis for what is going on."

For this reason, being a transsexual is not understood the same way as homosexuality. It is understood as a psychological condition rather than a physical condition.

Risa has researched the world of transsexuals in nearly every light. She has a supportive family and friends who have chosen to stick by her side and help her through her transformation. She's gone through the counseling, hormone replacement therapy, and is ready to make the change permanent. But the average patient for an operation like the one Risa will be undergoing is a male in his mid-twenties. Risa is fifty-six.

"Most people ask how the kids do," Risa said.

Risa's eldest son is thirty-seven, worth six figures and is a Republican. She came out to him with a letter just over a year ago. The response was a letter in which Risa's son stated, "You must think I'm not reading your blog." He supports Risa for doing what she has to be true to herself.

Another of Risa's son's works in the Society for Creative Anachronism as a knight. "It's another world," Risa said. "I told him what was going on and he put his arm around me and said, 'Hey, it's cool. Will you get upset if I call you Papa?'"

The last of Risa's son is autistic, but has been adjusting well to the change. He has been using the name "Risa" rather than "Richard" and the noun "she" rather than "he" more and more often, even in Risa's absence. "He does still holler across the store 'Papa!'" Risa said.

***** Bear, who graduated from ******** **** in 2003, "adjusted beautifully. When I first told her how things were going to be, she said 'You know, I'm going to be going through some pretty difficult years here, I'm only thirteen. Could you be my Dad for another five or six years?'

"I said 'yeah,' I could do that." Risa held off on hormone replacement therapy until ***** graduated. "She gave me a Barbie doll," Risa said with a smile. "She gave me my first make over, she gave me hoops, and she calls me 'Mommy Two.'"

Risa came out to her mother during a conversation in which Risa's mother asked how she was able to get off medication for high blood pressure. Risa responded, "Self-acceptance. I got a lot healthier fast." Risa's mother was also able to connect the dots quickly. "'I've known that [Risa was a transsexual] since you were a little bitty thing,'" Risa recalled her mother saying.

Risa pointed out early on that other's tend to know a transsexual when they see them, before the person themselves even knows. When she was children younger automatically assumed that Richard was gay, because at that age they didn't understand what a transsexual was. Her mother knew before she did, as did her father.

"He was terrified by it, and still is," Risa said. "My Dad...is not speaking to me...He is concerned that word will get around to his buddies in the retirement community that his only son is a weirdo, and that would be more face than he can stand to lose, I think."

But Risa has carried on despite being shunned by her father, knowing that what she is doing is for the best. "I know a transsexual who is eighty years old," she said. "He says 'If I had my life to do over, I wouldn't be George, I would be Susan.' ...He has never reached out to be himself...herself. The pronouns don't do it."

It's strange, to look at someone and to think about their life, what it must have been like to look in a mirror and think "this is not who I am supposed to be." How surreal could that moment be? What is it like to see shadows dancing on a wall in golden lights, and hear gentle, singing voices and think, "This is my language"?

Risa is an activist for people like herself, people who are trying to find who they really are. Hopefully, her story will help some people see that transsexuals are people, with lives and emotions and hearts. And what's more, hopefully her story will let others begin to understand who they are, and not be afraid of it.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

 •    •    •    •    •    •    •