Body in Transition: The journey of a transgender student

Editor’s note: This story contains language that may be offensive to some readers.

Vivienne Pope woke up earlier than usual on a winter morning about four months ago. She had to get up early — on top of preparing for a final exam that day, she had to do her hair, finish her makeup and pick out just the right pair of high heels.
A jitter of nerves ran through her stomach as she prepared for the day, but it wasn’t the exam that was stressing her. It was that she was preparing to publicly reveal a difficult-to-deal-with secret to a room full of her peers.
The secret: she’s transgender.
Vivienne Pope, which is not her legal name, is still transitioning to who she wants to be. And it has been a long, hard road that began when she was around age 11.
At the time, she did not have the appropriate words to explain how she felt. What she pieced together was from sources that cast a bad light on being transgender.
“I had a very negative image of it,” she said, “so I tried my very best for a very long time to pretend it wasn’t ‘that way.’”
To try to fix being transgender, Pope participated in stereotypically masculine extracurriculars, like football, hunting and weightlifting.
“I did everything I could think of to go, ‘Yes, I am totally, definitely not what I think I am,’” she said.
Her perspective did not change until senior year of high school, when Pope injured herself weightlifting during football practice. Being bedridden for six months gave her more than adequate time to “look at the internet and surf around and find things.”
This new knowledge was brought with her when she began attending Baker College in Owosso, Mich., and met a new friend.
“She was really accepting, actually knew more about it than I did, and she was the one who took me into it,” Pope said.
Her first “outing” was on the Halloween of 2007. Pope’s friend thought it would be a good idea for her to enter a costume contest. They announced Pope, standing up on the stage in front of the crowd, and didn’t explain what her costume at the time was.
“There were three or four people you could hear in the crowd, ‘She’s not wearing one!’” she said, eyes lighting up as she recalled the moment. “Okay, that’s cool. That is a supportive thing for me to hear.”
But after a year at Baker College, Pope had to move back home to care for her mother, who was having yet another surgery. It was around then that Pope met her ex-fiancée.
“It was almost nine months, [and] we were already talking about what happens when we get married and all of this,” she said.
The pair had even made plans to move in together during summer, but on Dec. 23, 2009, Pope’s fiancée was hit by a drunk driver and killed.
“It’s been a few years; I’ve made peace with it. I’m not happy about it, of course,” she trailed off, looking down again. “That put a real halt on me wanting to do anything at all. I stopped even attempting or thinking about transitioning. I was bitter and angry.”
It wasn’t until the recent reentry of an old high school friend into her life that Pope was encouraged to open up more.
“She actually dragged me to my first shopping trip in almost four years, because like, ‘Look, you’re too damn mopey. We’re dragging you somewhere.’”
By the summer of 2011, Pope became comfortable enough to be open with her gender identity everywhere. Except at home — her family was another story.
“For a long while, they were almost an every-Sunday kind of church family,” Pope said.
“My mom has been outspoken,” she said, “incredibly disparaging. I’ve heard her say things about people in my situation that I wouldn’t repeat in front of sailors. Terrible things.”
Her dad and brother are not much better, Pope said.
“Apparently, where my dad works there is somebody who is transitioning, and my dad refers to him as ‘that damn fag in a dress.’ That’s the polite thing he says.”
Pope said her brother finds it difficult to deal with even “standard” gay or lesbian people.
“I’ve been — not directly told, but it’s pretty easy to infer, given my family — that if they were to find out, I probably wouldn’t have a house. At all. Or family,” Pope said matter-of-factly.
“When I’m at home, when I’m at a place I can’t be me, there’s almost this sense of foreboding. You’ve seen spy movies. … I’m totally suspicious about practically everything,” she said.
It’s these struggles that make her transition difficult. There’s a worry her parents will discover something, or that someone from college will make a comment, and it will give her away.
The fear of being found out has led her to keep her clothes in the trunk of her car, which Pope jokes is “a rolling wardrobe.”
Her family, unfortunately, is not the only group she has to hide from. The family’s doctor is good friends with Pope’s mother.
“If I were to say, ‘Oh hey, by the way, what’s this about estrogen and hormone therapy?’ [my mom] would know within five minutes.”
And hormone therapy isn’t cheap; Pope said her research includes a budget of $75 every two or three weeks just for hormones, not including a visit to an endocrinologist every six months. Without help from her parents and a good insurance company, it is not an option for her.
“It’s one of those futures that I look at, it’s like, ‘If I had a little bit more money coming in, or had a safer place,’ or something like that, it’d be easier, and I would gladly do so. But for the moment I have to pretty much deal with how it stands,” Pope said.
Hormone therapy is only one of the many expenses associated with transitioning, though. Voice lessons are often wanted for those who wish for more feminine voices, because estrogen doesn’t raise the voice like testosterone lowers it.
Sometimes it’s the simple things like voice pitch, or the way of walking, or how to hold one’s hands, that some of her friends — whom she laughingly referred to as “trainers” — try to help her figure out via text messages.
“When we’re out together, I will actually get a text message: ‘You’re doing this wrong. Stop it.’” Pope looked around comically, as if searching the room for answers. “Okaaaaaay. How am I supposed to do it, then? … Give me a manual and a description and I’ll figure it out.”
It’s not always that easy-going as that, though, especially when it comes to shopping for clothes, or even simply walking around in public. It’s an experience Pope calls “an exercise in how much you can take.”
“I know people don’t mean to be mean about it,” she said, “but it’s very hard to, even around campus, not sit there and eat lunch without seeing three, or four, or five people walk by and stare. There’ll be that… ‘[What] the hell is that?’ look as they see me. And at the moment, you just tilt your head down, try and shrink out of the situation, and pretend like you’re not there.”
For as discouraging as it can be at times, there are also things that make it all worthwhile.
Like four months ago, on the winter morning of an exam when she dressed up in high heels. It’s an experience that still makes her glow just talking about it.
“I had decided that I was going to spend that Thursday over at a friend’s place so I had time to prep and get everything done,” she said. “I showed up at 9 a.m., hair, makeup, the full nine yards on, heels clicking down the hallway, and sat down and took my exam.”
Pope said one of the highlights of it was watching everyone’s eyes go wide. And even though she knows not everyone understood why, she said the act made her feel “incredible.”
“It’s those little moments of liberation,” she said, “that I pretty much live for.”