Becoming Jennifer An Interview with Jennifer Finney Boylan BY MARK GRIFFIN

Jennifer Finney Boylan has looked at life from both sides now. "I’ve gone from someone who had a secret to someone who doesn’t have one," Boylan says. Rest assured, Boylan hasn’t been dabbling in insider trading and she isn’t harboring those elusive weapons of mass destruction we’ve heard so much about. Truth be told, Boylan is a transsexual, who chronicles her complex quest for identity in She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (Broadway Books), an intimate memoir arriving in bookstores this month.

A charismatic co-chair of the English Department at Colby College, the author spent over 40 years as James Boylan — dedicated husband, devoted father, and celebrated novelist (The Planets). Consumed with an intense desire to shift genders, Boylan endured decades of concealed feelings before divulging the details of his condition to family, friends, and campus colleagues.

"I think in some ways, the biggest change for me is not going from male to female," Boylan observes. "It’s going from a person who lives in their head to a person who lives out in the world."

After therapeutic counseling, Boylan underwent sexual-reassignment surgery in 2002. "The surgery is the thing that everyone fixates on, but it’s really kind of like the last piece of the puzzle. More than anything else, this is a medical condition," Boylan explains. "It’s something that you’re born with and no one really understands why, but it’s certainly nothing that you do in order to be clever, post-modern, or strange."

As Boylan details in her book, becoming Jennifer was not some whimsical cosmetic extravagance, but a deeply personal, life-altering event. "Being transgendered is about being female and not being feminine," Boylan says. "As a woman, there are plenty of things about me that are characteristically masculine. I play in a rock-and-roll band and I like to fish. I like to tell jokes and I’m loud, you know? Still, none of that denies me my essential being as female."

In addition to the heavy emotional toll exacted by gender transformation, there is also a rigorous process of physical reconditioning involved. For example, in order to develop an authentic and aesthetically pleasing female voice, Boylan enlisted the assistance of Dr. Katalin Vecsey from the Department of Theater and Rhetoric at Bates College. Rechristened "Tania Vaclava," Dr. Vecsey appears in She’s Not There as the helpful Hungarian vocal coach from Lewiston.

"With Jenny and with other [male-to-female] transsexual students, the main goal is to achieve a more feminine voice," Dr. Vecsey affirms. "I told Jenny that the most important thing is to find a natural voice that is appropriate to her age, profession, and personality." Still, old habits can be hard to break and speaking in a man’s lower register for over 40 years is no exception.

"In the early stages of voice retraining, reinforcement is very important," Dr. Vecsey notes. "When they first come to see me, most transgendered people are talking with a very squeaky voice or they sound very breathy, using the so-called Marilyn Monroe technique, which is unfortunately recommended in some transgendered literature." Dr. Vecsey worked with Boylan to perfect an optimal pitch and varied inflection, using actress Helen Hunt’s voice as a model.

Oftentimes, the most daunting challenges faced by those in the transgendered community involve raising the required funds for high-priced psychotherapy sessions or expensive reassignment surgeries. According to Antoinette Pezet, President of Transsupport of Maine, the fees involved are unusually prohibitive.

"Every transgendered person is alike only in our struggle to obtain the necessary mental and medical health care," Pezet says. "There is no insurance that addresses the special health-care needs of the transgendered . . . It’s a misconception that it’s a simple road to reassignment surgery. It is only if you have the bucks and can go where transsexuals are treated."

Boylan agrees and adds, "There’s a real socioeconomic class issue in this. Just because you’re working at Arby’s doesn’t mean you’re any less deserving of happiness than if you’re a college professor . . . Young people who are transgendered are at a tremendous disadvantage because unless they have a huge trust fund, where are they going to get that kind of money? In order to get safely from one side of the gender divide to another, it does take a lot of resources and many of those resources are just personal. You have to be able to really manage the transition yourself. (see Tony Giampetruzzi’s "The search for services," April 10, 2003)"

Thirty-five years ago, Gore Vidal published his satiric masterpiece, Myra Breckinridge. The novel featured a vivacious transsexual protagonist and became a major bestseller. Already the buzz among publishing insiders is that Boylan’s She’s Not There will attract the same kind of attention while offering hope to readers who may be grappling with similar identity issues.

"It’s like being born blind or with perfect pitch," Boylan suggests. "It’s something you have to adjust to, learn about, and try to see as a gift." It should be noted that Boylan recently celebrated her 45th birthday though, of course, she had already given herself the most amazing present of all: becoming whole.

Mark Griffin collaborated with Dr. Pamela Brill on The Winner’s Will, to be published by McGraw-Hill in 2004. He can be reached at markgriffin@mpbc.org

Jennifer Finney Boylan reads, at the Portland Public Library, Aug. 20. Call (207) 871-1710.