Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Your Transgender Friends* *But Were Afraid to Ask Interview by Ann Walton Sieber

Raised in Beaumont, astrologer Lilly Roddy moved to Houston in the ’70s as an openly bisexual man. It’s only been in the last four years that she’s been out as her true transsexual self. She has written the astrology column for OutSmart for six years. President of TATS and secretary of the Unity Committee, she speaks calmly in a lilting Texas drawl that says I’ve found peace.

So what exactly does transgendered mean?

Generally, it’s an umbrella term that means different gender. It means cutting across traditional gender lines–drag queens, drag kings, transvestites, cross dressing, fetishists. It’s a term that would apply to anyone [who is a] genderbender.

So if somebody just occasionally dressed in the clothing of the opposite sex, they would be considered transgendered as well.

Yes. So, it’s really a vast term. And it could be anyone. Mostly it’s not applied to women very often because it’s acceptable for women to wear men’s clothes, while it’s not acceptable for men to wear women’s clothes.

How did you go from being Phil to being Lilly, and why did you decide to do that?

It was not a decision to go through transition. It was a decision to no longer hide who I was. I always knew I was a transsexual since I was eight, but I didn’t know what to do with that. As I got older, I thought that gender identity and sexual identity were the same things. So then for a long time in high school, I would say I identified as straight male. When I got into college, I lived as a gay male for about nine years. For a period, I easily dated men and women and started to identify as male bisexual, because I still didn’t know what to do with my transsexualism.

What are the steps you and anybody who decided to transition would go through?

Normally you work on self-acceptance combined maybe with or without therapy, taking that image out to the outer world–restaurants, clubs, bars. In my own case it was a process of seeing a therapist, telling my family, telling my clients, beginning to live as myself full-time. Electrolysis. Eventually hormones. Changing my name and gender. And then, for me, surgery. Some people do all of that without the benefit of a therapist. Some people are non-operatives.

So they don’t go through with the surgery?

Correct. Or they go through versions of it, where you would have the testes removed to cut down on the testosterone production.

But the penis would remain?

Yes. And then there are some people who have this surgery and still live as male. I can’t say for FTMs [female to males]. They tend to have a similar process of realization, albeit opposite. And they often take testosterone. May or may not have the multiple surgeries they must have. They have to start with a mastectomy, and then the implants for the male organ, which are not well-perfected yet. It involves sort of more devices than it would for a male-to-female transsexual.

Why do some people decide not to have the surgery?

First of all, the surgery does not represent that you’re a female. It represents that you’re a transsexual. It’s plastic surgery. They don’t implant a uterus and fallopian tubes and a womb, things like that. It’s a cosmetic, external creation. I think that for some people the idea of gender is very internal. What they are externally is not important.

Was there one point in the process for you when you felt your scales had tipped and you felt like a woman?

For me, in the beginning, there was such a need to feel passable that people didn’t think I was a man in a dress. The thing that was un-nerving was when I was in the early part of my transition, when sometimes I would be in guy clothes–what I call "drabwear"–and people would refer to me as "she." For example, one day I was driving to Dallas to do some electrolysis. You have to let your beard grow, and I thought I looked very guy-like. I didn’t put on any makeup. I had jeans and a T-shirt, and I set my hair in a ponytail, which I had done for years. So when I stopped at a roadside park to go to the bathroom, I went into the men’s room. It was very crowded and when I walked in, every man turned around and stared at me. And I went Oh god, I’m in the wrong place. But at that point I didn’t feel comfortable going to the ladies room, so I just went ahead and used the men’s, and tried to act as butch as I could. I was basically a cross-dresser for 45 years, because I dressed as a male.

I like that. How much money does transitioning cost, and what kind of hours are we talking about?

I’m not proud to tell you this, but I am going to tell you anyway. So far I’ve spent $14,000 on electrolysis. And since it’s $100 an hour, if you divide that by one hundred, you’ll get the number of hours of electrolysis I’ve had. [Editor’s note: 140 hours.] Depending on where you go, probably a reasonable average cost for just the SRS, Sexual Reassignment Surgery, is $15,000 to $17,000. There is a variety of things you can do–implants, tracheal shaves, facial restructuring, eyebrow lifts. Hormones probably $60 a month. Maybe therapy. Lawyers for your legal changes you go through. And never mind starting over and having a brand-new wardrobe, which is incredibly expensive.

Does it hurt?

Yes. I go to Dallas and they deaden your face. So they do an enormous amount of work at one time. The shots hurt. The electrolysis doesn’t hurt because your face is deadened, but then you’re swollen for two, three, five, eight days. And although I can’t tell you it’s painful, it’s really annoying. But the physical pain pales in comparison to the emotional pain of hiding it, repressing it. In the beginning, [you go through] a narcissistic phase where you move into micro management of how you look, how you act, how you dress, how you talk, how you respond. Everything you do is a first-time experience. Frequently, you stand there, you don’t know what to do. So, oftentimes you seem dumb.

What do you mean?

Well, like, a man and a woman go to get on an elevator. So the man stands and waits for the woman to get off. So, if you live as a man, you’re used to waiting for the woman to exit. But as the woman, there are also cues that I have to pay attention to. Are they going to let me get off the elevator first? You know, because sometimes I just stand there, and they extend their arm, gesturing, Go ahead. And other times when you wait, they look at you like, What planet are you from? So there’s a lot of subtlety in the gender cues, so the first stage is extreme self-consciousness, narcissism.

Then what’s the stage after that?

What I called getting my life back. Where I finally had enough life experience to go places and to not have to think all the time. But I am still learning every day.

So it’s like you have to think through each situation.

I went to Rockin’ Robin to buy a guitar tuner. So this guy said, Can I help you, dear? And he used the most simplistic of terms to explain the different tuners, took a great amount of time in explaining each one. Now, one part of me feels like he’s talking down to me, like I’m not going to understand him. Another part of me is incredibly grateful that somebody would take the time to explain these things to me–things that I wouldn’t have known as a guy, just because I lived that life, and there were expectations around what you’re supposed to know.

Using bathrooms, that seems like a perennial problem. What were some of the problems you encountered?

Well, I would say on that issue alone that all the problems were mine. In the beginning, when I was dressed as a guy, I went to the men’s room; when I was dressed as a woman, I went to the women’s room. There are enormous different social expectations in each bathroom. In the men’s room, you never stare at another man in the eyes. You can only stare from their throat to maybe their fourth button of their shirt. No higher, no lower. And that’s how strong homophobia is in the bathroom. The women’s room is just, it’s a totally different place. People talk to you, they comment, they tap on the wall, ask Do you have any toilet paper? So you’re just not used to that.

Women didn’t have troubles with you being in the restroom?

Well, what I learned was that no one saw me as a man.

In transitioning, what happens to people’s sexual orientation? If you start out being attracted to a woman, do you remain attracted to women?

When people remove the artificial boundaries around gender, people are more willing to look at options. But then I think they come back to wherever they’re actually really comfortable.

What would you like people to know about what is hard about being transgendered?

Depending on others for your sense of self-acceptance. We all want to be loved and have our place. And just to be considered normal. Not special, not trans anything. A lot of times people get to the end of the transition and we call them woodworkers–because they blend back into the woodwork and disappear. It becomes tiring, boring, to constantly have to re-explain every part of your life all the time.

And what would you like to tell people non-transgendered people, how can they be good allies to people who are trans?

Not make a big deal. Treat the person as the gender that they are. And don’t be afraid to ask questions if you have them. Most trans people are more than willing to share enormous parts of themselves.

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