Audio Interviews and Transcripts

Interview with Jenny Doe
by Natalie Iannetta

The thing about oral histories is that sometimes the subject chooses to remain anonymous. And it is up to the historian to preserve that anonymity out of respect for the subject. Below is the interview Natalie conducted with someone we will call Jenny Doe. She is much younger than Jane Doe but faced a lot of the same discrimination in school and in the world. Both experienced failed suicide attempts and depression because they didn't feel as if they belonged. Jenny had a much less accepting family; her mother completely refused to believe that she was a trans woman when she came out, and she avoided even having the conversation with her father. You can read a part of the interview below in the transcript typed out by the student or listen to a select part of the interview in the audio control below.


From 18:04-19:03

Natalie: What were some of the reasons your mom gave you for not being trans

Jenny: The reasons why I am definitely not and definitely shouldn’t be, they are sort of interrelated all of them. Some of them were like you know you might not be traditionally masculine, but there are lots of ways to be a man and like I was just like well yeah but none of them work for me and none of them are correct. The worst one was and this is probably the one with the most relevance to what you asked me before about my dad, she said you know well if this happens, well what is your dad going to think, what are all your relatives going to think and all the rest. Well that was the point where I realized the conversation couldn’t go any further. Because I just felt like if she puts the well-being of everyone else in the family above that of her own kid, it’s not going to happen. There is no way to force it at this point, or if I do force it, it will do more harm than good, she is just straight up not ready to hear this right now.

From 22:15-26:10

Jenny: It is sort of a slow daunting realization. Like I think there is the standard trans narrative a lot of people have, that like you know you just know from the beginning and that’s definitely not my case. Like I probably knew at some point and put all the individual pieces together, but just like um I found out like as a kid, there was definitely something odd. Just because I noticed the way I interacted with people just was not the same in some way that I [inaudible] just the way I interacted with other boys my age um would not really. I would always get weird looks and everyone would always be like what a weird fucking kid this is, and I always thought, you know, that probably a part of it was the fact that I was supper nerdy and super introverted, and even among the other nerdy kids, I was always you know a little more off; it was never something like you know until that aha moment where you know the game gender and all the rest, there was never a definite moment where I was just like, you know, that’s definitely it. Um there were definitely moments where I was just like these individual things um are definitely different. I never really had much angst over them. Like for example the first time I heard the word fag was in uhm like 5th grade and of course everyone is using it and the first time I hear, you know, what it means I thought, you know, that doesn’t make any sense as an insult. And I just refused to partake and of course that makes me weirder by everyone else. Um but I, you know, I heard that and I researched more stuff about queer things, um figured out I was bisexual by twelve, thirteen but I never had any angst about my sexuality; if only because the angst of my sexuality paled in comparison to the angst about my gender, like there was just not as much of the former. I had this problem solved check this box move on there is nothing really to um nothing else to say about this particular thing there is that other problem that makes everything else much more overbearing.

Natalie: So I find it interesting though that you said your narrative doesn’t really apply to other trans people’s narratives. I am going to disagree with that from the, you know, the interviews I done and my own experiences and everything. Your narrative is in fact similar to the majority of real, I don’t want to say real trans people but the trans people that aren’t shown in the media.

Jenny: I suspect that it is more common than people think. Probably because like even if you don’t fit that narrative, for the longest time to be transgender you had to pretend to fit that narrative. But um I just meant that it is different from the archetypical one. Yeah I am sure it is not the same and I’ve talked to other trans people and their narratives are more similar to mine but, you know, and they basically have two versions of their narrative: the version for other trans people and the version for cis people.

Natalie: And so with that narrative since that is such a big narrative in the trans community; when you are doing all the reading, did you, did the difference between your narrative and the common cis people conception of what a trans person is, did that ever worry you, that you know I didn’t fit that?

Jenny: There definitely were moments where I was like uh well you know there isn’t, I wasn’t, what I mean, the one that I was given first that there is the conception that someone who is trans is not only non-conforming but violently non-conforming at a very early age, like vehemently throw away all the boys’ toys and grab the Barbies and there is that kind of doubt that like I never did that um probably part of the reason for my doubt and probably part of the reason I was like yeah I am not sure about this.