Transcripts

[CLOTHES HANGERS CLATTERING] DEBRA DAVIS: So how many times have you been in the women's section shopping? [LAUGHS] Not too much?

CHRIS ROBERTS: Some transgender people don't need surgery to align their body with their perceived gender. They need clothes. And one of Debra Davis's favorite stores is Filene's Basement at the Mall of America. A good bargain makes her day.

DEBRA DAVIS: If I get depressed, what do I do? I go shopping to have some fun and see if I can find something I like. Most of the time, I don't. Because if I bought something every time I went shopping, I'd be a poor church mouse. Can't afford to do that. Cute color. Little short. Fun stuff.

CHRIS ROBERTS: To say Debra is a man who dresses in women's clothes, a cross-dresser, would be an insufficient description. Debra, whose age hovers near 50, spends more than half her time expressing her female persona. But anatomically, she is comfortably male and plans to keep it that way.

As we sit in a cafe at Nordstrom's, Debra tells me that the mall is one of the few places she can blend in, provided she doesn't draw attention to herself. Dressed in a brown turtleneck sweater, brown stirrups, and low heels, with a blonde highlighted wig in an updo, Debra is convincing as a woman until you reach her face which, though heavily made-up, has rugged male features. The people who recognize her are usually female teens, and sometimes Debra will chat with them.

DEBRA DAVIS: Of course, they want to know, why do you do this? Are you really a guy? Yeah, I am. Underneath all this, there's a man there somewhere. Are you gay? And I say, well, usually not. I'm attracted to women. Oh, really? And I said, yes, I've been married. Oh, really? And I have children. And it goes from there. They become fascinated. They become fascinated. And the more we get into it, the more they get into it. And usually we leave being friends, which is kind of cool.

CHRIS ROBERTS: As a child, Debra split her recreational time evenly with girls and boys, playing house with girls in the backyard and kick-the-can with boys in front. She excelled in sports in high school and college, and also was an Eagle Scout. She didn't start cross-dressing until she was a married, and later divorced, adult. Debra says the roots of her condition are hotly debated among transgender people, but no one really has a clue.

DEBRA DAVIS: It's not that we've been abused when we were children or conditioned this way, or great Aunt Bertha dressed me this way, or we had an absent father or a domineering mother, or have trouble with alcohol or substance abuse, or-- we can't find a common link. We just cannot find a common link.

And so I think it has to be genetic. I think I had to have been born this way. Sometime when that 23rd chromosome was mixing up the X's and the Y's and the testosterone and the estrogen and all that stuff was being mixed together in my mother's womb, something happened. And because of what happened, that's how I popped out the way I am.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Debra confides the woman in her has become such a strong part of her identity, when she is dressed as a man, at work or running an errand, she sometimes feels like she's cross-dressing as a man. When she removes her female attire, Debra remains.

DEBRA DAVIS: I can be naked in my bedroom, and it can be Debra, which then doesn't make it the clothes. It makes it something that's very deep inside of you.

CHRIS ROBERTS: As a dual-gendered person, Debra lives in a world that at times has embraced and rejected her. She once worked for a computer-related company that employed her as both man and woman. While her gender exploration caused her marriage to disintegrate, her relationships with her ex-wife and two daughters are still intact. Her sexual orientation is one of the most complicated things about her.

DEBRA DAVIS: I would self-identify probably as a lesbian woman, only to myself. But I say that very gently, because there are many folks that would say, no, you can't be. You have the wrong body parts.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Do you think with your body parts, the body parts of a man, that you can express yourself sexually, physically, romantically, with another woman as a woman?

DEBRA DAVIS: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, because it's the mind and the person that's with that other person. And you do physically with each other whatever you need to do, or whatever you want to do, or whatever is fun to do. When the woman is with me, how she usually feels is she is a woman with another woman, but this woman has different parts. And as long as she's not uncomfortable about the fact that my parts are different, then the relationship can flourish.

CHRIS ROBERTS: While some transgender people wish they could live exclusively as one gender or the other, many are accepting their transgender identity as unique and separate. Walter Bockting, coordinator of transgender services at the University of Minnesota's Program in Human Sexuality, thinks this is healthy.

WALTER BOCKTING: One of my clients stated, for a long time, I knew I wasn't a man. Then I thought I was a woman. I tried very hard to be a woman. But now I've discovered many years after surgery that I really am a transsexual. I'm neither man nor woman, and I have elements from both manhood and womanhood. But what I really am is a transsexual, and my body is a transsexual body. And I think we see that more and more, and I think it's a very empowering approach.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Many accept the fact that everyone has male and female qualities in their personality, but are still unwilling to accept the challenge that transgender people pose to the rigid dichotomy of male or female gender roles. St. Paul clinical psychologist Diane Olson says transgender people teach us a lot about ourselves.

DIANE OLSON: I think they show us the worst about our society, in terms of some of the stereotypes that they think they have to live out. The worst about our society in their fears of being found out when they've done nothing wrong. The sense of shame and humiliation, although it's not their fault. So they teach us some of the worst about ourselves.

And also some of the best that could be about us, that you can be a male with a penis and wear a dress if you want, and it really doesn't matter. That you can be a female and never put on a dress and live with a woman who believes she is straight, and it's all right.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Olson predicts that 50 years from now, therapists and researchers will view current discussions on transgender as silly, if only because of the scientific knowledge they will have accumulated by them. For Minnesota Public Radio, this is Chris Roberts.