And God Said … Be a Man
I couldn’t tell you if God was a tenor, a bass or a soprano. There was no echoing, booming voice. But it wasn’t small. The words just came to me. But not the way a thought comes to you. All I got were three words:
“End your transition.”
I was walking through an alley on my way to work at Einstein Bros. in Lawrence. It was dark, maybe 2:30 in the morning in January. Every morning, I would walk to work and pray. But I hit a point where it was a one-sided conversation, which wasn’t the way it had been. But I still prayed. I knew there was a reason that God wasn’t talking to me.
Hearing those words stopped me in my tracks. I felt really uncomfortable. I tried to reason with God, but, of course, that was human reason, which doesn’t stand up to divine foresight. I decided to drop it until later. I was like, We will revisit this after work. And we did. When I got home after work, I went to the basement and prayed.
I had mixed feelings about the message. I wanted to hear from you, God, but this isn’t what I wanted to hear. Suddenly, abruptly, I’m expected to end my transition from Jessica to who I am today, Claven Snow.
Growing up, I would always try to pass as a boy. I would make beards out of shaving cream. I would make bow ties out of the bows my mother would put in my hair. I’d cut my hair short because Mom wouldn’t take me in for short haircuts.
At first, I did not obey. I was praying the type of prayers that you hear prayed in Lamentations, where Jeremiah is like, “I know I’m never going to have peace until I listen and obey, but I don’t care. I’ll deal with that.”
God broke it down. If I wasn’t going to listen, He was going to withhold His presence from me. And that was horrible and heartbreaking. I was like, OK, fine, I will end my transition. I finally stopped taking testosterone in February 2005.
When I started presenting as a female again, I wasn’t happy. Some people thought I was suffering from schizophrenia. But I wasn’t. People asked me, “You’re wearing a skirt. Do you identify as female now?” I wasn’t going to tell them that God told me to stop my transition. People get committed for saying God spoke to them. If someone asked why I went off “T,” I told them that I went off for spiritual reasons. If someone wanted me to elaborate, I’d tell them.
Then I started passing out. The first time I passed out was at home. I wasn’t sure if I fell asleep watching TV. Then it happened at work. My boss encouraged me to go to the doctor.
When I found out that my heart valve would have blown and I could have died if I hadn’t stopped taking testosterone, that explained everything to me. My transition was going to kill me physically, not spiritually. It turned out who I was was fine. What I was putting in my body wasn’t. I felt that I got a pretty clear OK from God to start living as a man.
I didn’t have insurance to cover heart surgery or money to post upfront. I had a hard time getting surgery because there were a few doctors who wouldn’t see me because I didn’t have any money. Isn’t that creepy? If you don’t have enough money, you can’t get heart surgery and you die. How many people die waiting for surgery? A fair amount, probably. I have a really good doctor who searched around for a surgeon after surgeon No. 1 denied me. My surgery was on April 19, 2006.
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For a week, I was at KU Med Center. They replaced my aortic valve, aortic root and part of my aortic arch. My aortic root and arch were totally chewed up. They weren’t good anymore. The fact that they were so chewed up and not working caused the valve to fail. The root and arch were replaced with mesh tubing. My valve is made of space-grade plastic that’s supposed to never wear out. If you get down near my chest, you can hear it click.
If I hadn’t obeyed those three words, I wouldn’t be here right now. There’s obviously something more I’m meant to do. Daily, I try to discern what God wants me to do. It may not be anything big. It might be that I’m supposed to give a blanket to a homeless man who would die without it. It might be to preach the Gospel to someone who hasn’t heard it. It could be any number of things.
I remember telling my mom that I wanted to change my name. She was in the kitchen making dinner in a big pan. She always cooked goulash and spaghetti in it. I was sitting in the doorway of the pantry. I was roughly 4 years old.
My given name is Jessica. I was never comfortable with that name. I never felt like it fit me.
Mom wanted to know what name I wanted instead.
“I like the name James,” I told her. “And I like the name Brian.”
“Those are boys’ names,” she told me.
To me, that was the point.
My mom saw it as a phase. She thought I was experimenting, like some little kids do. You know, they’re like, I’m a boy now. I’m a girl now. I don’t know if the experiment stuck with me or if I’m truly wired differently. But I always related to myself as a boy. I liked to play baseball. I wasn’t any good, but I liked to play. I preferred G.I. Joes over Barbies. I wasn’t into makeup, and I didn’t want to wear dresses.
In second grade, I told the teacher that I wanted to be a man when I grew up. My parents freaked out and sent me to therapy. I learned right away that that wasn’t the thing to be saying. My therapist was named Donna. I more or less pretended that it was a phase. Donna believed me, and my parents bought it. Donna got her pay, and I went on being trans but quiet.
During puberty, all of the secondary sex characteristics kicked in. I was identifiably female. So I was like, OK, if I’m going to be female, I ought to be pretty. I wore makeup, went to dances and dated guys. The guys I dated I related to more as friends, and a couple of them turned out to be gay. I guess you know who’s not going to expect you to sleep with them.
I have some pictures from that time, and I didn’t look abnormal. If you look at the pictures, I look like a high school girl. Internally, it wasn’t me, so I just gave up.
I stopped trying to be feminine and wearing makeup my junior year. My parents called me Jessica until my sophomore year of high school. Finally, I refused to answer to Jessica. I started going by C.J. Most people were like, “That’s C.J. She’s a lesbian.”
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But I didn’t decide to transition until I was in my 20s. I didn’t even know transitioning was an option. Yeah, I’d seen Donahue and Oprah, so I knew it could be done. I guess I assumed that it cost millions and would put me in a category of people that didn’t really exist.
I made a doctor’s appointment.
“Help, I’m a transsexual,” I told my doctor.
“Oh, God, C.J.,” he told me. “I don’t know how to help you.”
But he made some phone calls and got me hooked up with a psychologist.
It was 2001 when I took the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders , a rigorous psychological test that you have to undergo to prove that you’re really trans and not just crazy. I essentially had to detail my life’s story. Like, when I was a kid, my parents made me wear dresses, and how did it make me feel? Well, it felt weird. Then I had to take a standard psychological test called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Essentially it was, “Are you crazy?” Seriously. It had questions on it like “I see things that other people do not see. True or false.” I mean, it’s like, “No, I don’t hallucinate.” And then they talked about my scores. I was not crazy, but I had some identity issues, which was to be expected.
In the beginning of my transition, my parents sent me near daily e-mails pleading with me to change my mind. When I told my parents that my transition wasn’t up for discussion, they took that as me being militant. Month after month and day after day, it got tiresome receiving all of those e-mails. I refused to read their e-mails anymore.
My mom called me a couple of times and told me to go to the psychologist. My dad called and told me that he was convinced no one would ever love me, that I wouldn’t find a romantic partner. For a year, we didn’t talk at all. I kept our relationship at a distance because they didn’t seem to be making an effort to engage me.
They stopped sending me e-mails, which is what I wanted.
I wonder how many people die before their disability hearing. I applied a year ago, and they think I’ll probably get my hearing next January. So they’re still waiting for me to die.
I have been diagnosed with Takayasu’s arteritis. People call it TA for short because it’s a mouthful. It’s an autoimmune disease in the same category as lupus, multiple sclerosis and AIDS. You’d think they’d just take a look at the doctor’s records and make a decision. But it would be naïve to think our government would make a decision based on compassion. It’s all about money.
I started getting sick around age 12. I developed a cough. Right away, I wasn’t able to sleep comfortably. I lost weight. I lost hair. My fingernails started clubbing. That’s what gave it away — the dome shape of my fingernails. I was stiff. I couldn’t put much food down. My parents took me to all kinds of doctors.
A lot of my medications have undesirable side effects. And a lot of my medications are to counteract the side effects of other medications. It’s a cocktail.
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I take Remicade, prednisone, Coumadin, Vicodin, Fosamax, methotrexate and folic acid. Then, I take calcium and ferosulfate.
The Remicade kills my immune system, which attacks my blood vessels.
The prednisone is to keep inflammation under control.
The Coumadin is a postsurgery medication to avoid blood clots.
The Vicodin is to control pain.
The Fosamax is to halt bone loss, which is the result of 16 years on steroids.
The methotrexate is to prevent the formation of antibodies to the Remicade.
The folic acid is to prevent mouth sores from the methotrexate.
The calcium is to build up my bones.
And the ferosulfate is for anemia.
I had a prescription for Marinol, which is basically concentrated THC. But my state insurance wouldn’t cover it. So marijuana is cheaper. I have written “marijuana” in the margin of my disability application, because I don’t know if I want to tell the disability examiner about it. It’s essentially to prevent nausea from the methotrexate. Saturday is the day I take methotrexate. On those days, I eat a pot biscotti. So I stay home for about six hours because I get a little goofy.
I started taking testosterone again in December. Injecting testosterone at home is cheaper than having a doctor do it. Testosterone takes about 20 minutes to set in. When it does, I have a pretty emotionally aggressive response. And my libido skyrockets. But I feel like I’m in too aggressive of a head space to have sex. So I isolate myself for the first hour afterward. Then it levels out. But I do get a rush.
I feel more connected to my body now that I’m on testosterone again.
If I’m going to be going out and about, I wear a double-front compression shirt from Underworks. Most of the trans guys I know order from Underworks. It’s safer than Ace bandages or duct tape. It’s a pretty good product because it’s made for men with gynecomastia, you know, where men develop breasts. It generally does the job.
I don’t pack. I bought a packy for the novelty of it. You stuff your pants with it to make you look like you have a guy package. They come small, medium and large and in two colors, pink or chocolate. I went for medium pink. This thing was, like, bright fluorescent Easter pink. And it was, like, 6 inches. Nobody’s 6 inches limp. I tried it on for size. In a way, it was cumbersome.
In 1998, I left Cedar Rapids for a road trip. I was going over the mountain to see what I could see. My car broke down in Lawrence. I guess I didn’t get very far, but I liked it here.
My Ford Tempo broke down in the Dillon’s parking lot on Sixth Street. I had stopped for groceries. My car wouldn’t start. I don’t remember exactly what was wrong. I think I needed to replace the battery.
I checked out the city and liked it, so I got a job. I liked the shops and the people. As a kid, I lived 45 minutes from Iowa City. Lawrence reminded me of Iowa City. I got a healthy vibe from the city. People were playing guitar on Massachusetts Street. And you could strike up a conversation, and people would talk to you.
The Virginia Inn had a $300 monthly rate, so I stayed.
In 2001, I caught a discussion about anarchism at KU. The ideals of anarchist theory really appealed to me. I’ve been an anarchist ever since. The system we have now is ineffective. They have someone with an autoimmune disease waiting two years for disability. But if the system were torn down, I don’t believe I would get the care I need.
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I’m a Christian and an anarchist. Anarchy and Christianity don’t have to be mutually exclusive. A lot of the ideals, when lived out in daily life, are the same, although I will say a lot of anarchists are not Christians and a lot of Christians are not anarchists. But the anarchist community isn’t effective, so we will not see anarchism in my lifetime — if we ever do. We can live out the principles of anarchism in our everyday lives in some ways.
When my girlfriend, Emily, and I first met, she was 15 and I was 23. We met at an art auction to raise money for prisoner support. When we first met, I was not interested in anything more than offering a queer kid community. We didn’t see each other again for three years. Then we ran into each other on Mass Street on Halloween. I gave her my number.
We really got close while I was recovering from heart surgery. We would stay up every night until late hours talking. We talked about a lot of things at 3 a.m., and the prominent subjects were spirituality and religion. For me, I’ve always been Christian and shared this mission to at least explain what I know to be true to other people, if they’re willing to listen. And she wanted to know.
A lot of trans people get angry with me when I say this, but I can’t really have a heterosexual relationship because I don’t have a penis, and a lot of straight girls want to have a relationship with someone with different equipment than I have. At the same time, I am male, and that would definitely prevent me from being lesbian. Emily identifies as polysexual. That differs from bisexuality in that she’s attracted to women, a small cross-section of male-born men and female-born men.
Emily isn’t as theologically conservative as I am, but she is a Christian. She was raised by a family of primarily scientifically minded atheists. She never went to church before she met me.
Before my surgery, I bought Emily her first Bible.
Last December, Emily and I had dinner with my husband and boyfriend-in-law. It’s a convoluted story. Well, I have a husband. But we think our marriage might not be legally binding because we signed with the last name “Snow.” And you can’t find these Snow people anywhere other than on this marriage license.
We met at KU and decided after much friendship building that we should have some kids. We thought we’d just hitch up and do it.
We were married at the district court in Lawrence on May 21, 2002. The judge said we could sign with whatever name we wanted. She said the DMV would change our names, but they didn’t. We never actually legally changed our names. So we’re like, OK, we are sure this is not legally binding because the people who signed this don’t exist.
I was off testosterone, but we hadn’t gotten checked to see if either of us was sterile. We were going to have babies, and then I was going to continue my transition. That was the idea. But he changed his mind, which is OK. It was a dumb idea. He moved to Arizona with his gay lover. That was the end of it.
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Clearly, no one will have a successful marriage after this.
I was raised in a traditional Mormon home where the job of the wife was to be a mother and the job of the husband was to earn a living for the family. My family followed that model.
None of my siblings stayed Mormon. We weren’t rebelling against Mormonism. My problem with Mormonism is that it tries to present itself as a Christian faith, and it’s clearly not, when you get down to the details.
My parents stopped taking us to church when I was 6. When I was 11, I started going to Gloria Dei Lutheran Church. It was about a mile down the road from my house.
I feel like I’m pretty well in tune with God right now. I’m not ever going to have a perfect relationship with God in this world. No one will. Sin separates us from God. If we could attain infallibility, we wouldn’t need a savior. We can’t attain infallibility. And we do need a savior. Salvation gives us direct access to God.
I don’t feel my transition is going to be a determining factor when I’m held accountable for my life before God. It does say that in Christ, there’s no Greek, no Jew, no male, no female. It indicates to me that physical differences won’t make a difference eternally.
A lot of pastors don’t know what to do with me. While I think a lot of transgendered people and transsexuals go to church, I don’t think they tell their pastors. The thing is, if I’m going to go to a church, I need to build some authentic relationships with people.
I go to Central United Methodist Church. I started going in November 2005. That’s been a good experience. My pastor knows I’m trans. People in the choir know I’m trans. I think some of the old ladies who sit in the back probably don’t know, but they might. I sing in the choir, play the piano. I’m kind of like their default replacement pianist.
When I first started going there, I was still presenting as female. So they actually saw me through what they considered a transition from female back to male.
My relationship with my family is definitely strained right now. My dad severed his Achilles tendon recently. He was out of the hospital, but he developed blood clots. He wasn’t breathing and was lying on the floor looking gray. They called an ambulance. My mom was supposedly convinced that Dad was on death’s doorstep.
He was in intensive care on Wednesday night. I found out Thursday morning. Around noon, my mom called and said, “Dad doesn’t want anyone to make a fuss over him. I don’t think anyone should come up.” I expected my dad to say that. I told my brother, Nathan, that I still planned on coming. Nathan called an hour later and said there was specifically a problem with me and my transition and my dad’s discomfort with it.
I know Dad was moved out of intensive care. But I was pretty hurt and pretty angry. Being asked to not attend a holiday or a celebration, that sucks. Being asked to stay away in a time of trial, that really lets you know where you stand. If my dad’s at death’s door, why are you telling me to stay away?
My sister-in-law was outraged that they told me not to come down. Nathan was uncomfortable with the idea of not letting me see my dad.
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When my mother’s mother passed away, I think that brought a lot of things into perspective for my mom. She realized she was going to need to make an effort to respect me for who I was or she was never going to have any kind of authentic relationship with me. And so she started making an effort to use the correct pronouns. She made my dad be very careful.
My family’s not very open. There’s this unspoken, unwritten, don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy about things in my family. If you’re on drugs, don’t ask, don’t tell. If you’re gay, don’t ask, don’t tell. My parents have given up trying to pretend that their children are Mormon. We don’t talk about religion. We don’t talk about politics.
I only want to keep the family bond if they’re going to love me for who I am. They are my bloodline, and I would like to be able to have a bond with them. After 29 years, I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.
I’m told that you don’t need a penis to be a man in Kansas. You have to have chest surgery, you have to have a hysterectomy and you have to be on hormones. But I hear you don’t have to have a penis.
I’m one out of three.
I eventually want to have surgery. But right now, I can’t afford it. Chest surgery. A hysterectomy, at some point. Maybe genital surgery. I’m not 100 percent set on having genital surgery. I definitely want chest surgery. That’s still far enough in the future that I don’t have to concern myself with it. I guess I don’t think as much about surgery.
I don’t have an SRS fund. Sexual reassignment surgery. I might if my disability ever comes through, but right now, I don’t have the funds.
I don’t like these pictures that I’ve seen of these penises they make for transsexuals. But I’m considering it more seriously as a possibility than I ever have. There’s a point that I always stick on: If I have $16,000, is it morally responsible to spend it on something so cosmetic? How many meals could that $16,000 buy somebody? What could I do with that money that would be more morally responsible?
If the best results that I could get were the worst results of these photos, I wouldn’t do it. No chance. I wouldn’t want to look like I’d been in some horrible accident, and some of those photos look like something really terrible has happened. I guess I would want to talk at length with the surgeon before doing something.
Hands down, if the possibility of having a satisfying sex life were out of the picture, I wouldn’t do it. To never experience erotic sensation or to never climax, I would never do that.
I don’t have to have a huge penis or even a medium-sized penis. It’s possible that I could have just been born little. What I want would be what’s acceptable in the locker room.
What I would look into would be Metoidioplasty, specifically the centurion. The centurion gives you some girth.
I’ve got them up here on my computer screen. Yeah, this one is little, and you probably wouldn’t be able to use it for penetration. But it looks a little more natural. It seems to me like it would be too small. You definitely could achieve an erection and maybe have some reasonably satisfying oral sex. But it seems like it would be too flaccid for vaginal penetration.
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To me, this looks pretty normal. Little but normal. If you’re going to undergo something like this, I would put up extra money to get something that looks decent.
Emily and I have discussed it at length. And she’s honest. She thinks she’d feel awkward about it, and it would definitely take some getting used to. A lot of relationships don’t survive transition. They really don’t. She says that if it’s something that I want and something that ever starts to look like a possibility, obviously, there’s going to be some more thinking and some more processing to do. But she wants me to be content with my body. She said she’s clearly going to have to go through some of her own processes because she met me, fell in love with me and bonded with me in this body. So altering my form that drastically, that’s really something.
