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| In her book, ‘Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods — My Mother’s, My Father’s, and Mine,’ Noelle Howey recounts her family’s coming of age from their suburban beginnings (left) to their life after her father’s transition to womanhood (right). (Photos courtesy of Picador USA) |
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: CHRISTOPHER SEELY
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In the prologue to her girlhood memoir, Noelle Howey describes herself and her
divorced parents, a biological woman and a transgendered lesbian, as “traditional.”
“I have a family that survived a life in the closet by employing humor,
tinted car windows, and thousands of dollars’ worth of therapy,” Howey
wrote. “A family that gave its patriarch Chanel No. 5 for Father’s
Day. A traditional family — loving father, supportive mother, doting
child — that would probably be the right wing’s worst nightmare.”
The family isn’t “traditional” in the nuclear sense, she
said. But it does function with what she considers traditional values.
“We’re traditional in a simple sense,” Howey said in an
interview Wednesday. “We love each other and support each other, but
it is sad because people express surprise when I tell them I support my father.
Families aren’t just to annoy you on the holidays.”
Howey discusses her book, “Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods — My
Mother’s, My Father’s, and Mine” at the Southern Comfort
Conference this weekend at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel in Midtown Atlanta.
The annual transgender conference expects to draw more than 500 participants
this year. Howey delivers the keynote address at Saturday’s lunch and
plans to speak about improving the media’s depiction of transgender people
to be more “genuinely inclusive” and to discuss transgenderism
as part of a continuum that applies to every human.
“It is a gender spectrum and we all identify at different points along
that,” Howey said. “We are too busy classifying transgendered people
as others or making a mockery of them.”
A significant message of Howey’s book is the notion that transgendered
parents hurt their children more by torturing themselves in the closet than
by being honest about who they are, she said.
“Partly why I wanted to write the book was so that maybe transgendered
people would realize that the best thing they can do is embrace their children
and themselves and that hurting themselves is what hurts their kids,” she
said. “It’s losing the parent they can’t handle.”
Rebecca Christine Howey, Noelle Howey’s father, began her public transition
to become a woman when Noelle was 18. The transition prompted her parents to
divorce and it paved the way for Noelle and her father to nurture a better
relationship than they had during her childhood, she said.
Throughout Howey’s childhood, her father was distant and temperamental.
But after Howey’s father came out as a woman, the self-loathing she felt
lessened, she said.
“When my father came out, she became a much more positive person because
she wasn’t beating up on herself,” Howey said. “You take
away that huge burden she was carrying around for 30 some years and it changes
the whole dynamic.”
Now Howey’s father lives as a post-op transgendered lesbian, who is
her “best friend,” but it took several years of re-building trust
for the camaraderie to foster completely, she said.
“Part of it was just time,” Howey said. “We got used to
it. When she finally came out dressed, she looked so much more normal and happy.
There was always a feeling that she was just a little quirky. Nobody knew,
including me, what to make of my dad for years, but over time her real personality
came out.”
Coming out doesn’t end with family members, and often results in job
loss and alienation — risks that must be taken into consideration before
making a public gender change, said Virginia Erhardt, an Atlanta psychologist
who specializes in transgender issues.
“I ask what kind of changes my clients can tolerate making in their
lives. There is a lot to gain but also the risk of losing a lot, like families
and jobs,” said Erhardt, who will present two seminars at this year’s
Southern Comfort.
Transgendered people need to be mindful that family members need time to cope
with the sudden shock that their gender is not what was previously thought,
said Erin Swenson, a licensed general marriage and family therapist in Atlanta.
“Most of us have spent decades and only recently accepted ourselves,
and it is unrealistic for us to expect them to be okay with it right away,” said
Swenson, who is also a transgendered woman.
The first reaction of family members to a transgendered person’s announcement
is not as important as a continued dialogue, Swenson said.
“If people are able to find ways to be connected, over time people tend
to come around and find ways to deal with it that are conducive of a continuing
relationship,” ...
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