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Aaron mentioned the bathroom, and I just want to point out that if this conference were being held in Arizona or Colorado, I wouldn't be legally allowed to use the correct bathroom. I live in a world where my existence is a political statement. It's a lot of pressure for me to live under; it's a really hard road to travel. However, I've learned some lessons along the way that I want to share with you, and I hope these lessons are applicable to you. Most of all, this talk is for the one person in this audience who is also transgender and is afraid to come out. This talk is for you.
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In October of 2012, I missed the train. I was standing on a platform just like this one. The train was coming down the tracks, creating a wind effect that blew my trench coat in the wind. At that moment, there were two things I wanted more than anything else: I wanted a cigarette, and I wanted to step off the platform onto the tracks. What brought me to that place? I'm transgender. Let me explain what that means.
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When I was born, to all appearances, I was a boy, but gender identity isn't something physical; it's in your brain. There was a mismatch between how I identified and how my body actually looked. Despite my certainty that everything was wrong, I was socialized to conform to gender norms, so I was raised as a boy. I developed many of the bad habits that boys acquire as they grow up. However, there was this constant tug of war between my internal picture of who I was and my external appearance. This conflict caused a shock, a literal shock of non-recognition every time I saw myself in a picture or in the mirror.
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Puberty is tough for everyone, but it was especially hard for me because it was the wrong one. I experienced permanent changes: vocal cords thickened, facial hair came in, and bones fused. Hormones began being produced in my body. This led me to experience something known as dysphoria. The DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, defines it as discomfort caused by a mismatch between physical gender and gender identity.
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As you know, if any doctor tells you you're going to experience some discomfort, it means it's going to hurt. There was no information for me at that time. I grew up in a small town with only 500 people; I had no idea that there was a word for what I was experiencing. I had no vocabulary for identifying my feelings. I was lost, scared, and alone. Back then, the internet barely existed, and there was no community for me to seek out. I had three or four friends from that tiny town, and that was it. I suffered from emotional pain and self-loathing, certain that something was wrong; that I was either mentally ill or simply didn't deserve to live.
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When I did see people who questioned their gender on television or in the movies, they were always the butt of jokes or portrayed as clowns on daytime talk shows. I hated them for that; I hated them for being anything like me. Forty percent of transgender people will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, and I had constant thoughts and ideations about suicide. I had to construct a new life for myself, trying to strike a compromise between who I knew I was and who I had to be in the world.
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I have a vivid memory from when I was less than five years old. A woman came up to me and said, "Oh my god what a cute little girl!" To which my mother replied, "That's a boy." I remember thinking to myself, 'What is she talking about? That woman was right, and my mother was wrong.' That was my first realization that the world didn't see me as I was. My parents split up, and my mother was abusive. Nonetheless, I had fantasies about her kidnapping me and raising me as a daughter. Even after all the horrible things she had done, that idea seemed like a better life to me than the life I was living.
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So I learned to hide; I learned to hide the things that made me feel ashamed, the things that made me feel different. I played with Lego, which is the best toy in the world, and while I built crazy machines, I also secretly built dollhouses. From the age of seven, when I got my first computer, I was always hacking; I could forget myself and lose myself in code. Later, in the BBS era, I could experiment with identity. The anonymity provided by the early internet allowed me to explore who I was.
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By the time I was in my late teens and early 20s, I discovered goth culture. Goth was appealing because it allowed me to flirt with androgyny; I could wear makeup, grow my hair long, wear tight clothing, and it was cool. But amid the external acceptance, I was troubled. I literally turned to magic and the occult, pursuing any chance of physically transforming myself. I would have sold my soul for the opportunity to change my body.
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At age 23, I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant. There was nothing I could do but get married. I had a beautiful daughter named Lydia Naomi Sasha. I concentrated on my family and my career, and that occupied the next 18 years of my life. Throughout this time, I was very troubled; I was haunted. I tried to build a wall around the sense of otherness, a sense of wrongness, and I pushed all my feelings down into that wall. I completely cut myself off from experiencing emotion.
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This emotional suppression led me to a train station in Chicago in October of 2012. I knew that something had to change if I was going to continue living my life. I was either going to change my life, or I was going to end it.
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This is Aaron Kalin; he's a good friend of mine who identifies as part of the LGBTQ spectrum. I took him out for lunch one day; he was the first person from my professional circle that I confided in about being transgender. I expressed my fears about losing everything: my family, my career, absolutely everything. He urged me to build a support network for myself and to turn that support into a resource for others like me.
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So we planned a nonprofit called LGBT Tech. In October of 2013, we stood on the stage at Madison Ruby, and I shared the origin story of how LGBT Tech became a reality. That was also when I came out as transgender to around 400 people, including everyone who would later see the videos of Madison Ruby online. Evan Light, a good friend of mine who runs an invite-only unconference called Ruby Decamp, invited me to attend. When I told him I was transgender, he welcomed me to come to Decamp in whatever way I felt most comfortable.
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I realized that this would be my first opportunity to enter the professional sphere presenting as female for the first time. It would be a test of my strength, my resolve, and how the community would treat me. I did it, and they did it. I discovered that I was stronger than I ever imagined. I knew then that I could follow through on the decision I made that day in October.
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Noel Rabin, a friend of mine, was also at Decamp that year. His reaction to the revelations I shared there was quite funny. He joked that while I was transgender, did you know Corey uses BBEdit as an editor? That was quite amusing.
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So at 40, I decided to start my life over. What does that mean? I had been living what they call part-time; socially, I was transitioning and presenting female to my friends. I began my physical transition on August 11, 2013, at 10:13 p.m., by taking my first estrogen pill. I blacked out the dosage because a lot of people aren't as privileged as I am; many can't afford the medication and choose to self-dose. However, self-dosing can be very dangerous and potentially lethal.
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My parents were incredibly supportive. I remember my dad's reaction. He's a Fox News-watching, Rush Limbaugh-listening, right-wing conservative in the wilds of Virginia. When I called him, I was being a bit circuitous, reminding him that he'd said he loved me no matter what. After a few minutes, he asked, 'Are you dying or what's going on?' Then I told him I was transgender.
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There was a long pause as I thought to myself, 'This is the sound of me losing my father.' But then he said, 'Thank God! I thought you were about to tell me you were gay.' To honor my parents, I asked them if they wanted to give me a middle name. My old middle name was Dale, which was pretty messed up. I figured I'd give them a chance to make amends, but they came up with Raven, and I thought, 'Thanks, but no.' So I took my name from two badass women: Coraline Jones and Ada Lovelace.
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In January of 2014, I won a Google whack award; there was exactly one search result for my name, and now I own my SEO. I was on a path, embracing the scariest and hardest thing I ever attempted: my full-time transition. I set a date for when I would stop pretending to be a guy altogether: March 1st.
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That meant some changes at work. In January of that year, I received a glowing review and was promoted to principal developer. I worked for an apartment-finding service called Blank.com because they had a strong corporate culture and non-discrimination policies in place. I worked there for about a year. Then, Liz Abenanti, the woman I mentor, who was running Chicago Girl Development at the time, invited me to speak there as Coraline. This would be my first speaking engagement as Coraline.
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The announcement was sent out late in January, and the technical recruiter at my company expressed excitement. She sent me an email, saying, 'I had no idea your wife was also a speaker! Can we organize a trip for us to go?' At that point, I had to tell my employers that I was going to transition from male to female on March 1st. Their response was that I was no longer meeting their expectations and suggested I might not fit in the company anymore.
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So, just two weeks after starting my transition, I had to look for a new job. Imagine the awkwardness of feeling like a teenager at 40, trying to find the confidence to sell myself to a potential employer. It was a pretty hellish experience. I talked with a friend of mine who is also transgender, and we discussed the intersection of imposter syndrome and being transgender. She told me the trick is to be absolutely sure that you're a badass who is skilled at what you do.
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I created a reminder for myself: 'I am not an imposter; I am a badass who is skilled at many things.' Eventually, I found a wonderful company called Canvas. Initially, I was uncertain about accepting a position with a Utah-based company, fearing they might be very conservative. However, I was assured they treated their employees very well.
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The next step was really about finding my voice. I discovered that I was not just accepted; I was embraced in my personal life, my professional life, and by the Ruby community. The lesson I learned here is that when you're not miserable, people want to be around you and want to be your friends.
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I started to speak about my experiences related to microaggressions, inequality, and the issues I had kept silent before. To my surprise, people were actually listening to me. One of my crowning achievements was getting listed on the feminist cabal edition of 2048, something that I thought was pretty awesome.
00:16:06.560
Last year, I spoke at four conferences; this year, I’ve had 12 speaking engagements, with this being the twelfth. I’m hoping for a thirteenth, and I just got invited to deliver the keynote at the Great Wide Open conference, a significant open-source event. I closed out the Madison Ruby conference to a standing ovation—the same stage where I stood a year before to come out as transgender.
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However, there was a price for my newfound advocacy. I lost my family; my wife and I could not make it work. Her family did not accept me at all, which meant I could no longer see my niece and nephews.
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I had to refactor my identity. I decided to be deliberate in how I would rebuild from Cory to Coraline. I pressed the big red reset button on my life and had the privilege and perspective to start anew. Here are some things I learned along the way. I learned to let go of my ego.
00:18:26.960
While working on a project with Sarah Gray and Corey Haynes, our boss presented an architectural problem. Both Corey's and my opinions clashed, resulting in a lot of arguments and no progress. When we left the room, Sarah quipped that she had never been in a situation where two people were so certain they were right, but we were probably both wrong. I learned to define my passion and consider my values as a developer.
00:19:09.440
It comes down to learning, teaching, growing, and giving back to the community. I resolved to live by those core values and learn to be a partner both professionally and personally. At Decamp, we participated in a code retreat, working with a different partner each time while solving Conway's Game of Life multiple times. At first, my urge was to bring my solution to the table and watch as the other struggled to type it out. Eventually, I realized that was unfair; I learned to listen.
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I had to learn to open myself to new ideas, allowing others to challenge my way of thinking. This wasn't easy; I had never practiced listening with empathy and compassion. I learned that asserting my opinion as fact would shut down conversation and impede others from sharing their knowledge.
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By giving up male privilege, I learned what privilege truly means. I learned to empathize with women who feel afraid walking down the street, even in daylight. I began to recognize things I had taken for granted while living as a male. I came to understand how to amplify voices that don’t have the platform I do, rather than speaking over them.
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I learned about the importance of retweeting and using my platform for good, essentially learning how to be a better ally. I’d like to share some advice specifically on being an ally to transgender people. If you're unsure about someone's chosen gender, ask politely; never assume.
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Never refer to a transgender person's ability to pass as a compliment—phrases like 'I never would have known' or 'You look like a genetic female' are extremely rude. The only words that respectfully describe me as a transgender woman are 'transgender woman.' Anything else is a slur.
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Do not ask about our bodies; it's a personal matter. You wouldn't interrogate a non-transgender person about their bodies—it's rude. Don't go making assumptions about someone’s sexual orientation. I came out to my parents last week as straight, and that conversation did not go smoothly.
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Most importantly, don't say gender doesn't matter. Hearing statements like 'gender is just a social construct' is akin to telling someone who is dirt poor that money is merely a piece of paper. So, most of all, listen. Amplify voices; these are the lessons I've learned in the two years since I realized I had to transition.
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I hope my story resonates with you, informs you, and perhaps touches you in some way. I aspire to make things easier for those who come out after me, especially for that one transgender person in this auditorium. I want to reassure you that you are not alone. Each of you can have the courage to be who you genuinely are. If I can do it, anyone can.
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Thank you.
