Free to be he

Local man matches outside to inside

Rachel Rosenfeld

Puberty is hard. Body changes and raging hormones can make it a confusing time for everybody. But as a pre-teen girl struggling with gender identity disorder, puberty for Julien Davis was more than just confusing.

“Puberty was devastating,” says Davis. “I had a lot of anger… I knew something was wrong but didn’t have the language to express it.”

Last April, with the support of his girlfriend, Sandra Bornemann, Davis underwent gender reassignment surgery and began testosterone hormone therapy, transitioning from female to male. Although surgery took care of some of the major physical changes, the transition period is a long one, and Davis’s body is still in the process of changing. He gets a testosterone shot every two weeks and will continue to do so into old age to make his voice drop and to grow facial hair.

The operation has done wonders for Davis.

“I just feel happy. Not just happy overall but happy in my gender,” he says. “It’s comfortable and it feels good.”

As a child, Davis couldn’t express that he felt more comfortable in a male role, because growing up as a girl in Pictou County, N.S., he was never taught there were any other options. So he adapted by living largely in a fantasy world.

“I used to pretend I was a boy,” says Davis. “I lived in my head a lot. I would cut things out of catalogues… I used to go by Josh, and I would get very upset when other people didn’t go along with it.”

When he was about 16, he began to understand sexuality a little better, and sensed his attraction to girls. He says he didn’t feel like a lesbian, so he started to identify himself as a bisexual.

“I was like, maybe I’m just butch,” says Davis. “I didn’t have any (transsexual) role models, and what I identified with trans – someone who was sad and depressed – was not what I wanted to be.”

It wasn’t until he moved to Halifax nine years ago to attend Mount Saint Vincent University that he met Bornemann and began to question not just just sexual orientation, but his gender identity.

Bornemann and Davis met in a typical college fashion: during frosh week. Bornemann, tired of making small talk with fellow students at a pub night, had skipped off early and was headed toward a nearby vending machine. Davis had been noticing her around campus and had been nervously waiting to approach her at the pub. When he noticed her leaving, he decided to go after her.

After an awkward moment during which Borneman was too embarrassed to take her vending machine toonie out of her shoe and Davis was just too drunk, he convinced her to come to his dorm room and the two ended up talking all night.

Bornemann, who had just moved from Vancouver, was more aware of transsexual culture than Davis was. It took many conversations and arguments before Davis became comfortable with the notion of transsexuality.

“I guess I was sort of trans-phobic for while,” he says with a laugh. “I was in gender studies and some of the students were not that supportive. I think I sort of bought into it for awhile… maybe it was little bit of self hating.”

Fights over the merits of transsexuality occurred often in the early phases of their relationship, but these fights opened the door to discussion, and, Davis as says now, “We both knew.”

The couple has come a long way since their early days at Mount Saint Vincent. The two moved in together after residence and have been inseparable ever since. They share a home, a car and both work at the Youth Project, an organization designed to promote openness and awareness for queer and transsexual youth. In September 2007, six months before Davis’s surgery date, they made their relationship official, getting married at Halifax’s North End Church. The wedding also served as an opportunity for Davis to come out to his parents about his transsexuality.

“Sometimes I think if we added up the hours we have spent together, I bet it would compare to people who have been in 20-year relationships,” jokes Bornemann.

Davis and Bornemann’s relationship, one that began between two women who both identified as bisexual and has now transformed into a marriage between a man and a woman, is difficult to label.

“I think of us as a queer straight couple,” explains Bornemann, and the two chuckle.

“Our relationship is heterosexual but I think we are still queer in many ways,” adds Davis.

Bornemann recalls a friend’s reaction when Davis came out to her as a transsexual who was transitioning. She asked Bornemann if she was straight now.

“I was like, really? Is it that black and white?” she says.

Like any relationship, theirs has not always been an easy one, and Davis’s process toward transitioning proved to be especially difficult at times. Because the surgery alone cost about $62,000 and isn’t government subsidized or covered by Nova Scotia’s Health Insurance Program, finances played a big part in deciding how long before Davis would be able to undergo surgery.

A fundraiser raised around $15,000, but the rest came from Davis and Bornemann working hard and saving their pennies. While the couple continued to save money for the surgery, Davis was struggling with his identity.

He recalls being so depressed and angry, that there were periods when he thought about suicide.

“It came to the point where either I do this or I become more than just suicidal but I begin to attempt it,” he remembers.

Bornemann remembers Davis’ many “off-limit” areas of his body during that time.

“It was getting to where (Davis) was like, ‘you don’t touch me anymore,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not allowed!’”

Davis has improved since the surgery, but he still struggles. Though it is becoming rarer as hormone treatment progresses, it is still hard when strangers refer to him as a she. He refers to these experiences as “heartbreaking.”

He recalls a particularly stressful experience shopping at Winners, where an employee stood outside of the change room, directing people into the male or female changing areas.

“It was easier (for Davis) not to shop there, than to go through the stress of being slotted into a gender category by a complete stranger,” recalls Bornemann.

Restaurants were also difficult territory in the early days following the surgery, because servers seemed particularly disposed to using gendered language.

“Everywhere we went it was just: ‘hey ladies, how are you? Hey ladies, what can I get for you?’” says Bornemann.

She began keeping a “lady log,” writing down the names of restaurants where they had been called ‘ladies,’ versus other restaurants that were still safe to eat at.

These days, Davis is mistaken for a female less and less frequently, and he is anticipating his facial hair beginning to grow in full force.

“Most people when they go shopping or out in the world, are generally contented, but for me it was a life of being angry and for a long time not understanding why. Life has gotten amazingly better… I put off happiness for way too long.”

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