TheVitalVoice.com – by Kati Stovall
Editor’s note: This is the second and last installment in a series profiling “Janice,” a transgender woman who works in research at a local university. A year and a half ago, Janice began hormonal therapy. Last winter, she began living as a woman.
In February of this year, Janice felt it was time to take a bold step: her Real Life Experience (RLE). Typically, for one year, patients are to dress and act as the desired gender full time. They are to maintain relationships and hold jobs as their newly apparent gender in order to demonstrate that they can indeed function within society.
Halfway through her RLE regimen, she is now very comfortable wearing skirts, make-up and wigs. Janice admits that she is far from the perfect woman, but is taking baby steps toward fitting in. “I didn’t go through those stages of self evolution that every woman goes through, in deciding how she wants to present herself in public,” she said.