Debbie Pond, Lorna Rankin, Kelly McGuinness, Jay Sennett and Heather MacAllister

From Jennifer to Jay

Activist breaks down the barriers to transsexual transformation.

by Jason Michael
5/10/00

"Trans people , we're everywhere."

At first glance, Jay Sennett looks like a pretty ordinary fellow; a man's man, just one of the guys. But looks, as they say, can be deceiving. And upon closer inspection you'd discover that not only is this activist far from ordinary, but he's a few notches from the full inheritance of manhood as well.

"I don't consider myself a man, I think, in the way we agree that term means. Because I didn't grow up as a man," says Sennett, a resident of Ypsilanti. "I prefer the term 'guy.'"

Confused? Well, let's go back to the beginning. For Sennett, that was 35 years ago in Colorado, where he was born Jennifer Lee Allen.

"For many, many years I felt like I was actually a man," Sennett recalls. "I was a tomboy as a kid."

Fast forward to the mid-Õ80s. "What became really apparent for me during college was my attraction to women," said Sennett. "So I came out as lesbian in 1986. It was really OK. I started off as your garden variety lesbian, and then I became self-identified as butch, and then stone butch in the early Õ90s."

But Sennett didn't feel quite right as a lesbian, or as a woman, period. Soon, he was reading up on the FTM, or female-to-male, transsexual movement through books such as Marjorie Garber's Vested Interests and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg.

Still, Sennett rejected the typical transsexual transformation process, if such a thing exists, and shunned the idea of completely realigning his gender.

"I wasn't interested in having surgery," says Sennett. "Surgery is very expensive. You're looking at a minimum of $20,000-25,000 and three-to-five days in the intensive care unit. And it's a very intrusive procedure. I don't need to have a penis to feel like a guy."

Some transsexuals do, though. "There are other transsexuals who feel, absolutely, they have to have it, and I feel, as an activist, it's my role to support them. And that support centers on removing the barriers to surgery."

Beyond the cost, which your HMO isn't about to cover like they did for your appendectomy, is the diagnosis that must be obtained first: Gender dysphoria. In short, a physician must declare that you have a mental disorder, the prescription for which is a sex change operation that would realign your body to match your mind's gender identification.

"The whole issue around gender dysphoria is very, very heated," Sennett says. "There are transsexuals who say, 'I don't have a gender dysphoria. Society has a dysphoria with me."

So, Sennett chose instead to change his name and acquire a prescription for male hormone injections – the next best thing, if you will, to the full procedure. In doing so, Sennett spoke honestly to his family and friends, and says he was blessed to find the support of so many, including the minister at the Unitarian church he attended.

"She was the first person to ask me, 'Which pronoun do you want me to use?' which was really an eye-opener."

Then, it was full steam ahead. "I made the decision when I started hormones that I was going to do it for myself, regardless of the cost," Sennett says. "If that meant that I had to lose my job or all my family and friends, then I would. It's sad that I had to think that way, but I was very aware that other trans people had paid that price."

Luckily for Sennett, the toll was not that costly. And soon, he was changing in very visible ways. He grew facial hair, his voice lowered, his body fat began redistributing itself and his menstrual cycle stopped.

"I don't think I had an enhancement or a reduction in my libido," he says. "There's more muscle mass. I think I probably put on 25-30 pounds. I have had my feet get bigger and my hands have gotten bigger also."

Today, Sennett would still be technically classified as a pre-operative transsexual, though it's not a classification he's comfortable with.

"Trans people, we're everywhere, and we choose to live our lives in ways that make sense to us," Sennett explains. "Because our whole culture is so fixated on gender, that fact can make our lives atrocious at times. The energy that we have to devote to interacting with people and institutions of the state and representatives from the therapeutic community – our energy gets taken away from getting a job, or getting on with our lives and other things."

Sennett, a filmmaker who's currently working a temp gig to pay the bills, hopes to bring the struggle to light through a documentary he's working on. Tentatively titled Live from the Rust Belt, it's about trans people and communities in the Midwest.

"I want to document the lives of people that I know, people that I work with, people who are never going to have a movie made about them," Sennett says. "I conduct my life as activist for social and human justice, and my filmmaking is about creating a viable trans culture. I align myself with people of size, poor people, people of color, people with disabilities, anyone who suffers from discrimination because of what they do with their bodies or because of how their bodies are viewed by the world."

Find out more at FTM International's Web site, at www.ftm-intl.org.

Jason Michael is a senior staff writer for Between The Lines.