 Marcelle Cook-Daniels
March 1, 1960 - April 21, 2000
Marcelle Y. Cook-Daniels, 40, died April 21 as
a result of suicide, following a lifelong battle with clinical
depression, according to his partner of 17 years, Loree
Cook-Daniels. A native of
Washington, D.C., where he lived until his 1996 move to Vallejo,
California, Marcelle was a computer programmer/analyst who
worked for the IRS, the Maryland-National Capitol Park and
Planning Commission, and, most recently, Norcal Mutual Insurance
Company of San Francisco. At the time of his death, he was
actively working toward his M.S. degree in Computer Science at
Golden Gate University.
 A
quiet but very dedicated and principled activist, he was known
for his work in raising awareness of transgender and Lesbian/Gay
issues and for his efforts to promote and support his family
values of love, commitment, honesty, openness, and public
service. His education and advocacy work included presentations
at the 1999 Creating Change conference, the 1998 "Butch-FTM:
Building Coalitions Through Dialogue" event, several True Spirit
Conferences, and numerous other educational and advocacy events.
Interviews and/or photographs of him appear in the "Love Makes A
Family" book and tour; Dawn Atkin's book "Looking Queer: Body
Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender
Communities," and "In The Family" magazine. He was an active
supporter of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere)
and provided substantial material and volunteer support to the
Transgender Aging Network, four True Spirit conferences, and The
American Boyz.
 Marcelle
was at heart a family man. He was a devoted son to his mother
Marcella Daniels; a passionate supporter of his lifepartner of
17 years, Loree Cook-Daniels; and an outstanding father to his
6-year-old son Kai Cook-Daniels, who calls him, "The Best
Lego-Maker in the World." He is also survived by many beloved
friends and colleagues.
My Life As An
Erroneous Sonogram
By Marcelle and
Loree Cook-Daniels
An interview of Marcelle concerning his body image and decision
to transition female-to-male.
|
L: |
Let's
start by you describing how you think of yourself at this
point. |
|
M: |
I
guess the phrase that I've come to is psychological
hermaphrodite. It's the only thing that sounds like
something that's both and neither at the same time. |
|
L: |
Well,
if the hermaphrodite is psychological, then what is the
physical? |
|
M: |
The
physical is definitely more male. I think where the female
comes in is emotionally, and in my approach to life and
the world. My communication style is a little of each of
what is traditionally thought of as male and female. And
as far as relationships go, love is more important to me
than sex. But, those things are just sort of broad-stroke
stereotypes of male and female. |
|
L: |
I'm
curious: when I asked you about the physical, you said
that it was definitely more male. But if someone were to
see you with your clothes off, they would have no question
that your body is female. |
|
M: |
Now,
you mean? |
|
L: |
Yes.
So how do you resolve that? Or are you already living in
the future? |
|
M: |
I
guess I am already living in the future. I guess I've
always lived in the future. I think that's part of the
whole dysphoria. Let's use an analogy. Say you always
think of yourself as being 5'10". And in your mind, or in
your house which represents your mind, you have everything
scaled so that in relation to it, you seem 5'10". And in
your own little, safe corner, you are a 5'10" person. Your
chairs and your furniture are all proportioned to make you
look like you're 5'10". |
|
|
Then
you go out in the world, and the world is scaled the way
it usually is, and you realize that you're 4'10". To the
world, anyway. But the way you've always thought of
yourself, the way you've thought of yourself not in
relation to other people, is as 5'10". So, I guess what
I'm doing is something akin to having my legs surgically
lengthened, so that when I go outside, people will see the
person I always see inside. |
|
L: |
So
you have been seeing yourself as male all along? |
|
M: |
Basically. It's kind of schizophrenic, I guess. My problem
is mirrors and photographs and other people. I see myself
a certain way, and then I'm faced with a "real" image that
is very different from how I am in my mind. I feel I look
a certain way in the world, am a certain way, and then
something happens that changes that. Reality intrudes. |
|
L: |
Can
you talk about a specific example of what might happen and
how you might feel when that reality intrudes? |
|
M: |
Say
I'm going out somewhere, and I'm picking out clothes and
thinking of things that would work with each other. I'm
thinking of a particular way I want to look, a particular
image I want to convey. I take all this time and dress,
and then when I check in the mirror to see how everything
looks, there are these breasts that are staring back at
me, and the shirt doesn't hang the way I thought it was
going to. In my mind's eye, when I'm seeing myself, I
don't see those. For instance, I like suspenders. But I'll
put those on, and they bow out to the side because there
are these huge impediments in the way. So I end up taking
them off. |
|
L: |
That's an example of when you've met with your reality
versus a different reality in the mirror. What happens
with people? |
|
M: |
Well,
there's the pronoun problem. I'm going out, and I think
I'm really doing a good job of passing as a man and I'll
get "ma'am"ed. Actually, sometimes it's nothing that
obvious...it's just something like going into a building,
and the guy in front of me stops to open the door for me. |
|
L: |
You're assuming he's doing that because you're female? |
|
M: |
Oh,
yeah! It's not even an assumption sometimes. Sometimes I
will stop and open a door, and try to wave the man on in
front of me and he'll stop and say, "but that's not the
way I was brought up!" |
|
L: |
Is it
the breasts that make you female? |
|
M: |
I
think that, given my other physical characteristics, it's
the breasts that are the deciding factor when someone's
waffling on the fence, trying to decide which way to take
me. They are the most noticeable, prominent feature I have
next to the freckles. Men can have freckles, but men
usually don't have breasts, and if they do they're not 42
DDDs. I try to minimize that by the way I dress and the
kind of clothes I wear, but I know that they're a focal
point. I've talked to people before, men, and they're not
making eye contact, they're looking at my chest. |
|
L: |
Aside
from the breasts, you think you present to the world as
fairly androgynous? |
|
M: |
I
think I present to the world as fairly masculine. My body
language, voice, facial expressions, I think all of those
are sort of masculinizing cues. As Kate Bornstein said in
Gender Outlaw, people are going to err on the side of male
unless there's some feminizing cue, and so far the breasts
have been the feminizing cue. I know, because I've been in
situations where I've done things like wear pretty
feminine earrings, but I've done things to conceal the
chest, and I've still gotten "sir." So even dangly
pearl-type earrings or something are not enough to
convince someone that I'm anything other than a man
wearing dangly pearl-type earrings. |
|
L: |
Which
came first for you, looking kind of masculine or feeling
masculine? |
|
M: |
Feeling. |
|
L: |
So
the looking masculine you've cultivated. |
|
M: |
Looking masculine I think I've accentuated more, to
counteract the physical presentation. It's also part of
who I am. I was always a "tomboy." Even before I had
breasts, I was always told I was acting more like a boy
than a girl. I'm just much more aware of working at the
appearance more, of having to think about it. So I don't
know what I would be like if I didn't have to
overcompensate for the physical stuff. I don't know if it
would be much different or if it's just a part of who I
am. The way I sit, the way I walk.... The testosterone
helps too with the voice, the 5 o'clock shadow, the hair
on my arms. I even have a receding hairline now. |
|
L: |
You
started by describing yourself as a psychological
hermaphrodite, but we've been talking "male" and
"masculine." How do you reconcile those two? Or do you? |
|
M: |
When
I'm talking "male," I think I'm talking about the physical
presentation. I don't know about the rest of it; I haven't
come to a decision about that. I just know that when I
think of myself after the surgery, I think of myself as
physically presenting as male, but what my identity will
be and what I really will be...I don't know that it has
any antecedent. |
|
L: |
So
even though other people have changed their gender
identities, you feel like you are forging new ground? A
pioneer? |
|
M: |
Well,
I'm not changing my gender identity; my gender identity
has been fairly constant. What I'm changing is my gender
presentation, I guess. I also don't think of myself as
being a pioneer. I'm not a follower. I'm not a leader. I'm
just doing what I have to do. |
|
L: |
In
Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg talked a lot about the
problems faced by people she defines as "he-shes." People
who sort of confound other people's sense of the dichotomy
between male gender and female gender. Would you say that
the "he-she" analogy fits for you, first of all, and
second, do you think you've had problems by not clearly
fitting into "male" or "female"? |
|
M: |
Oh
yeah. I've definitely had problems with fitting in. Take
job interviews. I refuse to wear a dress to a job
interview, because I'm not going to wear a dress on the
job. I pretty much wear pantsuits. I have no doubt that
I've gone in and people have thought, "oooh!" and not been
able to deal with me on that level...I'm too butch. |
|
|
There
have been problems with other professionals, doctors in
particular. I've called my gynecologist's office and the
staff has said, "I'm sorry, sir, this is a gynecologist's
office," and I've said, "I know, I'm a patient, trust me."
Or, dealing with salespeople. I'll walk up to the counter
and they'll say "yes sir, er, ma'am." Then they're all
flustered and they can't deal with me. I just want to say
"pick one, it doesn't matter," and move on to the
transaction. In Leslie's definition of a "he-she," I think
that's the same thing I'm saying about the psychological
hermaphrodite. I'm not all one or the other. I can't say
how I'm going to feel two years down the road, but right
now I think I "bend" gender and probably always will. At
least, whatever percentage of my identity governs my
physical self, that percentage is predominantly what would
be considered "male". |
|
L: |
How
early do you think you were perceived as a "he-she" or
perceived by others as not fully fitting into the category
of "female"? |
|
M: |
Probably from very early. As I said, I was a pretty severe
tomboy, although I did like being around the girls better
than I liked being around the boys. So it didn't
necessarily follow a "straight" line -- identifying as
male or female and wanting to associate with the same. I
liked being a "boy" among the girls. I got a great deal of
satisfaction about that, in more ways than one. I just
pretty much thought the boys were awfully boorish. But I
almost felt like an infiltrator with the girls. I felt
like I was...that I was a pretender, that I was there in
disguise. But I was still very tomboy-like, very physical,
very daring. I did lots of climbing, rough- and-tumble
type stuff. Also, I had a romantic interest in girls which
is pretty common for a baby dyke. The girls were more
willing to play "doctor" with one of their own than with
the boys, so I got a lot of mileage out of that. The
problem came in when I hit puberty. All of a sudden,
inside of weeks, I started getting breasts, which were
totally wrong, in my opinion. They got in the way. And
they drew attention to me as a girl. People started
saying, you're growing up, you've got to stop all these
tomboyish activities. I was not about to stop. I didn't
want to. Beyond that, I knew it just wasn't right. What
was happening was just not me. |
|
L: |
The
physical changes? |
|
M: |
Yeah.
Up to that time, I was fine. Up until age 11, I had a flat
chest, and I was fine. I had to deal with the period and
what that meant, but by itself, that wasn't bad. That was
hidden, so it wasn't a big deal. But the breasts were very
noticeable, very out there. And very damaging to my
self-image. |
|
L: |
If
you could have had smaller breasts, would you have had an
easier time, you think, staying in the female gender? Or
settling into it? |
|
M: |
I
don't know that that's true. I think if I had smaller
breasts, I would've tried passing more often, earlier. I
would've tried to pass altogether. I don't know that it
would have made that much of a difference. I think I would
have come to the same decision sooner or later. I think it
would have just allowed me to pass more easily. |
|
L: |
Let's
shift the conversation a little and talk about images of
beauty. How does either the body you have that the world
sees now, or the body you see in your head, relate to the
images of beauty or attractiveness both in the society at
large and in the Lesbian/Gay community? How does
attractiveness figure into all this? |
|
M: |
I
don't think of myself as an attractive woman. I just don't
think I do "woman" well. I'm definitely far outside the
mainstream beauty image. I've tended to play up the
Lesbian butch image, but I don't know that I necessarily
fit that either. When I think of Lesbian butch I think
white. More specifically, I think somewhat tall or medium
height, short hair, handsome features, Caucasian. I'm kind
of pudgy, lumpy, big-breasted. I don't think I fit either
straight or Lesbian. I think the straight ideal of female
beauty is pretty narrow; very few women fit it.
Admittedly, the body I see in my head leans more toward
the masculine attractiveness ideal. I would like to be
trim and fit and well-muscled, which to a degree I already
have because I do have a muscular body that can be
developed even more on testosterone. But again, even the
gay male ideal or the straight ideal for men -- I don't
think I fit that either. One, I'm too short. And two, I
tend to think of that ideal as being white, also. |
|
L: |
So
the fact that you're perceived as black almost by
definition meant that you couldn't have been seen as
attractive as either a male or a female? |
|
M: |
No. I
wouldn't say not seen as attractive, but not the ideal,
which as I said, fits very few people in this society. I
have no doubt that some people may find me attractive, I
think more so as male than female, but those would be
people who don't necessarily accept society's view of
ideal beauty. But even as a black, I don't have classic
features. My complexion is too uneven. It would be better
if I was all chocolate-brown, or all-tan, but not
necessarily the mix that I have with the freckles. But
other than that, I don't think I'm totally unattractive. I
tend to think of my appeal as being somewhat
idiosyncratic. |
|
L: |
So
being black has affected your images of beauty. Has being
black had any affect on how you see gender? |
|
M: |
Yes,
I think it has. In the back of my mind I always knew that
gender realignment would make me a black male in a society
where black males are tolerated at best, and hated and
feared at worst. That bias is something I have to get away
from myself. I haven't had a real high opinion of most
black men. I think of the exaggerated macho, fathering
babies and abandoning them, that kind of thing. I think if
anything, it's stood in my way of accepting my maleness. |
|
L: |
It
would have been easier for you to have the feelings you
have about your gender if you had been white... |
|
M: |
Oh,
definitely! |
|
L: |
...because it would've been easier to imagine yourself as
a white man than a black man. |
|
M: |
Most
definitely. You and I have talked about television images
and, in particular, [the TV show] Mod Squad before. I
didn't identify with Link so much as I did with Pete. So I
think it would have definitely been a lot easier to
accept. But I gave up on being "white" when I was a kid. I
didn't want it anymore. |
|
L: |
Given
all that, when you're in that in- your-mind-"house" we
talked about earlier, are you seeing yourself as a black
male or a white male? |
|
M: |
Actually, I see male of indeterminate race. I see a
mixture. Brown-skinned, decidedly, but mixed. |
|
L: |
But
that's not necessarily how you define yourself out in the
world, is it, brown- skinned and mixed? |
|
M: |
Well,
I'm leaning more towards it. When I filled out a survey
recently, they had a question about race. They had
African- American, European-American, Asian- American,
Native American, Other as choices. I put down "Other," and
in the space for "Other," I wrote down African- American,
European-American, and Native American. So, I don't know,
maybe that's what I have to do now to accept the male:
somehow downplay the "black" part. |
|
L: |
Because it's too scary to be a black man in this society? |
|
M: |
Maybe. Or maybe because I'm challenging what is male and
female and whether one has to be one or the other, and
that's making me wonder about all the categories. I don't
know, really. My guess is it's probably a mixture. |
|
L: |
When
we were talking about images of beauty, you talked about
being pudgy. When we met, you were not pudgy. You'd lost a
lot of weight and had worked out and were in very good
physical shape. You were also taking testosterone and
getting ready, to some degree or another, to go through
with surgery. Over the years since, you began putting on
weight and got out of shape. In retrospect, those were the
years in which I blocked you from going forward with the
surgery. Do you think there is a connection between your
weight gain and being kind of "stuck" in being female? |
|
M: |
There
is definitely a connection. That's funny, I was just
thinking about that today. I was retracing the timeline. I
think I stopped taking the hormones in '86, and I think it
was right after that time that I started really porking
out again. Looking back, I think I had an investment in my
body before then. I started my weight loss program and
everything when I was around 17, when I had decided that I
was definitely going to go through surgery, this was what
I wanted. I started to work out, and lose weight. Then
when I was about 18 or 19, I started taking the hormones.
At that point I also started to develop other physical
characteristics I wanted: the growth of body hair, and
then the voice deepened, and I became more muscular. My
body was starting to be shaped more and more the way I
wanted it to, and I started to take more care of it and
appreciate it more and like it more. Then after we got
together and it became clear to me that I wasn't going to
be able to go through with it [surgery], I stopped taking
the hormones because I just figured, "why? Why bother any
more?" I started to lose that investment in my physical
appearance again, and I just didn't care any more. I've
noticed now that I've started to feel a little more like I
care what I look like. Now I have a little more investment
in my body. Unfortunately, it's a little harder now to get
in shape than it was when I was 17! |
|
L: |
One
reason it may be a little harder is because now you've had
a baby. Can you talk about what it was like, as someone
who's dealing with gender issues, to try to get pregnant,
and then being pregnant? |
|
M: |
Originally, I had decided to be the one to carry the child
because I thought that it would help me "be in my body,"
that it would help me "ground" myself in my female body. I
thought the experience would make me accept the way I was
more, so that I wouldn't have to keep dealing with the
gender stuff. It didn't turn out that way. |
|
|
Getting pregnant was so goal-oriented, I don't know that I
thought about it much. BEING pregnant was interesting.
Being pregnant felt almost like there was some kind of
parasitic creature in me. It didn't feel real, somehow. It
just felt like some strange thing controlling my emotions
and my body, and making me eat when it wanted to. If I
didn't eat enough, it took all my energy and I didn't have
any left. And just the movement inside, and all that....
It was very ungrounding as opposed to grounding. I
dissociated a lot from my body. I wasn't able to deal with
the experience in a positive way. I was sick all the time,
and tired, and in pain. I definitely think part of that
was the idea that I was a pregnant woman. And the more
people paid attention to that, the more pissed-off I was.
I didn't even want anybody at work to know until
absolutely the last minute. |
|
L: |
Talk
a little bit, if you can, about how it felt when people
reacted to you as a pregnant woman, either people on the
street or people you knew. |
|
M: |
Well,
I don't think very many people on the street ever related
to me a pregnant woman because I didn't do the "pregnant"
stuff: I didn't dress pregnant, I didn't walk pregnant --
as far as I can tell -- I didn't act pregnant. At work,
when it all came out, I had all these people walking
around giving me unsolicited advice: [falsetto voice] "Oh,
well, you've got to do this and you've got to do that and
now you've got to breastfeed and this, that, and the
other." All of a sudden everyone was in my business, and
in my business about this in particular. People telling me
what I should and shouldn't do: I shouldn't be lifting
that, I shouldn't be doing this. And as a butch, the
actuality was, I was functioning at a lower level and I
couldn't do many things. I couldn't lift stuff, I couldn't
reach for things, and I had no energy. So, my whole butch
self- image which I'd cultivated all this time got really
out of whack. The care people were giving me, making sure
they carried things for me, opened doors for me -- it made
me very angry. |
|
L: |
You
breastfed the baby for awhile. Given how much upset your
breasts have caused you all your life, was breastfeeding a
problem? |
|
M: |
That's another way the dissociation came in. I didn't
really think of them as my breasts so much as the source
of his food. They ceased to become, in lots of ways, a
part of my body. It was just sort of his meal, that's the
way I looked at it. I wouldn't bear my breasts in public
in order to breastfeed, but I get uncomfortable when other
women do that, too. I really, at least I think I did, did
a good job of separating myself from what was happening. |
|
L: |
The
baby we were expecting based on sonograms was a girl.
That's what we were prepared for. And then when you had
the baby, it turned out to be a boy. Given your gender
issues, what did it mean to you immediately and then later
to have a boy? |
|
M: |
Well,
the first time I heard he was a boy, I was coming out of
the anesthesia [from a C-section] and I refused to believe
them. I think I asked them about four times: "What did you
say it was again?" "A boy." And I was like, "Oh, well how
did that happen?" So there was shock. But I was also just
plain relieved that it was over and he was here, and in
some ways it didn't really matter that it was a boy. There
was a little bit of disappointment. I was struck,
actually, by what I took as sort of a metaphor for my
life: We thought our child was a girl, and prepared for a
girl, we had a girl's name picked out, and were all ready
to receive this female, and it turned out to be a male! I
thought about that as a metaphor for my life in that by
all appearances -- my life being the erroneous sonogram --
I was a girl, but surprise!, I wasn't; I was a boy. Very
early, within a few hours, I remember thinking, well, I
wonder if his is a message. That this means I'm supposed
to go through with it [gender realignment]. |
|
|
Later
I started dealing with my disappointment in the fact that
he wasn't a girl. I had to examine my feelings about males
in general and my feelings about my being male, or my
maleness.... I realized that I had to do some work to
accept him being male, and that was the same work I needed
to do to accept me. So in lots of ways, Kai's gender was
another positive push. |
|
L: |
When
you say you have "to do some work" to accept Kai's and
your maleness, what do you mean? |
|
M: |
I had
to start thinking, well, what is it...what are the
problems I have with men in this society? And how much of
those problems stem from the way males are socialized, and
how much is irrevocably "male"? And so I had to sort of
broaden and loosen my thinking about what males were and
females were, and what they are capable of. I had to start
looking at more of the paths or, sometimes, the lack of
paths, that we're given to pursue based on perceived
physical limitations, gender, height, or color, or any
other sort of arbitrary means of measuring people. So I
think it is in lots of ways making me less rigid about why
people are the way they are, and how much of that is
intractable -- how much of that is biological -- and how
much of that is sociological -- how much we buy into the
system. |
|
L: |
Given
that, what do you think your transgender identity is going
to mean for Kai? What are your hopes and fears about that? |
|
M: |
I
don't really have a lot of fears. Hopes are that he won't
be so rigid in his gender expectations. That he might be
more capable of seeing people as people, and that he might
be able to see degrees of maleness and femaleness and
"otherness." And, hopefully, he'll be able to see that
being a male or being a man has very little to do with
just the physical, that it's a whole package that has to
be developed. I mean, most people just kind of go through
life saying, "I am what I am." They don't have to think
about what they are, and what it means to be what they
are. And I would hope that, given my experience, he would
be more self-aware, and more self-examining about who he
is and what he is, and why he is what he is. Just make him
a much more conscious person in general. Not take things
at face value. |
|
L: |
What
are your hopes and fears about what will happen to you
when your surgery is complete and your papers are changed
and everyone has accepted you as male? |
|
M: |
Well,
I do fear that I'll be perceived as "selling out."
Regardless of what some people think, this is not about
male privilege. That's something else that I had to fight
in myself all along -- am I doing this just because men
supposedly have it better in this society? That's another
realization I had to come to. No, I don't necessarily
think men have it better. So my fear is that people will
assign the wrong motives to what I have done, and make
certain assumptions about me based on those motives. That
they may, for instance, think that I think being a woman
in this society is so awful that I couldn't do it, that I
had to cop-out. Although they do that now...make
assumptions about me based on my perceived gender, or my
sexual orientation, or my color. |
|
|
My
hope is that I will be able to live openly as a
transsexual or transgendered male, be up front about that
and have people accept me for that, and not try to make
assumptions about who I am. |
|
L: |
So
what are your motives? |
|
M: |
My
motives are just to have my...to have things in synch. I
don't know how else to put that. I don't believe that when
I have the chest surgery in late August, that there are
going to be any really profound, immediate effects on my
life. I mean, I'm not going to be suddenly richer, or
handsome, or anything like that. I just feel I'll be more
at peace with who I am, and more happy with the way I am.
That's the whole point in going through all this. As for
any long- term effects, changes...I'll just have to see as
I go along. I can't really say what the future will hold.
I just know it'll be better. |
Source:
http://hometown.aol.com/marcellecd/Erroneous_Sonogram.html
http://hometown.aol.com/marcellecd/Transgendered.html
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