Janice Josephine Carney - Becoming My Mother’s Josephine

 

My birth certificate said my name was John Joseph and I was male. That was my problem. As an infant, my mother had me in gowns that had long, curly hair. I was my mother's daughter. I was her Josephine. As a young child, I enjoyed wearing my sister's clothes and I preferred dresses. My games were hopscotch, jacks, skipping rope. [giggles] I did not like playing with the little toy soldiers or playing with the guns. That was not me. As I got older and my father, sisters and brothers had seen me dressing up, it was beaten into me that was not a good thing. And as I got a little bit more older, I learned in school, from teachers and from church that was not a good thing. So, I hid it pretty much by middle school and high school. I had a dark secret.

 

I knew I was not John, and I knew I was not a boy, but I had to hide it. So, 1968, I took a draft physical. Then in 1969, when I was graduating high school, I heard the news. I was classified 1A. I was fit for military duty. As shocking as it was, there was nobody more surprised than me. [audience chuckles] Nobody. And I talked to my grandmother a little bit. My grandmother was from Nova Scotia and was French Canadian, spoke mostly French. As a child, she always let me dress the way I want and be me. She wanted me to go up to Canada. But I went and I decided to confront my father. I never got into the gender stuff, but [scoffs] I told him I was thinking about going to Canada, that I was trying to avoid the draft.

 

And my father was a typical World War II Irish guy. And he went off the deep end and telling me, "Don't ever let us step foot in his house again. You know, sodomite. If you can't go off the wall and just the whole Archie Bunker thing." Before there was even an Archie Bunker on TV. [audience chuckles] He was there. The very next morning, I went out, we took the T down to downtown Boston, Cambridge, actually. And I went into a recruiter's office and I enlisted into the army to get into the medical corps so I could avoid the infantry. July of '70 to July of '71, I was in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne. I spent some time up along the Laotian border on a firebase.

 

I could talk a lot about that, what it's like being on a firebase that's under attack and surviving an ambush, but the biggest thing was coming home, landing in Seattle. And I ended up back in Boston. And almost immediately I was back in full femme, hitting the clubs. I was 21 now, so I can get into the good clubs. And I was dressing up again. The army didn't change nothing, as if I was my gender and who I was. But the struggle was still there. Wanting to fit in, wanting to be-- wanting to be normal. There were periods around this time frame where the army doctors had said I had psychotic war neurosis. This is before the term posttraumatic stress disorder was used.

 

I was under a lot of different medications. We were trying to treat it with pills. Pills to help you sleep, pills to help you wake up, pills for anxiety, pills for depression. And I tried. I wanted so much to fit in. So, I got married, which was the thing to do. I had three children. I worked five years at a hardhat job at shipyard in Quincy, Mass. Then I got a civil service safe, secure job, the post office. But the image at the time of Vietnam veterans all being the enemy. And if you put Vietnam veterans on a job application, you wasn't going to get the job. There was a lot of shame in being a Vietnam veteran. And I got involved with a veteran support group and I got to meet a bunch of really-- what would become my closest friends, the only friends.

 

It brought back my pride as a veteran, and I started wearing a Vietnam Veterans hat and being proud of who I was. But in the end, I just was this miserable drunk with the home life. I ended up finally all of this with a suicide attempt. I tried before, but this time I ended up in a hospital and transferred to the Boston VA Hospital. And a woman from my church who was our big AA champion came in to visit me in the hospital and brought a friend. His name was Pat. Pat, I think in the long run, may have saved my life. He got me to a year of sobriety and sanity, a whole year, the longest I'd gone out drinking probably since around middle school. And there was this clarity and this sense of who I was and I--

 

We were sitting, he was on his mail route one day. I was meeting him at lunch and something called a four-step inventory in the program where you really look at yourself and try to answer questions. And the two questions we were working on was, "Do I still feel like drinking? Do I still feel suicidal?" And I was, "Yep, yep, both of those still there." "What can you do to-- what can you do to stop those, the cravings or to stop the suicidal thoughts?" As we were sitting there, it was to the end of the winter, the nice warm sunny day. And two young girls came in and they had really nice summer dresses. And I'm kind of glaring at them. They're all excited. They're not all bundled up for winter and they're comfortable with giggling.

 

So, I says to Pat, "If I could just wear a nice summer dress like that, I think I'd be happy and I wouldn't feel--" And Pat took a bite out of his sandwich, sip of his coffee, and says, "Go buy a dress. What's your problem?" [audience laughter and applause] My AA sponsor. And didn't bat an eye. And I was expecting a total shock and kind of, "Okay.”  He says, “Go buy a dress.” We solved this crisis over. [audience laughter] And but it started-- By that time, my marriage was falling apart and I really was trying to be who I always knew I was. So, I went out, I got my ears pierced and I stopped wearing clip-on earrings and just dressing up and painting my nails, shaved my legs, let my hair grow down shoulder length, and I was just out being me.

 

The problem was, well, still the birth certificate. But I was going to this veterans group getting more and more effeminate. And these people who had brought me back and all that pride, the Vietnam veteran had got me to where I was suddenly turned on me. "Are you queer? You're a faggot. Are you going to get your dick cut off? Are you going to get one of those gender realignments?" And this was the talk in the support group with the facilities there. Another part around this time was the VA had a program where you can get a free personal computer. The idea was that with the computer you could send emails and connect with other Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder and stuff. But the first thing I did was I googled transgender. This new word that was kicking around.

 

It was no longer just LGB, lesbian, gay and bi, I also knew was this transgender. What it actually meant was confusing to a lot of people, even to me. But I found out that was me. But the biggest thing I found other transgender Vietnam veterans across the country. But I liked to simplify it. I weaved myself a cocoon and I came out the beautiful woman I always wanted to be. And it's poetic, but it's a lot more complex than that. A lot more complex. But I did it. I really, truly did it. In the end, I had a letter from Dr. Biber that said legally I was female. I fit the criteria. Can I say the V word? We adults here? They had a vagina. [audience applause] And I had legally changed my name to Janice Josephine.

 

So, I had this beautiful morning when I went into the Cambridge City Hall, armed with my paperwork, and I was presented with a new birth certificate that said I was Janice Josephine Carney, female. [applause] One last thing. I am-- I can never be my father's son, but I am my mother's daughter. I am my mother's Josephine. Okay, thank you.