Jamie Shiner was born male, but she always knew inside that she was female.
Shiner, on June 19 at the Shawano Civic Center, told her story of the lifelong effort to shed her male designation and become who she feels she was meant to be. Today, she’s 71 and living in Green Bay, pointing out that transgender people have existed in the world for a long time.
Shiner was invited by the Shawano County Democratic Party to speak in commemoration of Pride Month, designated in June to shine a spotlight on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals.
Growing up in Escanaba, Michigan, Shiner knew she was not a boy by the age of 3, even though the anatomy appeared otherwise. She said she started to try her mother’s clothing on when she turned 5, and her mother began using Shiner as a model when making dresses for cousins and other relatives.
With a Catholic upbringing, Shiner was convinced she was a homosexual, believing then that the word meant a male wanting to be a female. She said there was very little literature on being transgender when she was a child.
“I thought it was going to be a terrible sin and I’d go straight to hell. I wouldn’t tell nobody about that,” Shiner said. “If I’d told anybody, there would have been grave consequences anyway. We’re talking about the 1950s and early ’60s.”
Shiner told how she’d dress up in women’s clothing when her parents left the house, how she took the tweezers to her first hairs upon hitting puberty and how she feared she’d be drafted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War. She noted she never got a draft notice, and she set off for the western part of the United States after a failed relationship with a woman with no male clothing but everything else she owned to start a new life.
“I was going to dress the part, what I felt,” Shiner said. “This is what I’ve been all my life. I’ve always known it, but society always wanted to push me into being a guy.”
However, Shiner experienced a setback when she got married to a woman and fathered a child.
“I was in the basic trap,” Shiner said. “Had a house with a mortgage, kids. You’re stuck. You’ve got a job that pays good, long hours. I worked hard.”
That feeling of being trapped led Shiner to drink all through the 1980s, which led to health problems in the 1990s. She said she quit drinking and returned to the practice of buying women’s clothing and wearing them in the privacy of her home.
A return to Michigan showed Shiner that other transgender people like her existed, and making the transition was doable. She said that, during a stint at a mental institution following a suicide attempt, a psychiatrist pointed out that if she didn’t transition, she would not last long.
“I wanted to be alive,” Shiner said.
She was thrown out of her home in 2005, which is when she moved to Green Bay. In 2006, she had facial feminization surgery, which she said, “hurt like hell” and cost her $28,500 out of pocket. Then, the following year, she had her final transition surgery, which cost another $12,500.
Shiner noted that transgenders can be traced back at least as far as 1924, when a Jewish German man named Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld performed one of the first sexual reassignment surgeries.
“The Republicans still claim it’s experimental, 100 years later,” Shiner said. “There’s history for you. We’ve been around forever.”
Since moving to Green Bay, she has pushed for transgender rights under the banner of the Democratic Party. Her political career included a stint as chairwoman of Wisconsin’s LGBTQ caucus.
“It’s all about being who you are,” Shiner said. “This is who I am.”
The recent attacks on the LGBTQ community nationwide have angered Shiner, including bills signed into law in Florida.
“They went after the drag queens first because they’re pretty visible,” Shiner said. “People like me, there’s lots of people around, and half the ones who are transgender you wouldn’t know about.”
Now, in Shiner’s view, Florida is “messing with the kids.” She noted that doctors use puberty blockers on transgender youths until they turn 18, as no gender reassignment surgeries are permitted on children until that age, but lawmakers are claiming otherwise.
“I feel sorry for them, because I can imagine how I would have felt,” Shiner said.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
Shiner shares story of becoming transgender
