This ran in the New York Times 

On an Opinion page called Transgender Today

Sally Michelle Jackson

Author, salesperson (part-time) and semi-retired from New Orleans, La.

 

My story is basically one of invisibility, I was never abused, just overlooked. I wanted to do the things that my sister was doing but I always did what was expected of me, doing things that I didn't care about and apparently neither did my family.

It may seem odd to some but even while working as a musician, playing lead trumpet and jazz solos with big bands I still felt invisible. The reason is rather simple - that was never really me, I was invisible, the puppet master behind the stage - completely responsibly for everything that the puppet said or did but totally unseen.

This is not uncommon for people like myself who never identified with the gender that they were assigned at birth. The male persona that I hid behind for the first 58 years of my life was never really me, at the core he was but never really open about his feelings or beliefs - guarded and afraid of being found out I hid in the shadows until it became a way of life.

I transitioned rather smoothly, losing a wife, a house and a business but maintaining my friends and my new job throughout transitioning.

Some people feel that they became marginalized or disenfranchised from society when they came out as transgender but for me that happened long ago when I betrayed the American Dream of wealth, power and fame. I have never made a lot of money or ever spoken out about much of anything but now it seems that the transition from invisible background to the forefront is much more difficult than that of transitioning from male to female, because I was always female and I have never seen myself as a leader. When twenty people walked along behind me I assumed that they were headed in the same direction only a step or two behind, I found out later that they were actually following me.

I have turned my creative side towards writing and through my poetry I have shown the emotional side of transitioning and I am trying to make a little bit more of social awareness through my novels. The main characters include trans and gay people but the theme is not just to bludgeon anyone into submission but to shed the light on trans people as human beings, nothing more and nothing less.