Not long ago I finished reading Warrior Princess, the recently published biography of Kristin Beck, retired Navy SEAL. Kristin is a transgendered woman who came out and began her transition from male to female upon retirement from the Navy. Transitioning, undergoing sex reassignment, is always public. There’s simply no way to be in the closet about what’s going on when someone decides to live life in a gender different than that which they were assigned at birth.

Kristin’s transition is public on a mega- level. Her (formerly his) 20 year career with the SEAL teams, serving in 13 deployments which included the first Iraqi conflict, Bosnia and the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts of this century, assured that more than her immediate circle of friends and acquaintances would become aware of the transition. Since retirement from military service in 2011, Beck has served as a consultant to defense contractors and remained a voice in defense circles nationally. Early in 2013, Beck went public with her identity as a woman and her plans to pursue social and physical transition to live fully as a woman.

What I’m blogging about here is not so much a review of the book or even, really, a commentary on Kristin Beck’s experience. I’m compelled to write about my reaction to the book and to her experience. When Warrior Princess was published, I waffled on whether I wanted to read it or not. As a rule, I don’t like reading about another’s transsexual experience. I had my own transition experience; I live as a transsexual every day. It’s not something I need to read about. Truth is, reading others’ experiences is uncomfortable for me. I wish I could read biographies of transsexuals and feel a sense of peace, a solidarity, a camaraderie with them but often I’m left with the feeling that something is missing. Something that was a large part of my own experience went untold. I also find parts of the reading personally painful.

What happens is that I start to empathize too closely. Reading the childhood experiences are particularly hard; it excites my own memories of isolation, inadequacy, immorality, secrets. Reading the experiences of an MtF (male to female) is worse because most of them do have a worse time in childhood. As a child, I could dress like a boy to a certain extent. My mother didn’t make me wear a dress every day. Even in a dress, I could get away with wearing something that made me feel more male. A baseball cap or cowboy hat – and not in pink or white; they had to be black, red or blue, just like the boys. Any little thing like that would make me feel okay with myself. I could assert my internal identity. But when you’re assigned male at birth, you NEVER get to wear a dress. The slightest whiff of femininity on a boy brings down a torrent of shaming remarks and sometimes physical assault (often in the form of corporal punishment meted out by parents intent on correcting behavior).

Despite my reservations about reading the experience of another transgendered person, the facts behind Beck’s story were compelling and I wanted to learn more. Hence, I downloaded Warrior Princess and dove in. As I expected, I was emotionally pulled in to her experience. We’re the same age and both were raised in middle class, American households. Beck’s childhood experience was far harsher than my own, however. I have long been grateful for having been raised by parents who set some value on independence of spirit and non-conformity. I can’t say that non-conformity was encouraged. But, it was respected if the reasons behind it were well thought out. Gender roles in my family were fairly traditionally split, but it wasn’t unheard of for my father to do the dishes or a load of laundry. Mom mowed the yard once in a while. Gender roles in Beck’s childhood home were more traditional and strictly adhered to. It was too easy for me to imagine myself as that child, to feel what that experience was like. My own childhood discomfort was remembered and magnified when reading hers. Those feelings I’d left behind are again fresh.

The other part of what makes me particularly uncomfortable in reading the childhood experiences of other transsexuals is that there is rarely a relief from the misery of childhood in the telling. This saddens me because I have many happy, warm memories from my youth and some that stem directly from my persistent feelings that I was really a boy, not a girl. Something about feeling that way made me feel special. I cherished that small dream, that secret side of myself. Sometimes I felt almost superior to others, more worldly perhaps would be a way to describe it. I knew something that they didn’t. I understood something they never could, had access to a place in myself that they could never dream of. This peace I found within myself was calming. I could focus outwardly on school or family activities or friends while still caring for, caring about, the real me inside.

When I decided to transition, to go public (albeit on a much smaller scale than Kristin Beck), it was from a place of deep self-knowledge and happiness and strength. I didn’t experience transition from a place of desperation. I wasn’t on the verge of suicide. I simply knew I had reached a point in life where I would be happier living as a man and no longer being seen as a woman. There didn’t seem to be any valid reason not to take the steps necessary to make that change, to conform my body to my internal sense of self. It was an exciting and happy time.

Between the lines of Beck’s coming out experience, her going public with a female identity and living full-time as a woman, that same deep sense of satisfaction and happiness and strength almost came through. Almost. I think all that was there, somewhere, amongst the words describing her family’s deep opposition to the change, the almost unanimous opinion from others that she would be ostracized from the SEAL teams, lose the support of the military community, possibly lose her post-retirement career as a consultant. Beck is open in the book about the separate issues of PTSD and difficulties of establishing a civilian life after the whole of her adult life in the military and often on deployment. As either a woman or a man, she needed the support of that military community if she was going to successfully integrate into civilian life.

The book highlights all these issues, building up the tension until Beck’s coming out, her announcement of being a woman and deciding to live full-time as a woman, appears to be an act of despair and defiance. I have no doubt that was part of what drove the decision and the timing of the decision. But somewhere, in that whole desperate part of the story, I could feel the happiness and satisfaction, the strength and the peace. I wish her story had brought those elements more into focus and that more trans* coming out stories, not just Warrior Princess, also focused on these elements. When I look back and recall my feelings around that time, that’s mostly what I remember.

Beck had a co-author on the book, someone who’s not transgendered and who, from what I gathered, didn’t have much knowledge of or insight into the community prior to meeting Beck. Maybe this accounts for all the focus on the misery and desperation and negativity – this sense that Kristin was driven to such despair that she had no choice but to come out. I’m not saying that negativity wasn’t in play, surely it was. I just think that somewhere in there, they forgot to write that there was a strong, happy woman emerging. She was arriving confident and peaceful and free. She shouldn’t have had to escape from between the lines of the text. She should have been given her own independent voice.

The transgender experience is more than just this grinding oppression of self. It’s more than rejection and fear, mislabeling and misery. It’s truly the most lovely and satisfying mix of complexity and clarity. It’s a delving into oneself as a whole person. It’s an expansion of mind and body. It’s humbling and it’s exhilarating. Surely, I’m not the only one who experiences transsexuality in this way. I’d like to read a biography that explores that feeling of ease and confidence and self-knowledge. Maybe they’re out there. After all, I rarely read on the subject anymore. I think Warrior Princess would have been well-served by examining these aspects of transition. I think they are part of her experience, just a part that didn’t get told in reliance on the traditional story of “life was a living hell until transition.”

The book ended in a place where Beck received overwhelming support after her announcement and upon living full-time as a woman. She was not roundly rejected and many, many of those she served with and with whom she continues to work indicated their intention to support her. I hope that holds true in the long run. She and they will be re-learning how to interact with each other. It takes time on both sides and that first year can be choppy. It’s tempting to retreat to a place of comfort, where you surround yourself with people who only know you in your new, post-transition gender. Something tells me, though, that Kristin and her friends don’t know the meaning of the word retreat. She and her SEAL team buddies should get through this phase of adjustment just fine.