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Leader's Resource for Introduction to Gender Identity and Gender Expression Lesson Plan
The Girl-with-No-Name*
I was perhaps 15 years old. The rest of the family had gone on a ride, and I had begged off; the excuse is long forgotten. I was sitting on the floor of the living room, wearing a purple dress (I had my own by that time), experimenting with my face. And for the first time, I got it right. Looking in the mirror, with my mandatory haircut, I would ordinarily see a boy, and only a boy. In that dress, with Cover Girl skin and Maybelline eyes, my hair blended into a wig, I saw a very pretty, an almost beautiful girl. I didn't—and this is important—see a boy dressed as a girl. I saw a girl!
I remember thinking, "This is who I want to be. This is who I probably should have been." But I also remember thinking that it couldn't be. I was looking at a fiction, a fabrication, a creature created out of cosmetics and cloth. The girl in the mirror was a fantasy, and I could see no way to make her a reality. The girl had no name. In the end, she wound up in a paper sack which I hid under a loose board in the summer-hot attic.
My parents took me to a psychiatrist… In my shame and denial, I led him to think that the crossdressing was not very important, had just been an experiment. And he went for it, telling my parents that I was "just going through a phase." It's a phase that's still going on, now, at age 46. I entered adulthood as a man instead of as a woman… Married a woman; grew a beard; went to college. Got weak in the knees every time I saw a pretty girl, because I wanted to be her so much. Got divorced (for unrelated reasons).
I started by acknowledging that I was at the very least a crossdresser. I quit worrying that my pumps or wig would be seen, or that I would be spotted wearing them. One by one, I told my friends and acquaintances. Step one…
Step two was to ask myself whether I wanted to be a woman. I already knew the answer to that one.
Step three was to take an honest look at myself, to determine if it would be possible, via surgery, electrolysis, and better living through chemistry, to ever pass convincingly as a woman. I refused to be a man-in-dress. I took careful stock of my body. I didn't at all like what I saw. My body had moved in undesirable directions since the day I found that single hair growing on my face. I was too hairy, too big, too this, not enough of that. I made a list and then scratched off things that could be changed via hard work, hormones, electrolysis, surgery. I looked at what was left and thought, "Just maybe…"
The girl-with-no-name now has a name. It is, in fact, the name she had all along, one of those names which turns out to work perfectly well as a woman's name, thank you. She is finally a creature of flesh-and-blood rather than a fantasy. She is not a notion of a woman, not an imitation of a woman, not a man's idea of what a woman should be, but a woman, with all the virtues and warts, the rights and privileges thereto—a woman who can be raped, who can be strong, who can bake a cake and change the spark plugs in her car. It is she who I see in the mirror every morning instead of the burr-headed boy I once was. Finally, at long last, thank God, it's over.
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To those of you who are transgender and have not found your way through the glass, know that you can, if it is your earnest and heart's desire. You can reach out. (See Select Organizations, Web Sites, Videos, and Books in Creating Safe Space for GLBTQ Youth: A Toolkit)
* Excerpted with permission from The Girl-With-No-Name, by Dallas Denny © 1992, Empathy 1992/93.
Reprinted from Creating Safe Space for GLBTQ Youth: A Toolkit, Girl's Best Friend Foundation and Advocates for Youth, © 2005. [PDF file] 
Click here to read more lesson plans from Creating Safe Space for GLBTQ Youth: A Toolkit >>
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