Jamison Green & Associates
Education and Policy Consulting on Transgender and Transsexual Issues
Jamison's Story (continued)
Photo credits: Above left: Trout fishing with only a spool of leader and a dry fly in Yosemite (age 14). Top right: As Peter Pan, age 6 or 8. Middle right: High School graduation, 1966. Bottom right: With little brother Eric, 1971.
He took the name Jamison when he was 15 years old (1964) and started going by the androgynous name "Jamie" (he now prefers James as his nickname). He achieved a number of accomplishments as the "first female-bodied person" to perform various feats, such as: first girl to climb the ropes in the boys' gym, first girl to take woodshop in his junior high school (1960 - 1963), first girl on his high school ski team, only female in his graduate program (he holds an MFA in English/Creative Writing, June, 1972), and the first woman employed as a construction cable splicer with a division of Bell Telephone (February, 1973 - August, 1976).
By the time he was in his early 20's, James knew he was probably transsexual, but he was afraid to obtain treatment because he believed the social mythology that one must be seriously psychologically imbalanced to perform such a radical act as changing sex, and he did not want to risk losing all his social support. By the time he was in his mid-30's, he knew he was "not going to grow up to be a woman," and he realized that he was going to have to
choose between seeking treatment for transsexualism or becoming debilitated by his incapacity to take on the social role of an adult woman. He also was living openly as a lesbian in a long-term relationship, with one child by donor insemination and another on the way (James' partner gave birth to both children, and he was named as father on their birth certificates, even though both children were born before James was legally male.
