The New Republic

Breaking Boundaries
Interviews conducted and compiled by Eliza Gray and Margy Slattery
Retrieved from the Internet on August 22, 2011

http://www.tnr.com/gallery/transgender

This project began five months ago as a simple reporting assignment: investigate how people who were making the transition from one gender to another learned to alter their voices. That relatively simple inquiry, however, opened a vast array of issues and questions, and introduced me to a number of people whose lives—despite any proclamations of banality—were utterly inspiring. The scope and length of the article grew, and eventually it turned into a broad look at the state of the transgender rights movement.

Several weeks ago, TNR's art director, Joe Heroun, conducted a photo shoot in New York with eleven members of the transgender community. I spoke to them and learned about their lives. There was Maggie Stumpp, who transitioned at the height of a successful career in finance. Or, Laverne Cox, who survived intense bullying as a boy in Mobile, Alabama, and has become a stunning and confident actress and producer. And Sam Berkley, our cover subject, a self-described "scrappy kid from Brooklyn," who decided he was "done with this girl ->-bleeped-<-" and transitioned a year ago. He is now a plaintiff in a civil rights law suit against New York City.

It would be impossible to catalog or classify all the varieties of transgender experience. My hope, however, is that the following gallery contributes to our understanding of this community.

-- Eliza Gray