Transgender student defies labels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By: Angela Scipione

News Editor

“If you internalize [your identity,] it’ll choke you out. It’ll kill you eventually. It’s going to suffocate you if you just keep it inside,” Jonah Teal said.

Jonah Teal, a honors liberal arts student, knows what it’s like to keep a secret. He kept his until his freshman year of college.

“I knew I wasn’t a girl for a long time,” he said, “But that moment was when I was finally like ‘OK, this is enough, I have to say something.’ So, I did.”

Pretending to be someone he wasn’t took a toll on his mental health. After dealing with depression and anxiety, he came out to his mother in his sophomore year of high school.

He remembers the pivotal moment clearly. “We were in the car, driving home from a counseling session, and we were talking about [the fact that] I had come out to her as gay,” Teal said.

In the counseling session, Teal’s mother said her expectations were shattered after realizing she would not be getting what she hoped for in a child. “She thought that there was a lot of things that she had hoped for me to accomplish, and by being gay I would be deviating from that. Obviously, I got upset about that,” he said.

During the 45 minute drive home, tensions grew until Teal’s mother pulled over into a parking lot. “And so I told her, ‘I’m not a girl. I’m trans. This is how it is,’” Teal said.

Teal came out fully in college where he felt he could reinvent himself in a safe environment.

Teal witnessed what his best friend, Jordan, had to endure after coming out in high school as trans. When Jordan won the title of prom king, one student made clear that he was against the decision.

“It got worse,” Teal said, “They were threatening to hurt [Jordan.] We were terrified. Our friend group did not let him walk alone at all. We walked him to his car. We walked him to class.”

“It was heartwarming to see the amount of [students who ended up coming out] in Jordan’s favor. That helped me gain confidence too. They [took] the time to protect him and make him feel comfortable,” he said.  

Teal realized transforming into a different person wasn’t necessary when starting college. “I didn’t really need to come out because it was just a new place, so I just went as Jonah, and that was that,” he said.

“Obviously I appear more as a girl, and so it’s hard getting people to say the right pronouns no matter what I do. Even if I email professors a week before classes start [and explain the situation.]”

Teal doesn’t take it too personally though.

“Sometimes I wish I did have a blinking sign like, ‘Hi, I’m a boy!’ But I don’t. I realize that not everyone is going to get my pronouns correct and that’s just how society works right now,” he said.

Now that Teal can be himself, he is considering sex reassignment surgery, but the prices can reach over $100,000. He also plans to legally change his name.

In New York, to legally change your gender the person must be in the process of transitioning. Teal wishes it would change so he could change his gender legally without having expensive surgeries.

Teal would rather see society’s views change than his body. He feels as though transitioning is what society expects to see from him. He said there is pressure to look a certain way and he often feels insecure.

Teal feels the LGBTQ community also needs to conform. “There’s a struggle between ‘I am transgender and therefore I feel connected to this community,’ and the individualist inside you that’s like ‘I’m trans, but I also like to read. I like to ride my bike. I like video games and learning new languages,’” he said.

“[Members of the community] need to accept their place in it but not let it define their entire life,” Teal said. He wants others to accept their identity, while also living their lives outside of the boxes society has set.