Working Within The System

Sometimes - all too often - the best-laid plans of men transitioning to women do not proceed as anticipated.  Michael Hamelin who has been a man for 49 years and is now a woman thanks to medical science and an unappeasable inner urge that left him questioning his masculinity despite two marriages and fatherhood and a twenty-year career in the military, has now attained his dream.

 Michelle Hamelin leaving her job at Kingston Penitentiary on Day 2 of being a woman in July 2012.   Photograph by: Lindy Mechefske

He has been transformed.  He is no longer Michael, but rather Michelle Hamelin.  "I came out of the closet and went straight into the basement", she says in disappointment over how things have worked out for her at the present time.  Working for the past two years at Kingston Penitentiary as a supply officer, a post that brings her into direct contact with a small group of inmates, she anticipated no problems with her change in gender status.

She had notified her workplace superiors of the monumental physical changes that were taking place in her body to match the alteration in her psychology, and felt that she had their support.  She had informed a wide circle of people to forewarn them of her altered presence.  And she felt that she would simply turn up at work one day clad as a woman, among inmates and workers who had been familiar with her over the years as a man.

The local Ottawa newspaper, The Ottawa Citizen did a story about this coming out affair in mid-month July.  Stating, among other things, that her plan was to show up for work a week after her story was made public, and she would then appear as a woman, fulfilling her heart's desire.  "They advised me to continue coming to work dressed as Michael until my legal name change because official", Michelle explained.

She felt shattered, disappointed, let down. The directive given her made her miserable, altered her self-confidence as she fought with herself over what her response should be.  In the end she made the decision to comply with the request, and to wait a little longer. 

"I felt sick about continuing the charade of being a male even though I had announced my transition publicly.  It was as though I had to go underground again.  My legal name change is not the thing that defines my gender.  It's just a legal formality.  I felt I couldn't take risks, so that I had no choice but to comply, and continue trying to work within the system."

Her first day back it swiftly became clear that everyone was aware of her transition.  "All eyes were on me.  It is almost like people are afraid of me, not sure what to think."  People who had routinely greeted her in a friendly manner suddenly did not.  One staff member said: "when you expose what you do in your bedroom, you can expect some negative consequences, Mike".

"The important thing for me is to educate people.  This is not about what I do in my bedroom.  That's private. This is about the fact that my known gender did not match my physical gender."  And then prison management acceded, and invited her to begin arriving to work as a woman, without the official legal name change.

"That night as I left the prison, I felt like a dead man walking.  It was the last time Michael Hamelin would exist."  That much at least affects Michael/Michelle.  Who finds it somewhat difficult to understand his/her parents' reaction.  It was difficult for them to come to terms with this complete alteration in their son's persona, from male to female.

On Michael/Michelle's mother's birthday a call was placed by a dutiful son to tell his mother that her new daughter wished her a happy birthday.  And this is when her mother said she would never be able to call what she took to be her son of 49 years, Michelle.  "It's fine mom, I understand", Hamelin responded.  But does this son understand the bewilderment and fear of a mother who witnesses such a profound alteration in the most fundamental attribute of a child?

"Despite everything, she's my mom, and I'm still her child", sighed the new woman residing in the psyche and body of the man whom the mother had given birth to.  And that closing statement is certainly correct.  And Michelle Hamelin who is eager to be accepted as she now is, and wants to have a normal relationship with people should know enough that people need time to make adjustments in their apprehensions.

When Michelle Hamelin herself felt affected by her having left the status and personhood of a male, so too do others knowing her as a man feel awkward and uncomfortable about this transition, and just as she needs time to come to terms with this new reality, so too do they.  Offer patience and respect and it will be returned in kind.