Transgender Alum Reflects on Novel, Experience

Indentured servant Deborah Sam- son slashed her hair, bound her chest and donned men’s attire, enlisting in the Continental Army to fight for America’s liberty as well as her own. This story seems like that of legend, but in Revolutionary, a new book by transgender alumnus Alex Myers, the tales of Samson are both based in his- tory and brought to life.and Brown universities.For his whole life, he had heardstories about his ancestor Samson fighting in the Civil War as a woman, but Myers chose to delve deeper into the topic when he discovered Samson, like him, was restless about fitting into gender conventions.“She is a fascinating and remark- able woman,” Myers said. “They say when you start writing a novel, ‘pick a topic that you would want to live with for the next five years, and that is very good advice.”By TOMMY SONG and PHILIP KUHNStaff WritersMyers ‘96 came out as transgen- der before his senior year at Exeter, and since then has attended HarvardHe continued, “I can live withConnor Bloom/The Exonian SnowcoveredthepathsaftersnowstormssweptNewEngland.this woman for five years or more because she is so interesting and there is so much going on in her history. I was excited to read, write, and think about her a lot.”Although Myers felt a particular connection with Samson, he struggled to tie his experience as female to male (FTM) transgender to her tale.“At first I assumed she must have felt a lot like I felt-- she wanted to be a boy, she wanted to do things guys do, and she would be uncomfortablebeing a woman,” Myers continued.“But the more I researched her and the time period surrounding her, I realized that was notexactly true. She did not want to be a man as much as she wanted to be independent, and women at the time did not have much independence. So a lot of what I experienced as a transgender person I had to take out of the novel because I felt I was being anachronistic and inaccurate.”Unlike Samson’s experience enlisting in the military, Myers said that his transition into every- day life at Exeter as transgendered was largely smooth and pleasant. He held some trepidations, but in the end felt that the reward of feeling comfortable was far greater than the risk.“It made my senior year a lot better. I was really pleased and surprised about how accommodat- ing and gracious the administrators and teachers were,” Myers said. “I had some fears, but they did a really great job of talking to me and making sure everyone was comfortable with the solution.”Senior Xander Coleman, who is also FTM transgender, shared a similar opinion about the way the administration and the Exeter community handled the situation.“I have a very nice arrangement in Merrill, where I live in a single in the basement with my own personal bathroom and shower,” he said. “Everyone in my dorm is really wonderful and ac- cepting, and none of them seem to mind having a boy living in their basement.”Unfortunately, both Myers and Coleman encountered various challenges at the Academy.“The biggest struggle of dorm life is actually the Visitations policy,” Coleman said. “Even though I'm a boy, they require me to follow the girl's rules for visitations. I personally think it is very strange that I can't go to another guy's room without permission, but the visitations policy is a little out of date.”Senior Marly Coe, one of the co-heads of Gay-Straight Alliance, noted a similar problem.“One of the big things trans students face here is the dorm situation,” Coe said. “Because the dorms are technically separated by sex, trans students end up in a dorm of the opposite gender. That is not an easy problem to solve, and even the trans students themselves would feel a little uncomfortable being placed in a dorm with the same gender, but also the opposite biological sex.”In addition to the uneasiness of dorm placement, the reactions of other students affect trans- gender Exonians.Myers said, “Being transgender made it a little awkward or uncomfortable because I had to continually explain who I was and what I was and what I was doing.”He noted the psychological toll of people constantly asking questions.“Sometimes I just wanted to complete my senior year and finish my college applications, yet again and again I was forced to meet with people, explain what was happening, and really think about identity in a way that I had never had to do before,” he said.While certain issues still remain at Exeter, the Academy can be a far more caring, respectful community than the rest of the world, according to Myers.“I was interviewing for Harvard University, and they sent down an alumni interviewer. He noticed that the office had a typo when spelling my name ‘Alice’, but I explained that was my birthname and I am transgender,” Myers said. “He was horrified and did not know what to say. I had to have a second interview because the first person had been really upset and almost offended by my identity.”Myers continued, acknowledging the difference between Exeter and other institutions.“That moment was when I realized Exeter was a safe place--I was known, I was understood,” he said. “But in the real world there are people who are not as tolerant or accepting, so I had to be cautious and I had to to prove to them that I was a normal person and deserving of their acceptance.”But Myers and many like him have taken these experiences with intolerance and used them to better the community that they are a part of.“I spent a lot of time in college and as a teacher advocating for transgender rights and working for LGBT groups while speaking and educating about transgender identity,” he said.He said that these experiences have helped to nourish his drive for writing a novel.He said, “This passion for helping others really fed into the novel that I wrote about the an- cestor of mine, since I wanted to bring her story to the world and, in doing so, let people know that transgender identity is not just an issue of the 20th or 21st century, and is something relevant back in the 1700’s.”