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“I identify as a straight male, and I’ve always known. My first memory was saying, “I am not a girl. I don't want to be a girl.” All the games we played, I always played a boy. Didn’t wear dresses. Fast forward about fifty years. I meet my partner, CC, which stands for Cuauhtli Cihuatl, Eagle Woman, and she asks me, "How do I honor you? What do I call you?" She said she could see it in me. The more we talked, the more it was like, "Oh, I should be transitioning." It changed my life. She's the one that helped me realize I can be authentic and be okay with it. People need to know they're not alone. Because that was my battle. For fifty years. I was in it by myself. I told my mom, because I didn't know how to tell her, I said, "You know I’ve never been the girly girl. Well, I just decided to embrace the maleness in me." She was like, "Okay." I go, "You're gonna see some changes in me." And she's like, "You are who you are. You don't need to change who you are, because you are who you are. But if that's what you need to do, then do it." Yeah. My Catholic mom. So I said, "Wow." Because the bottom line is she wants us happy.” - D'Santi, 54, Santa Fe, NM, 2017 Representations of older transgender people are nearly absent from our culture and those that do exist are often one-dimensional. For over five years (2013–2018), photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating “To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults.” Each portrait in “To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults” by Jess T. Dugan and Vanessa Fabbre includes a powerful interview with each of the featured individuals. See “To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults” on display in the Ruth Kadish Gallery located in the post-security connector between Terminal 2 and Terminal 3, and online at: https://bit.ly/46z9t7N
This image was posted on September 13, 2023.
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