Ray Rubin layers his clothes every morning to cover up his breasts, and cuffs his jeans because men’s pants are always too long for his short legs. His hat covers his short spiky hair.
Rubin, 21, was born a female.

In the past five years, more young people have come out as transgendered, according to Caitlin Ryan, a clinical social worker at SF State who just completed a long-term sexual orientation and gender study of youth and their families.

In the late 1970s, Virginia Prince (a man who wanted to live as a woman without the use of hormones or surgery) created the term transgender to refer to individuals who wanted to spend at least part of their time in the gender role opposite to the one they were assigned at birth.

“These people include boys who wear eye-makeup or girls with short hair, which is known as gender-bending,” said Ryan.

Transgenders struggle with feeling accepted by their family.
“I think they (my family) just kind of read me as a butch queer woman, which is a bit disheartening, but I think it’s their process,” said Rubin, a junior with an independent major in queer theory. “My family is as supportive as they can be. If they’re still adjusting in 10 years, we’ll have a problem.”

Most of Jennifer Kennedy’s extended family is not aware of her sexual orientation. Kennedy was reigned Ms. Transgender San Francisco in January 2005.

“I have a brother-in-law who refuses to let my niece see me, even though my sister is accepting of the changes, even if it saddens her,” said Kennedy, 47, a software engineering manager and consultant.

Licensed psychologist Dr. Anne Vitale holds the Internet partly responsible for more young Americans coming out as transgendered.

“Twenty years ago, a young person would have found it almost impossible to get any information,” said Dr. Vitale, who has worked with the transgender community since 1978. “It would have required a trip to a medical school library to get the information they can now get in their own bedroom.”

Dr. Vitale also said that society is now more accepting of transgendered people.

“Now the DMV has a form that allows individuals with their doctor’s approval to change not only their name, but their gender identity on their driver’s license,”she said.

Kennedy said she thinks that society is open-minded as long as he or she looks attractive, and looks like the gender he or she is trying to present. She has been married to a woman for 16 years, and they have a nine-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son.

Another transgender graduate of SF State does not feel supported by traditional society.

“There are times when I’m afraid of my own safety because of the violence many trannies have already experienced, like the local murder of Gwen,” said Grant Donnelly, 22, who was born a male, but does not feel like a boy or a girl.

On Oct. 4, 2002, 17-year-old Gwen Araujo was beaten and strangled to death at a house party in the small Silicon Valley town of Newark after others learned that she was biologically male.

“I felt how much she wanted to be female just like me and she paid for it with her life,” said Kennedy.

Neither Donnelly, Rubin, nor Kennedy have had sexual reassignment surgery to become transsexuals. The term, transsexual, refers to individuals who use hormonal and surgical means to alter their appearance permanently to match their internal sense of gender.

Kennedy has been taking hormones for about two years. Some of the effects include the lowering of male aggression, mood stabilization, and minor breast growth - she is now almost a full B-cup.

Rubin has his own reasons for not having the operation.

“Transitioning in a Western medical sense is a huge financial burden,” Rubin said. “Right now, I’m able to cum, and I’m not really interested in fucking with that.”