A photograph of Tiffany reminds Zander Keig of a little girl who didn’t enjoy the frilly dresses her grandmother and mother forced her to wear. In their eyes, a young girl was to dress feminine—in pinks and purples—but Tiffany wasn’t willing to wear anything other than pants, shorts and baggy shirts. With an annoyed face, her hands on her hips and legs spread, Zander remembers Tiffany, his female child self.

“I looked like a little commando in a dress,” he jokes. “That picture cracks me up.”

Zander, 41, was born a female and lived as a member of the Gay/Lesbian community for 20 years. He served as a mentor, organizer and facilitator in the community for two years through the Lou Sullivan Society, an organization serving transsexual and transgender people in the Bay Area.

The terms transsexual and transgender are still fairly new unlike the terms gay and lesbian. There are limited resources for transgenders and transsexuals nation-wide. Now Zander and four of his trans-counterparts are in the process of creating the Transgender Resource Center of California, the first resource center of its kind, catering to the wants and needs of trans-people. "The transgender resource center will serve as the vehicle for driving our community to the next level of advancement—full integration into the fabric of society," says Zander.

Zander considered himself a masculine female for the majority of his life and began his transition from female-to-male a couple of years ago beginning with weekly testosterone injections. Biologically still female, Zander, a self-proclaimed "trans-man,” only had one defining female sex characteristic altered with chest reassignment surgery. With neatly groomed facial hair, a filled-out physique and deep voice, there are no traces of Tiffany left over.

“Once I hit adulthood, I was fairly unhappy with wearing a bra and the way shirts fit on my body,” he says.

The process of officially becoming a male was a lengthy and expensive one for Zander, as it is for most transsexuals undergoing the same process. To further his transition, a court order was needed to legally change his sex and name on his birth certificate. To aid Zander in getting the court order, his doctor provided written documentation serving as proof that Zander had underwent surgery, which permanently changed one of his female sex defining characteristics. After filling out copious amounts of paperwork and standing before a judge, Zander waited patiently. “Just getting the court order amazed me,” says Zander.

It took several hundred dollars, four to eight weeks for the paperwork to go through and an additional four to six months to get the new birth certificate with name change and “male” checked off as his sex. “The only feeling I could recall was satisfaction,” says Zander. “I made sure to immediately put it in a safe place.”

As a young girl growing up in Southern California, Tiffany was raised by her single father, Rick Hermelin. “Tiffany’s grandmother and I didn’t see eye-to-eye when it came to my parenting style in how I let Tiffany decide who and what she can be,” says Hermelin. “If Tiffany didn’t want to wear dresses, then I supported her.”

Although Tiffany had friends, they were mainly boys. “She would rough-house with her boy cousins," says Hermelin. "It was okay with me, but I can see where other family members didn't approve."

It wasn't until her teen years that Tiffany’s masculinity made peers wonder. "People just thought I was a lesbian," says Zander. "That didn't make me popular." Tiffany’s sexuality became clear in her mid-teens. “I had girlfriends and no one really said anything,” says Zander. “No one was particularly shocked.”

Tiffany identified herself as a lesbian until she questioned her sex in 1996, when she attended a film festival in San Diego and viewed a movie called You Don’t Know Dick, featuring transsexual men. “I thought it was interesting but it didn’t register as something personal to my life,” he says.

It wasn't until a friend introduced a book containing before and after pictures of nude transsexual men. “That’s when it started to dawn on me and it definitely triggered these notions of trans-sexuality,” he says. “It started to make sense that I could be trans.”

Tiffany began to call herself Gabriel, serving as a unisex name depending on how one pronounced it. “Many trans individuals do not realize they were always a man or woman,” says Rita Melendez, SFSU professor of Human Sexuality. “Many come to realize this in the course of their life.”

Gabriel met Margaret Keig at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR), a seminary in Berkeley where they both attended school. Margaret was a volunteer student leader at orientation and Gabriel, a fresh face. “I found him intense and interesting,” says Margaret. “I was impressed.”

From Tiffany to Gabriel, these names digressed to obsolete in Gabriel’s mind when he chose to be called Zander, a name chosen from an extensive list of possibilities that narrowed down with each pen scratch. “I chose Zander because I thought it was unique like me,” he says. “I decided to take Margaret’s last name because it flowed better.”

Margaret was there through the transition and they eventually married in three capacities: a domestic partnership, a commitment ceremony in October 2005, which they consider their real marriage and the legal marriage at San Francisco City Hall on Earth Day, April 22, 2006.

The commitment ceremony was held at a PSR chapel. The couple wore light blue: Zander in a Cubavero shirt and shorts and Margaret in an organic hemp dress. There were 50 guests in attendance, mostly close friends and family. To make it more intimate, they sat in a circle and each expressed kind words towards the happy couple. “It was very emotional,” says Zander. “It was a moment that touched Margaret and I.” As the two lit a unity candle, the guests sat in silence because “they were moved to do so,” says Margaret. “It was beautiful.”

According to the San Francisco based Transgender Law Center, what is called a “post-transition marriage,” like that of Zander and Margaret is acknowledged and supported in California law and public policy. “To me there is nothing less legitimate or deceptive about our marriage,” says Margaret, “To say there is would be to say that Zander is not truly male.”

Reid Vanderburgh is a marriage and family therapist who specializes in transgender issues. “Pro-traditional-marriage laws are very unclear about transgender peoples’ rights,” says Vanderburgh. “This [trans-community] is such an invisible population; those laws don’t include any language clarifying the trans-person’s rights.”

If a male-female couple is legally married and one partner decides to transition, their once legal marriage could possibly be viewed as invalid. But in Zander’s case, since he transitioned prior to his legal marriage to Margaret, the marriage is completely valid.

“The bottom line is, the laws just aren’t there to protect trans-marriage challenges, and it then comes down to a judge’s decision,” says Vanderburgh.

Margaret, an identifying queer woman and Zander, a transsexual man are a trans-married couple who’ve realized that society’s views are slowly but surely changing in their favor. “The labels that we use to talk about identity are not adequate,” says Margaret. “Language is a tool for understanding our world, but experience is often more nuanced than language is capable of capturing.”