Thrusday, January 14, 1999
A boy grows to womanhood
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Beleine Turner suspected the hormones were kicking in when he started mass-consuming Little Debbies.
He'd always loved the chocolate cream rolls, but never like this. Good grief — he couldn't even wait to get home before ripping open the box.
“I thought about starting a Little Debbie support group,” he says.
Welcome to womanhood, Mr. Turner. It's a rough gig sometimes.
We're having lunch together at Scaleas restaurant. Our waitress, I'm happy to report, seems perfectly comfortable serving us, even though my companion's voice is awfully deep for someone wearing makeup and a skirt.
Beleine Turner considers himself one of us. As early as age 5, he says, he was confused about his gender.
At the risk of confusing everyone, I'll refer to him as a woman from here on out. I'm told that's the polite thing to do once a man begins the conversion.
Ms. Turner, 40, has dressed like a woman for several years now. She's a true outsider around here — a person who has lost her career, alienated relatives and been damned to all sorts of hells.
Still, she's much happier being true to herself, she says. Over the years, she has developed a Buddhist-like ability to accept other people's opinions.
“Oh, honey,” she says, “as long as they're not beating me up, I don't care what people say.”
I met Ms. Turner through a sociology class at the Urban Learning Center, which offers college-level courses to Cov ington residents for free.
You may remember the column: It described one student as a “cross-dresser” whose positive attitude had won over her classmates.
That was Ms. Turner. She's not a cross-dresser, though. My mistake. Those are people who enjoy wearing the clothes of the opposite gender. Ms. Turner's association goes beyond that. She thinks, feels, talks and acts like a woman, too. It's not by choice, she says. To anyone who asks, she provides research on the biological causes of her condition.
I had trouble accepting all this at first. Then we got into Little Debbies, shopping, and what drives us crazy about men. (The way they fail to notice our smart new haircuts, for instance, or assume they can overcharge us for car repairs.)
OK, maybe she is a woman, after all.
Ms. Turner attended Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger. While still living as a male, she dropped out, got married and fathered a child. Back then, she was trying mightily to fight her nature. She acted so macho, in fact, that her marriage fell apart; neither spouse could understand her behavior.
Ms. Turner is trained in computers and the repair of electronic equipment. In the '80s, she went from factory to factory, working two or three years at a time, until male co-workers realized she was different. Then hostility would emerge. People would turn on machines, for instance, while she was repairing them.
When her son became a teen-ager, she decided to make the switch.
Besides dressing like a woman, Ms. Turner takes female hormones and is saving money for surgery.
Not that she has much money to save. It's tough to find work as, essentially, a man in drag. All the job changes made her a fairly adept technician, she says, and she loved her career. But now she is living on savings, receiving food stamps and shopping at thrift stores. “Sometimes I can fit into a 5 or 6, if I starve myself and don't eat Little Debbies for a month,” she says.
It's not an easy life.
Most people accept, for instance, that Ms. Turner uses the women's restroom. It's not like we do anything racy in there, and what man would want her in his space? Still, when she took an office-technology course at the Brighton Center last summer, she was told to use the bathroom with men.
That's dangerous, she says. During lunch she went elsewhere to relieve herself.
Ms. Turner's legal status is that of a man, says Wanda Winkler, director of special projects for the center. No exception could be made on the restroom issue, but in all other ways, her differences were accommodated, she says.
After 10 days, Ms. Turner was released from the program, anyway. Personal problems that included a housing dilemma were hurting her attendance, Ms. Winkler says.
Ms. Turner has encountered other difficulties. Once a person followed her around Meijer's in Florence, loudly telling her to repent and get saved.
“Well, I have been saved,” she replied. “I've been saved from being like you.”
She wasn't trying to be flip, she says. Just honest.
“I understand a lot of people were brought up to believe that way, and they don't have the insight I have,” she says.
Her unique perspective has given her empathy for people living in the margins of our community. She also has, if you will, a woman's intuition about who will accept her as she is.
Our waitress at Scaleas seems to have a good attitude, I say.
Ms. Turner agrees.
“She seems pretty open-minded,” she says. “And I love her hair.”
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or by e-mail at: ksamples@enquirer.com
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE
