To The Contrary

Coming up on To The Contrary When I look back at my life and that's what this memoir allowed me to do, to look back at my life from a different lens.

It looks very different in a lot of things that didn't really make sense about myself now do.

Intro Music Hello, Im Bonnie Erb Welcome to To The Contrary.

A weekly discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, we hear a lot about policies and politics in the debate about transgender Americans.

But we don't generally see the people behind the stories who have made the decision to transition.

This is what Maeve DuVally writes about in her memoir, Meave Rising.

She transition from Michael to Meave while working at Goldma Sachs, a prominent and extremely competitive Wall Street firm.

Welcome to you, Meave.

Thank you for joining us.

Bonnie Thanks for having me.

And I just wanted to commend you for that intro because what you said is exactly true.

It's well-established that when people who don't really know transgender people get to know them personally or they get to know their stories, they're less likely to have negative feelings about them.

Well, and also, I mean, if they have family members, I would imagine, or friends, close friends or family members.

So it becomes personal to them.

It's easy to hate something in the abstract, but it's not so easy to hate a nice, brilliant, friendly, talented person who you get to know.

Exactly right.

So tell me tell me about your life.

What?

At what age did you know you were in a body that didn't match your mind?

My story's a little bit different from a lot of other transgender people.

I did not really have a conscious realization that I was transgender until quite recently.

In the fall of 2018.

So it's really, for me, only been five years.

Once I realized I was transgender.

However, when I look back at my life and that's what this memoir allowed me to do, to look back at my life from a different lens.

It looks very different in a lot of things that didn't really make sense about myself.

Now do.

For example, I'd never liked anything masculine about myself.

I always felt more of an affinity for women than for men.

I kind of thought this was general, this was the way it was, and I couldn't do anything about it.

But obviously there was something going on.

The other variable for me is I was an active alcoholic for most of my life, and I only got sober at the beginning of 2018.

And I think it's no coincidence that it was later that year as I began working a program of recovery, that I had this realization that I was transgender.

So I didn't have conscious knowledge all my life that some transgender people did.

But I believe that was always inside of me, and it was probably being drowned by all the alcohol I was pouring into myself.

Once you started feeling like something was wrong, what did you do about it?

Once I started feeling I was transgender, well, I immediately came out in my social life.

I had a lot of good friends in recovery, and I immediately came out to them.

So this was October of 2018.

I told Goldman Sachs in January of 2019 that I was transgender, but I didn't want to come out yet.

And why is it that people don't come out?

People don't come out earlier because they're worried they're not going to be accepted.

So kind of the thought of walking into a building where I spend ten, 11, 12 hours each day and not being accepted caused me all kinds of anxiety.

So there was this period of seven or eight months where I was really living two lives in my social life.

I was completely out at Goldman Sachs.

I dressed as I always did as a male in a suit.

I groomed myself as a male and I changed on the way out.

And I in my book, I say I spent the day as Clark Kent.

And on the way out, I changed into Wonder Woman.

And that's really how it felt.

And at the beginning of that period, it was very exhilarating to kind of lead this double life.

But by the end of it, I'd grown I'd grown very, very tired of it.

And I felt by the time that I decided to come out, I decided to come out in April of 2019, and I actually came out in May of 2019.

I really felt like I had no choice.

I have a friend who's a lesbian, and I asked her how she knew she was a lesbian and she didn't figure it out until she was a teenager.

And she said, I never fell in love with men.

I fell in love with women.

So did you have any experiences like that.

In terms of.

Well, gender identity and sexual identity are different things.

Sure.

I've always been I've always been attracted to women.

I'm still attracted to women.

The only difference is before I would have been considered a straight person.

But now that I identify as a woman and I'm attracted to women, I identify as a lesbian.

And, you know, I'll tell you obviously, that the types of women that I spend time with and the types of women that I date are different than they were before.

How have they changed?

Lesbian Lesbian relationships are just just different than straight relationships and the dynamic in the relationship.

What's important in the relationship?

The type of women that are lesbian and the type of women that are straight, they're different.

It's hard to be specific, but it's I didn't think it was going to be that different.

So you think that I always liked women?

I still like women.

Nothing's really going to change.

But I had changed.

And the type of women that I date have changed.

In the book, tell me how you talk about the decision to transition.

What motivates you?

How much of a transition did you go through?

Because there are various stages of transgender and how did that feel?

As I said, I made almost immediate changes to my physical appearance when I came out in my social life.

Those could easily be reversed because I was still presenting as a male during my work day.

So predominantly those were kind of superficial things.

But and then in 2020, I had several surgeries and that that changed.

That changed me a lot.

But I'll tell you, I think one of the biggest misconceptions about transgender people is that transitions are primarily external and external.

The external part of a transition is very, very important for me to feel like a woman.

It's important for me to feel like I look like a woman.

However, the most rewarding part of transitions for me is to be accepted by a group of women as one of them.

And I have that experience quite frequently with a lot of the women friends that I have.

So that's by far the most important part.

You know, the internal, the psychological, the emotional is is actually much more important than the external.

Very interesting.

I grew up in Manhattan.

It's certainly one of the most LGBTQ friendly places in the country.

That and San Francisco.

But Goldman Sachs, which is all about making big money and being attractive to corporate America, how did they receive you when you said you were transitioning?

A lot of people find this hard to believe, but I had a very good experience coming out of Goldman Sachs.

And that's a function of two things.

People only usually attribute it to one thing, but part of it is the objective reality of what happened.

So I felt accepted by people, I felt supported by people.

But the other variable here is me, how I perceive things.

So, you know, sometimes you might get two transgender people in the exact same circumstances and they might perceive the outside world differently.

And I was very ready to come out and I came out late in life.

So I really had no choice.

By the time I decided to come out and I, I came out after Memorial Day and in 2019, it was a very public event because a New York Times reporter shadowed me my first few days at work and the New York Times wrote a big story on my coming out experience about a month after I came out.

But the degree of support I received from transgender people, people at Goldman Sachs, you know, really paused during their daily routine.

And they reached out to me and they empathized with me in a way that I could feel.

Granted, it was a very short period because people are very busy and they go back to work.

But that pausing and that connecting with me on an emotional level and me connecting back with them on an emotional level, that that was just electrifying to me.

And it made all the difference in my experience.

So nobody had a negative reaction?

I don't really know because sometimes you don't know how people react.

Let me give you some examples.

Some people who I thought I was very close to, I didn't really hear from them after I came out, but I don't know why that is.

It could very well be they they were uncomfortable and they didn't know what to do.

I just don't know what people's motivations are.

So I didn't have any outwardly adverse reactions that that I perceived.

Hmm.

You know, it's interesting because you and I were talking just a bit before the taping and we exchanged information that we were both watching Suits (TV Series).

Of course, you know, my as usual, I'm a little late to the party, but yeah, same here but I ran out of things to watch and I only subscribed to streaming services and somebody said, you know, if you never watch this, you really ought to watch it.

And I think about it.

It's about a big law firm in New York City, but I think about Goldman Sachs as being the same way with a lot of people competing.

And it's very political and there's backstabbing.

Was Goldman like that?

Investment banks are a very as you say, they were very I wouldn't say backstabbing, but they're political, they're very competitive.

And really, investment banks, hedge funds, they're kind of at the top of the capitalist food chain.

Right.

So it's kind of the ultimate form of capitalism.

And people spend their day trying to make money, but that doesn't mean there aren't other aspects of the job.

The company really tries to infuse this idea that everybody's responsible for creating a diverse and inclusive environment.

And I honestly believe that Goldman Sachs does try to attract and retain a diverse population because they believe that it's better for business if you have the most diverse population that brings the most diverse viewpoints and therefore yields the best consensus of of what to do in situations where it's sometimes difficult to decide what's the best course of action.

Tell me how your LGBTQ friends, they must have really welcomed you, I assume.

Well, it's it's interesting.

I did have LGBTQ plus friends before I transitioned, but this was really a kind of a gradual realization for me for the first, let's say, year and a half of my transition, I was really focused on myself.

And then I began to realize that not just transgender people that I knew, but there was this broader LGBTQ plus community that I was a part of.

And I began to really identify with that community.

I became very active in Goldman Sachs as a very active LGBTQ plus affinity network.

Some people call these employee resource groups, and I became a part of that.

You know, I was really a loner for most of my life.

I think part of it was the alcoholism.

Part of it was not really knowing who I was.

And, you know, in retrospect, I really wanted to be part of something bigger.

And now I am a part of something bigger, the broader LGBTQ community.

And I'm very grateful to be part of that community.

Now, you were 57, if you don't mind my saying so.

You say in the book when you came out, why do you think it took so long to figure yourself out?

Because of the alcohol.

I mean, you said that earlier, but what about when you were a kid?

Again, in retrospect, I. I saw signs.

And if you read my book, you'll see that I identify some of these signs.

I saw.

But I honestly think it was the drinking.

And it's one of those chicken and egg things.

Right.

Did I know I was transgender, but I didn't want it to come out, so I poured alcohol on myself or I drank a lot and there was no and there was no chance that I was going to discover who I was while I was drinking.

But, you know, regardless of which one of those it was in, which one of those, to be honest, it doesn't really matter.

I believe that when you're pouring drugs and alcohol into your body, it's impossible to know who you really are.

Some LGBTQ people, some trans people do realize who they are.

But before they stopped drinking or before they stopped taking drugs.

But I hear in recovery, a lot of people say they didn't really know the full extent of who they were until they stopped using drugs and alcohol.

A lot of people say even then, there as young as three, that they know they're in the wrong body.

But nothing like that ever happened to you?

That wasn't my experience.

I know.

I know many transgender people have that experience, But that wasn't mine.

And the more people I talked to, the more you realize that each experience is different.

Each really is unique.

what point Did you consult doctors and how were they of help to you?

As I said, I realized I was transgender in October of 2018, I started seeing a specialized therapist who sees a lot of transgender people.

In probably December of 2018, I began seeing an endocrinologist at the beginning of 2019, and I began hormone replacement therapy at the beginning of 2019.

Now, you did have a wife and children before you transitioned.

How what was their reaction?

Yeah, I actually was married twice.

I have three children, one by my first marriage, one by my second marriage and my some my youngest child took a little bit of time to come around, but all my children and both of my ex-wives are are very supportive and very encouraging.

It took a little bit of time, but not too much time.

And I'll tell you, this applies to my extended family as well, that even if they don't really understand everything that's involved with being transgender, people know that I'm happy.

And people who know me know how unhappy I was before, and they're happy to see me happy.

So how long did you stay at Goldman Sachs after you transitioned?

I think about three and a half.

Three and a half?

Four years.

Yeah, but but the interesting thing is I really I had a great career at Goldman Sachs.

I got to work through the financial crisis.

I've worked under the leadership of three different CEOs at Goldman Sachs.

I've handled very consequential stories.

I just had a great 18 year career, but almost from the moment I came out, I discovered that my story could benefit other transgender people.

So many transgender people helped me early in my process.

So I feel a responsibility to give back to them.

And every time I do an interview, every time I give a public talk, I usually have several transgender people reach out to me who want to know more about my story and want to share their story.

And that's the power of storytelling.

It's identification, it breaks isolation, it makes people feel connected to the world.

And this isn't just something that applies to transgender people.

It's really a universal experience.

So I realized that I could help other people.

So I stayed at Goldman Sachs for a period of time, but I left.

I left during the summer of last year, and I really spent a lot of my life giving back to the community I work for.

I do some consulting, some diversity inclusion consulting.

I mentor a lot of transgender people.

I'm on the board of a LGBTQ+ nonprofit.

So it really is my life right now, and it's a life I'm ecstatic to have.

Did working for all those years at Goldman Sachs make you financially independent so you could pursue issues of the heart after you left there?

Yes, I well, I don't know if I said this before, but I'll say it now.

I'm very privileged.

I'm white.

I live in New York City.

I actually live in the Chelsea portion of New York City, which is arguably the best place in the world to be an out transgender person.

And I worked at Goldman Sachs.

I wouldn't say I'm completely financially independent, but I've had the flexibility to not work full time for the last year and a half or so.

I do have to discover some additional streams of of revenue going forward.

But I have faith that I will, hopefully my book will sell.

And I worked for large companies for 37 years, and I think that for me that's enough.

So I'm hopeful, hoping to cobble together a living from writing public speaking and doing a little bit of consulting.

You mentioned earlier you are a person of privilege, you grew up in Manhattan, etc.

So did you feel like you lose lost some of that white privilege when you came out as transgender?

Did it affect your view of of where you stood in society?

Absolutely.

And it isn't it isn't all the time, but it's not infrequent where the way I interact with men or it's more the way men interact with me is now different than it was before.

So I have a better understanding of some of the challenges that women face on a daily basis.

Tell me about how do they talk down to you now?

Some of them?

Some of them talk down.

And, you know, one thing I've noticed is not all men, but some men feel that they can comment on my appearance in a very detailed way, what they like about it, what they don't like about it.

And that never happened to me when I was presenting as a male.

And I find that I find that both misogynist and transphobic and when I when I see particularly egregious examples of it, I try to call it out and use it as a as an opportunity to teach people.

What do you think about the discussion and debate about transgenders?

Are people making mountains out of mole hills?

Okay, let's take the general question first.

We all know that politically and socially, the country is very bifurcated right now.

Everybody's kind of dug in on their positions.

And unfortunately, LGBTQ plus transgender issues in particular have become like a big political issue.

And I, I believe that the Conservatives have basically decided that this is an issue that if if they're very strident on, they can score points with their political base.

And I frankly think that's despicable that they're using transgender people for their political gain.

I'm hoping this is a temporary phenomenon.

I think society kind of continues to move forward in a positive way on social issues.

So I think I'm hoping this is a temporary blip.

There's more transgender people in the younger generations than my generation.

So demographically, if these if these younger people grow up and vote, you know, that's really going to help a lot.

The issue of sports, there's a lot of weird things mixed in so there's a lot of the media attention is focused on elite athletes at the collegiate or the professional level who compete.

So these are people who have gone these are transgender women who have gone through male puberty and and may have a physical advantage over cisgender or non transgender women.

And right now, hormone levels determine you know, who can compete in what category.

So I'm all in favor of if hormone levels are not adequate that we should have other measures to determine which people can compete in women's categories.

So but we need to let the doctors decide.

We need to let the doctors decide and not a bunch of old men in Congress who really don't know anything about the medicine.

But then the other side of that is all the laws are directed at children, children who haven't gone through puberty yet and do not have a physical disadvantage.

So do you see what I'm saying?

That the focus is on these people, but the laws are directed at these people who don't have a physical advantage, and I don't think that's quite right.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your story.

And what a story it is.

And very good luck with your book, Maeve DuVally.

And the book is Maeve Rising, and that's it for this edition.

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