Zackary Jargowsky hates
pronouns.
He hates the “she” that sometimes slips out when he’s playing Quidditch with his friends and the “it” he’s been labeled by the ones who don’t understand.
He hates the prolonged stares as people try to figure outwhat is going on beneath his
“Nightmare
Before Christmas” hoodie and plaid, vertical-striped shirts – the ones the stylist said would help.
He hates going to his grandma’s house on Sea Isle City beach, where other guys run around shirtless and he has to stay covered up.
As Sophia Jargowsky, Zackary never had to deal with any of these things. No, Sophia had a different set of problems – her nagging thoughts of suicide, the deep hatred she felt for her body, the kids at North Junior High who made it an unofficial school sport to push her buttons.
All those issues were fueled by the one problem that constantly ate away at Sophia. For the first 15 years of her life she couldn’t figure it out, and therefore couldn’t fix it. Now, she has it solved.
Sophia never really existed – she has been Zackary all along.
Zackary, now a senior, is a female to male transgender student struggling to find himself in a body he wasn’t meant to occupy.
It all started in junior high – when the boys with their footballs and the girls with their make-up bags divided into their separate social planets. Zack, the tomboy who used to wear capes to school, was left floundering in space.
“When my best girl friend, who was also a bit of a tomboy, started getting interested in make-up, I felt betrayed,” Zack said. “And then when all my guy friends decided to stop associating with me because, well, I was a girl, that was also really hard.”
The result of becoming a social outcast wasn’t gender introspection, but rather a hatred of gender issues altogether. A bitter and resentful seventh grader emerged.
“At that point, I just thought everything having to do with gender was just really stupid,” Zack said.
Then came high school – a chance for reinvention and a new start. Originally zoned to attend JJ Pearce High School, Zack and his family knew that it wasn’t the right place for the bright, yet eccentric 14-year-old. Leaving his small group of friends behind, he came to Richardson High School – unsure if this would be the best or worst decision of his life. At Richardson, Zack found something he hadn’t felt since elementary school… happiness.
“Freshman year I remember trying vaguely to be more female,” Zack said. “But I was still so much happier than I had been. I had great friends, it was a great school, I was in the science magnet. It was a great experience, but there was still the feeling that something was wrong.”
It was while on a family vacation to Alaska that Zack figured out what that something was.
“I just realized, everything would’ve been so much easier if I had been born a boy,” Zack said. “I wouldn’t have been ostracized by my original group of friends and I just would’ve been happier. Then I started playing out all these scenarios in my head, and I realized that if I had been a boy, I wouldn’t have had this or that problem. It seemed like the best idea ever was to invent a time machine and change my conception, which obviously, the next day, seemed like the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever thought of.”
But he wasn’t able to let his epiphany go the next day when he was complaining to his mother about cramps.
“Ugh Mom why do I have to have a period?” he asked.
“Well do you really want [to be a boy]?” Marie Chevrier said, unaware that her daughter was silently thinking, “Well… yes.”
This wasn’t the first time Chevrier brought this up to Zack, who complained about every period, every bra, and every feminine change.
“I mean I’ve never known a girl who wasn’t happy when her breasts started to grow,” Chevrier said.
It wasn’t like his mother conditioned Zack to be a girly-girl, though. A self-proclaimed feminist, she was determined to instill those values in her children, Zack and his older sister Isabelle. Chevrier was proud of the fact that Zack defied all gender stereotypes, but wasn’t prepared to deal with her daughter being transgender.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had a gay child,” Chevrier said, “But transgender? It just never crosses your mind.”
A large percentage of society doesn’t understand what it means to be transgender and for confused youths, such as Zack, some of the information online can be frightening.
“When I first started looking online, I came up with a lot of sites where transgender people came to talk about their problems and that kind of, really scared me,” Zack said. “I could only see the negative side – scary medical problems, scary legal problems, scary I-just-got-disowned problems.”
But then Zack turned to the American teen’s favorite pastime: YouTube. There he found “transition logs” where transgender people documented their day-to-day life – the good and the bad.
“It was far more realistic,” Zack said. “People were still talking about their problems, but they were also talking about how excited they were. I just saw how much happier they got as it went along. It made it seem possible – I could see the before and after. And I realized that, that is what I wanted to happen to me.”
There was still the doubt in Zack’s mind as he flip-flopped from thinking that “this is the best idea ever,” to believing it was impossible. From “this is the best idea ever,” to feeling it was impractical. From “this is the best idea ever,” to considering it too difficult. Then finally, “this is the best idea ever,” and it is what I want to do.
So he, with the help of his friends and sister, chose his new name, his new identity and his new future.
So-phi-a… Za-cka-ry…
Sticking with three syllables, Zack chose his new name. On a piece of lined paper he drew a backwards y, then r, followed by a-k-c-a-z. Tying his long, ratty hair back into a ponytail and slumping over in the loose t-shirt and baggy jeans – his wardrobe staples – he peered into the mirror to see the scribbled-on piece of paper displaying his new name reflected in front of his growing chest.
Much better.
But bigger changes were still ahead.
First, he had to tell his parents.
All Zack and his father Paul Jargowsky could see was white. The silent sinking of their snow shoes was the only sound in the dense Maine forest. For Zack’s purposes, this was perfect. There was no way one of them could avoid the conversation now, no where for either of them to run. After building up the courage, he just blurted it out.
“Dad, I think I might be transgender,” Zack said.
Paul was confused at first and asked his son questions that not even Zack could answer. At the end of the day, though, Zack still had his father’s support and love.
One down, one to go.
When Zack and his family got home from Maine, still only one parent knew. With a little pressure from his father, Zack took his mom into the living room.
“It’s just like ripping off a bandaid,” Zack thought.
“Mom, I think I might be transgender,” he said.
Chevrier at first focused on the “I think I might be” part, but over time gave Zack unconditional support.
“He’s still my child,” Chevrier said.
While he was at first met with doubt and the “oh, this is just a phase” mentality, Zack knows he has it better then most transgender teens. He knows he has it better then his friend and role model Shawn Trimm and the 26 percent of transgender kids who are kicked out onto the streets.
Shawn’s father was a Messianic rabbi who, upon finding a suggestive text message from a girl, disowned 17-year-old Shawn. After a year of homelessness, Shawn was finally taken in by a family friend. He has since put himself through testosterone treatment and gotten involved in Youth First Texas (YFT).
Youth First Texas is a non-profit organization committed to helping the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth of Dallas feel like they have a safe place to talk about the daily pressures of their lives. At YFT, members introduce themselves by saying their name, age, and their preferred pronoun and can share their most intimate stories with an unjudging group of peers. It’s YFT that helps kids like Shawn and Zack make it through.
After Zack’s parents realized this wasn’t just a whim, they took him to get his hair cut short, to buy more manly clothing, to legally change his name, and to YFT’s bi-weekly Gender Identity Group, run by Aunt Melanie, a woman who looks like a typical grandmother %u2013 until she opens her mouth and a man’s voice emerges.
It was at Gender Identity in the Dark, a special meeting where members sit in complete darkness able to be who they are on the inside with no thought of physical appearance, that Zack had his first break-though.
Earlier that week Zack had been at school for a PSAT prep class. During a break, Zack left to take in some of the crisp fall air. When he tried to get back in to class, however, the school was locked. Banging on the door, trying to get someone to notice he was gone, he accidentally smashed a window. Cops were called and drama ensued.
“What’s your name, son?” the officer asked.
“My legal name?” Zack said.
“Yes, you’re legal name…” the officer said.
“Well it’s Zack, sir,” he answered.
But when the policeman asked for a driver’s license, which still read his female name, the officer got suspicious and angry.
“When he called my mom to talk to her he would just say ‘your daughter’ and ‘she’ what seemed to me a ridiculous amount of times,” Zack said. “And it just made me angry that he still could see me as a girl.”
At YFT, Zach could finally get his anger at the police, his female name and his whole situation out of his system.
A gleaming silver bell sat in front of Aunt Melanie, a tool for helping the kids in her group get out their anger. While telling his story to the group, Zach unleashed his rage on the bell.
“Stupid… DING…policeman… DING… thinks… DING… I’m a girl… DING!”
“That really was his breakthrough moment in Gender Identity,” Aunt Melanie said.
Since then, Zack has encountered other hardships on his path to becoming who he is.
Zack’s mind is often his own worst enemy. His fear of being stuck in this in-between stage haunts him. When one of his classmates called him “it,” it was the hardest moment of his life.
“I’m just afraid of stagnating,” Zack said. “I want an identity. I don’t want to be an ‘it’.”
Usually, however, Zack can stand up to the intolerance %u2013 sometimes even shedding some light on the subject for those who would otherwise be ignorant.
Zack stood at the top of F Hall handing out white boards as the sound of the band echoed from below. It was the Day of Silence, the one day a year when students go silent as a way to bring attention to the bullying and forced silence of LGBTQ teens. While quietly doing his job as a facilitator of the event, Zack saw the jeering group approach %u2013 it was the posse of guys who took it upon themselves to torture Zack daily.
“Dyke.”
“Loser.”
“Freak.”
One, however, hesitated.
After the bullies sauntered off, the reluctant one stayed behind.
“Why are you even doing this, man?”
Zack handed him his note card, telling of Day of Silence’s plight.
Later that day as Zack got ready to head for the buses, the same hesitant boy came up to him.
“I just wanted to tell you, I’ve been silent since first period,” the boy said.
It’s moments like those, and Carlton, that assure Zack that he’s doing the right thing.
The summer before his senior year, Zack attended what he called “nerd camp,” a science camp at Carlton Summer Science Institute, where he signed up as male and was allowed to stay in the male dorms. Treated just like another one of the guys, his two weeks at Carlton were the happiest of Zack’s life – no one messed up his pronouns, no one gave him a hard time, no one had any reason to doubt he was a guy. He was, for two amazing weeks, the man he wanted to be.
Those moments make Zack’s struggles worthwhile. The praise, however, he feels he doesn’t deserve.
“I guess people have told you that I’m courageous and brave because that’s what they’ve told me about coming out during high school,” Zack said. “But honestly because of the way Richardson is, I feel sort of uncomfortable when people call me brave because everyone has just been so accepting. And yeah, there have been the rough spots, but it just feels odd to me to be praised for something I really couldn’t have done differently if I tried.”
Zack is plans to go on testosterone soon and hopes for chest reconstruction surgery before he goes to college. Other then that, he doesn’t know what the future will hold.
Zack’s father hopes his son’s life will be filled with tolerance.
“I know there are people out there who think this is inappropriate,” Paul Jargowsky said. “But it isn’t their place to make Zack’s life more difficult. They need to be accepting.”
Zack knows his life won’t be conventional, but with every male pronoun he hears, his struggle becomes a little bit easier.
“I know my life isn’t going to be a cakewalk,” Zack said. “But it’s worth it.”