Transgender Iowan seeks public's understanding

When Alex Shearer read the online suicide note from an Ohio teen last week, it hit him hard.

"It fit me to a 'T'," said Shearer, 22, who lives in an apartment on Des Moines' south side.

The note by the Cincinnati teen, born as Josh Alcorn but signing her name as Leelah, said she hoped others would read about the lack of acceptance she faced in her gender transition and would "fix society." She would rest in peace if transgender people were treated better, "like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. My death needs to be counted."

Alcorn was struck and killed by a truck Dec. 28.

Her apparent suicide drew worldwide attention, including from transgender people who took to Twitter to say they were everyday people with jobs and regular lives and were not freaks. The outpouring shed light on the struggles the transgender population faces, and specifically an alarming rate of suicide attempts — by 46 percent of transgender men and 42 percent of women, according to a recent study by the Williams Institute and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

After Shearer read the note, he contacted The Des Moines Register.

"That suicide letter hit me. I'm not involved in the LGBTQ community, and I don't even know anybody that is transgender," Shearer said. "But I'm sick of seeing the community ignored.

"Maybe I'm not the right one to talk about it. Besides being transgender, I go to work and try to make a better life."

He had "come out" to his family as a man only this fall and on Facebook in November. Born with female anatomy and the name Alexandria, he began telling people he felt like a man inside and is now in the fifth month of hormone therapy to make a physical transition.

Shearer said his voice has lowered, his body has become "hairier and smellier," and he's gained so much upper body strength that he can pump through push-ups and regularly beat "the guys in the woodshop" in arm wrestling at the Grimes factory where he works.

Feeling like outside, inside don't match

But he still struggles. At the factory where he has worked since 2012, he was always known as female, so co-workers often use the pronoun "she." At his part-time job at Panera Bread on weekends, where he has worked only a month, co-workers call him a "he."

"Even now I don't feel like I have a gender. I feel like a girl on the outside and something else on the inside," he said. "I'm trying to find this happy medium."

It's a familiar place for Shearer. His mom is white, and he is black.

"I felt that she was gay when she was little," said Maria Shearer, who raised Alex as a single mother. "When she was little, she wanted boy toys and to do boy activities. She — I'm sorry, he; this is hard for me — recently came out, and I told him I support him no matter what.

"I think sometimes the DNA gets screwed up, and yes, you were made to be a different gender. You may have all the traits of one gender, but not have the body of that gender."

Transgender often is confused with sexual orientation. Just because you are transgender doesn't mean you are gay, lesbian or bisexual. Transgender refers to people whose gender identity, expression or behavior doesn't conform to the sex assigned at birth.

The confusion may be part of the reason that acceptance for transgender people has lagged gays and lesbians, experts say.

"It can be a very isolating experience. A lot of people feel like they are the only person going through this," said Myke Selha, a West Des Moines social worker who specializes in work with the transgender population. "The people you expect to be there are rejecting you, and you feel like you have nobody to turn to."

Alcorn wrote that she wasn't accepted by her parents, who have been lambasted in online comments.

"But there's been a lot of progress in the last five years," Selha said. "I'm now seeing people coming in to me in their 20s or later in life, and, in the last year, even parents who say my child is saying this, and I want to understand it better."

'A lot of work to do' to boost acceptance

No suicide statistics are available in Iowa for the transgender population, but studies show that it's a widespread national problem, according to One Iowa, which advocates for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population.

"It's really tragic. It can be overwhelming if you are a teenager who suddenly understands yourself to be a female gender when your anatomy doesn't match that," said Matty Smith, One Iowa's communications director. "We've seen more acceptance for gays and lesbians coming out of the closet, but there is still a lot of work to do around the transgender community. We need to have more conversations and come to more understanding so these tragedies don't happen anymore."

Shearer said he's often thought of suicide, but he enjoys connecting with people too much, and he's had family support.

As a young person, he took prescription drugs to treat depression, but nothing worked. He remembers as a young boy seeing a movie when a woman said she wanted to "chop her boobs off," and thinking, "That's me."

"Nothing about me wanted to do hair and makeup," Shearer said. "I wanted to be running outside, being active."

But as he grew older, he faced feelings that he was trapped inside the wrong body by trying to "act cool" at Roosevelt High School, he said. He sold dope and even called in a bomb threat, which got him expelled. He eventually attended an alternative school and now takes community college classes in Web development.

Shearer wears jeans and a flannel shirt and a Yankees ball cap on backwards on this day in his Des Moines apartment. His hair is short, and he sports a thin mustache. His appearance has led to trouble with police, he said, who recently questioned him after he emerged from a women's restroom.

But it's the constant assumptions that wear him down and make him depressed, he said. Some people think he was not born this way.

"I hate it when people say I chose this. I'd do anything to not be this way," Shearer said. "I'm not an experiment. We all have problems, so who are you to make my problems bigger? You don't get to worry about my life.

"Tell me a Bible passage that talks about transgenders. God made me."

Beyond surgeries, he seeks happiness

He admits his girlfriend had a tough time with it. Shearer said he played the role as the "butch lesbian" for a long time and that didn't work. His bisexual girlfriend stayed with him, however, as he has dutifully taken his testosterone, he said.

He wants to save money to get "top surgery," or removal of his breasts. A long-term dream is a more expensive "bottom surgery," which would create a penis. He hopes one day that medical insurance will cover those procedures.

But his aspirations go beyond genitalia, Shearer said. He wants to be recognized "not as a trans man, but a man." He wants to be accepted and happy. And that's what his mother wants.

"To me, it's always my child. I just need to get in the habit of calling him a he," she said. "I hope he finds peace and happiness."

Until then, this is how Alex Shearer tries to explain it to people who don't understand, who he hopes will one day support transgender people enough to stop the suffering in young people.

"It's like I'm trapped in a burning building, and I hear the firetruck coming," he said. "But no one comes."

He wants society to show up for transgender people, because too many are dying in that fire.