Darcy Corbitt.jpg

Darcy Corbitt from 2010 to 2013 (Submitted)

AUBURN, Alabama -- From the age of three, Darcy Corbitt knew she was meant to be a woman.

Born biologically male, Corbitt, on her 21st birthday in May, stopped using the boy's name her parents gave her and asked that others do the same. It was, she says, the final step in a years long journey to fully embracing the person she always knew she was.

"I didn't feel like I was a born in the right body, but for years I didn't know that was legitimate. I knew I was a woman, but I didn't understand what that meant," the Auburn University senior said.

Corbitt sent letters to faculty members asking that they address her as Darcy and refer to her with female pronouns. In October, in a front page interview with the campus newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, she described the suicidal feelings she battled before she made the decision to live openly as a woman.

On Sunday Feb. 16, at the 16th annual Vigil for Victims of Hate and Violence on the steps of the state capital, Corbitt will receive the Stephen Light Youth Activist Award. The award is named in honor of a gay rights activist who died in Birmingham in 2012 at age 25.

Sara Couvillon received the award in 2012 for the stand she took after Hoover High School officials said she couldn't wear a T-shirt that read, "Gay? fine by me." Adam Beathard received the award in 2013 for his role in organizing Mobile's LGBTQA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Queer and Ally) youth.

Michael Hansen, communications director for Equality Alabama, the group presenting the award, said Corbitt earned the honor when she shared her story with The Auburn Plainsman.

"Her story touched many lives throughout Alabama and beyond," Hansen said. "It was a bold and courageous move, especially on a campus recently voted the nation's most conservative public university. I have gotten to know Darcy via Facebook since then and have been extraordinarily impressed with her passion, intellect and activist spirit. Personally, she has been inspired me to become more informed and vocal in my advocacy for the trans* community."

(Hansen said he uses the word "trans*" because it encompasses all of the many identities within the gender identity spectrum.)

Corbitt said she wasn't so sure she deserved the honor.

"I don't consider myself an advocate," she said. "I thought about it for a few days. Every time I put on lipstick and go out into the world and live my life as a woman, I'm showing people I'm human too, I'm brave and I'm not going to let people tell me who I am."

'It's hard to be yourself, but you sure look happy.'

Before Corbitt fully identified herself in public as a female, she came out as a gay man at age 18 and for about a year she dressed as a woman, although at that time she identified herself as a gay man who wore women's clothes.

Her 21st birthday, she said, was when she "started anew" and officially identified herself as Darcy. "It was impossible for me to stay the man I had presented myself as for 20 years."

Making that change wasn't easy.

"I was really terrified. I thought I was going to get death threats," Corbitt said. "I really haven't had any problems. I have had nothing but support from the faculty."

Her parents struggled with it and they stopped speaking for a while. Darcy said she began supporting herself financially.

"My parents had 20 minutes to take it all in. It's a process. It takes a long time. I think in a couple of years things will be better. I'm lucky to have the parents I have," Corbitt said.

Having lived in Auburn since she was a young child, Corbitt said most of her childhood friends and the people she went to church with "won't look me in the eye. People who don't even know me treated me better than people I do know."

She was treated with kindness, she said, when she went to the Lee County courthouse to change her name.

"The clerk in the driver's license office said to me, 'It's hard to be yourself, but you sure look happy.'"

Before The Plainsman article appeared, Corbitt was just one of the more than 25,000 students at Auburn University.

Corbitt said the day the article ran, she was stopped by 50 people -- all of whom had nice things to say.

"It was nothing but good, positive comments," Corbitt said of those who approached her on campus. "It wasn't just liberals or hippies. It was conservative frat guys."

'I never looked back.'

Corbitt said Bonnie Wilson in Auburn's Women's Initiatives Office and Spectrum, Auburn's Gay-Straight Alliance, where Corbitt serves as director of social affairs, helped give her the courage to live her life openly and freely.

"I asked her, 'If there weren't any barriers, what would you be?'" Wilson told The Plainsman. "And (Corbitt) said, 'a woman.' And I said, 'then that's what you are.'"

"I never looked back" after that conversation, Corbitt said.

Now, as part of her work with Spectrum, Corbitt speaks on panels and to groups about sexual orientation and gender identity issues.

"I think that education, next to small acts of courage, are the most important ways for us to gain equality. I think that racism and homophobia stem entirely from ignorance, not stupidity, just the lack of information or knowledge about specific issues," Corbitt said.

On Nov. 2, 2012, before she began using the name Darcy, she wrote a letter to Auburn University President Jay Gogue asking gender identity and expression be added to the university's non-discrimination policy. The school's student government passed a resolution endorsing the change months earlier.



"As a gay man who is also a full-time cross dresser this resolution is very important to me. Because I dress outside of the normative for my gender, I am considered transgendered, and my right to wear the clothing I choose is not protected by the University," she wrote.

"I have numerous friends who are transgendered or transsexual, and most of them have been the target of bullying from faculty and their peers. At least one that I know of was even outed in a class by his professor, and several of our esteemed athletes declared in a classroom panel that 'trans' individuals were not humans and didn't deserve to live," the letter continued.

"All I ask is that Auburn stands by me and my friends, protecting and affirming our rights, even if portions of the Auburn family do not agree. Because this is the true meaning of family: that we stand by each other no matter what."

She was invited, along with other Spectrum members, to speak to a committee considering the resolution.

A year later, in November 2013, the policy was updated to include gender identity and expression.

The change in policy "originated with students and was recommended by the Student Government Association and approved by the Multicultural and Diversity Commission," according to Kelley Taylor, Auburn University's Director of Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity.

Other Spectrum members, Corbitt said, deserve the credit for the change.

"I wrote a letter. A lot of people did a lot more than I did," Corbitt said.

'It's hard to be open and out.'

Pursuing a double major in English literature and psychology, Corbitt said she wants to help young people fight against suicidal thoughts.

She said was moved by the story of Josh Pacheco, a gay high school junior in Michigan who killed himself in 2012 after being bullied.

"It made me so angry. He felt like the best way to deal with it was to end it all," Corbitt said.

It was a feeling Corbitt said she had herself before taking the name Darcy, once after she was outed while attending a private Christian college and once while struggling with her gender identity while at Auburn.

"I was going to do it. I had a plan. I didn't want to be trans* and face the consequences," she said in an interview with Equality Alabama.

Adopting the name, she said, wasn't about changing who she was. It was about being willing to fully embrace who she was.

"I've always been Darcy, a woman. I was in a costume for 20 years," Corbitt said.

She says she worries about other young gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people in Alabama and understands the fear many of them may feel about coming out.

"It's an appropriate emotion to feel. It's not welcoming. It's hard to be open and out. It's not a popular stance," Corbitt said. "But it's worth it. We are all different and we're all unique and we're all valuable. I want them to know the world would be a worse place without them."