BAY CITY, MI -- While getting ready for work in her job as an English professor, Charin Davenport stares into the bathroom mirror.

Before brushing her teeth or washing her face, she looks for a man she's known all her life, a man she's run from for quite some time. His name is Chuck, and she can't go to work until she finds him.

When she sees him, she inspects his face for signs of facial hair that, if found, she shaves off.

She reaches for a stocking cap to cover thinning hair, which she then covers with a shoulder-length wig.

"It's my favorite one," she says. "It brings out the hippie in me."

When she's teaching at Delta College or Saginaw Valley State University, she usually wears a shorter wig.

She isn't comfortable discussing her morning ritual or the issues she faces as a person who's transgender.

"Putting on wigs and having to shave is something a lot of transgender women don't like to talk about," Davenport said. "We usually get lumped into the category with drag queens and cross dressers."

Transgender people have a sexual identity that's different from their gender at birth. Davenport wants people to understand the difference between her and a cross-dressing entertainer such as RuPaul. He's a character who parades as a woman on stage, Davenport said.

Davenport's identity is more complicated.

The social experiences of transgender people, as well as gays, lesbians and bisexuals, has made news of late in part because of political movements to extend nondiscrimination protections to them.

The Bay County Board of Commissioners changed the county's personnel policy April 15, protecting county workers in that group from employment discrimination.

"What history has shown us over and over again is that to deny civil rights and freedom and equality to anyone, anywhere, is to deny them to everyone, everywhere," Davenport told Bay County commissioners during a public hearing Feb. 11 on the issue.

On Monday, April 21, the Saginaw City Council took a second look at a proposal that would extend protections in all public accommodations and employment in the city. The council voted to suspend a decision on the measure indefinitely.

Davenport didn't attend the meeting but said she feels the council's decision was a joke.

"They are playing with people's lives," Davenport said. "They have to argue whether people like me should have the same rights as them? That is absurd! They are denying I exist."

Childhood of confusion

Davenport grew up in the 1960s, a time when teenagers hung out with their dates at the local burger joint and shared a milkshake, men went off to fight in Vietnam and "transgender" was not a word.

"I thought maybe I was gay or something. But I wasn't. I never was," Davenport said.

"I thought I was just having the wrong thoughts for the body that I had, not that the body was wrong. I didn't hate my body; I hated myself."

Davenport said she spent decades learning how to play the role of regular guy.

"So you try to keep it hidden and hope it would go away. You would try to find the most masculine things to do to hide it. Friendships end because you don't want people to find out. It's a terrible way to live."

Growing up, she said, she felt like she was someone else.

"Like for gym class, I felt like I was in the wrong locker room, that I shouldn't be in there with all of those boys. I couldn't even open my eyes because it felt so wrong," she said.

"Sometimes I would go to football games in high school, and I would see these guys with their dates, and I remember saying to someone that I was jealous, and they would say, 'Yeah, she sure is pretty!' And they never realized that I meant that I was imagining what it was like to be her."

Davenport explains her thought process.

"I am not attracted to gay men. I'm attracted to straight men."

Davenport enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served from 1974 to 1981, partly through the Vietnam era. She married and divorced twice and has three children and three grandchildren.

It wasn't until 2006 when she again began to seriously entertain the thought of becoming a transgender woman.

Brain surgery

Davenport booked an appointment with a therapist to start hormone replacement therapy in 2004 after her last year of teaching high school in Rochester, N.Y., but had a brain hemorrhage the same day.

"I never made it to that appointment," Davenport said.

She was found unconscious in her apartment. Davenport credits her cat, Witty, with saving her life.

"Witty went to a downstairs apartment below me and kept meowing and putting up a ruckus," Davenport said.

A neighbor who returned home to retrieve something noticed Witty and picked her up to bring her back to Davenport's apartment.

"Witty never let anyone pick her up. I was the only person," she said. "But that day she let the neighbor pick her up and bring her upstairs, where she continued to meow until I was found. She saved my life."

Witty died on Davenport's birthday in 2012.

"I held her in my arms the whole time. She was my best friend," she said while removing her glasses to wipe a tear.

Hormones and therapy

Davenport decided to hold off on the transition and move back to Michigan in 2006. She began working as an adjunct professor teaching English at Delta College and Saginaw Valley State.

Though both employers are supportive of Davenport's decision to live as a woman, only Delta College has that support written into its nondiscrimination policy. Delta College's policy can be found online.

SVSU Spokesman J.J. Boehm said that though it is not addressed in the university's policy, the school is working with Davenport on "employment documentation and related matters."

"Transgender is not a special designation under SVSU's anti-discrimination policy, but we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind," Boehm said.

During the fall of 2013, Davenport talked to her doctor at the Veterans Affairs Hospital and told him about her decision to start hormone replacement therapy.

"Without hesitation, he said, 'You've waited long enough.' I thought I was going to have to talk to him for a month or two to convince him. But I didn't," she said. "I couldn't stop crying."

Davenport is open about her transition with her students and plans to teach as a woman next semester if her health allows. This semester, she didn't anticipate her hormone medicine to make physical changes to her body as fast.

Along with a medicinal regimen, Davenport regularly attends therapy.

"The therapy is there as a safety measure because suicide rates are high for transgender, four or five times higher than for lesbians and gays," she said.

"I think another reason is because I have a lot of things I need to figure out, and I appreciate having a therapist there to help me sort through my new challenges I face every day."

Davenport said her family supports her decision.

"My family had a lot of questions initially, but they are with me 100 percent," she said. "I spoke to them last year; prior to that I didn't tell anybody. I kept it a secret."

Every woman inside of me

Davenport reached into a quilted, multicolored purse and pulled out a few bracelets.

"The thing about being a guy is I could walk past a pile of T-shirts and put one on without thinking about it," she said. "But every choice I made felt like I was putting on a uniform, like, am I dressed like a guy?"

Going shopping can pose a challenge for Davenport, though. Cashiers and clerks sometimes don't know how to address her or sometimes show discomfort.

"Makes me wonder if people are paying attention to the message us transgender have been delivering that we are here," she said.

Davenport said they don't have to guess her gender when thanking her at the checkout.

"Simply just say thank you and leave it at that," she said. "Or ask. It's OK to ask."

Davenport said she wants to see the day when everyone is recognized and protected -- regardless of gender identity or gender expression, though she doesn't think it will happen.

"I suspect that in this state, we will find a new civil rights law that includes sexual orientation, but not gender identity or gender expression.

"I hope I'm wrong. I think the lesbian and gay community deserve to get their rights."

Davenport says her fight is different.

"This isn't about who I love. This is about who I am."

Congruency

At 58 years old, and living as a male for most of her life, a question of importance looms: Why change now?

"Like many people my age who are transitioning like me, we thought we were crazy," Davenport said, referring to her younger years.

"Part of it was the times. In the '60s and '70s, transgender wasn't even a word. I thought I was out of my mind. I would pray and pray for it to go away, but it wouldn't."

Davenport said it is important to her that people see her as she is now.

"For me it's what I call congruency," she said. "I knew growing up who I wanted to be, but outwardly it didn't match."

Davenport sat in her living room chair, looking out the window while reflecting on what the future holds for her.

"For me it's important that I bring my perceived and real self closer together. It's important to me to have others see me as I see myself," Davenport said.

Davenport said she doesn't believe people should have to fight to have civil rights. Instead, they should just have them, she said.

"I hope that someday everyone is treated equal and we never have to decide who gets certain rights," she said.

"We are all connected to each other. The same atoms that are in me are in you. So, when we mistreat each other, we might as well be mistreating our own selves. No one is better than anyone else."

Some people believe the civil rights era is finished, Davenport said.

"I think we are still in the civil rights era; at least, I am. It hasn't really ended if you think about it."

Davenport recalled a conversation she had with a man in the lobby of the VA hospital while she was waiting to see a doctor. She said the older man had served in the armed forces and possibly fought in a war. She thought he would be resentful toward her.

"He didn't know I was transgender or anything," Davenport. "After he saw my name on my paperwork, which had Charles on it, I could tell he started to figure it out.

"He said, 'You don't look like Charles.'"

The conversation progressed, and Davenport found out they had more in common than she previously thought.

"He was a very nice man," she said. "One of the best conversations I've had.

"But it made me think about what I had done. I prejudged him before I got a chance to know him. This is something that people often do to me."

Bob Johnson is a public safety reporter for MLive/The Saginaw News. Contact him at 989-395-3295, by email at

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