Billy Huff: Leaving behind Kimberly and living life as me

Billy Huff hasn't always been comfortable in his own skin.

He is now because he has the freedom to be a guy. He can dress down in jeans, a plaid shirt and flip-flops or look preppy casual in a loose necktie.

Billy used to think he didn't have a choice. He thought his only option was to follow the gender norms of society.

Billy wasn't born a male. He was born Kimberly Huff — female.

"The things that bother me the most about my life are the things that deal directly with me being a woman and recognized as a woman by others," said Billy, 39, who teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Billy is in the midst of transitioning from female to male. He is injecting a small dosage of testosterone in his thigh every other week. Eventually, his voice will get deeper, and he will grow facial hair.

"When I first did my testosterone injection for the first time my friend said, 'Do you feel more like a man?' How in the hell would I know what a man feels like?" Billy asked, laughing as he recalled the moment.

Billy's road to transitioning began in earnest June 1 — the day he took his first shot. He calls the day his birthday. He celebrated it with friends.

The decision to transition — the process that people go through to begin living their lives as the gender in which they identify with and not the one assigned at birth — is being made by thousands of people across the country. The exact number of transgender people living in this country isn't known, but some believe the number is as high as 700,000.

"You kind of get down sometimes when you hear about trans on the news," Billy said. "It seems to be a lot of it is very negative and for good reason because there is a lot of bad (expletive) going on you know.

"But what you don't hear enough about is the joy of it, the adventure. It's a huge adventure. It's like jumping off a cliff, really. You have no idea what it's going to be like or what's going to happen to you or who you are going to be at the end of it."

This has been a long journey for Billy. It started in his 20s when he first began having thoughts about transitioning.

"But it didn't ever feel like it was the right choice for me," he said. "It just felt too extreme, too drastic, too much. I mean, there is a lot. It's even more than I knew going into it."

The decision to finally go through with it didn't come until last year — nearly 20 years later.

Billy shared the news with his family, friends, colleagues and even his students. Some were happy for Billy. Others were not as accepting of the news.

"What other people think about me is none of my business … ." Billy said. "It's my life and my decision to make."

So who is Billy?

He's Billy Gene Huff, social activist. He is involved in Visuality, an LGBT center, the LGBT Community Fund of Southwest Florida and Standing Up for Racial Justice. He is a faculty adviser for the Gay Straight Alliance at FGCU.

He is an assistant professor of communication and researcher focused on the study of gender.

Billy has three degrees — a bachelor's degree in communications from Valdosta State University, a master's degree in Internet technology from the University of Georgia and a doctorate degree in communications from Georgia State University.

Billy's thoughts about gender don't match what most of society thinks.

"I am really into my teaching, especially when I teach gender," Billy said. "I want my students to feel, literally like look through my experience... question their own and understand that their genders were learned.

"And that everybody falls short of these ideals that were set up by our society as to what a real man and a real woman should be. I think they can relate and understand more if I am open."

Billy's name and his decision to transition partly were inspired by his beliefs.

"I am pretty sure that if it wasn't for my studies of gender academically I don't think I would be doing this," he said.

Billy's name came about through conversations with his best friend, colleague and roommate, Mohamad Al-Hakim, an assistant professor of philosophy.

Al-Hakim said the name Billy came about because of Billy's curiosity and the questions he asked him about being a male.

He said Billy's middle name resulted from him joking with Billy about how he sometimes reacted to things in a way society would stereotypically call a male's way. He said he eventually told Billy "maybe you have a type of gene that makes you express that way."

"So I made this joke that your... name should be Gene, meaning that there is a Billy Gene there," he said.

Part of Billy's story of transitioning can be told through some of the tattoos on his arms, like the Pinocchio on his left arm.

The smiling Pinocchio's left eye is missing. There are cracks below the eye and below Pinocchio's mouth.

Billy said what the tattoo artist was trying to convey through the look of the tattoo is that the process of becoming anything in life is not easy.

"I wouldn't want to get through it unscathed," Billy said. "Leave this life as battered and bruised as you can or else you didn't live it, I guess."

Above Pinocchio are the words, "You Make Me Real."

"I got the 'You Make Me Real' because it's actually other people recognizing me as a guy that actually makes me a guy," Billy said. "Nothing else does."

Billy grew up in Lilburn, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, as Kimberly Huff, dressing and acting like a girl.

"In middle school, all my friends were mainly girls, and I went to slumber parties," said Billy, who was a Brownie and Girl Scout as a child.

He said when he was a young girl, he enjoyed dance activities, like tap, ballet and jazz. But he said, "I was never graceful."

Billy later switched from dancing to athletics. He played softball, basketball and soccer. He also took karate lessons.

Billy was a clarinet player in his middle and high school bands. He was in the flag corps in high school.

The thought of being a boy trapped in a little girl's body never crossed his mind, Billy said.

"It's interesting because people want trans to be something that's been there from the beginning that you are born with, and I don't think that," Billy said. "I don't believe that because I don't think we are born with a gender. I think we learn it.

"People want to look at pictures of me before and pictures of me in dresses, looking for this trans-ness that was always already there, and it just wasn't."

Laura Jacobs, a New York-based psychotherapist, said the notion that all transgender people identify with a gender other than the one assigned at birth when they are children is a stereotype.

"That story is in everybody's mind that you knew it when you were 5. It was always there. Maybe you buried it. Maybe you lived in denial of it," Jacobs said. "But that doesn't really fit everybody.

"The idea that you didn't know at 5 is just as valid as for people who feel like they did know at 5. There is no right answer to something like that."

Billy's questions about his identity came after he got older.

"I know that when I was much younger, like 18 years old, I used to think, 'I'm a gay man,'" he said.

In high school, Billy didn't have the dating life of a typical teen girl. He said he dated boys whom he knew were gay.

Billy's personal life made another change in college. He decided he was a lesbian and started to date women.

"It's weird because something about being in a relationship always felt queer to me, but I didn't know how to put my finger on it, if that makes sense," he said. "Because I never felt like a lesbian, I have always said that even when I was in relationships with women, 'I'm not a lesbian.'"

"You have to be a woman to be a lesbian," Billy joked and then laughed.

When Billy was 20 years old, there was another dramatic change. He married a man — a gay man.

"And at 20, it seemed to make perfect sense," he said.

The marriage didn't last, ending after three months.

"I really liked the way that he related to me, and it's something that since that ended I haven't experienced or had," he said.

Billy moved to Fort Myers in July 2010 after accepting a teaching position at FGCU. He came here after year-long visiting teaching roles at colleges in Minnesota, New Mexico and Las Vegas.

When Billy moved to Fort Myers, he was still going by Kimberly Huff and wore women's clothes and makeup.

"It was something that I did consciously and always, always aware, though, when I was doing that," Billy said. "It was kind of an act that I was putting on. It kind of felt like drag in a way if that makes sense."

Billy decided two years ago to give away his women's clothes and shoes, and he stopped wearing makeup. He gave his things to Goodwill and friends.

"The types of things that girls typically are supposed to like and are expected to do I just never wanted to do," Billy said. "And I don't want to say never because it's not true.

"There were times when I enjoyed wearing makeup and dresses and the positive feedback I would get back from people. When I did those things, obviously, I enjoyed that, too. That was in a context when I thought I really didn't have a choice but given the choice I have made it."

Billy started talking to friends in 2013 about transitioning to see how they would react.

"People were pretty much like, 'No, you shouldn't do that. It's pretty extreme,'" he said. "But the more I said it out loud, the more I just decided to do it."

Billy announced his decision to begin transitioning to his students during a class at FGCU last fall.

Before telling the class, Billy shared his plan with one of his students, Julian Montalvo, a 21-year-old senior who identifies as gender non-binary. Montalvo, who wears a beard, makeup and mostly women's clothing, said Billy was worried about how the class would react.

"It takes a lot, especially when it comes to gender transition, for people to kind of open up about it, because it is such a taboo and ostracized idea within society and culture today, especially in Southwest Florida," Montalvo said.

"I was honored when he told me, and it was exciting because we could both kind of feed off of each other."

Billy did most of the talking the day he told his students about his plan to transition. A few students asked questions, but no one expressed an opinion about it, either positively or negatively, Montalvo said.

"Sitting in the class it was interesting to kind of see everybody's reaction because people's faces read as completely surprised, unsure of what it meant," he said. "It was a very interesting reaction in the room."

The decision to transition has come with some consequences for Billy.

"For most of the people that knew me, this wasn't completely out of left field," Billy said. "For a couple of people, it was. For my parents, it was very much. But my parents didn't even really know transgender existed. They didn't know it was a thing, so they had a hard time with it."

He said his decision has put a strain on his relationship with his mother and stepfather. Billy said when he told his parents during the Christmas holidays in 2014, they said, '"You know we will never call you, 'My son.'"

He said they also vowed to never call him Billy. He said they still won't.

"I told my mom, 'That's fine, but you are going to look silly one day when you are introducing me to somebody as your daughter, and I have a full beard," Billy said.

Billy said it's tough on him, too, because he understands what he is putting his parents through. He said he delayed going through with the transition because he knew it would be hard for his parents to accept.

"My mom was very much into me being a girl," he said. "When you have kids, you have these fantasies of what they are going to be — the whole marriage and kids. That's what she wanted for me, and I went in a very different direction. It's hard, and I think it's hard for most parents. They still love me. They are still supportive of me."

Jacobs, the New York psychotherapist, said the way families react to someone transitioning varies. She said some struggle to understand at first but eventually come around, and others don't because of their religious or cultural backgrounds.

She said for the person who is transitioning, it's a vulnerable time.

"You are going through physical change," Jacobs said. "The hormones are affecting your body. You are under a lot of stress. You are trying to make sure you are making the right decision.

"And so for the person, it can be a really, really stressful time to deal with your own internal feelings and anxieties as well as the stuff that is happening in the people around them."

Jacobs said families need time to adjust to the news and learn about transitioning. They also have to come to the realization their dreams for the person who is transitioning aren't going to happen, she said.

"They have to grieve this sometimes not unlike a death," Jacobs said. "The daughter that they had is not going to be around anymore. That's where families can sometimes take a lot of time."

The process of transitioning has been mixed for Billy. There have been challenging, exciting and hurtful times.

There are questions swirling in his mind. What bathroom to use? What box to check on forms — male or female?

There are issues Billy can't resolve. He wants to legally change his name to Billy but can't afford it. He also wishes he had the option to change the name on his doctoral degree.

"I am going to always have to display a doctoral degree that says, 'Kimberly Huff,' even 10 years from now when there is nothing about me that says, 'Kimberly', and I might be somewhere where nobody has even known me as that," Billy said.

Billy said he is going through the toughest part of transitioning.

"People notice that I have really hairy legs out in public, and it just doesn't go together," he said. "I get a lot of stares."

The worst moment for Billy came during the summer while visiting Washington, D.C. He said he was at a coffee shop when a group of people began to loudly say disparaging things about him.

Billy said he was called Caitlyn Jenner and was referred to as "it."

"They were... asking me, 'What I was trying to be?' Said, 'Maybe, it was homeless and couldn't afford a razor,' and things like that," he said.

Caitlyn is former Olympic hero Bruce Jenner. In April, Jenner appeared on "20/20" and talked about her gender identity struggles.

Three months after the interview aired, the reality TV star appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine as Caitlyn.

For Billy's friends, their hope for Billy is for a world that is more accepting of him and unlike the one he encountered in Washington.

"I hope that we one day actually see people for who they are and... see beyond all these differences," said Al-Hakim, Billy's friend.

At work, Billy has found a supportive environment.

"I congratulated him and said, 'I'm really proud of you for making the decision that you are most comfortable with, and if there is anyway I can support you, I'd be happy to do that,'" said Robert Gregerson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at FGCU.

Billy said he tries not to focus on moments like the one in Washington.

He said he spends time wondering about his future. How will his voice sound? What will he look like? How will his life change when he is perceived by society as a man?

"Having no idea what I am going to look like is kind of exciting," Billy said. "I'm kind of likening it, and I have never done it before, to jumping out of an airplane. You are so excited. You want to do it..., but you are at the same time petrified and scared. I love that mixture of excitement and fear and severeness and all that. I think that's living."



