On becoming a man: Transgender in the workplace
“I’m not a boy, but I’m going to be one,” Chris Edwards defiantly told his grandmother at age 5, when she asked “the girls,” including Chris, to come to dinner. “I’m not a girl,” Edwards told her. “Yes, you are,” his grandmother said. “No, I’m not. I’m a boy,” was his response. The next year, when he learned that his cousin Adam had a penis and he did not, Edwards thought he would eventually grow one. When that didn’t happen, he said, “I realized something was terribly, terribly wrong. When puberty hit, I knew that my body had betrayed me in the worst possible way that I could ever imagine. “I knew then that I was stuck being a girl for the rest of my life, and I became deeply, deeply depressed.” And so began Edwards’ journey from female to male, a journey that has included as many as 22 surgeries in a...