an Interview with Chloe Schwenke
July/August 2010
Chloe Schwenke is a many-faceted person: she is a transsexual woman, parent, and spouse, as well as a longtime Quaker, an ethicist, and an expert in international development in the fields of gender, governance, peace-building, and human rights. She lived and worked in Africa for 14 years, and has carried out project assignments in 34 developing and transitional countries worldwide. Chloe has published extensively on topics of transgender people and international development, on moral values in international development, and on leadership and integrity. In addition to her work as a development practitioner, she has served for ten years as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland. She was also a Fulbright professor at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda from 2005-6.
Jacob Stone, co-director of Ben Lomond Quaker Center, conducted this interview with Chloe via email on behalf of WF. She will be visiting Quaker Center in September to lead a program on gender.
Q. How long have you been a Friend? Which meeting do you attend? What brought you to Friends?
My first exposure to the Religious Society of Friends was during the Vietnam War era, when I was constantly under threat of being drafted. I was very moved by the witness of Quakers against that war and for peace, and their rich way of presenting peace as so much more than the absence of war. Many years later I met a Quaker woman who actually invited me to Friends Meeting of Washington, where I was immediately in my element. I first became a member in 1989 when I was living in London and worshipping with Westminster Friends; I’ve since been a member at Langley Hill Friends Meeting in Virginia (BYM), Durban Friends Meeting in South Africa (CSAYM), and now at Adelphi Meeting in Maryland (BYM).
Q. What does gender mean to you? How do you understand the difference between gender and sexual orientation?
My favorite “gender question” response was by the Welsh historian and writer, Jan Morris; I won’t even attempt to do better. Jan was a transsexual in the early days of that term; she transitioned from male to female and had sexual reassignment surgery in 1972:
“To me gender is not physical at all, but is altogether insubstantial. It is soul, perhaps, it is talent, it is taste, it is environment, it is how one feels, it is light and shade, it is inner music, it is a spring in one’s step or an exchange of glances, it is more truly life and love than any combination of genitals, ovaries, and hormones. It is the essentialness of oneself, the psyche, the fragment of unity. Male and female are sex, masculine and feminine are gender, and though the conceptions overlap, they are far from synonymous.”
As for sexual orientation, this is quite different in sense and in feel – not so much about who you are, but about who you are attracted to. Many transsexuals do not change their sexual orientation when they transition from one gender to another; I went from being a “heterosexual male” to a “lesbian female” in the eyes of the world, even if my mind and spirit have remain unchanged since birth.
Q. How did you experience your gender as a child?
My early awareness of gender was one of confusion, as I tried to express myself in ways that seemed authentic, only to be strictly channeled into all things “boy”. I grew up in a traditional military family, and there was little room for reinterpreting what masculine might mean.
At the age of 7 I asked for a toy ironing board and kitchen set, which my parents agreed to. I still have the 8mm film of a very happy me, ironing away. The next year I told my dad (a colonel in the Marines) that I wanted a ballerina costume, and tolerance gave way to a firmly “directed” socialization which later included two years at a military boarding school. I experienced my authentic gender only in glimpses, and in labels such as “the sensitive boy” and the “introspective boy”. I had mostly girls as friends, and could hold my end of a teenage girl chat over the phone with the best of them, but this did not go without critical notice. Again and again, I ran into unrelenting pressure to “be a man”, and barriers that would not yield.
Q. How did you first realize that something didn’t fit?
There was no early moment of clarity that could be described as transgender enlightenment. Instead, it might be described as a pattern of coming into an awareness of more and more uncomfortable edges in my male existence, and progressively fewer experiences of wholeness. I knew quite clearly from the age of seven that I was “different”, and from that age my awareness of that uncomfortable (and ultimately unbearable) sensation that I now know as “gender dissonance” gradually grew and grew over decades. In time, I felt quite hollowed out by this, living a less and less authentic life, until that life was no longer sustainable.
Q. How does it feel now that you are done with sexual reassignment surgery?
Being “done” is a funny way to think of a gender transition! After all, many transgender people never elect (or can never afford) to have sexual reassignment surgery, and others feel quite comfortable in that androgynous space between gender polarities. For me, the path was unambiguous – I knew myself to be firmly at the female end of the gender spectrum, and bringing my body into alignment with that awareness has been close to a feeling of reincarnation.
Since my surgery last year, each day is indescribably more centered and spiritually grounded, now that I am wholly free from the constant hurt and deep discomfort that comes with bearing that artificial male persona. Still, I will never be able to reclaim a lost girlhood, never experience teenage female angst, and never feel wildly pretty in a young woman’s skimpy dress. In that sense, gender transition is never “done”; I always have to live with my personal narrative of gender dissonance, of a past that in many important ways did not belong to me.
Q. What’s your experience of being transgendered among Friends? How has your meeting responded to you? How have Friends beyond your meeting supported you in this journey? How have Friends disappointed you in this journey?
Friends, once they find out that I am a transsexual (it isn’t obvious), react in a wide variety of ways. Generally, Friends have been supportive. Specifically, our meeting – Adelphi Monthly Meeting of Baltimore Yearly Meeting – went out of its way to carefully work with my wife and me to create a safe, caring, and understanding space within the meeting community to receive us once I did come out. To a very large extent, that was successful. There were a few Friends who questioned why I could not express my femininity in some aspects of my life without having to actually become a woman, but once it was explained to them (by others, in most cases) that being a woman was not an “aspect” but was and is at the heart of who I am, they seemed to understand, or at least accept. A few men in our meeting remain uncomfortable around me, but fewer all the time. In fact, the meeting has largely just moved on with the life of the meeting, leaving me the space to be the woman I know I am, and accepting me wholly as that woman.
Among the most moving and certainly the most spiritually grounded Quaker embraces came from the 2010 midwinter gathering of the group known as Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC). I felt so completely accepted, respected, and cared for by these Friends, and still do.
Q. You have been very public about your journey as a transgender woman. To what extent do you see this as a ministry among Friends? Among others?
In addition to working in international development, I am an ethicist by profession. At the center of my teaching and work is the testimony of integrity. For years that testimony rang false, as I exhorted my students to a respect for integrity while personally living a fundamentally false existence. Finally being whole in my body, mind, and spirit feels like a rebirth, as a heavy and ultimately crushing burden has now forever gone.
The joy that comes with that rebirth leads me to share my own strange and difficult journey across the gender barrier as a personal, spiritual narrative of joy and opportunity. It has led me – through careful testing by a Quaker clearness committee – to a new life of service, working with transgender people in the poorest countries in the world. These transgender people are among the most beleaguered, neglected, and misunderstood people on earth, and the new non-profit organization – Trans~Dignity – that I am now setting up will bring much-needed services and opportunities to them, as way opens and funding is found.
Q. You are married and have two teenage children. To the extent that you want to share this personal information, how has your family responded to your transgender status?
My gender transition is also my family’s separate but equally challenging transition, although I get nearly all the attention. If Adelphi Meeting had not exercised such care, it’s likely even Quakers would have neglected to reach out to my wife and two children. Their stories are important, and the constancy of their love for me is a light that shines very brightly indeed, but it is not for me to describe their stories. I will say that we remain a committed, loving family, and the initial awkwardness of our family’s change to two moms has given way to a normal routine, differentiated mostly – and importantly – by no longer having a deeply depressed, inwardly imploding parent. My joy in life is uplifting, and while it doesn’t negate their continuing grief in losing a husband and a father, it does offer them some new and special spiritual gifts, which they are lovingly open to receiving.
Chloe will be leading a workshop titled, “Gender, the Search for Self, and the Search for Acceptance” at Ben Lomond Quaker Center September 10-12. Call (831) 336-8333 or mail@quakercenter.org for more information or to register.