Tuesday, May 31, 2005 | 11:18 a.m.
Recent UNLV Boyd Law School graduate Christina DiEdoardo is learning how to be a woman and a lawyer.
A "career and a gender ago," Christina was Christopher, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal with a propensity for channeling "The Godfather" when he was trying to get information from sources.
As Christopher, DiEdoardo said she was demanding and aggressive, drawing upon all the moxie her Italian heritage could muster to show that she was the ultimate "alpha male."
But inside, DiEdoardo was really more of an alpha female. After more than two years of exploring her feminine self, DiEdoardo said she's struggling with how to be assertive as a woman without being aggressive.
And of course, she's studying to pass the bar.
"I'm trying to learn how to be a woman and a lawyer and I'm on the crash program here," said DiEdoardo, sitting in the downtown law office of Cristina Hinds where she's been working as a student attorney.
Now, "God and the state bar willing," the 36-year-old law school graduate is hoping to use her legal expertise and personal experience to help fellow transsexuals and others struggling with sexuality and gender equality issues.
Nevada, like most states, allows transsexuals to change their gender identity but makes it difficult to do, DiEdoardo said. There are also no laws protecting transsexuals from discrimination in the workplace, and the state is silent on whether transsexuals can legally marry.
The laws have "nothing specifically discriminatory but nothing progressive either," DiEdoardo said. There isn't very much case law out there involving transsexuals, so each time someone goes through a sex change, they have to "reinvent the wheel."
Most transsexuals suffer, DiEdoardo said, because they are still so invisible in society. After they transition to their new sex, most "go stealth" or "fade into the woodwork," out of fear of discrimination or violence.
DiEdoardo said she understands why transsexuals often hide, but she says that means there are few support groups or mentors out there for other transsexuals dealing with the same issues.
It also means that they "go from one closet into another," said Jane Heenan, a marriage and family therapist and facilitator of Transgender Support and Advocacy Nevada. Heenan sees about a dozen transsexuals at any one time, but she estimates that she's counseled 1,000 to 1,500 transsexuals in the Las Vegas Valley over the last 10 years.
Younger people struggling with gender issues only see transsexuals in the headlines when they've done something "freaky" or when they've been raped and killed when someone discovered their original sexual identity, DiEdoardo said.
That's one reason, she said, she's been up front with sharing her story.
"I'm hoping that some young trans person reads this and she says, 'She went through this and went on to law school. My life is not over. This can be a vibrant part of my life.'th"
The invisibility of most transsexuals also adds to the ignorance and fear of who they are among the general public, DiEdoardo and Heenan said.
DiEdoardo said she struggled with her gender identity for most of her life, but only recently came to terms with it. When she was a little boy, she always wanted to play with the girls, and she started "dressing" when she hit puberty, DiEdoardo said. Every time she put on woman's clothes, she said she felt wonderful, then the "Catholic guilt" would sink in and she would confess to her mom and swear to stop.
Studying journalism at the University of Missouri Columbia, DiEdoardo said she sought a girlfriend to prove to her mother she wasn't gay, because she (as a he) did prefer women, but at the same time she didn't feel right as a guy. She had no concept of being "trans" at the time, DiEdoardo said.
Gender identity disorder is a medically acknowledged phenomenon in which someone believes they are the opposite sex, said Heenan, who teaches psychology and sociology at the Community College of Southern Nevada. But she also said that is just the medical "code" that doesn't get at the larger issue: A transsexual isn't a woman trapped in a man's body or vice versa, a transsexual is someone who doesn't fit into a two-gender system.
"We are conditioned to believe there are two and only two," gender options, Heenan said, and transsexuals feel out of place because they don't fit either category.
DiEdoardo started seeing a therapist and then started taking hormones in 2003. She began living as a woman, the next step before actual surgery, in January.
When she finally made the switch from Christopher to Christina this past semester, she sent a mass e-mail to her Boyd classmates informing them of the change. The letter asked them to call her Christina and informed them she would be using the women's restroom.
DiEdoargo said she received a couple of obscene and defamatory e-mails that "could not be printed in a family magazine, " but for the most part she said she was overwhelmed by more than 30 e-mails supporting her decision.
DiEdoardo said she thought some women might feel uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with her, but according to Boyd's administrators, they only got one complaint that was easily resolved.
"There's a certain discomfort for everyone as a person changes genders, it's not a usual event," law school Dean Richard Morgan said. "But everyone at the law school handled it in a responsible and professional way."
Even before she made the switch, Morgan and other professors said DiEdoardo was someone "committed to trying to promote justice and equality" for all people.
Her first taste of the law came as a paralegal between college and starting her brief journalism career when she helped win a reverse discrimination case for a "white, heterosexual male," in California, DiEdoardo said. The man successfully claimed that he had been routinely overlooked for promotion because he wasn't a minority, a woman or gay.
"That's the kind of work I want to do more of," DiEdoardo said, adding that job discrimination is the biggest issue facing transsexuals."Very client orientated and coming up with creative solutions for impossible problems."
As a student attorney, DiEdoardo has already helped one transssexual woman change the gender on her birth certificate and helped another seal her prior record to help her find employment.
DiEdoardo, who graduated from UNLV with a Dean's award and an American Bankruptcy Institute Medal of Excellence, said the courts are often the only avenue minorities can use to protect their rights.
"I think we have to push on all levels," DiEdoardo said. "Historically, in the U.S., you can't expect people to vote in laws that expand opportunity. The South could have voted down the black codes, but they didn't.
"... If it weren't for activist judges we wouldn't have Brown v. Board of Education."
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