Becoming Nicole

Wayne makes a short speech for the Maine legislature’s House Judiciary Committee in April of 2011 as they consider LD 1046. He reveals that he has a 13-year-old transgender daughter. He also reveals the many doubts that have surrounded him and how he has continued to wonder whether transgender children exist despite the knowledge and advice of his wife, doctors, and counselors. He says he’s finally begun to question his behavior and values by examining his lack of knowledge about the issue and experiencing a lot of pain. Some of this pain is from watching his daughter lose her access to the bathroom she feels comfortable using. He notes that this only happened when adults became involved in the situation and made decisions based on unfounded fears. “This bill tells my daughter that she does not have the same rights as her classmates and reinforces her opinion that she has no future,” he tells the legislators, then asks them to help him give her “the future she deserves” (203). Nutt describes Wayne as “oddly ebullient” in this moment:

as if he’d finally rid himself of some suffocating weight, and it was all he could do to keep himself tethered to the ground.