Becoming Nicole

Nicole speaks at the 2011 GLAD Spirit of Justice Award Dinner. She makes the crowd laugh, much like she did during her summer-camp performance. She also uses her performance skills as an actor at an active shooter training held by the sheriff’s office. During this event, she connects with another actor, a boy about her age. He takes her by surprise by kissing her. A sheriff’s deputy sees the kiss and tells Nicole’s mom, who is dismayed because “any romantic relationships before [Nicole] made her full physical transition were complicated—especially if it was someone Nicole had just met” (211). When the boy contacts Nicole on Facebook, her dad convinces her to block him.

The loss of privacy Nicole has experienced by being in the public eye has made her feel uncomfortable about dating, along with the fact that she hasn’t had surgery yet. She wonders if any boy will truly want to be with her if he knows she’s transgender. As Nutt puts it, Nicole “looked like a girl, she felt like a girl, and she yearned to be kissed like the girl she really was, but what would a boy say if he knew that technically she was not 100 percent female?” (212).

LD 1046 is defeated in Maine’s House and Senate thanks to a bipartisan effort. A bill to strengthen the state’s anti-bullying laws is introduced. At the time, Nutt says, most Maine schools had policies about individual student behavior, but the new bill aims to create a statewide standard for conduct. It becomes law less than a year later. Nutt argues that it’s the kind of legislation that might have prompted the administrators at Nicole’s elementary school to treat her bullying incident differently.

The Maineses organize a sleepover at their house, realizing that Nicole stopped going to them while the family was living in stealth mode. Wayne and Kelly know the sleepovers are a deeply validating experience for her, and they’re a chance for her to open up to others. A Boston Globe reporter contacts the family a few months later to see if they’d be willing to tell their story. “There was so much that other people needed to know. This was a chance to show them what it means to have a transgender child,” Nutt says, explaining why Kelly decides it’s the right time to share this story in such a public way (215). It’s an unprecedented and influential piece for a major American newspaper, and it leads to many more interview requests from the media. Kelly doesn’t want these requests to take over their lives. She just wants her kids to “experience life as average teenagers” (215).

Nicole starts to find her way in the world as Jonas starts to lose his. Jonas feels angry and depressed, but he’s unsure why. He also dislikes how his emotions feel out of control. He feels like he is always playing a part in Nicole’s story. He’s proud of her, not jealous, but he feels marginalized. When the Boston Globe story turns her into a minor celebrity, he sees himself as the twin with the not-so-interesting story. He also thinks he doesn’t have any special talents. He sometimes turns to music and poetry to process what he is feeling. Like his mom, he’s an introvert who is loyal and thoughtful but tends to avoid the spotlight. Kelly turns down invitations to speak to the public about the family’s journey, but Wayne accepts some of them, “perhaps in part to make up for all the time he’d spent ashamed, embarrassed, and confused about having a transgender daughter” (217).

The family also gets invited to the White House to help the Obama administration celebrate LGBT Pride Month. The twins hear President Obama speak. He says that progress toward equal rights happens because of “ordinary Americans who every day show extraordinary courage” and people who move society forward “by the force of their example” (218). Nicole is proud. She feels that she’s in a position to represent transgender kids seeking rights. Wayne tells Jonas he’s proud of him for looking out for Nicole for so many years.

In September of 2012, the hearings for the Maineses’ case against the Orono School District begin in Maine’s Superior Court. The GLAD lawyers include pictures of Nicole in their brief, even though she’s not identified by name in the suit, which is to decide if a transgender girl has a right to use the bathroom with her gender identity and if forcing her to use the unisex bathroom amounts to discrimination under State of Maine law. The lawyers include the photos of Nicole because of something that happened in another case: the press mistook a masculine-looking transgender intern for the feminine-looking plaintiff, and it may have swayed the outcome of the case. The lawyers also include a simple statement about Nicole, who goes by Susan Doe in the case: “Susan Doe is a girl. She is also transgender” (222). They hope this boiled-down summary helps the judge get to the heart of the matter.

While the hearings are happening, Principal Bob Lucy gets some negative press. It turns out he allowed some students at the middle school to change their answers on a standardized test after the time was up. He had recently taken an assistant superintendent job in a nearby district, but when his new employer found out about the debacle, they launched an investigation. Lucy resigns in March of 2013.

To the chagrin of the Maines family, the judge rules that the Orono School District has not violated the state’s Human Rights Act. He is not entirely unsympathetic, though: “The law casts a broad stroke where one more delicate and refined is needed,” he remarks, adding that the “Maine Human Rights Act only holds a school accountable for deliberate indifference to known, severe and pervasive student-on-student harassment. It does no more” (223). Nicole and Jonas ask what the next step is. The lawyers plan to appeal the case to the Maine Supreme Court, but that will be the end of the line.

Wayne and Nicole go to an LGBT youth conference at one of the University of Maine campuses in April 2012. Wayne is amazed by the diversity of the group and their approach to gender. Some of the kids don’t have a clear gender and it doesn’t seem to matter to them: “Everyone was different and no one cared how or why” (224). If it didn’t matter to these kids, why should it matter to him, Wayne concludes. He also sees how much these kids value people they can count on. He realizes he wasn’t that person for Kelly for a long time but that she was that person for Nicole in thick and thin. He knows he needs to be that person now.

Nicole writes a Facebook post about a transphobic moment on a TV show that reminded her that she might never find love. Wayne leaves a comment, telling her he doesn’t worry about her being alone. He tells her that she has never been alone. Many people love and admire her, and he knows someone will fall in love with her. He’s just not sure that he is ready for her to grow up.

Jonas begins to thrive. He takes college-level classes, wins a poetry contest, and serves on the school’s winning Model U.N. team. He loves big ideas and wants his life to be significant. Jonas also realizes that meaning is something a person must struggle to find. When Wayne is asked to be a keynote speaker at another school’s Civil Rights Day program, he asks Jonas if he wants to come along to help. Some of the girls at the school ask Jonas to answer questions for the audience. One of them asks what it has been like growing up with a transgender sister. He says, “Imagine what it’s like for kids, teachers, adults asking you about your sister being transgender and you’re trying to explain it all with a sixth-grade vocabulary” (229). Wayne is impressed by Jonas’s response. He thinks his son is exceptionally articulate and self-aware. This experience also motivates Jonas to return to performance, something he used to love when he was younger. He begins auditioning for theater roles at school and wins many of them. Being on a stage helps him come to terms with the roles he plays in his family and elsewhere. Plus, he gets to define the experience.

Nutt points out that only one other bathroom accommodation discrimination case involving a transgender person had reached a state supreme court as of June 2013, the time at which attorney Jennifer Levi headed to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court to argue the Maineses’ case. The other case was in Minnesota in 2001, and the plaintiff lost. If the Maineses win their case, it would set an important precedent. A couple of months later, California establishes a law, AB 1266, that made it the first state to align bathroom use with gender identity rather than sexual anatomy. Opponents of measures like AB 1266 sometimes argue that separating males and females in bathrooms and locker rooms allows people to attend to their needs and permits camaraderie among people who share manhood or womanhood. The Maineses think this is nonsense. “They argued that the female experience, the ‘life experience of manhood or womanhood,’ was exactly what had been denied to Nicole by Orono Middle School,” Nutt explains, adding that “[u]sing the girls’ restroom, combing her hair, and gossiping with friends: These seemed like small things, but they were all part of being a teenage girl and that’s what was being denied to Nicole” (233). Nicole didn’t want a society without gender, Nutt concludes. She simply wanted to be recognized for who she was and have the experiences a teenage girl would typically have.

The Maineses are an average middle-class family in many ways, according to Nutt, but they are also acting in ways they think families should act. Wayne combines the traditional with the nontraditional when he revives a tradition he had given up several years prior: writing a letter for the family Christmas card. He now has a much greater capacity to describe Nicole and share genuine joy about her activities, including her activism for transgender issues. He also shares how he is working on these issues.

In January of 2017, GLAD calls Wayne to inform him that his family has won its case against the school district. Things seem to be changing all around the Maineses, in fact. Some of these changes are good and some are not. Michael Heath, the former leader of the Christian Civic League, decides to devote himself full-time to restricting freedoms for LGBT people. Paul Melanson decides he’ll keep speaking his mind, no matter what the courts decide. Jacob wonders if Jonas ever felt disappointed that his brother had become his sister. Jonas never felt that way, though, because he had seen Nicole as a sister all along.