| Teena Renee Brandon was born in
December1972. JoAnne Brandon’s husband, died in a car crash while
JoAnne was pregnant with her. She had another daughter with
her late husband, Tammy. It had been a very
difficult pregnancy, at one point JoAnne had thought that termination
of the pregnancy was the best option
but her catholic upbringing kept her from doing it. She had
very thick hormone shots while she was
in the hospital, and on total bedrest. Teena was very late,
well past JoAnn’s due date. The poor woman was
exhausted, waiting and trying to find activities to help induce
her labor. She would up having her labor
induced and Teena was born. JoAnne adored Teena; she was the
last part of her deceased husband’s love
and Teena was a very sick baby. She was in the hospital for
weeks before she was allowed to come home.
JoAnne was sick herself, with a staph infection and couldn’t
see or hold Teena for weeks, which bothered
her deeply. She claimed that as she grew older, Teena was always
sick with something and JoAnn was
continually taking care of her for one childhood illness or
another. Both daughters were at opposite ends of
The scale: Tammy, the oldest was very feminine. She loved her
dolls and dressed in anything with a cute
ruffle and ankle socks with lace. Teena loved to get dirty
and was mischievous, laughing at her sister
scaring her with whatever she could find. As they grew up together,
Teena was tomboyish and Tammy was
very feminine. Teena wore pants and turned up her nose at dresses
and JoAnne never understood why
Teena was so adamant about it that it wasn’t worth arguing
about. She did average work in school, but
many teachers thought she was capable of doing much more. Teena didn’t
care.
In her teenage years,Teena had her share of problems. She stole, lied,
and had several unhealthy
relationships. The girls she hung around with didn’t help, and Teena
decided that she would try and join the
military. It seemed like something she would be good at, and she started making
plans to leave.
Unfortunately, she failed the entrance exam and was devastated. It was the
only thing she wanted to do, and
the rejection was a slap in the face. JoAnne was desperate to help Teena find
her place in life, and Teena
was slipping farther and farther from her every day. She went to stay with
friends, and drifted in and out of
JoAnn and Tammy’s lives. JoAnne found out that Teena was posing as a
man and causing grief for the
people in her life. The bad checks, stolen credit cards alienated Teena from
her family, and she moved out
of JoAnn’s house and in with her Grandmother, where her gay cousin
lived. Teena made her decision for
good:she was going to live as a man and began to tell people she was having
a sex change operation.
In rural Nebraska, transgender issues were
non existent. Not many people knew anything other than
boy,
girl, and gay or straight. And gay wasn’t even an option. In the film,”Boys
Don’t Cry” By Kimberly
Pierce, Brandon’s story is told against a backdrop of bleak farm fields
and intolerant undereducated
people who had lived in the same town all their lives and had never seen a
gay person, much less
having any understanding of complex gender issues. And Teena herself was confused.
She loved feeling
like a man and the girls who paid attention to her as she made them believe
she was a man. She dressed
with a sock in her jeans, a pair of mens underwear and a swagger that unnerved
JoAnn. He daughter was
growing farther and farther away from her. Occasionally a young girl would
see Teena, who was by this
time calling herself Brandon, and JoAnn would carefully explain that Brandon
was a girl, and try to explain
that there was no Brandon, just her daughter. Brandon told his girlfriends
that his mother was a crazy
woman, a drunk who was sick and had wanted to have a daughter, when in reality
she had a son
named Brandon. He moved on to date several girls, one seriously enough for
Brandon to buy a diamond
ring Almost everyone knew of rumors about Brandon’s sexual identity crisis
in Lincoln. But Brandon
wasn’t happy. Confused by her gender disorder and the fact that she was
wanted by the police, there wasn’t
a lot of room for her to get around the local court, so Brandon moved around,
crashing at different people’s
homes. When she needed something she stole it, or found some way to get the
money for whatever it
was. Brandon had gone through a transformation and she was no longer Teena,
her name was Brandon
and her life was about to undergo a change that would eventually wind up costing
Brandon her life. |
