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tell me exactly what happened. okay? just stay where you are and don t hang up, whatever you do. okay. the guys, they have a [ screaming ] i m very proud of myself that i kept it together as long as i did. but once i heard the screams toward the end, i mean, honestly i m holding the phone and i m in tears. i can barely talk. i m shaking. i m in tears because all i hear is them screaming. and it was very, very tough for me. i m don lemon. thanks for watching. thanks for watching. have a great week. captions by vitac www.vitac.com . i remember looking in the eyes and thinking my god, it s out. what have i done? oh, my god. for so many years i kept it in. fire him or give him more testosterone and let s move on. what liberates me has come at an expense for the people that i loved. this transformation from steven to susan has been nothing other than magical. lots of humidity in the forecast for the week. today s forecast high is 88 degrees. the rain chance 50% throughout the day. best chance for rain in the morning right along the beaches steven had a good world. i had a job i loved. a wife that loved me. and a son that i adored. our home was beautiful. our friends were great. i was respected in the community. the honeymoon bliss lasted for nearly three years. every evening we would come home and run five or six miles together, eat dinner together and talk about our days. we played tennis on the weekends or swam in the pool. we drank wine in the hot tub at night. we took romantic vacations together. we bought a house and had a baby. we had it all. yeah. my dad was just very manly. we would always watch football games, and when i was little he used to, when our team would get a touchdown he would throw me up, and one time he threw me up and hit my head on the wall. your day was all right? yeah. we enjoy riding in the jeep. we enjoy scuba diving with each other. we enjoy talking. travis is very much like his dad. he doesn t show emotion. he was a family man. and they looked like the perfect family. he spent a lot of time at work. he worked as the best he could to be a good city manager. if they re not going to do it they need to vote it down. as far as working with the commissioners, getting the city moving, you know, working with the department directors, he did i think a good job. this is, what i call the i love me wall. the new york marathon in 94. d.c. marathon in 2002. and we have a chicago marathon in 98. i ve been fortunate enough to get some good schooling out at the kennedy school at harvard. icma credentialed manager means you ve met some criteria as a city manager. largo s they want to be the progressive city. and we are in a lot of ways. but we re still hometown, a little hometown with a lot of baptist churches. the city of largo is very fortunate to have steve stanton as their city manager. i move to approve a salary increase for the city manager, steven b. stanton, in the amount of 4%. he was one that wanted to make sure that everything was done correctly. so he was very involved in virtually every operation of the city. he had more knowledge about the totality of what it takes to run a city than anybody i ve known. a lot of employees thought he was too harsh and unfair. others thought he was a little nuts because he was constantly moving. steve was that kind of macho guy. and it wasn t just the way he held himself, but it was also his attitude. i mean, we had some personal conversations and i was like, i would sometimes think he doesn t really get how women are emotionally. you don t ever push steve around. if you had an objective that was not in line with what he visioned, it was a battle. he was a man s man. guy s kind of guy is what he was. i was perceived to be a very assertive, aggressive city manager. i trained with our s.w.a.t. team. i rappelled with the fire department. i cleaned sewer lines. i loved playing in the dirt. my job was my passion. i didn t want to lose steve s world. the story began for me one night when i was here at city hall. i got a tip from a fellow reporter. he told me it was about the city manager. steve had experimented with cross-dressing, had attended transgender support groups, that he planned to become a woman, that all the commissioners knew, that he planned to announce it in a month, and that he planned to stay on as city manager. lorri, the reporter, lorri helfand came to my office, closed the door, and seemed uncomfortable with the question. because she and i worked very closely and she got this tip from her editor. there was this little bit of shock when i first came in. when i mentioned the thing about cross-dressing he actually kind of laughed. when she said we heard you re making an announcement, i kind of what announcement? well, we understand that you re planning on changing your gender. my god. all these years. and the world knows. you know? and it s weird what goes through your head at that time. that sound bite with apollo 13. i mean, there was a soundtrack. houston, we ve got a problem. the rug was pulled out from under me. i was definitely outed. i didn t want to deny but i didn t want to admit. and she said, steve, we re running the story anyway. you can participate or not. we got it under a number of sources. she knew a lot of details. we agreed to meet at 7:00 in the morning the following day, and he told me the entire story. came home that night, told my wife. my god, guess what? the world knows. our world the world as we know it is now going to is now going to come to an end. and it did. y insurance. if all you know about us is. aflac! .then you don t know quack. to find out more visit getquack.com. steven s space helmet. i was never attracted to dolls and pink things and all that stuff. i loved digging in the dirt. at that time was feeling very different from other kids, not knowing what i was feeling. you feel that the outside doesn t match the inside in a very real way that is not easily understood. so i can t give a real good clinical definition of what a transsexual is, but for me, at a very early age i just knew that what was inside, this presence, this feeling of being somebody other than what i was on the outside was real. and it s been something i have struggled with for many years in my life. i started keeping journals, i think when i was about 8 or 9. i was writing about feeling a sense of two presence in me, even at a small age, and trying to understand how that worked. when i was a kid i used to equate it as never being alone but never having friends. i got out of my grungy clothes and put my dirty body in a soothing hot water. i looked at my body floating in the water and imagined i was a beautiful nurse. my legs looked so pretty and my arms so feminine, but i knew this was wrong. i was a boy, not a girl. my dad was always distant. he worked very hard and very long. my dad made an okay salary. we were certainly not well off. my mom was a full-time mom. she was a homemaker. and i remember sitting down while i had her attention. she was in the kitchen. ask her. mom, if i had been a girl, what would my name have been? and she said without delay, it would have been susan. and when she said that, i can remember as soon as she said, it would have been susan, this explosive sound going off in my mind that, my gosh, that is what its name is. that s what my name is. and that s what i had been feeling for so many years. i just knew it to be true, and it was just a powerful sensation that i could feel even as a small child, that it s susan. that it s susan. i never knew people went through puberty. when it started happening to me, it was very frightening that all of a sudden i was getting things that i never thought i should have, more of these masculine features, development of the facial hair. when i started that, it was extremely scary. it felt like all of a sudden my body was attacking itself. my mom and dad were divorced. this is about 77, 76. and she was moving out of the house. some stuff she was taking. some stuff she was going to just give to the salvation army. i remember going through the pile and tried the little tennis dress and it felt right. it felt very comfortable. and i can remember wearing it for a half hour and taking it off and feeling really guilty about wearing my mom s tennis dress, for heaven s sake. i would find myself looking forward at the end of the day to putting on my tennis dress. and typically hiding underneath the covers. at some point probably after graduating high school and beginning college, i had heard the word transvestite, cross-dresser. i would spend all my time at the university of florida and read about this, transvestism, transsexualism. during that time as well i started getting little nightgowns and little brassieres and i would wear that stuff at college. it was not a sexual thing for me. i know that some people were sexually stimulated by those things. i was not. we don t want to start until he comes in, do we? surprise! people think if you re transsexual maybe you re just a gay man in denial. no. not at all. women were attractive, but i never dated before. even when i was in college. never engaged in a sexual activity at all. i must come to terms with my problem. i should not allow the two halves to continue. i must incorporate my personality. i cannot be two people for life. i don t know if i can solve this problem by myself. i really need help. when i first met steve, he was the cute young boy in the front of the aerobics class. he was fit, muscular and had great legs. i met donna. she was outgoing. she was gregarious. she was beautiful. she was nurturing. and she was looking for somebody who was normal. as i was as well. we both wanted many of the same things. a loving spouse, children, and a successful career. i was in love, and more importantly, she loved me. because no one had ever loved me before. all of a sudden i felt the body of a beautiful woman, and that surge of sexual energy, desire and a sense of warmth that i never had in my life before. i think she knew at the time that i was seriously deficient in some other areas, but was willing to willing to teach me, i guess, or put up with some of the inconveniences of a 30-year-old guy that didn t know how to make love to a woman. after we became lovers, i didn t feel the need to jump in my clothes anymore. all i needed to do was just be normal, to do the things that most normal guys do, and it would be it would be okay. so when steve accepted a position as assistant city manager in largo, florida, he said he wanted to take me with him to paradise. i promised her that if she married me that i would make $100,000 within a couple of years and that i would show her paradise. we got married en route to florida and headed out with all of our possessions in a rented truck to begin our normal life together. it was done. it was done. it was behind me. thank god, i m a normal guy. when i left for largo, it never came back for almost seven years. it was done. it was great. it was behind me. i was i was free. i can remember one day waking up and thinking, oh, my god, she s back. susan was back. she was calling out. she was calling out to me. he wants to show off. he wants to walk for the camera. he s saying hurry, daddy. okay. i m ready to go. walk to daddy. i was living the life of normalcy, and i felt great about that. the dysfunctional aspect of my self was in my past. it was done. it was purged. it was nothing that was relevant anymore. hi, everybody. travmeister s going to his first day of school. everything we dreamed of and hoped for had become a reality. but then things started to change. i can remember one day waking up and thinking, oh, my god, she s back. susan was back. she was calling out. she was calling out to me. steve was promoted to city manager and began working even longer hours. what can i do for the community? he continued to spend more and more time on the computer at home. he would still have more work to do every night when i went to bed. when donna went to bed, i would be on the internet reading information on transvestism. i accused him of having an affair. he said no, that wasn t it. so after years and years and years of denial and after seven years of marriage, i went into her room and said, i think we need to talk. i think we need to talk. he told me he thought he would be a better person, a better husband, and a better father if he could wear women s clothing sometime. not to be confused, she asked, well, do you want to be a woman? i said, oh, god, no. of course not. i just want to have fun with this thing. this was so farfetched that i agreed to play along. i told him i would help him find some clothes and dress up. if i had known what i was doing, i never would have done it. we did the makeup, the clothes, the high heels, the wig. i was still giggling when i escorted him into the living room to look at himself. i looked in the mirror and saw a ridiculous-looking man in a dress. looking looking in the mirror was this was what i had been running from all my life. and i remember looking in the eyes and thinking, oh, my god, what have i done? it was it was out. for so many years i kept it in. he stared at the reflection, then in a quiet voice he said, so there she is. i stopped laughing. steve s desire to dress as a woman snowballed after that. he wanted more clothes, his own makeup, wigs. he began dressing several nights a week at home. we both agreed to keep this a secret. life went on like this for another seven years. who would guess that i m a transsexual? of all people, me? and as a public person disclosure would have an absolute and permanent damage on my world. it would be more than the loss of my job. it would be the loss of my 20-year career. am i really putting my needs above those of my son, my wife and my world? i needed to get out. i needed to get out. i would go away once a month to various places throughout florida as susan. i was now shopping in the mall. i was going to dinner at nice restaurants. i was trying to learn to be who i was. the first thing i thought about in the morning was all of this transgender stuff, and the last thing i thought about at the end of the day was it as well. i just realized it s getting more and more difficult to go back to steve s world. i believe in this ordinance. i believe it s the right thing to do. the city had considered a human rights ordinance geared against nondiscrimination against sexual orientation and gender identification. up until that point in my life i had been pretty good at compartmentalizing these two worlds. commissioner jackson? no. crozier? no. commissioner halverson? no. the conflict i had, when commissioners would say, i m okay with incorporating sexual orientation, but god, this transsexual things, i have never even met a transsexual, i can t believe these people would be out there. mr. harper? no. the motion is denied 3-4. i remember feeling just a sense of being a fraud that i had this very active aspect of my own personality that i wasn t dealing with. so i found a therapist. she was struggling with her identity and had been for years and was at the point where she believed that she was ready to emerge as susan. and needed that guidance in terms of how to do that. in march 2005, after nearly 15 years of marriage, steve told me that he had come to the realization that he needed to live the rest of his life as a woman. the secret to which i had given up the essence of who i was to protect would be revealed. we would give travis two more years of having mom and dad together, taking family vacations, getting through middle school. a two-year extension on a happy childhood. i met with my mayor. i met with the city attorney, the fire chief, personnel manager, police chief. it almost took him two hours to get the whole story out. it was a painful process for him to start with his childhood and build up to present day, where he finally told me all of the things that he was feeling and going through. he kind of hemmed and hawed. he drug this thing out. and he just he came out and said he was a transgender. and, of course, i wasn t quite sure what a transgender was, but i acted like i did. i bet it took a couple of days for it to sort of sink in. it was sort of surreal. i didn t have any idea. i had a transition planned until a reporter walked into my office. and our world changed at that point. when steve told me that his secret had been leaked to the newspaper, i immediately knew that our lives would never again be the same. i just wanted to take travis and run as far away as we could get. all the work, all the preparation that i had done and that donna had done in preparing for a very significant event in our lives just blew apart. i don t want the city of largo to be the poster child for bigotry and discrimination. if jesus were here tonight i guarantee you he would want him terminated. i m don lemon. here are your headlines. our top story, the cold-blooded killings of three people connected to the u.s. consulate in juarez, mexico. two of the victims were americans. the third was the husband of a mexican woman who worked at the consulate. on sunday the white house condemned the killings. in a travel advisory the state department says families of workers at some u.s. consulates can leave mexico if they choose. it s also warning americans to use extreme caution if traveling to mexico. yemen is targeting a suspected al qaeda hideout tonight. the country s defense ministry says air force jets carried out an air strike on militants south of the capital city. it says it struck before an imminent attack by the insurgents. yemen s al qaeda wing has claimed it was behind the failed christmas day bombing of a u.s. airliner. long-time actor peter graves has died. he was perhaps best known for his roles in the tv series mission impossible and the 1980s movie, the spoof movie airplane. los angeles police say peter graves was found dead at his home on sunday. his publicist says he had a heart attack. graves is survived by his wife and three daughters. he died four days shy of his 84th birthday. those are your headlines. i m don lemon. keeping you informed, cnn, the most trusted name in news. ÷÷÷ that day, nervous. very more antsy than normal. he was frightened. and never really seen that in steve before. it was going to be a storm, and we were going to see what was left in the aftermath of the storm. the timing couldn t have been any worse. i literally have not had time to discuss this with my son, and this is certainly not something that an adolescent boy is necessarily equipped to handle. everybody shows the fire chief and the police chief and the mayor and the hr director, the human resource director standing by steve stanton. steve had told us he was going to go home and talk to his family. so a deal was bartered that the media would get an opportunity to ask steve stanton a question or two and not show up at his house then and bother his family, so with that deal being cut, steve appears in the city hall in the commission chambers and the media focus just completely changed. it was all about steve talking. the obligation of city manager is to demonstrate that i can continue to do the job. that the fact my gender is shifting doesn t impact my knowledge, skills and abilities. we when you went to the symphony, places like that, what did you wear? just normal stuff that any other woman would wear. typically something like a black evening gown. he seemed to enjoy the spotlight. and i m watching this man who was very shy about getting in front of the camera almost relishing the limelight. it was a new side of steve that i hadn t seen. and i thought he was revealing a little bit too much at that time. that press conference was devastating. the information i gave was way too much, way too detailed. this is probably a wife s worst nightmare, without a doubt. at the news conference i told the world that i was hoping that travis was not watching. he was at home, and when donna got home we all got together in our living room. it was not an easy conversation. my dad said that he had feelings that he was in a guy s body but when he was born he was like a girl. and i was really shocked, but then i was just like, i kind of got over it. i don t know how, but i got over it. he was really serious. my mom was crying. culminating in him coming in my study and saying, can i see a picture of susan? i said are you sure? and he said yeah. he looked at the pictures and he said, geez, that doesn t look like you. wow, you re you re pretty. we must have gotten 1,000 e-mails. he lied to the commission, he needs to be fired. none of it having anything to do with being transsexual, but clearly the underlying reason was that. i called commissioners and just said, you know, what do you think of this news? basically, what they had said is they supported him personally. this is a special city commission meeting of february 27th, 2007. we are here to discuss the city manager s employment contract. you have a serious responsibility here tonight to support mr. stanton and evaluate him based on his job performance and not his decision to change his gender. what my concern is if this is the decision process that mr. stanton made, what kind of decisions will he make in other areas? having a meeting with the city manager, who is a man, wearing a dress preparing for a sex change is going to make people extremely uncomfortable. fire him or give him more testosterone and let s move on. i was disgusted, outraged. basically, i talked to some other pastors, too, about it and mentioned that of course it s against the scripture and i believed that the other side was going to be there, the tolerant side that thought that it was okay, and that basically christians should be there and give their side of the story. mr. stanton is not a role model. he s proven that. if jesus was here tonight, and i m very familiar with the bible, i guarantee you he would want him terminated. you make no mistake about it. it is with absolute horror that i look at the kind of mob mentality at play, and this is a mob mentality. it s just real painful to know that seven days ago i was a good guy and now i have no integrity, i have no trust, i have no competence. and most significantly, i have no more followers. i have lost the respect from everybody in just seven days. some of the stuff they were saying was just not true, and they were saying it, you know, to everyone as if it was true. i think it was discrimination. as i pulled into the driveway, i could see the lights were still on, so nobody was in bed. i pulled into the garage and turned off the car, but before i could really get inside travis quickly opened the door and said, why did those people say those lies but? and then he gave me a big hug. it was a hug i really needed to feel. and then donna came into the kitchen and we held each other. i m sorry, she said. i was so drained emotionally. it felt so great to be with my family and feel the love we all had. how did the secret get out? you know, it s probably something i ll never find out. well, when i visited steve in his home, he was preparing to save his job. he had one last try. this was his last appeal. and the city was going to give him that opportunity. he seemed to really believe that if he explained it well enough to these people that he d worked with for so many years that they would understand and care enough about him to allow him to continue in his job. if you don t get your job back, will you stay in largo? will you stay in this neighborhood? i ve never conceded the fact that i won t get the job back. so i haven t gotten that far, what i m going to do, where i m going to go, and what i ll what profession i ll be in. i love what i do. i love my job. we had media from everywhere. every local outlet. you know, plus national media. so in certain ways it was like a circus. what do you think about all the support? well, through it all he said that his wife had been supportive. but she didn t quite understand. and he thought she might be at that hearing to stand by his side. and i remember we kept looking for her as he pulled in in the motorcade, and we couldn t see her. and that was because she was not exactly by his side but behind him. it was as if she was so conflicted but still loved this person so much that she felt she had to be there. so many people were praying for us that i could literally feel the protective hands of god around me. i don t want the city of largo to be the poster child for bigotry and discrimination. i urge you five commissioners to change your vote to show the rest of the country that largo is indeed the city of progress. don t let abnormals influence your vote. the man is sick and needs help. i felt only sadness and pity for the people who spoke such harsh words of hatred, anger and intolerance. i just kept praying, forgive them, father, for they know not what they do. i will tell you that it is not about transgenderism. the decision was not based on him being a transgender. steve is an individual that really is focused on himself. i called him a master chess player, and i saw where certain events in the past several years were lined up to prepare for this moment that he was making the announcement. the foundation which the relationship between the commission and the city manager is built is trust. without trust there s no longer a foundation for any relationship. and that was when i changed my mind and decided to vote against him. there were some of the commissioners that said prior to taking that first vote they had issues with his performance and you know, they didn t trust him anymore, whatever. whatever it was they said. i think if you had those issues you would have had them before this happened. and this doesn t have anything to do with that. when it came time for the final vote, it was late. i don t even remember what time. 1:30 in the morning or something like that. it had been hours of testimony. it was tense. we were nervous. and it was just, you know, everybody s stomach was in a knot. the city charter gives to the city commission the authority to remove the city manager. we have a motion and a second. so please poll the board. at no cost to your company insurance. if all you know about us is. aflac! .then you don t know quack. to find out more visit getquack.com. there s a big reason to lower high cholesterol. dangerous plaque that can build up in arteries. it s called atherosclerosis or athero. and high cholesterol is a major factor. but crestor can help slow the buildup of plaque in arteries. go to arterytour.com and take an interactive tour to learn how plaque builds up. and then ask your doctor if crestor is right for you. along with diet, crestor does more than lower bad cholesterol and raise good. crestor is proven to slow the buildup of plaque in arteries. crestor isn t for everyone, like people with liver disease, or women who are nursing, pregnant, or may become pregnant. simple blood tests will check for liver problems. you should tell your doctor about other medicines you re taking or if you have muscle pain or weakness. that could be a sign of serious side effects. learn more about plaque buildup at arterytour.com. then ask your doctor if it s time for crestor. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. we have a motion and a second. so please poll the board. commissioner black. yes. commissioner guyette? yes. commissioner woods? no. mayor gerard? no. commissioner arntsen? yes. vice mayor closier? yes. commissioner gentry? yes. motion carries 5-2. meet steve, who s finally about to fulfill his desperate lifelong desire to become susan. we were told you re going to make an announcement tonight of some kind. yeah. i think everybody thought that we were going to sue. you are not? we are not going to sue. that s the announcement? absolutely not. there s a time for healing as opposed to the process of litigation. i always said i wanted to educate, i wanted to educate, to make people understand that just because you re transsexual doesn t mean you can t lead, doesn t mean you can t be a productive person. and i think, i think i can do that better as an advocate. you need to make me beautiful. that s my intentions. i appreciate this. i started i guess started what you would refer to as the transition of a transsexual. by doing the electrolysis and then after that you do kind of wonder, physically, do i have the stamina to go through what it s going to take to change a gender? i ve joked with other folks that it takes a real man to become a woman because it s extremely painful. a transsexual you kind of feel like you re bringing something out that s deep within as opposed to cross-dressing, where you re concealing your masculinity. you are removing a shell and sort of letting what s there come out. steve has actually been very special to me all through the sessions. you ve got to be there for him because the closeness you that gain is so enormous. i can t even explain it. i can t put it in words. the bond you create with someone like that. it is a deep friendship. emotionally and spiritually you connect over time. so, yeah, the connection i ve developed with linda the last year is pretty strong. all done. that feel good? oh, yeah. feel like a new woman? yeah. right. i m in transition. struggling to do it seamlessly. the most terrifying part of the day is the morning when you ve got to fight. you know, fight the hair. want the hair to be perfect. you want the nails to be perfect. the whole selection of clothing. the way you do the makeup. the type of shoes that you wear. everything is so totally different. it was a little more complicated than i initially envisioned, but as fulfilling as i thought it would be. i was normal until i met you. you started all of this. yeah. it s great. coming out from under a very heavy shell that i ve lived under throughout my life, so it s exciting to get rid of it. you feel free and fresh and light and excited about the future. in many ways i believe steve s physical transition from man to woman has been more difficult for me than for him. i have had to say goodbye to the strong, muscular, hairy man that i married. i watched him gradually fade away, and it s been like a slow death for me. the masculine man that i loved is gone. a woman named susan has taken his place. i was hoping that maybe if i was truthful that she d want to make the journey with me, and she did not. she said what i was running to she was running from. what brought me pleasure brought her deep, deep pain. to be watching the most important person in her life just disappear, month by month, becoming smaller and softer. you are the best dad ever. you always make me smile. what i m hoping this surgery is going to accomplish is that it will make my body and my spirit 100% compatible. this is not a choice. no one does this because they think it s a good thing to do. it s done to preserve life. bye. oh, gosh. wow. it s done. it s done. amazing. i need a toothbrush. you don t have another toothbrush? no. what about beautiful white one? this is like a razor. i know. this one looks cool, though. stupid thing. there it is. i know how to do it. i told you. certainly the relationship between my son and i is something that is psychologically wearing. he s been okay, but he s been uncomfortable, so he hasn t got to that point where it s second nature to him yet. it s still it s going to be something that he s going to have to get to get accustomed to. you have the guns all ready to go? yeah. they re both out there. what are you doing? they keep falling out. you re hitting the board. that s good. he was a very manly kind of guy. i was going to think he was going to have trouble, you know, being all feminine and dressing all pretty and everything. but he looked fine. whoa. good shot. i wrote dinky because that s what i call him now. dinky. you are the best dad ever. you always make me smile. i love you no matter what you look like, and i don t care what people say. your son, travis. i just feel really guilty about putting travis on film, reading his card to me. i wish i had not done it. i feel really guilty about potentially using him as a prop. the transition from steve s world to susan s world will not be without some emotional torment. this is one from donna. we ve come to know and accept each other. you complete me in my world. i love you, donna. even though i have lost so much, i ve also gained a lot. i have no regrets. it s nice not living a life of two genders anymore. we ll see. we ll get there. and it is now hereby ordered that the petitioner s present name, steven bruce stanton, is changed to susan ashley stanton, by which the petitioner shall hereafter be known. and miss stanton, congratulations, and i wish you the best going forward. thank you, your honor. thank you. can you answer that question for us, how much it hurts? it will hurt. it might be a little uncomfortable for a few seconds, but i don t think it will be painful at all. it won t be very long. it s very quick. you re going to squeeze we re going to squeeze. don t break them. it took so long to grow them. no. they re not going to break. i promise. they re not going to break. you want to be able to say oh, how are you? instead of oh, how are you? when you re more excited than, that you want to go you know, you see someone in the mall or something. let me hear you do some humming. mm what did we say about your lips? how did you do just now? closed them. someone told me you take hormones, your male anatomy gets smaller. oh, okay. in fact, recently when she had to start removing the hair after eight it s like oh, my god. the guy in me is saying, linda, you ve got to believe this, it used to be like three times bigger, i swear to god. well, i think it s time at this point to turn and face the mirror. so looking at yourself in the mirror now, what do you see as your best feature? what do you like the best? geez, what do i like the best? i ve got nice athletic legs because i run. so i like my legs. i like my smile. so you re not seeing steve? no. okay. not anymore. not anymore. he s not there. the week started out getting ready to attend the gay pride festival in the city of st. petersburg, in which i was the grand marshal. it almost felt as if this was a parade held in honor of susan ashley stanton. please with a warm round of applause welcome susan stanton! you all are going to make me start crying with the hormones here. the strength that you have, a lot of us need to get our balls and i love you. i just had to say that to you. oh, thank you. really, you re beautiful. i did not appreciate the significance of my journey to so many people who compose the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community. lgbt community. in some ways the press exposure, even though at times it s uncomfortable being under the bright light, if that s my role for a while that s okay. susan was the most perfect example of someone who could be fired not for anything having to do with her job performance, but specifically because she was transgender. she is the reason that we need protections. that we don t have to face harassment or termination or other repercussions on the job that have nothing to do with our skills or our performance. so she was a poster child. she was the perfect test case at the perfect time. so i think it starts at the federal level. to say you ve got to judge people on their knowledge, skills, and abilities and you ought not to judge them based upon their gender, any more than you would based upon someone s race, religion. the amount of information people are getting about this has been terrific. i think washington does serve as a really good platform to communicate those concerns, those values, the need for the federal legislation. going up on capitol hill and having the ability to talk to my own congressman about that. who knew steven, who got to meet susan, and listened for almost 45 minutes, which was really unique. i wasn t prepared in seeing drink, too. yeah. yeah. yeah. gender expression is so varied. some of the guys i ve seen who cross-dress just a little, they seem so absolutely content but so unable to be anything other than, you know, just an ugly man with lipstick. are you getting revved up out there? i think people in the trans community accentuate femininity people think it is about clothes, about dressing up. for me, it has nothing to do with wearing women s clothes. i have not been in a dress for three months. i m embarrassed to say during the last three days i felt very much apart, not an equal participant. that is so narcissistically self-centered, critical and judgmental, that my wife said i ing was. i am slowly being outed to myself. i m so proud she is my friend and i get to introduce her today. here is susan stanton. when she went to the conference in chicago she was thrust into this sea of people who knew her but she did not know, who saw her as a champion, but she didn t recognize herself as such, who wanted her to speak up in terms of communicating their message but she didn t know what that message should be. good evening. or good afternoon. this is those lights are bright. this is my first opportunity to come to a conference like this. a couple of times people have walked over to me and have started talking and if i appeared to be impolite it is only because i have been terrified since i arrived here. because this is the first time. almost 100 days or so ago i was wearing a suit, red tie and a white shirt. somehow i have been thrown into the role as a national spokesperson for a cause i don t understand myself yet. i need to be able to articulate how one does pass a law to ensure gender expression, you can t be fired but at the same time understand that certain people are not necessarily suited for certain jobs because of their expression of gender or the way they carry themselves or the way they talk or the image they project. so i don t know. i m still struggling. the seminars for the first time i listened to a medical doctor talk about genital reassignment surgery. i do a penile skin to line the vagina. that is not going to define who i am. i do want to have it. it is not a matter of if, it is just a matter of when. i may be doing that in the next couple of months. we ll see. i have the resumes. i have the qualifications. how are you doing, this is susan stanton. i think her notoriety has hurt her chances to get a job. lindsey vonn,@ she stays tough! earlier, she had an all-over, achy cold. what s her advantage? 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(announcer) we all want to stay active. we don t want anything. .to slow us down. but even in your 30s. .your bones can begin to change. overtime, you can begin to have bone loss. calcium and vitamin d work together to help keep your bones strong. and yoplait gives you. .20% of your daily calcium. .and is the only leading yogurt with vitamin d in every cup. keep your bones strong every day. .with yoplait. wellbeing. we re all striving for it. purina cat chow helps you nuture it in your cat. with a full family of excellent nutrition. and helpful resources. purina cat chow. share a better life. i don t think you can live the american lifestyle without energy. we have all this energy here in the u.s. we have wind. we have solar, obviously. we have lots of oil. i think natural gas is part of the energy mix of the future. i think we have the can-do. we have the capability. we have the technology. the solutions are here. we just need to find them here. as a transsexual, i know that if i m going to get this job i m going to have to be better than everybody, not just by one or two percent, but substantially better to get this job. i walked in to city hall. i was extremely nervous. i had bought brand new shoes and walking on a marble floor, i didn t want to fall. the sarasota job came so quickly. i was still learning to do my hair, for heaven s sakes. i finally got in. had a cup of coffee. someone asked me to come over and introduce you to somebody. i said glad to meet you. my name is steve. it is like, oh, god. i said i m still getting used to all this, too. everybody laughed. it was a good ice breaker. welcome ms. stanton. welcome to sarasota. i would like to know what techniques would you employee the first thing i would do is look, learn and listen. it is important to have a comprehensive plan. i met with all the commissioners. connected with all of them except one. confident if they are able to put aside the fact i m different, i m a transsexual woman, i think i m going to get this job. were you pleased with the morning. absolutely. sarasota is a great community. the media had a substantial impact. when it became destructive is when they interjected themselves in the process. they were not covering the selection process. now they became part of the selection process. sarasota had to consider is this going to end if we appoint her and/or does, in fact, she enjoy the limelight. so we are now in the position after hearing everyone s comments to narrow the field. again, check off your top two preferences out of the three names. so what is your reaction to not getting it? a little disappointment, but this was such a great experience. everybody was so friendly in the community and i m glad i participated and i made a lot of friends and i found a new home and sarasota is going to be part of my future no matter what. good luck to you. see you at the next round. i came up short. didn t come in first. did not come in second. came in third, i guess. so i m disappointed. real disappointed, actually. this would have been this would have been a good opportunity. it was close to home. it is a community i loved and it would have been pretty cool. i guess this house represents what the community represents. it represents a new beginning, a new start, a new opportunity to learn, you know, to live as me full time. not just on saturday and sunday. that s neat. it makes some of the losses a little more tolerable. looking forward to the fact that people know susan stanton. i m not living in the shadow of steven anymore. i lost my job. a job i love in a city i adored with people i love working with. i obviously have lost all of my friends in largo, all the people that used to work for me, with the exception of about two or three people, nobody has called, no one has said how are you doing or lent a helping hand. so knowing all that, do i have a regret? yeah. the regret is i should have done it about 15 to 20 years sooner. the physical differences is dramatic. i used to do 70, 80 pounds and now i m doing ten or 20. it is hard. it is kind of weird. the most difficult and uncomfortable initially was going into the women s locker room. at this point it is difficult to go in the guy s locker room and i really can t shower in the women s locker room. the sex segregated environments are extremely intimidating. i m slowly meeting people at church. which has been really nice. that is important to me. people are reaching out and calling me by my name. when you lose everything, you do feel a sense of, you know, but why me? and probably during the past year with that sense of helplessness was, i guess, the time that this church became the most significant to me. the belief in god and a belief in self. so i m going be okay. i have no regrets. it s been the most difficult thing i ve ever done, but it s been the most meaningful thing i ve ever done as well. i do believe strongly there s a purpose to this. the good things happen to good people. i may be by myself, living by myself, but i m not alone. god has not forsaken me. if i can t get a job, that is able to put food on the plate, at that point, it s time to end the experiment. this is soup. how can you not like the soup? it is too try one? after this, no more. because i don t like it. how can it be too salty. we put salt on everything. not on soup. it is like putting salt on cereal. how do you operate this thing? you have it on wrong. twist it back over. when it was normal days he would go real early before i would get up. he would come home late as i was getting in bed and every once in a while we would have dinner. now i m coming over every other weekend and we re talking and stuff. let s say they had bikes, it is like the same thing. it is not like the same thing. it is. like a lawn mower and a car. essentially it does. it has power. you play one-on-one? you ve gotten good since i last played you. i m pretty sure all my friends know that was him and they seem okay. they were like, is that your dad. i was like, yeah. they re, like, he s cool. travis, you have gotten better. i didn t do anything since last. i think you got worse. you shouldn t play me so hard. you are supposed to go easy. i didn t go easy. people think he destroyed my life and he hasn t. you have enough clothes, don t worry. i do have enough clothes. okay. no more. if anything, we have gotten more closer because of this rather than far apart. i m just looking real fast. do you think this is fun for me? well, no. you have to take that into consideration. i guess you are right. he is still my dad. i call him dad. everywhere we go, he is still my father. smell that soup? yes. smell good, does it not? nope. please welcome susan stanton. there s obviously been a lot of controversy associated with the appropriateness of me being in this organization. she made a statement to the fact that perhaps we don t all deserve rights right now, but if you are going to leave us behind, please come back for us later. which was so contrary to what so many of us were saying. that you can t break us apart. the reaction of the trans community was a mixture of anger, frustration, disappointment, confusion. i think that you cannot legislate acceptance of transgender people when people when the general society has such a fundamental misunderstanding of what being transgender is. when you start to say that people who deserve rights are people who look a certain way or act a certain way based on other people s acceptance of masculinity and femininity, you lose sight that many of us can t fit into those boxes and you fall into the same trap of being judged based on other people s perceptions. i was furious. there was a significant amount of backlash towards susan. there is still a very vocal component of the community that feels that susan is a sellout, that susan is a traitor. i do believe she has made the journey for herself lonelier than it has to be. that is saying something very profound because loneliness is a by product of this journey. susan, this is brian jones. he has some papers to deliver to you. right here. thank you. i m sorry. you re the colon lady! diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating. that s me! can i tell you what a difference phillips colon health has made? it s the probiotics. the good bacteria. that gets your colon back in balance. i m good to go! phillips colon health. if you want to see the weather ahead, push here. if you want to access 10 gigs of music you just downloaded to your hard drive, push here. and if you want to pull away from it all, you can push here. the all-new-40-gig hard drive nav and entertainment system on the 2010 lacrosse. from buick. it s the new class of world class. i m don lemon. here are your headlines. the cold killings of three people connected to the mexico consolate, two of the victims were americans and the third was the husband of a mexican woman that worked at the consolate. the white house condemned the killings. the state department says families of workers at some u.s. consolates can leave mexico if they choose. they are warning americans to use extreme caution if traveling to mexico. air force jets carried out an air strike on militants south of the capital city. they said it struck before an imminent attack by the insurgents. yemen s al qaeda wing has claimed they are behind the bombings of an airliner. peter graves has died. he was best known for his role in the tv series mission impossible during the move airplane. he was found dead in his home on sunday. his publicist said that he had a heart attack. graves is survived by his wife and three daughters. he died four days shy of his 84th birthday. those are your headlines. i m don lemon. keeping you informed, cnn, the most trusted name in news. recently a whole new kind of cloud came to st. cloud, minnesota. well, this is going to be our thanksgiving day. it looks like crap here. i have nothing on my face other than my hair. we are cooking thanksgiving dinner and it s good to be home. it s good to be with my wife and my son and let s see how she goes. this is our thanksgiving bird. potatoes? hot. hot? they are hot. yeah. okay. this is travis, the new man of the house here. he serves the primary role of cutting the turkey. okay, hit her, trav. my son, the turkey cutter. we have all of our turkey trimmings here. when i go back home it is pretty clear that donna is kind of erasing me out of her life. susan, this is brian jones. he has some papers to deliver to you. i am a process server, appointed by the sheriff s department. i m not with the sheriff s department. i have some legal paper. right here. thank you. i m sorry. the goal is i don t want my partner to be financially worrying about stuff such as you know homes and support. sometimes when people get divorced they re upset with each other, they re angry with each other. during this past year i have fallen more in love with donna, my wife, than ever in my 17 years. she has been so good. she s been so supportive. she has been so nurturing to my son. i have fears of beginning a new career late in life, financial insecurity, raising a teenage son without a strong male role model and loneliness. the economic impact of the loss of economic is obvious. we will likely lose our home and our retirement savings and be unable to afford the comforts of financial security. the biggest change has not been him turning into a girl it is losing the job. it is all about money. he might move away to get a job and we ll never talk to each other or never see each other or anything ever again. i am earnestly beginning the process of applying for jobs. i have sent a resume to berkeley, california, for deputy city manager and decided to submit for the city manager job in tempe, arizona. i think my chances in tempe are slim and none. i think her notoriety has hurt her chances to get a job. i think that her attempts over the last year and her continued frustration in that capacity bare that out. because she still has the skills that made her successful as the city manager for largo, florida, for a very long time. how are you doing? this is susan stanton. it has been difficult this last couple of weeks. the last two jobs that i applied for as city manager in brooklyn park, minnesota and iowa city, iowa, both of those cities selected individuals that did not have nearly the breadth of experience. if i didn t have this huge ball and chain dragging behind me i should be getting those types of jobs. it has been nine months and eight days since i was fired from the city of largo. i just want to get back to work. i want to go to an office. i want to say good morning to people. i want to stay late. i want to feel excited about monday. i want to feel excited about the weekends. i want to be engaged. i just want to be myself. and i wonder if there will be a tomorrow. i used to talk about what i called option c. option a was do nothing. stay living encapsulated by the wrong shell. option b was to go forward and try to be an authentic person and be who god meant me to be. and option c really acknowledges that option a nor option b are viable. and it means essentially would be taking your life. and option c means that no option is viable. but essentially it would be taking your life. with 4g from sprint, i can download files up to 10x faster than 3g. outside. i can stream the movie airplane to my cell phone. at the airport. i can have a crystal-clear videoconference with my clients. .muffin basket or something. .while working offsite, or share five high-speed connections for online gaming. while enjoying the great outdoors. [ video game sound effects ] eat it, yoshi! what can you do with 4g? experience 4g from sprint. it s more than a wireless network. deaf, hard-of-hearing and people with speech disabilities i was short of breath, so i couldn t always do what i wanted to do. but five minutes ago, i took symbicort, and symbicort is already helping significantly improve my lung function. so, today, i ve noticed a significant difference in my breathing. and i m doing more of what i want to do. so we re clear it doesn t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. my doctor said symbicort is for copd, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. it should not be taken more than twice a day. symbicort may increase your risk of lung infections, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. my copd often meant i had to wait to do what i wanted to do. now i take symbicort, and it s significantly improves my lung function, starting within five minutes. symbicort has made a significant difference in my breathing. now more of my want-tos are can-dos. as your doctor about symbicort today. i got my first prescription free. call or go online to learn more. [ male announcer ] if you cannot afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. are you ready to do the dirty deal? the most significant has been the emotional support. it has been hard to see her go through some of it. we have spent hours of conversation talking about different things and how rough it has been sometimes. i try to soothe the pain by just being there for her for a shoulder to lean on. it s not going to be easy. yeah. this is not pleasant. there is nothing good about this experience. during the times i have been in the deep valley looking at my body has been reconfirming this is what i m trying to achieve. this is what it s all about. one of the reasons i m excited about surgery is i ll be ready, i ll be fully engaged. you know, the pieces of steven will be forever, you know, untethered. what i m hoping that this surgery is going to accomplish is that it will make my body and my spirit 100% compatible. no one does this because they think it s a good thing to do. it s done to preserve life. it s not a choice. i never considered myself homosexual. i have never been attracted to men. people used to ask me that a year ago. i said no. but i don t know now. i don t know. with a different chemistry i notice men in ways i never did before. i find myself looking at big muscular guys at the club. it s just amazing how big mens muscles are. i have been asking some of my friends, what is it like to make love to a man? hi, doctor. hello. let s talk about the order of things. the vaginal surgery will take 3 to 3 1/2 hours. we won t lose much blood so you shouldn t feel very bad. most people think it is a very painful operation. it is not. my patients rate it is a three or four out of ten. most people from the outside think the patient is going to wake up screaming in pain. they really don t. you are really not cutting everything off. you are preserving most of what you have. you are kind of just rearranging the parts. the easiest analogy is making an outie into an innie. this transformation from steven to susan has been nothing more than magical. hopefully through this documentary, they ll get a peek. a small peek of what it s like, but they won t feel the magic. they won t feel the magic. so i m hoping to feel the magic tomorrow. i m really scared. i m terrified in that sense. i didn t think i needed anybody here. i wish i did have somebody. i m scared. i m scared. this journey has been so solitary. i started it alone. in some ways it is appropriate to finish it alone as well. it s been a long process. it s been a long effort to get to this point. the point of no return is certainly here. i thought i should have done something last night to celebrate still having my little bitty baby penis. but i didn t other than hold it a couple hours. no. it just it s been a long process. what liberates me is come at the expense for the people i loved and hopefully we ll all be able to go on from here and resume our lives. after we prep and drape the patient we are going to take the penile skin, turning it inside out and form the vagina, the actual vaginal space. i m not amputating the penis. i m taking the important parts of the penis and turning it into a vagina. so i m basically separating the component parts. you have to be cognizant of the fact there are major nerves in that area. you want to preserve the nerves so the patient will have protected sensation. we found that 85% of our patients are orgasmic post-operatively so she should be able to have pleasurable sex. most often if they are attracted to men before surgery, they will be attracted to men after surgery and if they were attracted by women before surgery they will be attracted to women after surgery. they don t have a vagina so they don t get the privileges or benefits of being female per se and they don t get the validation of being female until after they have the surgery. your friends are waiting for you from cnn. want to wave at them? hi. she s just waking up. susan? how are you doing? everything went just as planned. there were no surprises for you. wow. yeah. it hurts down there. i can t feel anything. just mostly it hurts. oh, gosh. well, it s done. it s done. amazing. right now i m in the whitewater in a very deep hole. what the hell was i thinking when i got into this raft? [ female announcer ] it s lobsterfest. the one time of year red lobster creates so many irresistible ways to treat yourself to lobster. like our new wood-grilled lobster and shrimp with parmesan scampi. our succulent lobster lover s dream, with both sweet maine and buttery rock lobster tails. and eleven more choices, each served with a salad and our freshly-baked cheddar bay biscuits. come celebrate lobsterfest. right now at red lobster. what does it feel like the first time you reach down and your penis is gone? what is that going to feel like? my penis always was there but it always seemed out of place. the candle for steven is slowly going out. i thought it would look not wrong, but look odd, that it wasn t there. the thing i felt was that it looked right. it s too bad i wasted so many years of my life for something that was so easy to achieve. with a scalpel and a knife. how are you doing? hi. when i walked into the room, i just saw susan there, and she was smiled and i smiled and we just hugged each other. i just felt i was so happy to be there for her and knowing that she was looking forward to seeing me. how is that doing? you don t have to show me now. you don t have to show me yet. it feels weird. i would be embarrassed. i think she s doing very well with it. and i think she s glad she s done it. i know she s glad she s done it. and i don t think she would have it any other way. i think it s going to take a little to get used to. this last piece is done. i m excited about hopefully being demoginize d-back into the re real world. and it may different than steven ever thought about. how are you doing, travis-mavis? hi. how are you doing? good. can i have a hug? i taught you how to hug, remember? i know. there you go. that s a better hug. how are you doing? good. do you miss me a little? yeah. a lot or a little? a lot. crying when i see you or just like crying. do i look any different? no, not really. yeah. remember, never have a sex change. did i mention that to you? yes, you did. did i mention that to you? yes, like three times. you don t want to lose your muscle in case you go to college. i remember the last aspect of this transformation is the rely zags that i have to refocus my life. i m not employable. i need to leave the area. it s not that i m not qualified. it s not a lifestyle issue. it s one of a medical necessity. i don t want to be the florida transsexual anymore. i just want to be me. i guess i just want to be a woman that is looking for work. there s a picture of you right there, totally naked as jay-bird. i m not neighborhoaked. i could be wearing a swim suit. you were cute, travis. what happened? what now? i said, do you know how to drive it? your mom said that you re not good at driving the vehicles. i am exceptionally good at driving it. ooh. that was scary. just as i said, you re not very good at driving these. it s not going to be a problem. we just remove the limb. this is not a problem. oh, my god. oh, my goodness. as i was saying, don t try this at home. yeah. i m a very good driver. that limb didn t need to be there any way. you don t think this thing will like tip over or anything? because we are really overloaded. we re going to go windows up and air conditioning on and balanc balls to the wall. i really thought when i left florida it would clear across the country, that i could get a new start and that has not happened. if i can t get a job, that is able to put food on the plate, at that point, to me option c is it s time to end the experiment. and i would do that. i would do that if i have to. so when people talk about suicide, it upsets people. i think he has a whole bunch of reasons to live. i mean, a job is just a little small area in your life that s no reason to say that your life is not worth living for anymore. if someone were to tell me when i started, in order for you to be authentic to yourself, the price ah the price would be losing friends and the job, potentially a career, you must give all of that up first. and then you can live the rest of your life. are you willing to do that? i would have said, no, of course not. so, no. but the journey is still going. what i have gained is a body that is consistent with my spirit, i guess. what i see is, as it should be. i just see a real authentic woman that is just struggling to find her way back into the