Finding The Real Me

Sing Tao Daily, News Feature, Xiaoqing Rong, translated by Eugenia Chien, Posted: Aug 27, 2007

Editor’s Note: Advocate Pauline Park, an Asian transgender woman who was adopted by a Caucasian couple, says she has finally found a sense of belonging.

The famous Chinese movie star Chen Xiao Ching once said, “It’s hard being a person, harder being a woman, and even harder being a famous woman.” What about being a transgender woman? Pauline Park, the chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, understands best the weight of this question.

Whenever someone asks Park where she is from, Park never knows how to answer. Park and her brother were adopted by a Caucasian couple from a Korean orphanage when Park was only eight months old. Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, Park and his brother were the only non-white residents. When he was in elementary school, teachers and parents looked at Park and his brother curiously and asked, “Whose children are these?”

“Ever since I was a kid, I never knew where I belonged. I was born in Korea but I have never been there. I grew up in America but people call me Chinese or Japanese,” Park says.

Even more confusing for her was her sexuality. “When I was little, I felt that I was a girl. I was just a girl’s soul in a boy’s body,” she says. In 1978, Park and her brother left home to attend college in Madison, Wis. Madison had a more active gay and lesbian community, and the university had a center for gay and lesbian students. This was where Park and her brother came out as openly gay.

Park’s adoptive father passed away when she was 12. Not wanting to upset her adoptive mother, a devout Christian, Park hid her sexuality from her even after she came out of the closet. Even when a male admirer came to her house and roused suspicion from her mother, she still did not admit to being gay.

In 1981, Park left for the London School of Economics and fell madly in love with the first man she has ever lived with. She began dressing and living as a woman. Three years later, when Park graduated and returned to America to work in Chicago, her boyfriend traveled from London to see her. After her boyfriend left, Park’s adoptive mother finally openly talked about her son’s sexuality.

“She said to me, she knows that this man was my boyfriend. She didn’t use the term ‘gay,’ but she was subtly expressing to me that she can accept this,” Park says.

Her mother’s understanding had touched her deeply, but what Park didn’t know was that it would be the last time they would see each other. Three days later Park received a phone call from home, informing her that her mother had died from a heart attack. Although she does not think that her mother’s death had any relation to acknowledging her son’s sexuality, Park says, “Obviously, that was the last challenge of her life.”

After her mother died, Park felt more and more that the homosexual identity did not fully represent how she felt. She began to completely abandon the lifestyle of a man and formally lived a woman. But because Park did not undergo surgery or hormone therapy to completely change her physical appearance, new challenges began to surface.

In 2004, Park was at a restaurant with friends and was surrounded by security guards after she went to the ladies’ room. Park sued the security company. A year later, New York City amended an anti-discrimination ordinance to include gender identity, and whether it is different than a person’s biological sex. Based on the new law, the security company settled with Park, marking a milestone in the rights of the transgender community in New York.

Today, Park lives in New York City, where she has been for the last ten years. She is an advocate for the transgender community and established Iban/Queer Koreans of New York, the first organization for Korean-American gays and lesbians. In this diverse city, she finally has found the sense of belonging that she has been looking for. In her home in Queens, she plays Chopin and Bach on her piano, melodies that remind her of her home in Wisconsin where she would play the piano for her mother and grandmother.

“In music, all sense of confusion and fear disappears. I feel that the me in the past and the me now have finally united as one, becoming the real me.”