First of a two-part series
Dannylee Mitchell was reborn on a Tuesday in April at the not-so-tender age of 40.
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| John Beale, Post-Gazette Dannylee Mitchell stands in the foyer of her lawyer's Downtown office in March, before her surgery. "I think a lot of employers will see this and think twice, and it will make a difference," she said of her sex discrimination lawsuit. "They need to establish some policy." Click photo for larger image. Chat online about this story |
Four days after Christmas 2003, she crashed the Dodge Intrepid she was driving into the rear of a Ford Explorer parked on North Main Street in downtown Washington, Pa.
Stressed and depressed, she'd fallen asleep at the wheel in a company rental car. Police found her partially ejected from the car.
About two months earlier, she'd told her employer that she had a gender-identity disorder and would be transitioning from being a man to a woman.
"You don't know from the day you tell them you're transitioning whether you're going to have a job," says Dannylee, a Washington, Pa., native. "It weighs on you. You don't sleep. I was going on two and three hours of sleep a night."
Estrogen therapy was wreaking havoc with her emotions. Her family wasn't terribly supportive. She felt alone.
"I'd wake up at 2 in the morning, crying," she says. "I was just overwhelmed. Anxiety was at its peak."
Two days after the accident, on New Year's Eve 2003, she checked herself into Washington Hospital's psychiatric unit.
"I didn't want to go on anymore -- not a suicide attempt -- just exhausted," she says. "I was just burned out. Cooked. Done."
Severely depressed, she says she was having suicidal thoughts and spent a few days there under observation.
"It wasn't too long after I got out of the hospital that they fired me."
Dismissal of a salesman
Axcan Scandipharm Inc., a Birmingham, Ala.-based pharmaceutical company specializing in gastroenterology products, cited poor sales and inconsistencies in her reporting of the accident as reasons for her dismissal, she says.
Because she lost consciousness in the crash, she says she didn't realize there were two teenage boys in the Ford Explorer her car struck. All involved suffered minor injuries and were taken to the hospital from the scene. No one was charged in the accident, police said.
She believes she was fired because she told her employer she was going to become a transgender female. She filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against her former employer under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.
In court records, Axcan Scandipharm maintains it did fire her in January 2004 for alleged willful misconduct but denies she was harassed by the company because of her sex and disability or suffered lost wages, emotional distress, embarrassment or humiliation.
The corporation's initial request to have the case dismissed -- arguing that Title VII protections don't extend to transsexuals -- was denied in February. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing the corporation's request for an interlocutory appeal. That means the 3rd Circuit could grant the appeal, taking up the case itself, or deny the appeal, sending it back to federal court for trial.
Axcan Scandipharm's lawyer, Philip R. Voluck, had "no comment" on the case when reached by telephone last week.
John G. Burt, Dannylee's attorney, believes the case has parallels to other historic civil rights battles.
"Once upon a time we said black folks were three-fifths a person. Once upon a time we said women weren't smart enough to vote," says Mr. Burt, who took the case on a contingency-fee basis. "People like Dannylee are civil rights pioneers. They didn't want to be, but they are -- like the pioneers that wouldn't move to the back of the bus, the pioneers who said women have a right to vote. Just ordinary folk trying to live their lives."
Daniel Mitchell joined Axcan Scandipharm in February 1999 as a salesman. His performance evaluations consistently indicated he met or exceeded expectations, according to the complaint. In 2002, he was promoted to the position of photodynamic therapy specialist, marketing a photodynamic therapy drug (activated by light) to hospitals in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.
While his professional life was fine, his personal life was in turmoil. In August 2003, he found himself in the throes of a waning romance. His girlfriend at the time questioned his commitment to their relationship.
"She asked why did I have so much female attire in my travel gear?" Dannylee says. "She thought I was having an affair."
He wasn't. At that time, he simply felt free and safe to wear women's clothing only in hotel rooms when he was out of town on business. Her questions forced him to take serious stock of his life.
"It was a culmination of things, another failed relationship, my masculinity wasn't there in the relationship, always the question of whether I was gay," Dannylee says.
Right brain, wrong body
In September 2003, he went to the Persad Center, a licensed counseling center in Bloomfield serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. There he was diagnosed as having a gender-identity disorder, specifically gender dysphoria. As cliched as it sounds, all of his life he had felt like a woman trapped in a man's body.
A month later, his girlfriend moved out while he was away at a business meeting. And Dannylee continued looking for answers.
"This was not about anything sexual or getting some sort of sexual pleasure," she says. "This is about gender identity and who you are. What your computer program is. What your brain is. You have your internal program, but it doesn't always run the peripheral equipment properly."
People with gender dysphoria feel "in their head and between their ears that they are the opposite gender," says Judith DiPerna, a clinical therapist and transgender specialist at the Persad Center. "That person feels comfortable and at peace when they're dressed as the gender they believe they are between the ears."
Dannylee participated in the center's gender clinic, which is designed to help people sort through their gender-identity issues. She participated in group and individual counseling, received estrogen hormone therapy under a physician's care and began living, working and dressing as a woman full time -- which all is standard protocol for someone planning to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
In mid-October 2003, Dannylee began presenting herself as female to her business accounts after having first informed them and her employer of her plans.
"I told them what was going to happen, had to talk to the vice president of the company, had to tell my workforce of about 15 to 20 people," she says. "They called some of the hospitals to see if they were OK with me coming in as a female."
She worried whether she'd lose her job if one of her accounts objected, though none did.
She says one supervisor essentially asked: "Wouldn't it be easier to go work somewhere nobody knew you? Wouldn't it be easier to just leave?"
According to the complaint, a manager also told her not to discuss her sex change plans with co-workers and to be low-key and to use a separate bathroom at a national sales meeting.
She legally changed her name in November 2003. By mid-month, her supervisor told her she'd have more frequent job performance reviews because of her disorder, according to the complaint.
She doesn't dispute that her sales volume was poor around that time, but says the sales of everyone in her division were poor. Up to that point, her sales record had been commendable. She says a manager suggested her sales volume was down because of her disorder.
In court records, the corporation denies these allegations.
After Axcan Scandipharm fired her on Jan. 12, 2004, she filed for unemployment and initially was denied benefits. She appealed the ruling.
Her personal problems continued to mount.
In February 2004, after going to retrieve her dog from an ex-girlfriend's house, she was arrested and held in jail for two days on breaking and entering and theft charges. Dannylee claimed her ex-girlfriend's son gave her the dog when she asked for it.
"They threw Danny in jail, and the cops were yukking it up," says Joan Hoop, a friend who initially started out as her electrologist in Washington, Pa., and agreed to the interview only with Dannylee's consent.
"She was starting to dress as a woman and didn't have her polish then, and they made the big scene about her now dressing as a woman. Put [her] in an orange jumpsuit, took [her] clothes and put her in a holding cell up there."
Dannylee lost custody of the dog and the charges were dropped on the condition that she pay court costs and not have further contact with her ex-girlfriend or her ex-girlfriend's children.
In March 2004, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which initially said it didn't investigate claims related to transsexualism.
Extremely depressed during this period, she did try to commit suicide this time: She attempted to drown herself in a bathtub and later spent more time in a hospital psychiatric ward.
"You don't have a family. You have no money. Not sure how you're going to get through this transition," she says.
Around this same time, she won her appeal and started getting unemployment benefits.
In November 2004, the EEOC reconsidered the case and still found a transgender person was not protected under existing law, thus clearing the way for the federal lawsuit, which was filed in February 2005.
"First, it started off as me being [ticked] off at the world," she says. "But now when I look at it, it could do a lot of good for other people," she says. "If someone doesn't follow the perception of what [someone thinks] male or female should be, you can't discriminate."
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Daniel Mitchell, shown in high school yearbook photo, always felt there was something wrong in his life. It took years of heartache, depression and courage to make it right. Click photo for larger image. |  |
Portrait of a woman as a young man
Dannylee first realized she was different when she was 5 or 6 years old.
"I didn't feel like a boy. I didn't act like a boy," she says. "A lot of people said I had feminine features. My gestures were feminine. A lot of people assumed I was going to be a gay man."
Elsa Edwards, a kindergarten and high school friend, remembers Dannylee as being hysterically funny. The two, who were both witty and involved in theater, were voted "Most Unique" by their senior class.
"We defied categorization. Still do," says Ms. Edwards, 40, of Washington, Pa. "Danny always had such a sweet nature, always very kind, considerate, un-guy like, not aggressive, not pushy, didn't bully anybody, but got bullied a lot."
They lost touch a few years after high school graduation.
Dannylee earned a bachelor's degree in biology at Thiel College and considered going into nursing. She worked in medical research for several years, managed a pet store for a national chain, worked for a national pet supply company, sold eyeglass frames in Philadelphia and New Jersey, then moved back to Pennsylvania in 1997, landing the job with Axcan in 1999.
Twice married -- in 1989 and 1996 -- when she was still living as a man, she tried being macho in relationships.
"That led to disaster after disaster in relationships, relationship failure and divorce because I 'wasn't man enough,'" she says. "I thought something was wrong with me and that love would cure me."
She now believes the only thing "wrong" with her was that she spent the majority of her life trying to be someone she wasn't.
Dannylee reconnected with her old friend, Elsa Edwards, in August 2004 at their 20th high school reunion.
Ms. Edwards remembers seeing a very attractive woman in a red dress and heels across the banquet hall. It took her a few seconds to realize that woman was the Danny she knew in high school.
"A lot of people didn't have a clue. They'd say 'Hi' to me and then they'd look over and say, 'Who is this?' and I'd say, 'Oh, you remember Danny,' and the jaws would drop," Ms. Edwards says.
After people got over the initial shock, they actually were very sweet, she says.
Ms. Edwards doesn't believe Dannylee's desire to transition was some flight of fancy, because Dannylee was always very deliberate.
"When I remembered Danny from high school, I could tell there was a lot of hurt there but a really courageous kind of sense of trying to do things that would work, trying to make things work," Ms. Edwards says. "I think Danny must have tried really hard to fit in to what people expected, but couldn't because it wasn't right for her."
Near broke and still emotionally fragile in the late fall of 2004, all Dannylee could do was continue to concentrate on becoming the woman she'd always felt she truly was.
It was time to correct what she called a "birth defect," that "deformity" between her legs.
TOMORROW: Making the transition from male to female.
