Vanessa Marseilles was born as Louis 65 years ago, but a nurse who delivered her told her mother she was too “beautiful” to be a boy. Her mother dressed her as a girl for several years and called her “Lilly.”
A native of Whittier, California, who grew up in Los Angeles County, she has been living as a woman for about five years and moved to Prescott two years ago with her boyfriend. She said she liked growing up as a boy, climbing trees, playing baseball and pulling pranks on her neighbors. However, she enjoyed hanging out with her sister, who is eight years older.
“She would take me everywhere she went,” Vanessa recalled in a rambling, 30-page bio she posted on her TransWorld Productions page on Facebook. “I loved going shopping with her for clothes. It felt so natural to look at the pretty dresses and outfits. I so wanted to wear them.”
When Vanessa was 8, her sister and her friends tried on outfits for a party.
“One of her friends called me over and gave me a skirt and blouse,” she wrote. “‘Try them on,’ she said. My sister shrieked but then relented remembering how my mother used to dress me. All the while I was hiding my excitement. I grabbed a pair of panties and went to the bathroom to change. The girls laughed and said, ‘Guess he wants to be a girl, he grabbed panties!’ They laughed and waited for me. I had no problem dressing. It seemed so natural as I slipped on the panties and the skirt. I forgot to grab a bra, so I yelled out for one. They tossed one in and then I emerged.”
Vanessa knew by age 13 that she was born with the wrong sex, a condition clinically known as gender dysphoria. However, Vanessa was never formally diagnosed, and a psychologist diagnosed her instead as being depressed.
She developed two personas: Louis as an introverted boy and an outgoing Lizzie when dressed as a girl. As a child of the 1960s, she admired glamorous women like Jackie Kennedy, Suzanne Pleshette, Raquel Welch and Natalie Wood. “I loved their style, presence, and their attitude,” she wrote. She hung out with gay teens while attending high school in Pico Rivera.
Vanessa eventually moved away from home to attend Arizona State University but returned to Southern California to enroll at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. She even got married -- and to women. Her first wife died from an aneurysm and she was married to her second wife for a decade. Vanessa never became a father.
Vanessa was working for AT&T at the time that she decided to transition and waited to do so until after she thought the transformation would not affect her career. She started hormone replacement therapy four years ago and still takes pills, one of which blocks testosterone while the other increases estrogen.
After moving to Prescott, she underwent facial feminization surgery, in which a local plastic surgeon softened her facial features. The surgeon also constructed breasts for her in January. She wears wigs, makeup and red lipstick.
However, Vanessa decided not to undergo a complete transformation involving her sex organs. She said it was a matter of “comfort and just not necessary to feel complete.”
It was not a priority, she said.
Vanessa is the third transgender woman whom I have profiled over the years. I interviewed a trans woman when I worked for a small daily in Grass Valley, California, in 1987. Tall and sleek, she was a mathematician with a security clearance, married and a father in her former life. As a woman, she worked the front desk at a real estate office. My editors gave me more leeway: I wrote 30 inches — about 1,000 words — nearly double the limit on story length that they imposed. My photos of her turned out too dark, so the story ran without her picture.
The woman called me up afterward at work to thank me but to also say her employer fired her. I had a listed phone number at the time. An irate reader called me up and told me I was “sick” for doing the story,
“You have no right to insult me,” I recall saying in response.
Fast forward to 2014 when I moved to St. George, Utah. I met a retired radiologist named Rob when I joined a Meetup.com group for a hike on a Monday, my day off. Rob, who was in his mid-sixties, confided that he planned to undergo gender reassignment. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He might have confided to me because he saw me hang out at a club that attracted the alternative culture in the predominately Mormon community. He disguised himself as a woman while patronizing the club.
Rob continued the transition and changed his name to Robyn. A nurse administered injections. Robyn said young women who hung out at the now-shuttered club thought he was being “cool” by becoming a woman. I told her story in a St. George-based alternative monthly.
And while doing a story about 17 years ago at the former Prescott Pride Center, I met a person who was tall and lanky, wore a skirt, had well-coifed hair and spoke with a masculine voice. The charter school teacher in Sedona identified as being a hermaphrodite (having been born with both sex organs), a word that did not see print. “The Lord made me,” the person said.
Vanessa said she legally changed her name two and a half years ago and moved to Prescott six months later. She visited the mile-high community while attending ASU and decided to make “Everybody’s Hometown” her home because of the mild climate and “it looked like a great town. It is a small town, the history.”
I lived in her birthplace of Whittier – best known as Richard Nixon’s hometown -- from 1979 to 1982 but did not cross paths with Vanessa when she was Louis. I lived a few blocks from Nixon’s alma mater, Whittier High School. I worked for the local newspaper until a tight-fisted chain bought the paper and laid off about half the newsroom staff, giving us two days to clear our desks
I met her recently at a downtown Prescott establishment and did not realize at first that she was transgender.
“Around town I am open (about being transgender),” Vanessa said. She added she has not encountered any hostility.
“I’ve gotten looks, but nothing extremely negative,” Vanessa said.
However, she said she avoids places like athletic clubs where her presence in a locker room could make others feel uncomfortable. I could not picture her swing dancing with a dude at a testosterone-heavy bar where country music bands perform or being a guest at a Republican women’s club luncheon.
I advised her that a profile in my blog could put her in harm’s way. She could get roughed up by a redneck or a Proud Boy.
Republican-dominated statehouses, including in Arizona, have fired salvos in the culture wars by targeting trans people with discriminatory legislation. The Arizona Mirror, a nonprofit online newspaper, recently reported Arizona, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, Iowa, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana and Mississippi have passed bans on transgender youth in sports. Lawmakers in Arizona have passed anti-trans legislation on party-line votes. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has vowed to veto bills that do not enjoy bipartisan support.
A registered Republican since she reached voting age at 18, Vanessa said she thinks minors should not be allowed to undergo gender reassignment surgery, and she favors barring children from attending drag shows.
“I don’t agree with them having surgery,” she said “Are they 100 percent committed to it? They have not gone through puberty yet.”
She also disagrees with Republican politicians on transgender athletes.
“If a transgender girl is feminine enough, she should be able to compete if they did the hormone tests (on her),” she said. “If they have too much testosterone, I’d say ‘no.’”
Vanessa does not see any reason for another hot-button issue among Republican politicians: requiring trans people to use restrooms in schools and government buildings that match the gender in which they were born. She said bathroom stalls provide privacy.
I was working as a reporter in East Texas in 2017 when Lt, Gov. Dan Patrick, the Torquemada of Texas GOP politics, pushed a bathroom bill. Then-Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a fellow Republican, opposed the bill, saying it was discriminatory. My newspaper editorialized against the bill, writing it was a solution searching for a problem that did not exist. I shared some stories about the bathroom bill with Robyn, and she became very upset.
Perhaps even more upsetting is Kiwi Farms, a website whose users have harassed trans people to the point where some of them have committed suicide. Mother Jones published a disturbing expose about the trolls in the March issue. I shared a link with Vanessa, who said she has heard about Kiwi Farms and does not fear being trolled.
Meanwhile, Vanessa, who works part time as a caregiver in an adult daycare center, said she is enjoying life. She belongs to an LGBTQ group that meets for coffee and bowling and hangs out with friends at Prescott nightclubs to listen to her favorite bands. She enjoys sightseeing, visiting museums, and watching action movies and serious dramas. Hobbies include painting and writing,
“This (gender reassignment) was never about sex,” said Vanessa, who is not attracted to gay or “feminine” men. “I have always been attracted to straight or alpha males, (and) attracted to someone who is intellectual.”
She said she considers herself “reserved,” and wants to be “perceived as a natural-born” woman.
“I don’t flaunt (being transgender),” Vanessa said. “I don’t cry for special rights. I just want to be part of the community.”