by Aaron Spencer
EDUCATION | STUDENT
Out On Her Own
Future Film Maker
As a child, Sabrina McCoy’s favorite movie was The Goonies. She liked it
because the kids were just like her – lower-middle class with quirky inter-
ests and big imaginations. Even the main character, Mikey, was asthmatic,
just like her – both of them carried around inhalers. Most of all, the kids
didn’t apologize for who they were, even when others put them down.
knew she was gender variant – McCoy had told her before they got mar-
ried – but when McCoy decided to transition to female, her wife said she
couldn’t be in a romantic relationship any more. McCoy’s revelation wasn’t
the only thing that led to the couple’s divorce, to be sure, but it played a
large part.
The movie was formative for McCoy, 34, because when she was a child,
she was a boy. She decided to transition to female six years ago, a decision
that put her on her own adventure and changed life as she knew it. She
quit her job, divorced her wife and moved to Portland, where she began a
new career – film. She now attends Portland State University, where she’s
pursuing a degree in film production.
So McCoy started rebuilding what would be a new life for her. She met
another woman online (McCoy identifies as a trans lesbian), and the two
soon developed a long-distance relationship. After McCoy finalized her
divorce, sold her house and tied up some other loose ends, she decided to
move to be with her girlfriend – in Portland.
McCoy grew up in a conservative factory town, Rockford, Ill., just out-
side of Chicago. McCoy can point to clues that she was transgender as a
child, like throwing tantrums when her mother would try to put her in
“boy clothes.” By the time McCoy was in college, she had figured out that
she was gender variant. But because of her conservative surroundings, she
says, she suppressed it. She finished college, got married, got a steady job
and bought a house.
“But you can only put something in the back of your mind for so long
before it basically breaks wide open,” she says.
The breaking point came for McCoy on Memorial Day on 2006. She was
hanging out with her wife at another couples house watching anime. Be-
tween drinks, the women started talking about their likes and dislikes
about bras – which brands they like, which stores are better, how annoying
it is when the underwire digs in on one side.
“For me, a kid from Illinois, you grow up with cornfields and it’s flat,” Mc-
Coy says. “The Pacific Northwest was sort of like this magical beautiful
land of coasts and caves and hills and evergreen trees and absolutely gor-
geous scenery. So it kind of became a dream of mine to be out here one
day.”
Once in Portland, like so many others, she was unable to find steady work.
Her main concern was medical insurance; since she was transgender, she
wanted it as soon as possible. The easiest way to get it, she thought, would
be to go back to school.
And while she was changing things up, she thought, “I may has well go
and study a new field to try and better my career chances,” she says. “And I
might as well study something I love.” She chose film.
When she graduates, she wants to create a documentary that shows trans-
gender people in a positive light. Essentially, she wants to make the film
she could have shown her parents when she came out of the closet.
"When I came out to my parents," she says, "they were like, 'What does this
mean? How should we react?' I didn’t have any good answers."
What struck McCoy about this conversation was how easily and immedi-
ately she was able to jump in and contribute to it – she had after all, been
experimenting with cross dressing. But when she did jump in, she could
practically hear the scratch on the record player.
Her mom struck out on her own for information. She ended up going to
a video store, where she was told to watch TransAmerica – a film that for
a mother learning what to expect from her child's life, McCoy calls "prob-
lematic."
“They looked at me and said, “Wait a minute. How do you know about
that?” McCoy recalls. “And then a switch in my head switched over and I
was like, ‘Boom. I was female.’”
McCoy wants to make the film she could have shown her mother.
What followed can safely be described as dramatic. McCoy’s wife already
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JustOut.com
"I want to show that trans people can have relationships and jobs and that
some of them do really great things," McCoy says. "Basically a documen-
tary film that shows trans people living normally."
July 2012
Photo by Horace Long
“They say entertainment is all escapist,” McCoy says, “but when you’re
growing up in a horrible environment and you don’t have a lot of sup-
port…that escapist type stuff is all you have.”