An Orono man and his family were Maine’s pioneers of transgender acceptance, and Wayne Maines hopes their journey will help others as society evolves to accept and embrace transgender individuals as fellow community members.
More than 100 community members came to hear Maines recount his family’s story last Tuesday as part of the University of Maine Presque Isle’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
In 2009, the experience of Maines’ transgender daughter Nicole led to the country’s first lawsuit seeking to establish a transgender student’s right to access a bathroom corresponding with their gender identity, and last year their journey was captured in the book “Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family”, by Amy Ellis Nutt.
Maines said that the family was indeed transformed for the better, though taken through many ups and downs, and are now trying to help the general public understand transgender and families with transgender kids understand how to move forward.
Maines said he and his wife Kelly never expected to be parents of an LGBTQ youth.
“I was a solid Ronald Reagan-loving Republican. I’m a hunter and I eat everything I shoot,” said Maines, who is also a U.S. Air Force veteran. He grew up in upstate New York, she in the Chicago area, and came to Maine when Wayne got a job as the safety director for the University of Maine in Orono.
They adopted two identical twin boys from Kentucky, Jonas and Wyatt at 4 months old, and from an early age Wyatt gravitated towards activities typically associated with young girls and identified with female characters in books and movies.
“I knew my child was different but I hoped it was just a stage. Then I was in denial. And the big transformation for me was when I said, ‘I hope my son is just gay,’” Maines said.
“I started doing the research on what happens to transgender kids. It’s such a hard journey.” Bullying, discrimination and society’s heretofore general lack of acceptance all contribute to mental suffering that drives more than 40 percent of transgender individuals to attempt suicide in their lifetime, according to study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute.
“Then I quietly accepted what was going on and had this grieving period where I said, ‘I lost my son.’”
One day, when Jonas and Nicole were 12, Maines was going to Walmart with them. Getting out of the car, he offered his hand to Jonas, who responded as a typical teenage boy: “Dad, what are you doing? We can’t hold hands in a Walmart parking lot.”
“Then Nicole jumped out and took my hand. We started swinging hands as we were going to the store and it finally hit me: I have a daughter now and she’s going to hold my hand the rest of my life.”
The Maines accepted their new daughter from an early age. In early elementary school, she transitioned to her new identity and in fifth grade changed her name. Later she started taking testosterone-suppressing medication and at 15 began taking estrogen, putting her biology on a path to transitioning towards the identity she always believed in.
“When she was in third grade, she’d go around saying, ‘I’m a boy-girl,’” Maines said. “It made perfect sense to her. The next year, she told people she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. It always was easy for her to talk about.”
The school district in Orono was also supportive, allowing Nicole to use the the girls bathroom. But in 2007, she was required to use a staff bathroom after a complaint from the grandfather of a male student. The young boy allegedly followed Nicole into the girls bathroom one day and said “My grand-pappy says we don’t have to have any faggots in our school.”
That incident set off years of bullying and anguish and prompted the lawsuit and complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission. That lawsuit ended in 2014, when a landmark 5-1 ruling from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court decided that it was unlawful for a school to require a transgender child to use a bathroom designated for the sex he or she was born with rather than the one coinciding with their identity.
In the intervening years, Nicole, Jonas and Kelly moved to Portland, while Wayne kept working in Orono during the week, keeping his job so they could afford the legal fees. It was there that Jonas and Nicole enrolled in the private Waynflete School, which invited them to attend at half the per-student tuition rate of $10,000. The school informed the rest of the student body and their families of their invite to the Maines, and school’s community welcomed them, letting the two kids dive into their passions in the creative arts, Maines said.
Jonas and Nicole are now on track to living a happy and productive life, in their second year at UMO. Wayne, meanwhile, is focused on helping others learn from their experience, particularly parents with transgender children.
“I used to think everybody knew that they were either a boy or girl, and then I learned that there’s a spectrum. It’s not binary. And then I thought, well, everybody knows in their mind who they are. Nicole always knew she was a girl. But we still don’t know why. There’s some big studies going on,” he said, including research on Nicole and Jonas, who as identical twins may provide a unique insight into the development of transgenderism.
“Scared to death dads will come up to me and say, ‘Wayne, my son’s wearing a dress, is he transgender?’ And I say, I don’t know. He’s gender non-conforming, because kids at that age flip and move around. Just let them grow up and they’ll tell you who they are.”
Transgender kids should also try to by patient with their parents, and give them time to accept their new identity, Maines said.
“It’s not easy, but we have to do it, and it’s not just about gender. The most important thing we can do as parents is make sure our kids have a high level self-esteem,” Maines said. “I fear that once a child quits something, quitting will become easier and they might quit on life.”
“Young people get it,” said Maines, who is 54, referring to younger generation’s embrace of diversity and coexistence. “The problem is our generation is running the country.”
