Interview with Meredeth Vezina

Meredith Vezina identifies as a trans woman and was assigned male at birth. She lived in Berlin, New Hampshire until she moved to Long Island, New York when she was 7. She has two much younger sisters. She excelled in sports such as baseball and football and always yearned to be the cheerleaders. One time she got into her mother’s makeup and put on one of her slips. Her parents shamed her when they found out. She repressed her femininity, at least outwardly. She left school and didn’t graduate and began working for a clinic. She began taking unprescribed birth control pills to access female hormones at her job. The clinic found out she was taking the pills and fired her. She then opened up to her wife of five years at the time about her gender. Her wife told her she didn’t marry a lesbian and that it wasn’t going to work out. Vezina ended up in Tucson, Arizona separated from her wife and got a job at a company there as a woman in the middle of transitioning. It was relatively easy for her to pass as well. Her job then sent her to San Diego, California to run the office there in 1978. She got into a gender program at the University of California San Diego that required people to live the gender of their choice for 2 years before providing hormones or surgery. Vezina went to college at the University of Vermont and then got married. She went to graduate school in Manchester, New Hampshire where she got her master’s in history. From the time she transitioned back in the ‘70s until three years ago, she presented strictly as a cis lesbian. She’s been with her partner, Ellen, for over 25 years. She had gender confirmation surgery in 1980. Vezina enjoys rural life and lived off the grid. She started a business with her wife, Ellen, called Traditions Military Videos producing videos primarily based on the Vietnam War by interviewing veterans.

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View At: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll97:167?facets%5Bcollection_name_s%5D%5B%5D=Transgender+...
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Item Information:

Identifier: 2n49t175f
Collection: Audio and Video Clips and Transcripts
Institution: Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection, University of Minnesota
Creator(s): Vezina, Meredith
Contributor(s): Jenkins, Andrea
Publisher: University of Minnesota Minneapolis Libraries
Date Created: Jan. 13, 2017
Genre: Oral Histories
Transcriptions
Subject(s): Cuyamaca Woods
Harry Benjamin Standards of Care
Janet Mock
Laverne Cox
Marsha P. Johnson
Michele Bachmann
National Organization for Women (NOW)
Silvia Rivera
Stonewall 25
Tracy O'Brien
Traditions Military Video Business
Trans Elders
Trans Narratives
University of California San Diego
University of California San Diego Gender Program
University of Vermont
Vietnam War Veteran Interviews
Places: California > San Diego
New York > Queens > Long Island
Arizona > Pima County > Tucson
Baja California > Tijuana
New Hampshire > Hillsborough > City of Manchester > Manchester
New Hampshire > Coos > City of Berlin > Berlin
New Mexico > Doña Ana > San Ysidro
Topic(s): Assigned gender
Baseball
Cheerleaders
Contraception
Cosmetics
Divorce
Drag queens
Endocrinology
Femininities
Football
Gender identity
Gender realignment surgery
Lesbian identity
LGBTQ+ relationships
Marriage
Military
MtFs
Passing (Gender)
Privilege (Social psychology)
Psychiatry
Shame
Sports
Support groups
Transgender people
Transitioning (Gender)
Transphobia
Wars
Resource Type: Moving image
Text
Language: English
Related URL: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/
Rights: Copyright undetermined
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