Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up later this hour, we're going to talk about the 20th anniversary of The New York Times Modern Love column. If you can't stop thinking about essays like What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage, you are not alone. Get ready to call in and share your favorite Modern Love essay or podcast episode. That's going to happen about half past the hour. Now, let's get this hour started with the memoir The Last Time I Wore a Dress.

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Alison Stewart: Gender identity was an issue central to the Trump campaign's message to voters in the 2024 election. One of his most frequently run ads featured the slogan, "Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you." What so often gets lost in these political discussions are the real people whose lives are affected by policies and attitudes regarding gender identity. My next guest is one of those people.

Assigned female at birth, author and artist Dylan Scholinski knew they hated wearing dresses. They wanted to bike around shirtless and they thought that they might be attracted to girls. At 15 years old, Dylan's parents decided to have them committed to a mental institution. There, they were diagnosed with "gender identity disorder." They spent the next three years institutionalized.

Doctors and therapists tried different strategies for "fixing" Dylan's gender identity, from rewarding them from wearing makeup to separating them from a close female friend. All it did was serve to make Dylan more confused and lonely than before. In 1997, Dylan wrote a memoir about their experience. The book is titled The Last Time I Wore a Dress. Now, the memoir has been updated and re-released with a brand new epilogue. Dylan Scholinski joins me now to discuss. Hi, Dylan.

Dylan Scholinski: Hi. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. Thank you very much for asking. What was it like going back and updating and revisiting this memoir nearly 20 years later?

Dylan Scholinski: It was a really an interesting experience because there was part of me that it's not that I've ever actually moved on from it so much. It's always been a part of who I've been as an adult person and as I've become more and more myself. The thing that was hard, I think, was just being reminded of how driven people were to try and change who I was going to become because I hadn't actually declared anything yet at the time. Just the amount of money and time and services to try and get me to wear dresses and makeup and knowing that that's still like-- even today, we still have people arguing against that and advocating for that type of treatment.

Alison Stewart: Yes, I think $1 million was spent and I don't think you're exaggerating.

Dylan Scholinski: Right, no, I had a $1 million insurance policy and it was maxed out. In fact, my dad got a bill for $50,000 after I was discharged.

Alison Stewart: What are your hopes for the re-release of this memoir?

Dylan Scholinski: I think the main hope for me has always been for youth to be able to access the story and know that they're not alone and that I'm hoping that they'll find their person. I had a couple of people that were really instrumental in my survival throughout that experience and just really wanting to encourage youth to do the same, to find those particular people that see them and let them be and become who they are, and just to bring attention to this issue that it's a human rights issue and that it's not something that's gone away. It's something that we still need to work on.

Alison Stewart: Given the results of the election, what are your concerns?

Dylan Scholinski: Oh, man, there are so many. My main concern again from the beginning was just thinking about the message that this sends to young kids that don't have the resilience to understand how to survive things like this. It resurges my commitment. I run an open-studio environment for youth as an active suicide prevention.

It just really recommits me to making sure that that continues to be accessible for kids, especially as they lose their abilities to have hormones or hormone blockers or sex reassignment surgeries, access to care. I think that what is really fearful for me is the way that the dialogue that Trump had going and has had going just sets up a world that is just prepared to hate me simply for who I am and empowers hatred across the board for not just trans people, but so many other people.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Dylan Scholinski. We are talking about the republication of their 1997 memoir, The Last Time I Wore a Dress. Let's roll back to that time. You were diagnosed with "gender identity disorder." What were some of the key tenets of that diagnosis?

Dylan Scholinski: Well, that diagnosis, I was one of the original people diagnosed with that. In 1973, homosexuality was declared not to be amenable to change. The next edition of the DSM didn't come out until the DSM-III in the early '80s. This introduced the gender identity disorder. What was far more alarming about this diagnosis was that it wasn't about-- like with homosexuality, you had to declare an identity yourself, and then you would be treated for it. With gender identity disorder, it has more to do with how the outside world perceives you and some to do with your behavior.

If you're a boy that, say, puts a towel around their head and pretends it's long hair and you say you're a princess, or if you're a girl that says they want to be a police officer or likes Batman, some of these descriptions were actually in the diagnosis itself, and that by being mistaken for a boy, I could be institutionalized for that. When it wasn't really my mistake, it was other people's mistake. In the end, it wasn't really a mistake. Had I had the language even at the time, I probably would have understood my trans identity much earlier and wouldn't have struggled quite as hard. People were so eager to remove that as an idea or a possibility.

Alison Stewart: Why was it determined that you needed to go away for years instead of just weeks or months?

Dylan Scholinski: Right. Well, initially, I think my parents' main concern was my happiness. I had become very, very depressed. I had attempted suicide at an early age. I was probably about 13. Of course, they want to find some way to help me love myself and that was really their main goal. They didn't really understand from the beginning that what the doctors considered my lack of happiness to be that if I would just learn how to be more feminine and put on dresses that I was reacting to poor, what's the word, treatment from parents and peers and teachers.

If I would just learn how to be more feminine that the world would treat me better and then I could go on and be happy. The reality of that is that in behaving or trying to do that, I would have surely lost myself. I needed to learn how to love myself as I was becoming, not try to change who I was in order to make the rest of the world okay with me.

Alison Stewart: You were able to access your medical records and you put them actually in the memoir.

Dylan Scholinski: Right.

Alison Stewart: What did the medical records reveal to you about how the medical establishment was thinking about you and then they were thinking about your treatment?

Dylan Scholinski: Well, some of it was very diagnose-based. Like I said, I think they saw the cure for my depression if I would just learn how to be more feminine. That was the treatment that I was supposed to learn about what boys like. They actually put me in some really unsafe situations, hoping to inspire sexual behavior in order for me to be more feminine. They were putting me in situations that seem really unreasonable and unsafe.

Alison Stewart: Could you share a few?

Dylan Scholinski: When I was put into my third hospital, they put me on an all-male unit. I was the only girl on an all-male unit. I was the first girl to be. That's when it switched to not being an all-male unit. That in and of itself, you're like a little piece of meat there in the middle of 20 young men. That would be an example, or having me in four-point restraints and having male patients sneak into my room while I had no way of defending myself.

Alison Stewart: At one point, you had to start wearing makeup in order to gain good points for good behavior.

Dylan Scholinski: Right.

Alison Stewart: What did it feel like when you wore makeup?

Dylan Scholinski: Oh, my God, you feel dead. It causes a separation from your body. That is kind of hard to explain. I was on a point system. I would receive points for good behavior and lose points for bad behavior. My treatment was I was supposed to learn how to apply makeup and then say something nice about myself. Nice not being like I'm really good at baseball or I can really hit the ball or I can run really fast or any of these other things, or I can draw things that I was really proud of. Instead, I had to say things like, "I love looking pretty." I would feel like such a liar that I was performing and deceiving. I think they were hoping if I repeated it enough that it would change who I was going to become.

Alison Stewart: You're honest in your memoir, very honest about how much you lied throughout your treatment. You made up all kinds of stories about having addiction issues, about being anorexic. You asked yourself in rehab at one point. Looking back, why do you think you lied so much?

Dylan Scholinski: It's interesting. As a teenager, I think that sometimes I feel like lying happens because you don't necessarily get what you need, especially if you're trying to tell the truth and nobody does anything about it that you try to make up things that you hope people will pay attention to or give you the things that you need. I know for myself, when I lied about my drug abuse, a lot of that had to do with-- I knew I was being transferred to a new facility. That facility had a rehab unit on it. I thought that that sounded a hell of a lot better-- Oh, sorry.

Alison Stewart: That's fine.

Dylan Scholinski: It sounded a lot better than being on a psych unit. It was better to be addicted than it was to be crazy. What I quickly realized within a few weeks was that I was so in awe of the people working their programs and trying to really better their lives and work with their addictions and working on their sobriety that I didn't feel worthy. When I tried to tell people I was lying that I had experimented, but I'd never done any of those things to the extremes that I was saying, they told me I was in denial. It would take another month for me to convince them that I was, in fact, telling the truth then.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Dylan Scholinski. We're talking about the republication of their 1997 memoir, The Last Time I Wore a Dress. It's about Dylan's experience being institutionalized at the age of 15 and being diagnosed with "gender identity disorder." I want to ask about your parents in all of this. What were they thinking? What were they feeling?

Dylan Scholinski: Well, like I said, I think that they were more concerned for my happiness. My father definitely asked questions about why-- he wanted to know why I didn't want to wear a dress. He had curiosities. I wouldn't say that either of my parents were necessarily interested in me. They wouldn't be devastated if I turned out to be gay or lesbian or eventually trans. I think that once I was in that system, the system clicked in. They took that as their primary focus. My parents were middle class. They trusted the system.

You don't rock the boat because it's working for you. I think that they really didn't know what the treatment was for the longest time. When you first get into an institution like that, typically, they don't allow you to communicate with your family because they need you to turn your loyalties over to them and begin to care about what they think. The institution, the therapists, and such. What they told me was, "Wow, you've really messed up. Your parents don't want to see you."

What they told my parents was, "She's too far gone. You can't really see her right now." I had no idea that my parents were trying to see me. Whatever fragile relationship we did have was pretty much severed by the manipulation of that system. It wasn't until later that I realized that my mother told me actually a story of being in a meeting with my football team of therapists. They're in a conference. They say to my mother directly, "We're trying to get Daphne--" which was my birth name. "We're trying to get Daphne to work on her gender identity, but she's not being very cooperative."

My mom specifically stated, "Do not do that. That's not why she's here." All I could tell my mom is I never noticed anything different. My treatment never shifted or changed. One of the things we've realized since being discharged and throughout our relationships into our adult lives is that my parents were manipulated as well and that, in some ways, my parents were victims in their own right in terms of-- If they didn't do what they did, they would have been seen as bad parents.

That puts them in a really unhealthy situation. It took a while for us to get back to what-- My mom became my best friend. She was my greatest. We did everything together right up until she died about five years ago. My wife and I and kids are going to Christmas this year, which is actually the first time that I've gone to see them for Christmas, I think, since I was about 20 years old, and I'm 58.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Dylan Scholinski: We did an Alaskan cruise together last year. We're definitely in a very different place.

Alison Stewart: Dylan, during your institutionalization, did you encounter any person who seemed interested in really helping you?

Dylan Scholinski: Oh, my God. I'm so glad that you asked that question because, yes, I did. It wasn't very often, but it was often enough. There are a few people in my life that I feel like if I did not have them, I don't know that I would be here today. The first one was my third-grade teacher. I still talk to her to this day. She came to visit me in the hospital. She came to book readings in the '90s. She came to shows.

She's just been a great champion of mine and really the first person who I felt loved me with no buts. That wasn't like, "I would love you more if you did this or this." It was like, "I love you for who you are. I see you." The second one was an intern. This is a shout-out to all those interns out there that are 18, 19, 20 years old and you think you don't have impact. You have the possibility to change a person's life purely just by being there.

We became friends. She said to me one day, "What are you doing here? You're so sane and normal. You could be any one of my friends." I, of course, just shrugged it off in that teenager kind of, "Whatever." It became this mantra that stayed with me for years and gave me the strength to even consider finishing high school and think that maybe I could get out of the hospital. Up to that point, I just thought that that's where I'm going to be for the rest of my life.

I'm still in touch with her as well. She lives in Portland and we've gone to visit her as a family. Yes, those moments. That's why I say with young people, if you can just find that one person, and that's my goal in my life with all the work I do with youth, is that I want to be that person for as many people, not just kids, as possible like to be able to hold up that mirror by honestly and authentically being myself, but also giving permission for those around me to do the same.

Alison Stewart: What perspective could you give someone who is going through this at a young age?

Dylan Scholinski: I think it's, one, like I said, to find that person that you can see your reflection with them and feel honest and authentic and then just be really good about setting up a safe space for yourself, finding those safe people, and being smart about it, especially now in the climate that we're in. You pick your battles and use your resources. Find your resources. If you're hearing this right now, I am a resource. I'm very easy to find. You're welcome to find me on Facebook, Instagram, my website. I'm more than happy to help you.

Alison Stewart: Dylan, you note in your new epilogue that you don't know if you would be alive today if you hadn't been able to receive top surgery. Why does that surgery mean so much to you and to your mental health?

Dylan Scholinski: I can only speak for myself, so I can't speak for all trans people. Some people, they need things like hormones or sex reassignment surgeries. A variety of surgeries are out there. Myself, I have never been on hormones. I think that's because I pass. Passing is a privilege. If I didn't really pass, I might have considered that more. Top surgery became important. Not so much because I was trying to become more masculine, but that I was just trying to be in my body. Up to that point, I just had never felt right.

Having a chest, having boobs, it just never felt natural. They always got in the way. They started to move when I would run and play baseball. I was just never in my body. One of the things I recognized when I first was recovering from surgery, one of the most powerful memories of my life is walking outside and feeling the air on my chest for the first time because you bind and you hide. I'd always had so many layers around me that I never actually felt air on my chest. It took my breath away. It was the most beautiful and amazing feeling.

That's when I realized that I had never been in my body as much as I thought maybe I had been here and there. It was nothing in comparison to how I felt after that from that moment on. Without the binding, for years, I still find myself doing this sometimes. Today, you'll see me walking around with my hand on my chest like in the center of my chest. Part of that is because I'm protecting my heart. My heart is so much closer to the world now since that time. I'm a highly sensitive person, so I'm moved a lot by the world.

Alison Stewart: The Trump campaign made gender identity a key issue. One of their biggest ads ran with a slogan, "Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you." If someone came to you and said to you, "You know what? I found those ads to be effective, Dylan," what would you say to that person?

Dylan Scholinski: Check your privilege. That worked and changed your mind because it didn't affect you. Transness, maybe it doesn't affect you. You live a privileged life where this is not a concern for you in terms of your own personal safety or in terms of your own being. I had an experience. Actually, I was in DC visiting family. We were watching football and I saw one of those ads for the first time. It's like nobody around me really knew what to say. I just was reminded of what it's like to be that person that's invisible.

I remember being in Denny's restaurants and hearing people say gay jokes and trans-type jokes at the table next to me. Of course, they didn't know I was sitting there. They didn't know that they were making me feel small. Those ads, I just think, were so hurtful for a community of people that it may push people in the closet for much longer and create unhealthy life patterns as a result in order to stay in that closet. To me, it was one of the most harmful campaigns I'd ever witnessed in my lifetime.

Alison Stewart: The name of the memoir is The Last Time I Wore a Dress. It has been republicized, republication with a current new epilogue. It is by Dylan Scholinski. Dylan, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Dylan Scholinski: No problem. I'm really happy to be here.