Transgender Book Reviews

The Last Time I Wore a Dress: A Memoir
Nonfiction by Daphne Scholinski (with Jane Meredith Adams)
Copyright 1997, 212 pages, $13
Berkley Publishing Group (member of Penguin Putnam Inc.)
ISBN 1-57322-696-3

Capsule: The true account of a "bad girl" who suffered from parental neglect, was given over to mental institutions, and learned to play the games necessary to survive in the early 1980s. Therapists saw her boyishness as a curable manifestation of her problems, so she had to pretend to be girly-girly and interested in guys to graduate. Throughout it all her derring-do and intelligence preserve her sanity.

Full review

Scholinski grows up in a family with a past-generation history of distance and violence. In her immediate family, her artistic mother isn't cut out to have children. Her father had returned from the Vietnam war mentally damaged.

Lacking love and attention from these parents (who eventually divorce) Daphne Scholinski walls herself off, only having real contact with her younger sister. Her mother leaves to pursue an art career, so Scholinski lives with her TV-addict father, who from time to time whips her. Having a boyish streak and even mistaken for a boy at times, the author hangs with a gang, steals, smokes, does drugs and is talked into unfeeling sex with a man who plies her with compliments and money.

Meanwhile, confrontations with her father and mother convince them she needs to be institutionalized. Apparently, they are sincere in their desire to help and aren't just warehousing her. But, as Scholinski makes clear, spending three years in three mental health facilities is no way to spend an adolescence. At her first institution, she meets other teenagers like herself who are mixed in with older and more far-gone patients. There are scenes of fun and scenes of violence (upon her). Here she poignantly tries to form a mother-daughter relationship with several caring women staffers, even asking one to adopt her. And she clumsily tries to kill herself.

The author provides many vignettes of meetings with shrinks and staff members, and the book reproduces their notes. The shrinks, almost always males, come off as distant, uncaring and pre-judgmental. Sometimes she seems smarter than they are. They wonder why she can't bare her soul and act like a normal teenaged girl.

Just when the author seems to show that she has her act together by doing all the right things, the powers-that-be always return to a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder. If only Miss Scholinski's conduct, appearance and mannerisms could be more appropriate to her sex. If only she could form sexual relationships with men (instead, at the last facility, she's raped).

Here, the specter of mind control rears its ugly head. In those years (and probably still in many places today) boyishness and masculine attributes in women indicated mental problems.Treatable mental problems. Scholinski makes the effort for a time to wear makeup, grow her hair longer, wear less grungy clothing and walk more femininely. However, the person she sees in the mirror is a grotesque version of herself.

In the last facility, in Minnesota, she is given greater freedom and is able to live off campus. But even there, a developing relationship with a woman (Scholinski is drawn to women who look sad) is restricted because the staff feels it might become physical. Actually, Scholinski portrays herself as not exactly sure where her sexuality lies.

If anything, the book is a testament to a woman's ability to survive in an environment which can sap will power and identity. She has to continue to be a bad girl sometimes to keep her sanity -- but she pays a price. Even now -- 15 years later -- Scholinski is an artist in San Francisco -- she has trouble sleeping and dark memories of her incarceration return in her dreams.

She has reconciled with her mother.

(Reviewer: Valory Gravois) (Copyright ©1999 by Alchemist/Light Publishing)

Where this book can be purchased
Return to list of reviews
Return to home page