As a child, Kael Alberghini had no perception of himself beyond his youth. He could not see himself at 25, and certainly didn’t see himself at 40 or 60.
In many ways, Alberghini had a typical rural childhood. He loved to explore and play in the woods and stream behind his house in Norwich, and his favorite activity was climbing trees. As normal as all of this may sound, he never felt that he quite fit in.
Alberghini was functionally deaf by the age of 2, had cochlear implants put in when he was 3, and struggled with speaking throughout his elementary years. He attended speech therapy, but his oratory skills did not keep pace with his gifted brain. He coped by reading prodigiously, which put him far ahead of the other students, separating him further from his peers.
“I devoured my schoolwork,” Alberghini, now 20, explained in a measured voice during a recent interview, “I was the consummate nerd.”
The precocious and solitary child had trouble communicating with and relating to other kids, and he was often teased and bullied. In the fifth grade, Alberghini began to go through adolescence, which can be a thorny and painful time for most kids. For Alberghini, it was torture. That’s because he was assigned female gender at birth.
As a child, he played with Barbie dolls and a Tonka tool bench, and dressed androgynously. Until the age of 10, strangers didn’t know whether he was a boy or a girl, and he wasn’t really conscious of the notion of gender identity.
“I never felt uncomfortable with my gender identity until fifth grade, when my body started doing what I didn’t want it to do,” Alberghini explained. “Puberty hit me like a train. I started developing breasts and got really curvy. People started ascribing roles to me and having expectations for me that were centered around the fact that I looked like a woman.”
By the age of 12, Alberghini was mistaken for a girl in her late teens, and the bullying he had endured became sexual harassment.
Boys in school would pretend to be interested in him, offering fake marriage proposals, while the other kids looked on laughing; and when he visited New York City, he would get catcalled in the streets. His unease came not only from being sexualized at such a young age, but because he did not believe or feel like he was a woman. He didn’t have the words for what he was feeling.
During those years, Alberghini vacillated between trying to look as feminine as possible and living up to society’s expectations — wearing short skirts and makeup to school — or rejecting it and being more masculine by cutting his hair short and acting aggressively.
From fifth grade until he went to college, he was a three-season athlete, playing numerous sports. Still, he didn’t know which gender fit.
By age 12, he knew his sexual orientation was gay/bisexual because he was attracted to boys and girls, though predominately girls. He had a girlfriend when he was 12, and his parents accepted his emerging sexuality.
Looking back on those years, Alberghini said, he felt many confusing signals coming from within, and it was a lot for him to sort through.
He didn’t immediately classify himself as transgender because at that age, he didn’t know there was a name for what he was feeling.
When he was 14, he found some videos of transgender teens online and things began slowly to make sense.
“I started thinking that (being transgender) was something that described me,” Alberghini said.
He characterized the sexual harassment he experienced as an awakening point.
“There’s a discomfort that goes beyond being sexually harassed,” he explained. “It was the idea that I was getting attention for aspects of myself that I wasn’t comfortable with. Previously, no one was paying attention to how my gender presented, and I was comfortable and happy with it. When things changed (and the harassment began) I realized there was something else making me uncomfortable.”
Alberghini didn’t grow up dreaming of being a boy, but the more he read and learned about being transgender, the more it made sense to him.
His parents, divorced by this stage, had always been supportive and accepting of his sexuality. Late one night while staying with his father, Alberghini, then 14, decided it was time to speak up about his gender.
“The impression I got from that first conversation was that (my dad) was open to hearing what I had to say,” Alberghini recalled. “I explained it to him and I got confusion, with him asking a lot of questions, but he didn’t reject it or get angry. If he had, it would have been a very difficult time in my life.”
Following that late-night discussion, he told his mother, whom he said had a surprising reaction. For her, the issue was not that he was transgender so much as that he no longer wanted to be a woman.
“She had high hopes that I was going to be a trailblazer as a woman, and she was worried that I was rejecting my female identity and my power as a woman,” Alberghini said. “She wanted me to be a powerful voice for feminists, and I’d still like to think that I am.”
Alberghini credits both his parents with not only asking about his feelings and his perspective, but with taking the time to do research on their own.
“For a transgender teen, they are still learning how to talk about it themselves, so having to explain it all to parents can be stressful. If parents go find out about it on their own, it takes away a lot of stress.”
The year he told his parents, Alberghini started high school and he tried to fit in with his fellow students, but it never worked, and he was often ostracized.
“It was a challenge, and there was a lot of crying, not only by me but by my parents and grandparents,” he explained. “It was rough and I was very excluded, but it pushed me to continue to read and to learn, to excel and do what I needed to do.”
He was on a journey to learn who he was. He was also a gifted student who was far ahead of his peers. At age 15, he went to Bard College at Simon’s Rock, which allowed him to examine his identity.
“I found others who were transgender and learned about what got them to where they were,” Alberghini said. “I saw the full spectrum of identities and where my identity fit in. By the end of the two years, I knew I was a transgender man.”
Then 17, and with an associate degree in liberal arts, Alberghini decided to begin hormone therapy. Following guidelines set by the Endocrine Society, he had to see a therapist first, but he knew that he wanted to live as a man, and to be seen by others as a man. He took testosterone, and said the changes he experienced — in his body and his voice — were affirming.
That summer he went to camp, and for the first time introduced himself as Kael and started to use the pronoun “he.”
“Up until that point I was not saying that; it was a very clear divide.”
When he turned 18, he had his breasts removed and surgeons reconstructed a male chest. Though he had an initial moment of “freaking out,” once the bandages came off, he didn’t regret his decision.
“I felt healthier because I had been binding my chest for two and a half years. I felt better and much more comfortable with who I was. I felt like me.”
Alberghini went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Vermont, and is working toward his master’s in industrial organizational psychology at Salem State College in Massachusetts. He’s still deciding whether to pursue a doctorate or go directly into his field, but he knows he wants to be a success and make a difference — not necessarily as an activist, but as a role model.
He’s been in a relationship with a woman for the past two years.
Alberghini said he was very lucky, and feels a responsibility to talk about his experience in the hope that it will make it easier for others whose journey lies ahead of them, and for those who did not have the parental support that he had.
“Now that I’ve transitioned, I can actually think of myself growing older,” he said. “I can have long-term goals for my life, and I can envision what I’ll look like as a 40- or 60-year-old man and be happy with that.
“I am the person I was meant to be.”