Alicia feels 'like a whole new person' after a name and gender change
Alicia Rose Monaron was born with an extra X chromosome, also known as Klinefelter’s Syndrome, at Camp Lejeune Military Base in North Carolina. From birth, the doctors told her parents that she had the extra chromosome, but her parents kept this from her for the next 25 years and raised her as a boy.
Alicia knew she wasn’t a boy, however, and she wasn’t willing to act, dress or behave like one. For her forthrightness, she was beaten by her brothers at home and bullied by students and teachers at school.
“I got into so many fights in school because of who and what I was, and being open about it. I told them, I feel female. I feel like a girl. I don’t know why I’m not your boy, but I’m not who you think I am. My life, my body, my whole being is that of a female, there is nothing male about me.”
At age 10, Alicia was sent for her first stint to Alexander’s Children Center, a residential treatment center in Charlotte, N.C., for children with serious emotional disturbances. She stayed for two years, and she remembers that she was treated well there.
“It felt like home. That was where I started clarifying what was home to me. Home was a place where I wasn’t putting up with abuse or the people giving me abuse. They recognized me as female, because that’s what I told them I was, and that’s how they treated me. When it was time to be released, I didn’t want to go back home.”
She was readmitted two years later, when she turned 14.
A few years ago, her parents finally told her about the extra chromosome they had always known about. She was stunned.
“I asked my parents, ‘Why did I go through this? Why didn’t I get help? Why didn’t you tell me what I was born as?’ They didn’t want to deal with what I was going through; they were dealing with their own mental issues around me being born with XXY chromosomes.”
Alicia moved here from the South to be with her partner, Tina, this past year. They recently took a momentous step and successfully filed the paperwork for a name and gender change at Multnomah County Courthouse. On Dec. 1, she officially became Alicia Rose Monaron, female.
“I feel like this is my real birthday. Dec. 1 is the day I will celebrate from now on. I feel like a whole new person, reborn into the person I was meant to be. Our world has opened up to a better life, we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”
Alicia sells Street Roots outside the downtown City Target on Southwest Ninth Avenue and Morrison Street between 2 and 5 p.m. most days. Tina sells a block away at Nordstrom. The money they make selling the paper helps them get by, but even more than the money, Alicia and Tina value the community they’ve found at Street Roots.
“Street Roots has helped me find a new family, good friends, a new way of life,” she said. “Since I’ve moved to Portland, Street Roots has given me a freedom to do as I wish, selling, getting me out and socializing, meeting new people.”
Alicia loves everything about her new home.
“I love the weather here; it’s beautiful! And the treatment I’ve gotten in Portland is the best I could have asked for. Being treated as the female I am is an absolute delight. It’s how I should have been treated from the beginning.”
Alicia and Tina have an apartment now, but she has experienced homelessness on and off for the past five years.
“I know what people on the streets are going through. If I had to give up my home to someone else, I would. I can easily give the shirt off my back and not worry about it.”
