Steve Stanton’s story
‘I can’t walk away, it’s not in my nature’: An interview with Largo’s
suddenly famous transsexual city manager
BY DAVID WARNER
A few weeks ago, Largo City Manager Steve Stanton had never heard of the
acronym LGBT (for lesbian/ gay/ bisexual/ transgendered) . On Sunday,
when he was spotted by a group of lesbian volleyballers on a beach in
Gulfport, they broke into spontaneous applause.
It’s been that kind of a week for Stanton. Prior to his brush with
beachfront fame, he’d been talking with me in the Gulfport hangout
Cahill’s — one in a long line of media encounters he’d been having or
was about to have, from a Newsweek photo shoot at the Vinoy to
appearances on Nightline and CNN with Paula Zahn. He’d been in the
public eye for years as city manager, but had never experienced this
kind of attention.
He didn’t plan for it to happen this way. He had hoped, once he’d told a
select few in Largo city government hat he was transitioning from male
to female, that he could reveal the information according to a carefully
calibrated plan, one that allowed time for policies to be adjusted and
shock to die down. But that was not to be. The information about his
transgender status was leaked to the St. Petersburg Times, the Times ran
a story on its website, and before he’d even had a chance to tell his
own son, he was all over the news. And when the Largo City Commission
voted Tuesday to place him on administrative leave with intent to
dismiss, he went from local notoriety to international cause celebre.
Stanton and I covered a range of topics during our interview. Stanton’s
lawyer, Karen Doering, senior counsel for the Southern regional office
of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, was also present. The
conversation was wide-ranging, touching on the events of the past two
weeks but also going back to Stanton’s childhood memories, and looking
ahead to the broader implications of transgender rights. A slightly
built man with candid blue eyes and blonde hair that’s beginning to
cover his ears, Stanton spoke forthrightly, suggesting the
self-confidence that has marked his tenure as Largo’s head honcho. He
slouched into his barstool at times, though, his face squinching up with
bemusement at his inadvertent fame. Audio from the interview will be
available here later this week; the following is an edited transcript. A
shorter version appeared in the March 7 print edition of Creative
Loafing.
Neither Stanton nor Doering would confirm that they would be filing an
appeal of the commission’s decision. We discussed some of the legal ins
and outs before I asked about a comment he’d made during the hearing on
Feb. 27.
You said in the hearing that you wouldn’t sue the city.
SS: Yeah, I certainly alluded to that — and I guess one of the things I
certainly was not prepared for since the time of that meeting is the
number of Largo residents who have called and expressed their
disappointment and their anger [at the commission's decision]. All of a
sudden in many ways this issue is no longer about Steve Stanton — I
think there’s a bigger issue that may be addressed as well.
What about the language in the city’s employment policy, implemented in
October of 2003 [that included language prohibiting discrimination in
the workplace by any city employee on the basis of "gender identity or
expression"] ?
KD: In Florida it’s not clear that it’s a violation of law to ignore
your own employment policies. [But] the fact that city has this policy,
and they ignored it, may be evidence of their animus and their
discriminatory bias. There are no explicit laws in the state of Florida
or in federal laws that say you cannot discriminate based on sex
orientation or gender identity, but there are … claims that can be
made under sex stereotyping or disability laws that do protect
transgendered people — so employers are subject to potential legal
liability for that kind of discrimination.
The appropriate thing to do in this situation would have been to
complete the transition plan that the city was working on, provide the
kind of educational trainings that the city had already begun, the mayor
and human resources had already started. Then if there were employees
who couldn’t deal with it or who engaged in discriminatory behavior,
what you do is you discipline the discriminating employee, you don’t
fire the person who makes other people uncomfortable.
Bottom line is, [the city] violated its own policy.
KD: Absolutely.
You went to the mayor in January. That was the first time she knew?
SS: Oh yeah, yeah. Mayor Gerard’s reaction was anticipated but not taken
for granted. She listened — it was a very emotional discussion on my
part — and after two, maybe two and a half hours I completed my, um,
discussion and said ‘What do you think?’ and she said “You didn’t ever
doubt that I would support you, did you?”
Had you told your wife at this point?
SS: Oh, yeah, yeah, I sure did.
That was how long before that?
SS: This thing started in our life almost 12 years ago.
You’ve been married… since 1990?
SS: Since 1990, yeah, yeah. The whole issue of transgendered people, you
very much go through a spectrum of experiences, You don’t really know
where you’re going to stop or continue to, until you go through that
process. Certainly when we first started it, it was simply “I’m
comfortable cross-dressing at times,” but that really wasn’t it at all,
it was something substantially … more profound than that.
Which you’d been aware of since you were a kid, right?
SS: Yeah, but I was in denial, no one thinks that they’re going to
change their gender…It’ s one of those things that you think is fixed
until you learn otherwise. So after going through the Human Rights
Ordinance [voted down in Largo in 2003] and seeing the number of people
that came forward and the courage that they showed, as well as the clash
of two worlds … up until then I had always been able to keep my
transgender world and my professional world separate but that experience
told me that maybe I wasn’t going to be able to do that in perpetuity.
But more significantly it was just tiresome trying to live a life of two
genders, and that began a very therapeutic intense conversation with a
group of professionals that got me to the point where I am today.
So there were times throughout those 12 years when you tried
cross-dressing in settings other than Largo?
SS: Oh absolutely, yeah.
Describe that.
SS: One of the things that has been probably the most distressful in
this whole process is people focusing on the physical manifestation of
dressing. Transsexualism has nothing to do with dressing. So I don’t
want to dwell on it a lot. But certainly after you get, at some point
when you realize my gender is wrong, then the question becomes can I
live life comfortably in another gender? Some people can’t, for a number
of reasons, some physical, some psychological. So before you start
hormonal therapy you need to be pretty sure you want to start changing
your body, and before you start considering gender reassignment, what
the average person equates to sex change, before you start cutting into
healthy flesh, you need to be absolutely sure that this is something
that not only you want, but that you can do in the real world. We do
that. We’re required through the medical protocol to work very closely
with our therapists and try to insure that the gender we relate to in
fact is something we can live in some point in the future. And that took
place over the last five or so years, absolutely.
So you started seeing a therapist after the debate over the HRO, or had
you already…?
SS: Well I was thinking … what really was the thing that was the most
profound experience — I attended a pretty select class [Executive
Leadership Institute for local and state executives in 2006] at Harvard.
That’s what the shirt is about.
SS: Yeah — we talked about transformational leadership.
Transformational leadership takes on a whole other…
SS: Another connation … but it talks about the whole issue of comfort
zones, how we all get very comfortable in our personal and professional
lives and we stop growing, and I realized that so much of my hesitation
was not really the physical manifestation, the changes, as much as the
loss of prestige that one inherits as a white male. It was almost a
profound experience that if I’m gonna get where I’m gonna be, I’m gonna
have to leave the safe world where I learned to hide and step out and
start to live. Everybody in the class was challenged to do that in ways
that was a very emotional experience for a group of 67 professionals
from all over the world that culminated literally in people crying at
the end of the class.
Have you heard from any of your classmates?
SS: Absolutely, yeah.
Did you talk about this issue there?
SS: I was called on the issue there
How were you called on it?
SS: The experience is a very introspective, reflective process, and at
one point I said I can’t participate, I cannot disclose very intimate
details about who I am.
Oh, they must have jumped on that.
SS: Yeah, and there were a number of people in the class who were
sponsored from the Victory Fund that supports openly gay and lesbian
elected officials. We had a number of those folks and they kind of drug
me off to the side.
And what did they do? They said, “OK, what is your secret? We’re going
to take a guess, and if that’s your secret you better not keep it in the
closet?”
SS: I haven’t discussed this with many people. Yeah, we did — we talked
about the courage it’s going to take.
What was their question?
SS: Two or three different people in top positions in the country who
had dealt with discrimination as gay elected officials gave me a lot of
advice, but the issue of transgenderism is substantially different than
that, and a lot of the experiences they had are not necessarily
applicable to a transsexual at the same level in their respective
careers.
So you were able to share with them, though, that you were transsexual
– or transgender. Which term do you prefer, by the way?
SS: I like transgender, but it’s very nondescript, but transsexual is
how most people know it even though it has a negative connotation to it.
So you told them.
SS: Yeah, three of those people knew.
So then you had the discussion — and did you then come out to the
entire group?
SS: No, this was not a group discussion.
So that was a major turning point for you. Had you started — you have
started hormonal treatments, is that correct?
SS: Oh yeah, yeah.
How long have those been going on?
SS: Almost for about two years — year and a half, two years, in that
area.
So, 2005.
SS: Yeah, yeah.
And, and, and you’ve — Here’s the question…
SS: The question, I’m ready, go for it, the question.
…that comes with all of these folks who are using it as an excuse [to
ask for his dismissal]: “Well he’s deceived us, Why didn’t he tell us
this?”
SS: That is the 10-dollar question, because the whole aspect of
deception is relevant not only to your job, it’s relevant to your
parents, it’s relevant to your wife. What people don’t understand is
because this phenomena is so misunderstood and so stigmatized, that even
the people that wake up as small children and know that there’s
something profoundly different [about] them have no healthy outlet to
really express it, to come to terms with it, to understand it and to
receive support in coming to terms with it. This is not something you
tell somebody: “I’m a transsexual, don’t tell anybody.” Invariably
because of the negative connotation it’s something that’s highly
closeted, highly compartmentalized and absolutely protected. I conveyed
in my letter to employees, I’ve taken extraordinary steps to make sure
that nobody would ever know this including my parents and my family.
They didn’t know about this either.
You didn’t tell your parents?
SS: I never told my parents. I told my dad 10 minutes prior to the news
conference.
Good heavens.
SS: That’s what he said.
About that news conference or about the revelation?
SS: About the revelation. I don’t think it’s still sunk in. It’s not a
matter of deception, it’s a matter of helplessness, because you just
don’t know.
Especially for someone in your position.
SS: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I was worried about this type of
outcome, but I was also absolutely confident that Largo is in fact a
City of Progress, and if the transition plan that we developed had been
implemented Largo had the capacity to embrace the diversity. I
absolutely believe that. And I think the recent poll in the Pinellas
County area which included Largo absolutely confirmed that to me,
absolutely, without a doubt.
Do you have any resentment toward the Times for letting this out of the
bag?
SS: No, I mean, the Times reported the news, they don’t make news. They
acted very responsibly, I think.
So two years in hormone treatment and that resulted in some changes in
your body… Did anybody remark on this?
SS: Yeah, everybody was wondering, are you ok?
Because it was a weight loss result for you.
SS: Weight loss — and some parts of your body get smaller, and some get
larger. Your complexion changes, your skin tonation changes, your
emotions change. Men have the ability to decide to be emotional. Once
your body chemistry changes, you don’t. And people would often comment
about that.
Really? Can you describe the difference between Steve Stanton the man
and Steve the transitioning woman, in terms of emotions?
SS: Yeah. Probably the biggest thing as a city manager is I’m an
extremely passionate person. But when you go through this process you
become a whole lot more sensitive to others’ feelings. I used to be
known for saying, “It can’t be that complicated, get it done.” Well,
after I had a chemical change, I perceived the impact that I was having
on people, where in the past it just wasn’t important. So those were the
things I think most people felt that, “God what’s going on with him, he
seems so much more…”
So he’s nicer now?
SS: “More patient, more empathetic, more responsive to our needs as a
staff” than maybe I was in the past. I’m told I could be pretty
insensitive and uncaring at times. I didn’t believe it, but that’s what
I was told.
Well, that’s funny, because one of the things I had heard was that the
commissioners who took it upon themselves to get rid of you had been
burned in the past, and were just glad to get rid of you — and if
you’ve been changing in the last couple of years, are they just shooting
themselves in the foot? I mean, did you burn some of these people, is
that why they’re coming after you, it has nothing to do with your gender
change at all?
SS: It’s interesting, the e-mails I’m getting from people — it’s time
for “justice,” I think. During my 12 years in the city there have
probably been 100 or so people that … I’ve been substantially involved
in their being promoted outside the organization, and we sometimes had
conversations regarding, “If you can’t do the job I’ll do the job, but
then I don’t need you.” This is a high-performing organization. We’re
not gonna play the game that a lot of governments do that you can’t
fight city hall and you can’t fire a bureaucrat. We just never played
those games in Largo, so if you couldn’t do the job you weren’t gonna
stick around. And if supervisors didn’t want to make sure people did
their jobs, then they and the employee left the organization. So I’ve
actually received a number of emails that have been reflective of
people’s certain amount of satisfaction that from their perspective,
what went around, came around and hahaha. But that’s part of the game of
being a city manager…
Well, then, that was working. So conversely don’t we ask, if he’s
softening up, maybe he won’t be as good?
SS: No, I don’t think…
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but the other part of this is, it
kind of reinforces gender stereotypes what you’ve just said. I don’t
know, if I were a woman I’d feel, “Oh, I’m not tough enough, I mean I’m
a woman, my hormones change and I’m not as mean?”
SS: I don’t think it ever got to the level with the commissioners where
they said Steve’s gone soft. If anything…
No, I hadn’t heard that either, but you’re describing a transition into
a different kind of manager which has to do with your hormonal change.
SS: I think I was more empathetic, I could become a better manager.
People in fact said, “Jeez, you’ve been so good to work with.” I used to
be known for The Stantonization Process: the phone call on Monday
morning. And people for a while, they’d dread getting the phone call on
Monday morning from the city manager. Instead of making the phone call
the better option was to go to their office, sit down, communicate your
concerns and that started to change a lot of people’s experience of me
during the past year. I guess the two people that saw that the most were
the police chief and the fire chief because they tend to be more focused
as masculine alpha males.
And you were sort of a guy’s guy according to some reports? Or at least
you did a good job of seeming to be?
SS: Yeah, well, I’ve always been a wannabe firefighter and a wannabe cop
and I’ve always had fun in both of those worlds and both of those
individuals came over and said “What’s going on with you? You’ve got to
talk to us.”
When did they do that?
SS: About a year ago. They started coming in and closing the door: “Talk
to us.”
And you told them then?
SS: Eventually. It took a while before I wanted to burden them with the
secret. And it is a burden.
The mayor wasn’t the first person you told?
SS: No, the first person I told in the city organization was the city
attorney. After that it was the fire chief, the police chief, the human
resource director.
And they were all supportive. And that was one of the things that was so
striking about the media coverage [at first]… it did feel like you
were going to have a pretty good ride in the beginning.
SS: Yeah, it did, and I’m absolutely convinced that the direction that
the commission took was profoundly impacted by two or three different
churches that really conveyed … moral outrage that anybody could
change the image of man that God had perfected — as I understand it.
And the e-mails that we got, the nasty phone calls that we received, and
all the hate that was conveyed to us … very much impacted the
political system to the extent that by the time Tuesday came, not only
had commissioners deliberated extensively, but they’d already prepared
their statements prior to the meeting. So it was unfortunate but highly
predictable. We talked about that with my transition plan, that it takes
about two weeks. When you tell somebody that you’re transsexual, that
has a profound impact on who they feel they were talking to — that
whole sense of… understanding. And that’s a clinical response, that
first I’m angry that I’ve been quote unquote deceived. That is the first
clinical step when someone tells you something like this. The next step
is … understanding and almost empathy, and that was the most important
part of the second aspect of our transition plan, getting people in that
could say, this is what it is, this is what it’s not, this is why people
say what they are, this is why they retain it. And that never took
place. It never took place.
It stopped at anger.
SS: It stopped at anger, deception and dishonesty, yeah.
Did the police chief and the fire chief go through that same period of
initial anger?
SS: No, I think if anything because … they’re occupationally trained
to deal with confidential medical information, there’s not a whole lot
you can tell someone in the public safety field. After a while we get
real acclimated to things that you don’t –
They can’t be surprised easily.
SS: We’re not surprised, with the stuff that you see. No, they didn’t
have that feeling. Initially the human resources director did.
Really?
SS: She had the deer-in-the- headlight look without a doubt … but she
worked through it as well. When all was said and done, she said, “I’m a
professional, let’s see if we can get past this thing, let’s roll, let’s
do it.”
And it’s nothing if not a human resources problem. And it’s right on her
desk, right?
SS: I forgot — I guess the National League of Cities called me the
other day, and we had submitted [an application for a] diversity award
program — and they were concerned given the fact that we had submitted
this application and the city had done … this, this thing
Wait, wait back up. You just submitted for an award for diversity
support in the city? When was that submitted?
SS: A couple of months ago, I guess.
And they were calling saying, “Let me tell you what we got a problem
about here.”
SS: Yeah, and I discussed that, that the organization has done a lot
about accommodating diversity, and we as a city have a pretty good track
record in this area. We are hopefully going to get the award because of
our past practice and the things that we had done as a city
organization. I guess I would submit that a lot of the problems we had
were not a direct result of the organizational dynamics as much as the
political system was hijacked by a bunch of religious people that
inserted its beliefs and distorted the decision-making of the city, and
a very emotional public hearing.
KD: It can come across that they speak on behalf of all people of faith.
There are many, many people of faith who do not agree with the position
that was put forth by this small group of very conservative Christian
folk, and they’re absolutely entitled to their own views and their own
beliefs. This is not about changing anybody’s belief system. All this is
about is … you just have to handle yourself in a professional manner
in the workplace. You can believe and feel and think whatever you
want… but it’s about behavior, not about beliefs, and this particular
group has a certain belief system. But they do not speak on behalf of
the entire Christian faith community, and I think what we’ve seen is a
spontaneous groundswell from other faith communities.
SS: And I’ve just been inundated with calls from religious leaders.
They’ve been calling the house, and sending flowers, and food — it’s
just been something I never anticipated happening.
What do you say to that reaction, “Well, Jesus would have fired you,”
which is one of those guys’ claims?
SS: I went to church, it was an empty church, I had a very intimate
one-on-one conversation with my God. And it was “OK, Lord, I’ve done
everything I was supposed to do, I’ve got 17 years invested. You tell me
I’ll walk through the gates of hell, and I’m goin’, but I hope you know
what you’re doin’ because I am so scared and I’m extremely spiritual,
I’m not a sinner and I don’t deserve to be condemned.” I know it to be
so because I’ve had that conversation with God. I don’t know how to
respond to people who’ve had an alternate conversation, I guess that’s
between them and their god. I don’t know, I just don’t know. I was
surprised.
What about Commissioner Guyette complaining that you had attended the
same conference as he did and were dressing as a woman without telling
him?
SS: I think it’s important to understand the medical protocol that a
transsexual goes through when you’re contemplating such a profound
change of who you are. It was a supervised medical process to insure
that you can interact on every aspect of who you’re gonna be and what
you’re gonna be. In that situation, I think it was a Saturday, I
interacted as Susan in the outside world in a way that was not
disruptive. I registered with a different name, it was not under the
name of the City of Largo, and I interacted very well to such an extent
that nobody knew I was anything other than what I presented myself to
be. Which is what you have to be able to do if you’re going to be
successful in this transition. It is required in order to do the gender
reassignment, it was a medically prescribed process that was done in the
consultation of two of my doctors, it was entirely appropriate and
nothing was wrong with that. Now if you have the feeling that someone
was running around in drag and embarrassing the city, I guess you
probably would react as Commissioner Guyette might have, but again I
think it’s a lack of information, and responding from that emotional
visceral point in your belly, and [not] based upon education and having
an understanding of what the medical protocol is and why it’s there. If
anything I wanted to make sure I was just a faceless person in the
crowd, that it was not disruptive, and the fact that nobody knew was in
fact precisely what the medical protocol was designed to do.
You did attend a seminar with Guyette?
SS: I have no idea — there were three, four thousand people there.
You knew he was there.
SS: There were many people there that I knew.
Weren’t you really — scared?
SS: Not at all, not at all.
No? I mean that was really risky wasn’t it? What if somebody said,
“Steve’s over there and he’s dressed like a woman. What’s up with that?”
SS: Because, because, if you’re very comfortable in your gender you have
a presentation that does not look male.
So you were essentially a different person and you were occupying that
person’s flesh — it didn’t feel like you were pretending.
SS: Exactly — it’s not pretending, it’s not dressing up, it’s
expressing who you are. If anything, I’ve been cross-dressing as a man
the last 47 years. So I think there was more honesty in that
presentation than in this presentation.
But it is tricky, it is something you have to be very careful about. Had
you been doing this enough so that it wasn’t as scary?
SS: That was asked at the news conference. Have you dressed on city
business? When I heard that question, sitting there with all the lights:
Did I ever come into a meeting at City Hall? Did I ever go to a meeting
in another community as Steve in something other than professional male
attire? No, of course not. A conference even though it’s quote unquote
city business, I think it’s a different context of being out of town
with a group of 3,000 people as opposed to walking into a room and then
you are inserting a substantial amount of disruption and disunity into
the work environment, and that is irresponsible. It’s something I never
did, and it’s something I never would have done.
Let’s look at the happy ending you said (in one interview) you were
naively hoping for — and it still could happen. There will be a point,
right, as part of this medically supervised transition and after talking
to everyone in city hall, you will be coming to work dressed as a woman,
correct? And won’t that have to happen on a regular weekly basis prior
to the reassignment?
SS: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The other day one of the directors said
to me… “Steve, I don’t want to offend you, but I guess I saw you
coming to work in a dress Aunt Bea was wearing. Your hair was all fluffy
like Aunt Bea’s.”
He was imagining this?
SS: Yeah, and he said, “You had these goofy huge earrings on, and you
wore these great big white pumps.”
This was a dream he had?
SS: Yeah. It’s just the things people think when they think of a guy
coming to work dressed as a woman.
Somebody you worked with.
SS: Oh absolutely, a good friend. And they were being very honest with
me, with their fears and trepidations. I said, “I would think your
reactions would be extremely appropriate, and it probably looks stupid
in your dream as well. So I’m not comin’ to work lookin’ like Aunt Bea,
and I’m not going to dress in drag.
KD: Steve is a conservative, professional, deliberative person.
Aunt Bea’s conservative. ..
KD: Susan’s going to be a conservative, professional, deliberative
person. The person of Susan is the same as the person of Steve. He has
not undergone a personality transplant, that he’s going to dress in
flamboyant clothing, have big old gaudy earrings, look like Aunt Bea.
Well, what is your personal style as a woman?
SS: Same as a guy. It’s very conservative.
What kind of clothes, hairstyle? Have you imagined this?
SS: Well, absolutely. One of the things I was predicating that quote
unquote transition plan is I want to have my own hair. So it was
something as basic as that. I need to have my hair grow. As a guy I got
a haircut every other week, sometimes every week. So I’ve had to let it
grow, I don’t want to grow make-believe hair. That was going to take
time just to let my hair grow. I would be wearing the same kind of
business suits I do as a guy, only more feminine, and as a woman, but it
would not be looking like the Aunt Bea people had envisioned in their
dreams, which again is a very humanistic, understandable fear. During
the meetings a couple of times, I was joking with the cops. We were
joking about these whole aspects of me coming to work as a woman, and
they were trying to understand what that meant. So they were asking good
questions, “If you get past this, do you still want to come out with
us?”
The cops were asking you that?
SS: Absolutely. You know, are you still going to want to train with the
SWAT team? Well, why would I not want to train with the SWAT team?
The cover of Creative Loafing this week is going to be the Largo city
seal with WRONG across it in rainbow-colored letters. How do you respond
to that?
SS: The City of Largo is a city of progress, and I’ve said…
I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m saying the city of Largo made a
mistake–
SS: They made a mistake, they made a mistake–
And they’re wrong about it, and they should fix it.
SS: I’m hopin’ that they will. I’m realistic, it may be too late for
them to go back and undo what time has done, but certainly as media
continues to expand and I become more of a public figure that may or may
not be possible. My first love is being manager of an organization I’ve
devoted 17 years to and I believe it’s possible. It’s not going to be
easy. I indicated in my letter to employees that the transition is going
to be awkward, and it was going to require a tremendous amount of
sensitivity and flexibility and I suspect a certain degree of good humor
on my part.
On everybody’s.
SS: Moreso me. When you do as much training with as many employees as I
do, if you can’t laugh at yourself at the potential absurdity of these
kind of changes…then you oughta stay home. You oughta stay home.
Tell me about your job. What would be a typical day for you as a city
manager?
SS: I had the best job in the city, and I still have the best job in the
city. I’ve not been fired yet. I was always known for getting out and
about. The week prior to this thing blowing up I was working on a street
crew — um, digging out a median — so that a fire truck I was on six
weeks ago could make the turn easier. Because I listened to everybody in
the back of the truck whine about the fact that they couldn’t go over
the median, so I said, “I can do that.” And someone said, “It’s not as
easy as you think it is, boss.” “Well, tell you what — put me on the
work site, let me see how complicated this can be.” Sure enough, it was
more complicated than I thought.
KD: But you got it fixed, didn’t you?
SS: Well, I was out there with the axe and shovel…
How’s it been with your family?
SS: My family’s been outstanding, just amazing. We were under stress,
knowing that this disclosure was coming in April — actually the end of
May.
This was part of the eight-page plan [that you and the mayor devised for
the transition].
SS: My wife and I started a plan 24 months ago.
Really? Is that part of the process with a couple?
SS: It’s part of the process of making sure that your wife doesn’t kill
you at the time you discuss all this. She had to go back to get some
good education to get a new career because we both knew that… if this
thing went real poor I could be unemployable, which is a fate that often
happens to transsexuals once they come out and tell their employer. So
she had to generate a good income.
What does she do?
SS: She takes ultrasounds of people’s hearts. So it’s taken a lot of
time and energy — she’s an extremely brilliant, passionate, exciting,
devoted person. The last six months is when she went out and started
doing her clinicals before she was licensed, and the last six months was
then my responsibility to start preparing my world in the same way she
was hers, and everything was working well until a reporter came into my
office and said, “Can we talk? We got word that you’re getting ready to
make a big announcement about your change in gender.” And all I could
think of was, “Houston, we’ve got a problem. We have got a problem.”
And it would have happened in May. The commissioners would have known by
then?
SS: We were trying to give them a week, possibly two. You don’t tell
people you’re a transsexual and expect that they’re not going to tell
somebody else. And when you tell commissioners … and hope that you’re
going to keep this secret contained … [That] was something we never
came to terms with — we assumed we’d do the best we could — it was
always the weak spot in the plan. Once you tell the elected officials,
could they keep the confidence and/or would they feel compelled to …
disclose it to the general community because [they] have concerns about
your mental stability if you’re going to be doing this — that was
always a concern as well, how would they react, because unfortunately
we’d had to give the test prior to the lesson, and you typically don’t
want to do that in life.
And they haven’t done too well on the test, have they?
SS: Each one of these people are my personal friends — we have all been
thrust in this situation. I’m still naïve enough to believe they can
do the right thing. I’m hopin’.
Have you talked to them since the hearing?
SS: Actually, there was some discussion about getting together for a
dinner with me and my wife.
Who was that?
SS: I won’t — these are people that are friends with one another, it’s
like, well, it’s not personal.
Let’s all sit around, have dinner.
KD: I threw you under the bus, but I still like ya.
SS: It’s nothing personal, business is business, let’s get on with life
here. But these are personal friends.
Like you have had dinner with them.
SS: I’ve been in their homes, I know their kids, I know what their dogs’
name is for heaven’s sakes — we’re a very close community, and if I
didn’t think that the city had the ability to right a wrong, I’d do like
many a city manager would, I’d put down my weapon and go find another
battle to fight, but I’ve got 17 years in this city. It is the city of
progress, the outpouring of support is consistent with my belief that I
know Largo is a great community.
It must have been tough during that whole Human Rights Ordinance
controversy. Were you feeling any amount of guilt that you couldn’t come
out and say, “I know what you’re talking about from personal
experience?”
SS: No, it wasn’t guilt. It was shame. I had an employee come into my
office. My office is a beautiful office. I have a nice $7,000 table that
whenever anyone puts a coffee cup on it I convey to them it’s a $7,000
table, they need to use a coaster. So coming into this very nice office
with this very big expensive table is very intimidating. So this
employee came into my office and was shaking, shaking. She said, “Can I
talk to you, Mr. Stanton?” She sat down at this $7,000 big table in this
beautiful office — going to speak to the city manager is the equivalent
of going to speak to the principal in high schoool, I guess, and she was
literally shaking in her chair. And she said, “Do you mind, and will I
get fired, if I go to the meeting tonight to tell the commission that
I’m not evil, even though I’m gay I’m not a bad person, I just want to
let them know I mow my lawn, I pay my taxes, I come to work every day
and I’m a good person. Will I be fired if I tell them that?” Knowing,
watching this person, sitting, shaking, how much courage it took to come
in my office, how much it took for her to do that, and there I sat
hiding behind the business suit, hoping that this person wouldn’t judge
me the way that people have judged me today, as deceptive and
[cowardly], by those people who screamed, “Jesus would fire him, and you
should too!”
What did you say to this person?
SS: I said, “Of course not.” You definitely need to feel comfortable
communicating that info to the commission, and you have our support, and
your job is not in danger. Whatever I can do to support you. And she’s
still with us, one of our best productive employees. Despite her sexual
orientation, she’s a good wholesome God-fearing loving person.
Maybe because of her sexual orientation.
SS: Probably irrespective of her sexual orientation — it wasn’t
relevant.
Maybe because of her ability to be open about it. Isn’t that one of the
arguments you’re making, that you’re going to be a better city manager
once you’re fully yourself?
SS; Again I analogize with having a real expensive car that’s only
operating on four out of the eight cylinders. If I can get the entire
engine all working in the same direction, I think this car can be a
better car, a high-performing car, and ultimately a better city manager.
I believed it, I still believe it, I’m confident city commission will do
the right thing, and if not life has other plans.
Are you going to stay married?
SS: It’s a real personal issue. I love my wife dearly, she’s been a real
trouper through all this. As I’ve stated, this is a wife’s worst
nightmare. That’s a very personal question, we both love each other
dearly, no matter what our marital status is anytime in the future,
we’re still going to be a mom and a dad to a real exciting, energized
little boy and we’re going to be partners in life, irrespective of what
the status of our marriage may or may not be.
Can I ask you another personal question?
SS: You can ask me anything you want. You’re not going to ask a bra size
like somebody else did?
I already heard that — B, right?
KD: I can’t believe you answered it.
SS: Yeah, I did, I don’t mind answering personal questions, but come on.
KD: The attorney and client have the same bra size, all right?
This question comes partly from the fact that I’m a gay man myself.
SS: I did not know that. You seem like a nice person.
Oh thank you. In spite of all that. Thank you. And they let me keep my
job, amazingly enough.
KD: Creative Loafing, the paper of progress.
Exactly. I think … a lot of people in the LGBT community have
questions about the T…
SS: You know, I didn’t even know what the LGB…P community was…
Until…
SS: Until I walked into [Karen's] office and her secretary said, “We do
the L…BTG people,” and I said, “Who are those people?”
Do you know they’ve added I and Q now? I didn’t realize the I. The Q I
knew, but I didn’t know the I.
KD: And some people say IQQ — it’s intersex, questioning and queer.
SS: Well I’m just getting used to the LG and the…
KD: BT.
SS: …BT thing.
Well, one of the assumptions both among straight and “G” people is that
someone who’s transgender is actually gay, and among some gay people
it’s… “Transgenders are buckling under, why don’t they just come out,
live as a gay man and avoid all this surgical stuff?”
SS: Yeah, I’ve heard that transsexuals are gay men in denial.
Right, so that the question is, are you sexually attracted to men, or to
women, or haven’t you decided yet?
SS: You know, I wish I was. I mean, it takes a real man to become a
woman.
I’ve heard that line somewhere.
SS: Gosh, I mean when someone is putting a needle in your face and
squeezing electricity through it [for electrolysis treatments] and… If
it was just a matter of me saying I’m gay, let’s get on with with life
– oh, that would have been so easy. I suspect if I had stood up in the
news conference and said I was gay, nobody would have given a darn. I
wish I was gay. It would have been so much easier. If it were so, I
wish, but no, I wish it were that easy.
So the more likely scenario — if you don’t remain married to your wife,
who is heterosexual — would be a lesbian relationship?
SS: Yeah, this is always a fascinating conversation because people do
seem to relate sexuality and sexual orientation with gender expressions,
and I’ve introspectively reflected on this in both an academic and a
personal way, and decided I have no idea. That is as irrelevant to me as
the surgery. People keep saying to me, “When are you going to have the
surgery?” I have no idea. It’s irrelevant. Who cares?
It’s not on a schedule or something? I mean, you have this planned,
right?
SS: It’s about a year but I’m not fixated about it. Some transsexuals
get the surgery, some don’t.
So it’s not a given that you would.
SS; Nothing’s a given. Yeah, I want to, but will I do it or not? I don’t
know. Will I be married to a guy someday or a girl? Jeez, I don’t know.
At this point, I’m just trying to pick up the pieces and move forward.
And sometimes it’s best not to answer all the questions because you
don’t know what the questions are. And God knows, only He knows the
answers. He hasn’t revealed all that to me, but in due time I’m
confident that He will let me know.
Do you belong to a church in the area? Or did you?
SS: You know… the one area I’m very protective of… is my faith. I
don’t talk about where I go to church because as soon as I do that
there’s going to be camera crews showing up one day. I try not to
discuss that. My faith was extremely relevant in order to stand up
before all those cameras and all those photographers and talk about such
a personal intimate topic. Where I go is something that’s extremely
private —- it’s the only question where I’ve said, I’m not going to
tell you where I go and what I believe. I have a close relationship with
my god.
Can I ask whether anyone at your church, your pastor has reached out to
you and given you support?
SS: I’ve got a close relationship with my god.
May I say I really hope it wasn’t one of those churches that was at the
hearing?
SS: What I’ve also not done is focus on who spilled the beans, cause
that stuff will just eat you up. I’m sure there was a reason for it to
be done now and not later. One of the things, I was just shocked, Karen
knows I’ve had a lot of tears with her over this thing, I didn’t realize
there was so many people out in this [LGBT] community. I didn’t realize
there were organizations that Karen’s a part of, and people in
Washington that are now focused, and the e-mails, I just did not know.
You’re suddenly getting support from all over the place, is that right?
SS: Oh, yeah, and in ways — I don’t know if I’m worthy to be part of
this, I’m just trying to be me, Lord, if you tell me I can do this, I
will. All these interviews, OK, I’m just a city manager trying to get
along here, and all of a sudden they want me to talk on Nightline and
all these newspaper magazines and all I’m trying to do is just be me.
KD: That’s one of many, many media requests. [My office is] now
scheduling all media requests and interviews. I think because city
manager is a high-profile professional manager, I think the fact that
Steve has been so good at his job –
Excellent reviews, pay raise.
KD: Just recently a big pay raise — you know, you don’t give somebody a
$10,000 pay raise if they’re not doing a good job, and any city manager
that has no conflict whatsoever with anybody is not doing their job. So
sure, some people don’t like him, some do like him, but he has moved the
city of Largo forward — it’s just remarkable. I deal with city
management all over the country… and without question the City of
Largo is one of the most professional in the country. The irony of all
this is just unbelievable — but to Steve’s credit it is not the
professionals who he supervised that have had the problems, it’s the
elected officials. And again even the elected officials have acted very
humanly, as absolutely would be anticipated when you hear this kind of
secret without the appropriate preparation — and the management team
had prepared for this and would have educated them in advance.
Even Mary Black?
KD: You know, even with education, some people choose to take a position
based on their belief system.
[She's not] using it as a political launching pad?
KD: Well, it worked for Ronda Storms. I don’t know, maybe it’ll work for
Mary Black.
Do you think that’s a fair assessment, though?
SS: You know, Mary’s a very principled person — one thing I’ll give
Commissioner Black credit for, she’s been the most consistent on this
issue.
True.
SS: Because initially when I talked to each of the commissioners
individually they were supportive, embracing.
When was that?
SS: That day prior to the news conference.
The time frame of the revelation again?
SS: Lorri Helfand, of the St. Petersburg Times, came to me on a Tuesday.
I after a while said, “Let me call your editors up.” They said we’ll
give you a day, we’ll give you 24 hours, we’ll run the story on
Thursday, as long as you meet with our reporter on Wednesday. Of course
after the reporter did her thing I needed to talk with city staff. I
started doing that, then the Times was concerned after I started talking
to department directors–
That they’d lose the story.
SS: They would lose the story, so they put it on the Internet around 3
in the afternoon, and within a half hour our entire parking lot was full
of trucks with great big sticks in the sky.
The Times didn’t warn you it was going to be on tampabay.com
before it went up? How did you find out?
SS: The camera trucks started coming into the parking lot.
That’s what tipped you off?
SS: We don’t miss a thing here in Largo. We looked out that window and
said, “Oh God…” I think someone in the communications and marketing
department knew they were going to put this on the Web.
So they didn’t live up to their end of the bargain?
SS: Well no, they didn’t, but I don’t blame them, you just don’t tell
someone you’re transsexual and expect that information to stay. Other
than disclosing the story, I think the Times has done a pretty good job
of trying to cover the issue. In the Clearwater office, when I went to
talk to [the managing editor] he must have had five or six people
apologetic for the Tampa Bay whatever it is.
tbt*.
SS: The “A Boy Named Sue” headline. When I first saw that, I thought it
was cute myself — ’cause when I was a kid I used to think the boy named
Susan was [me].
Had you already picked out the name “Susan”?
SS: No, my mom told me at a very early age. When the song came out,
there was an identification with that song — and all of a sudden
there’s my picture and “A Boy Named Sue.” I giggled at it at first –
but everybody else conveyed how upset they were — and it was done in a
disparaging, denigrating way, and it got like, my sense of humor is not
appropriate in this situation.
There are a couple of questions you had raised in the WMNF interview,
like, What do we call you? And what restrooms do you use?
SS: Yeah, at this point it’s … because I haven’t externally, even
though … let’s leave it there. To the city, that was a concern, and
they asked me, because of the sensitivity, don’t use the men’s room no
more, and don’t use the men’s locker room. So what we did is took
bathrooms that were girl on one side and boy on the other side and just
made them unisex — that’s what a lot of companies do. It’s just not a
problem.
KD: And as far as pronoun usage … right now he is presenting and
dressing as Steve, so the appropriate pronoun is the male pronoun he.
When he begins dressing full time 24/7 as Susan, then the appropriate
pronoun will be she. Before the City Commission did what it did, he was
going to being living as Susan on April 2. So again right now I think
it’s still in flux when Steve is going to begin living as Susan.
I have to tell you, we did a couple of trainings on Tuesday before the
City Commission meeting — they invited us to do some trainings for city
employees … and it was great, we had a whole spectrum of folks, we had
people who were 150 percent behind their city manager … to others who
were, this is somebody I work with every day, I relate to him as a guy,
I share things with him, and I relate to guys differently than I relate
to women. So when I said when Steve becomes Susan it’s still the same
person inside, the response was, “No, I don’t believe you. But I’m a
professional … and we’ll have to work out what the personal friendship
thing is, but I know that this is a workplace and I know how to be
professional and I will absolutely do that.” And that is the classic
example of when education is done right, transitions in the workplace
can work out. So that’s somebody who personally was still going through
that process of figuring out for himself what this all meant. This is
somebody who I’m guessing was a personal friend of Steve Stanton who’s
saying I don’t know how to relate now to Susan Stanton. And that’s real
human.
In some ways you are different.
SS: Oh, absolutely. And when you talk about people changing, we’re all
born with a core set of values that does not change, our likes our
dislikes, how we hold ourselves out as human beings does not change.
That week — a prior week — I was out with our fire guys — we were
literally on the top of the Tropicana dome, on the C ring, we were
rappelling off this thing, and it’s 300 feet down to the ground, and
someone tells me after I’ve gone up and down the line, why don’t you
bring up the rope and we’ll get it set for somebody? Oh, OK, so I start
walking and I start pulling this rope up — and I can’t pull the rope
up. I can get it six inches at a clip, but I don’t have that physical
strength anymore. So in that situation people would have to relate to me
differently. The need for interacting with the highly skilled people in
our department is not going to change, but you have to understand I
can’t do like I used to because I don’t have the physicality that I did
before. So in that sense it’s changed, but my values will not change and
that’s something that people have to come to terms with, which is
logical and understandable.
But there’s also a certain amount of loss you have to come to terms with
yourself, of the things that you used to be able to do. Is that
something that you think about sometimes?
SS: I don’t think I’m going to lose anything.
I mean in terms of that kind of strength — is that something you feel
like you’re going to miss?
SS: No, I never liked that full exertion anyway. Typically because of my
role in the organization, someone else did the dirty work anyway. I
physically can’t do it now. If anything, I try not to generalize about
the superiority of the feminine sex as opposed to the other one.
You mean the idea that while [you're] choosing the other one [you] must
feel it’s superior… you don’t want to give that impression?
SS: Putting aside the aspect of inferiority or superiority, the
transsexual individual is uniquely situated to have experiential growth
in both genders that neither gender can have unless you’ve been in both.
And it’s just been fascinating, this metamorphosis, it’s been
fascinating from an academic, introspective perspective — fascinating
–
It’s gotta be.
SS: I sound like Spock — it’s fascinating.
Well, no, you’re — I mean all these questions we’re having about
gender, what it means, you’re gonna live through what it means to you
viscerally to be a man to be a woman — and what it means to move
through society. You’ve done that already when you’ve cross-dressed.
SS: It’s not cross-dressing, it’s being yourself, it’s a matter of
gender identification.
The times you’ve transitioned — what’s the best verb to use when you’re
dressing as a woman?
SS: You’re not dressing as a woman, you’re presenting yourself, you’re
presenting your own identity, your gender.
When you’ve presented, if you… One of the things you were saying that
you came to terms with in that Harvard conference was the loss of power
as a white male. Have you experienced that loss of power when you’ve
been moving in the world as a woman, and said, “Whoa, I would never let
them get away with that if I were a man?”
SS: No, if anything, if you’re in the world of women people tend to buy
you drinks.
Has that happened to you?
SS: Oh, absolutely.. . The first time someone ever did that, I did what
any guy would do, I freaked out.
Really?
SS: Yeah, I mean, why’s this person walking up to me? Because you’re not
a guy, that’s why.
So then what? Did you let him buy you the drink?
SS: No, I scared him off. And I made him feel bad, and he had this look
of dejection on his face.
And he went away hating women again.
SS: Absolutely. And I thought about, jeez, why did I do that? Cause I
could remember women doin’ that to me. So there was a learning
opportunity there.
So have you had subsequent opportunity to accept a drink?
SS; Yeah, because it’s easier and more natural to do that if someone is
doing it for just an act of kindness and seeing a single woman by
themselves — absolutely.
So you must be a pretty attractive chick — men buying you drinks…
SS: I don’t know — it’s natural to me. Some people can do it easier
than others — I’ve got a small build and small hands and size
8-and-a-half foot — so most women are bigger than I am so it’s not a
problem.
[Karen laughing]
SS: What size shoe do you have?
KD: 8-and-a-half.
SS: Oh, OK, there you go, so we can share shoes.
KD: Wanna wear my flip flops?
SS: No, I hate flip flops.
KD: Of course you do…
Is he the highest-ranking official to do this?
KD: To publicly transition. There may have been people who transitioned
before [they took office]… but in government as far as we know he’s
the only city manager who has tried to transition on the job.
SS: I’m not aware of anybody on this level. Probably because smart
people realize that it could [lead to] this.
KD: And a lot of folks would take the easier road, and again I think
this speaks volumes about Steve’s character.
SS: Or stupidity.
KD: They would resign their position, transition, and then go try and
find something else — because it’s too painful, it’s too public, it’s
too high-profile.
SS: Which I talked about in my letter to employees. A while back I broke
my nose training with our SWAT team. We play hard, and you know I had
this machine gun, and they’re coming at me with this great big shield,
and there’s seven of them and one of me, and I have this very powerful
weapon that hurts when you get hit, so you don’t want to get hit if you
don’t have to. And they’re coming at me and I’m thinking if I can just
reload, and by the time I got done doing that, I’ve got seven people on
top of me and they broke my nose. And a couple of them said, “Why don’t
you give up?” and I said I can’t do that. I’m not one to lay down my
weapon just because it becomes difficult. If you knock me on my butt,
OK, but it’s not in my personal constitution to lay my weapon down, I
can’t do that, and that’s why we’re here today. I can’t walk away from a
job I love and a profession I’ve devoted so much time to. Knock me on my
butt and take my weapon away, I’ll go home, but I can’t walk away, it’s
not in my nature.
You know, the “lay my weapon down” image has other connotations.
SS: What connotation does it have? Educate me.
If you’re looking at masculine identity, penis as weapon, you’re laying
it down if you’re [cutting] it off.
SS: God, that’s weird.
Sorry.
SS: Oh, that’s so Freudian.
I know, but it’s there, right?
SS: Oh, God, I thought y’all died a long time ago. No, I don’t relate to
any Freudian psychology.
That’s not completely out of left field, it’s kind of …
KD: This is my weapon, this is my gun.
It’s not just Freudian, it’s about male force being equated with male
genitalia, so that — I mean, that’s one of the things you’re talking
about when you’re talking about fearing losing the power of being a
white male. For whatever reason, those associations are made — you
don’t have your weapon anymore.
KD: I think there’s like a military expression — a weapon is the
neutral, you know, bang-bang, and a gun is your male genitalia.
Really? There’s a distinction?
KD: This my gun, this is my weapon.
SS: Jeez, this is so far above me, I’ve never heard of–
KD: I don’t know, that’s what I get for marrying a Navy girl.
SS: This must be a GBLT thing.
That’s what all of us with those initials talk about all the time. See
what you’ve been missing?
SS: I know, I never thought I was as odd as I maybe am, with the weapon
and the gun and giving it up.
KD: Well, that will be for others to analyze.
Indeed it will. I imagine the gay press has been approaching you?
KD: I’ve done a number of interviews with the LGBT press. The answer is
yes, and GenderPAC has requested an interview with [Steve]. The National
Center for Transgender Equality has been great. As a matter of fact
their executive director is flying in tomorrow. What’s really funny is
this has become our full-time job 24/7 at both NCLR and the National
Center for Transgender Quality — this story, this case. I have two
phones — my office phone and my cell phone — I’m on one and the other
one rings. But It’s about public education, and again this is one of the
things about Steve that’s so admirable. Not only is he committed to
being true to himself, he’s committed to this process being about
something bigger than him. So he’s willing to speak out about deeply
intimate, deeply private details of his life [Steve cringes comically]
in the hope that it will help others in the future — and not every
client that we have is willing to do that.
SS: As a small kid I can remember waking up, thinking, “Am I bad?” You
know from an early age that you’re profoundly different. You create
victims, you create deception that people perceive when they don’t know
who you are because you don’t know who yourself is. So hopefully when
all this is done, to me the true test is when some small kid wakes up in
the middle of the night thinking at age 5 or 6, his parents will be able
to recognize, “Well then, maybe it’s this,” and maybe there’s a way of
dealing with that in a responsible fashion instead of finding out 10
minutes before a news conference, that… “Omigod you’ve gotta be
kidding!”
A lot of transgendered characters [have been surfacing in pop] culture
– were they speaking to you at all? Hedwig? Crying Game?
SS: Without sounding like a nerd, I don’t watch those things. I watch
C-Span and The History Channel. So all these shows that people talk
about I’ve never seen, I’ve never heard of these … All these popular
things — I didn’t know the BLGT group.
I can remember recognizing gay feelings back as far as I was 9. But
that’s about [feeling] attracted to the same sex. It’s not about
questioning your gender. So how does that realization come to you as a
child?
SS: Yeah, great question. One of the defining diagnostic necessities
when you’re diagnosed with gender disorder is early childhood
sensitivities to this, and when you’re young you know you’re different
you don’t even know how. When I was a kid I used to love going to the
candy store in my sister’s shoes. Why did I want to go in my … I have
no idea, but I knew when I wore my sister’s shoes it was right, it was
good, but I also knew how profoundly wrong it was. No matter the time of
year, I took ‘em off before I went into the candy store. I never told my
parents about it. As a small child I longed to find out what it was,
that’s why I asked my mom, when I was 7 or 8, what my name would have
been if I were a girl — this is a small kid asking this –and when she
said Susan it just kind of exploded in my head. So when I hear people
now having kids that they think are transgendered and they’re making
these very difficult parental choices, introducing drugs to postpone the
onset of puberty so they don’t have to do what I’ve done with this
electrolysis in your face and other parts of your body, which is very
painful, if you can spare some of this trauma, physical, mental,
emotional, societal, other families, this would be great. So I mean
hopefully, I don’t know what my future is in Largo, I hope I get my job
back, if not, God has a plan. If not, I’m pretty positive and pretty
confident that when all is said and done, when all this is behind us,
especially with all the press, maybe people will say that you can be
transsexual, you can be city manager of a large organization with
thousands of employees, with hundreds of millions of dollars, and you
can still be a productive member of society, and that’s OK. If I can
achieve that, all of this will be reflectively irrelevant and all worth
the journey.
Just one more question — about [Equality Florida Executive Director
Nadine Smith, arrested during the Largo City Commission hearing for
allegedly handing out flyers]: As a city manager, did you remember any
policy that prevented fliers from being handed out at public meetings?
SS: Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, typically — this is where I get
these cross loyalties — typically when we have a public gathering like
that, the issuance of fliers sometimes does develop confrontational
exchanges between people, and if they do fall on the ground, it sounds
absurd, but people are going to slip on them. We try not to encourage
people to do that type of thing — I don’t know the particular
circumstances, all those guys I trained with and they’re pretty
sophisticated in this area — I wasn’t briefed prior to and after, but
typically I had been involved in those decisions.
[Long pause]
KD: Is a flier –?
There’s some question as to whether she was actually handing them out.
KD: If somebody asks for a piece of paper–
And you give it to them, and then you ask the cop why, and the officer
does not respond, and instead gets rougher with you?
KD: Actually, as your attorney I’m going to ask you not to answer that
question.
SS: I’m right in the middle of this thing.
KD: I think this is best if he doesn’t comment on that particular
circumstance. I mean there are criminal charges against her, which
hopefully when the state attorney evaluates, the state attorney will
drop those charges and that’ll be that. But you know there are questions
about how that was all handled. He doesn’t have any personal knowledge
of that.
You were otherwise engaged.
SS: They acted appropriately — they escorted me out of the building, my
e-mail account was dropped. I was proud of everybody, without commenting
on the [Smith] situation.
KD: He was on the dais when the incident happened. He was not present
for any of that.
Are you the top dog? Or is the mayor your boss?
SS: In our organization, the mayor is the political leader of the
commission, but in terms of who gives direction to cops, etc, the city
manager is extremely influential.
More power than the mayor or the commission.
SS: I don’t want to say power — but ability to hire, appoint and direct
resources — I have, the mayor does not. I mean I’ve hired every
executive manager in that city except one [finance director].
Irrespective of my future, when I said I am Largo, I’ve hired everybody
and long after I’m gone, my philosophy, my values, my way of doing
certain things will live on in that organization in ways that other
managers can have a career of 25 or 30 years and never have an
experience like a Largo.
So our cover idea is kind of personally upsetting.
SS: Yeah, I love my city. I couldn’t endorse that. It’s a good
organization.
Steve Stanton’s story: ‘I can’t walk away, it’s not in my nature’: An
interview with Largo’s suddenly famous transsexual city..
This subject is not for everyone. However, IF you are someone who enjoys, or even loves !!! , seeing men turn into beautiful women, then read on.
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