"We could call you Maddy or Dommy," Boylan said one of her sons suggested. "Dommy didn't stick but Maddy did."
Since then, Jennifer has been known as Maddy within her home.
Such awkward situations provided the basis for Boylan's speech Monday night to a packed crowd in Filene Auditorium. A self-described storyteller and an English professor at Colby College, Boylan has spoken about her experiences on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, the Today Show and 48 Hours. During her discussion, she occasionally read from her memoir, "She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders," and recounted the impact that being transgendered had on her family.
Being a transgendered woman caused some problems with her wife, with whom she has two sons, but Boylan said they lead a "happy life."
"She chose to stay with me and accept me as a woman and I chose to stay with her and accept her as a hetero[sexual]," Boylan said. "We have a celibate marriage and that's really sad. We miss sex. There are days when we both ache and feel really lonely because we don't have that physical relationship. I would never advocate a life without sex to anybody but when you're 48, it's slightly less of an inconceivable tragedy than it is when you're 20."
Her sons, who were four and six years old when she began the process of physically becoming a woman, have also adapted to their new family dynamic.
"The boys are fine. I can tell you thus far, there have been no particular problems in their lives at all from having a transgendered parent. It wasn't like one day I waltzed in there in a prom dress and said now my name is Tiffany Chiffon," she said.
"I can't tell you that there will be no consequences of this in their future lives," she added later.
Even her mother, a "conservative, religious, Republican woman" was able to come to terms with her daughter's revelation.
"Halfway through she started crying and said, 'I will never turn my back on my child,'" Boylan said.
She also said that even though members of her "little right-wing rural town in Maine" have accepted her as a transgendered woman, there is still a way to go in America before these gender issues are fully accepted and understood.
The emotional challenges of her transition continue to affect her life. For example, while reading one particularly poignant passage of her memoir that described the moments after her sex-change operation, her eyes began to water.
"I can't tell you how many times I've read that particular passage and once in a while it's like it happened yesterday," she said. "There's a reason transgendered stuff needs someone to come talk about it: it's really confusing."
Her ultimate goal, she said, was for there to be a time when a transgendered speaker in a college like Dartmouth wouldn't attract a crowd because the issue would be widely accepted and commonplace.
Despite the nature of her message, Boylan cracked jokes, sang and poked fun at Colby, Dartmouth, the state of Texas and herself.
With Homecoming approaching, she also offered a suggestion for a new Dartmouth mascot.
"How about the fighting transsexuals? It's not too late to go with the fighting transsexuals," she said.
After spotting a student in the audience dressed in a Colby sweatshirt, she began to sing Colby's alma mater and remarked that it sounded very similar to "O Canada."
"That's the difference between Dartmouth and Colby; Dartmouth can afford their own song," she said.
