By Jayce Tyler
Houston-native Dr. Kaden J. Stanley comes from a family that greatly values higher education. He spent his childhood cheering for his North Carolinian parents’ Atlantic Coast Conference basketball teams and dreamed of, one day, becoming a Duke Blue Devil himself. In the sixth grade, Stanley and his parents agreed that he would continue his schooling at a college preparatory academy. The school he would attend from sixth through twelfth grade was, as Stanley describes, southern Baptist and radically fundamentalist—Senator Ted Cruz is an alumnus. There, he quickly learned that religion can be weaponized and used to oppress. Yet, the school had an excellent academic reputation, which was promising for Stanley.
Stanley, who had always had an aversion to “girly” toys and clothing, decided to “play it safe” at his new school. “I discarded my Nike Air Jordans in favor of Sam and Libby flats with bows on them,” he explains. “I chose beauty makeovers over my Original NE Nintendo; I socialized with prom queens and dated football players. I overcompensated because I had to survive in a hostile context.”
Though he was experiencing conflicting feelings surrounding his gender identity, Stanley was unaware at the time that he was transgender—mostly, he says, because his only reference point was the “transvestites” on The Jerry Springer Show who threw chairs around the stage or broke up marriages. “All I had to go with was that I was ‘homosexual’ because I was attracted to girls,” Stanley explains. “Being bisexual or pansexual was not an option, so I couldn’t be attracted to boys, and people outside of the gender binary simply didn’t exist in that world.”
But Stanley soon realized that hiding from his queer identity was not sustainable. Once at college (his dream school, Duke University), he discovered his university’s LGBTQ resource center, visiting scholars of queer theory, sexuality studies, and a student organization called Gothic Queers. He passed out condoms and rainbow ribbons to raise awareness at the campus’ student center, and made his presence at the university known. He studied gay history, made friends living with HIV, and learned about trans identity. Yet, at this point, he was still identifying as a “butch lesbian.” “I had no idea what ‘transgender’ truly meant and that it applied to me,” Stanley says. “And that that was okay. As I went on to New York and Los Angeles to complete my master’s and doctorate degrees, I was able to own my queerness, but the baggage surrounding my gender identity proved more daunting to break through.”
Stanley began taking testosterone just before his 31st birthday. Then living in San Antonio, Texas, he found a therapist who helped him to put a name to his feelings surrounding gender. “I finally started to give myself permission to explore and process my thoughts and feelings about my location on the gender spectrum,” he says. “The shackles of my parochial school upbringing began to loosen more.”
Since socially and medically transitioning, Stanley has been determined to use his story for good. He now works as a psychologist specializing in transgender mental health. In 2015, he met fellow trans psychologist Dr. Keo-Meier and, during the summers of 2016 and 2017, Stanley and Keo-Meier co-facilitated Gender Journey, a therapy group for transgender teenagers in Houston.
Stanley now owns his own private practice, Emergent Pathways Psychotherapy. He manages the clinical aspects of the business, while his partner, Rich, handles client service requests, social media, and the company’s website. Stanley’s sister, Lisa, oversees medical billing and insurance claims for the business. “They’re both great trans allies and I couldn’t do it without them,” Stanley says.
Prior to opening Emergent Pathways in 2015, Stanley trained and worked in a university counseling center, predominantly with college-age adults. However, since opening his private practice, Stanley now sees tweens, teens, and adults of all ages, the majority of whom are LGBTQ. “I feel a profound sense of reward, purpose, and meaning in my clinical work with folks,” Stanley says. “It is an honor to bear witness to their stories and to be a safe space for them to work through their pain and struggle to find solutions that work for them.”
“My motivation has become the trans youth who are feeling alone in their suicidal thoughts, the Black trans women who are being murdered at an alarming rate, the trans guy who wants to stand up and pee in a restroom that corresponds with his gender identity,” Stanley adds. “We are at a cultural tipping point yet have so much further to go when it comes to trans inclusivity.”
