This interview has not been tagged for content warnings yet.
Victoria Kolakowsi was born in 1961 in New York City and grew up in Brooklyn as the oldest of two kids. Victoria knew as a child that she was different and wished to be a girl, but was unable to communicate her feelings due to self-doubt and a lack of vocabulary.
Growing up and experiencing puberty was difficult for Victoria, as she pretended to be a man and forced herself to conform to a gender identity that she did not align with. However, during her first semester attending New College of Florida, she found a book in the college’s library that contained information about transsexualism, which equipped her with the words she needed to identify herself as transgender. Victoria proceeded to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Science in 1982 as a first-generation college student. In 1987, she earned a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University, and went from there to LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
On April 1, 1989, Victoria began her gender transition during her last semester of law school. She recalls that during these years, it was especially difficult for transgender people to access the medical services they needed to transition, as they often required extensive therapy and unrealistic diagnostic tests. Victoria lost many friends and experienced discrimination at the onset of her transition. After graduating from law school in 1989, she was prohibited from taking the bar exam, the justification being that her trans identity proved that she was not “sound of mind.” She responded with a lawsuit against the Louisiana State Bar Association, which she ended up winning.
Victoria moved to California in 1990 and, after working for a small company in Silicon Valley and for the State of California, she decided to apply for the position of administrative law judge at the California Department of Insurance. In 2010, after a couple years working in this position, Victoria was elected to Judge of the Alameda County Superior Court, making her the first openly transgender person to be elected to a judgeship in California and the first transgender person to serve as a trial court judge of general jurisdiction in the United States.
Victoria has also received a Master of Divinity Degree from the Pacific School of Religion. In 1997, Victoria wrote an essay for the Journal of Theology and Sexuality titled “Toward a Christian Ethical Response to Transsexual Persons” — the first positive portrayal of transgender people within the religious sphere to be published in a mainstream academic journal. A few years later, her essay was cited in a paper about sexuality published by the Anglican Church.
Victoria has received multiple awards and recognition throughout her career. In 2010, she received the Unity Award by the Minority Bar Coalition, a network of diverse bar associations dedicated to promoting diversity within the legal profession. In 2011, Victoria received the Susan B. Anthony Award by the National Women’s Political Caucus and was named an individual community grand marshal for San Francisco LGBT Pride.
Today, Victoria is happily married to Cynthia Laird, a journalist for the Bay Area Reporter. She’s also the California Council of Churches’ appointee to the California Access to Justice Commission. In her interview, she reflects on the importance of being yourself, and the paradox she reconciled for herself as a trans woman: “I felt so guilty because I wanted to be something different than myself. It’s like, no, that’s not the case. I’m not being something different than myself. I’m being myself.”
