One of the oldest transgender women in America has opened up about the challenge of accepting herself after hiding behind a facade of success for decades.
Stephanie Haskins, 76, built a career to become a renowned veteran newscaster as she quietly suffered through nights of excessive drinking and taking pills to numb her pain.
“I wondered what it would be like to do what I’ve been thinking about most of my life,” she said. “I was just waiting to die.”
After a painful transition period in which she underwent several invasive surgeries and became estranged from her family, Haskins has come to the other side to tell her story and urge other older trans people that they too can “start from scratch.”
Haskins is the subject of a new documentary, “Never Too Late?” by Emmy Award-winning producer Joyce Mitchell, premiering June 21 at Sacramento’s B Street Theater.
Stephanie Haskins, 76, is one of the oldest known people to have sex reassignment surgery
Mitchell, who used to work for Haskins, told DailyMail.com that she was amazed at her old boss’s courage.
“She contacted me on Facebook Messenger and said, ‘I’m a woman!'” Michells said. “We had dinner and I looked at her, and I said, ‘Hey, we’re both TV people, let’s document this journey’…she’s a very compelling character.”
That journey began last year when Haskins became one of the oldest people in the United States to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
But it came after a decades-long battle with her identity, which first began when she discovered she was gay at age 13.
Despite being “miserable” for years due to her inner turmoil, she insists there was no indication she would later become transgender.
“I didn’t play with dolls, I didn’t dress up, I wasn’t really into makeup… but I was never comfortable with myself,” she said.
“I never saw myself as a viable male person.”
Anxious about her identity while appearing as the happy family man “Steve Haskins,” she admitted that she would often be “angry that I woke up” after a night of booze and drugs.
Years after retiring from a successful career in news, Stephanie said she started her long journey just before the pandemic, on Valentine’s Day in 2020.
Throughout her life as a man, Haskins said she “never saw myself as a viable male person”
Before her transition, Stephanie lived the first seven decades of her life as ‘Steve Haskins’
Then she first started her transition by undergoing hormone treatment. The results were almost instant – and the first thing to disappear was her wrinkles.
Haskins declined to reveal how much money her transition cost, but said more surgeries are on her list, including regular hair loss electrolysis and fat removal.
While her routine of hormone patches, exercise, and cosmetic surgeries is exhausting both financially and physically, she insists the struggle is worth it.
“I’m never going back to who I was,” she said. And I’m not going to stop being who I am.
“I will not stop speaking out as a radical feminist, I will not stop doing what I can to help other transgender people make that transformation.
“When you live behind a mask for so many years, and you feel such an enormous amount of guilt and fear, and you feel like you’re all alone, that no one can understand where you’re coming from.”
While internally suffering from her identity, Stephanie rose through a decades-long career in newscast rankings for several stations
Before coming out as transgender, Haskins says she drank to excess and took pills before ‘getting angry that I woke up’ in the morning
In the documentary, Haskins speaks right after undergoing her biggest surgery to date: a vaginoplasty to medically create a vagina.
And she’s been asked what ‘Steve’ would say if he saw her today.
In tears, she said she felt like her former self would say, “I’m incredibly proud of you, and I’m so glad you thought my body and our souls are identical.”
Issues surrounding transgender people have become a controversial topic in recent years. And with the rise of “culture wars” debates, there has been criticism that the movement is promoting extreme, irreversible surgeries and forcing medical transition on minors.
But Stephanie addressed the backlash in her documentary, saying, “I think it’s important for people to know we’re not body mutilators, we’re not perverts.
“We’re no different from who they are, who their relatives are, who their children are, we’re just a little bit different.
“If you know superficially that I’m a transgender woman, then you know how much I’ve given up for it, how much I’ve suffered, and by God, you better respect me enough to call me by my name.”
But Haskins said one of the most heartbreaking aspects of her journey was the struggle to come out to her ex-wife and daughter.
She declined to go into details, saying their reaction was “very painful” and that she was “going through a tough time, as many transgender women do.”
She added that coming out as transgender blindsided her family and that she “broke their hearts” when she told them the news.
After her vaginoplasty (pictured), Stephanie said her former self would be ‘incredibly proud’ of her journey
Despite insisting she was “willing to start all over again,” many who knew her as “Steve” were stunned to learn of her late transition.
The documentary about Haskins’ extraordinary story, ‘Never Too Late’, premieres June 21 at the B Street Theater in Sacramento.