When Jean Batronie announced her candidacy for the County Commission District 4 seat currently held by Ronda Storms, she made it clear she was transgendered, a man who had surgery to become a woman.
Batronie, who has no party affiliation, didn't want anyone to use that fact against her. Her campaign for the seat, which covers most of East Hillsborough including Brandon and Plant City, is about more than the 2002 surgery. Over seafood at Red Lobster, we talked about her motivation, her four children and 11 grandchildren and being trapped in a man's body.
Pull up a chair and join us.
ERNEST: What inspired you to get in this race?
JEAN: First of all, I never really imagined I would be taking this path. I always thought my direction was going to be someplace else. I was working at public access. I had my own television show, and yes, one of them was controversial. It was an adult-content show. It was an educational show about a different culture. After Ronda Storms and the county got on a tangent about White Chocolate, their whole idea was to get rid of anything out of the ordinary. I'm the type that I see if I'm being wronged, I'm going to fight for it. I fought it. I fought a year-long suspension (of my show) and it was parlayed into a five-year suspension. I went to the County Commission and took all the steps to fight the suspension and it fell on deaf ears. That was when I made the decision that this is nothing but corruption.
I'm told the show was about bondage.
It was the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadomasochism) culture. It's just a different culture. It's just something to enhance an interpersonal relationship. It's a very monogamous culture, but some people didn't understand it.
I presented it in a positive way on the show because there were a lot of people who were interested in it. In fact, it turned out we were the most watched show on public access. I would go down to Home Depot and have older couples come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed the show.
So your challenge to the suspension didn't work out. That's your motivation?
It was basically the spark that lit the fire, the pilot light. As I got into it, I saw what was going on. I've lived in Brandon for 20 years and I've seen how Brandon and our whole community has completely gone out of control with everything. Whenever I went to the County Commission, it fell on deaf ears. They didn't care what the community thought. I figured I want to make a difference in society, especially in our community because as far as I'm concerned, our community is being prostituted out to the highest bidder, and the highest bidders are all developers.
My new house sits on an old orange grove, so I'm part of that. But I would like to see growth managed better.
The growth and the out-of-control building is what I term a domino effect. It's affecting everything else. The school system can't keep up with all the kids coming in. Law enforcement cannot keep up with maintaining law and order because they're so undermanned. Our road system is completely out of date. As soon as they finish building a road, it's obsolete. If I have a five-pound bag of sugar and I try to put 10 pounds of sugar in it, it's going to break at the seams. That's what's happening to our community right now. Growth is important, but responsible growth using common sense; not building one subdivision on top of another and having no foresight for the roads.
Tell me about your family.
I've been married 36 years. I have four children, 11 grandchildren and all of my children live in Hillsborough County. My son who lives furthest away is in Lutz. I'm a hypnotist and I have been for 32 years.
For clinical purposes?
I help people in problem areas, weight-loss, smoking. I help people with stress management, relaxation. I help people feel better about themselves with more self-image and a positive attitude, which is very lacking in today's society. Nobody knows where they're going. So many of us are like ships without rudders.
Hypnosis is considered out of the ordinary, and it seems like you're not afraid to do things out of the ordinary.
My principles and my convictions are very strong. I don't know how to do anything else but to support what I believe in.
You're transgendered. Tell me about that conviction, that desire.
It's not a desire. You have to understand, I knew it was going to be brought up. In fact, I actually went to the County Commission and made the announcement at the BOCC meeting back in April when I first decided to run. I knew that some people would use that to try and throw mud on me. So I figured I would use it before they got a chance to get started. I'm not ashamed of it, it's a condition I was born with. This isn't something that anybody born this way chose.
When did you realize there were other people like you?
My mother took me to see The Christine Jorgensen Story. She was a man back in the early '50s who went to Sweden to have the transgendered surgery, but that was a very expensive proposition.
How was it telling your children?
None of my children knew until I started making the transition, and then I dealt with each child separately. One of the things that's always been important in our lives is family. My whole existence revolves around my family. We did everything as a family. We raised our children and we were the parents, but we were young and we grew up with them. It's gratifying now. My oldest daughter is 35 and my youngest son is 25 and all they talk about is, Remember when we did this, remember when we did that.
I can tell in your voice you're very proud of your children.
If God appeared to me today and said Jean, I'm going to let you go back to when you were born and you're going to be a woman and start Day 1 as a woman, I would have to say no.
You wouldn't do it?
If I did that, I would have never had my wife, I would have never had my children. There's no way I can do that. Understand, from a child all the way up until I finally made the decision to make the transition, not a night went by that I didn't pray that I would wake up as who I was supposed to be. My wife (Batronie is still married) and my children are my life, and in a sense that's part of why I'm running, too. We are the caretakers of our community for our children.
DESSERT: A postscript from Ernest
Growing up, Batronie, 58, was such a loner that her motorcycle became her best friend, and she still owns it. Although Batronie's campaign has put her in the public spotlight, she is protective of her family.
- Ernest Hooper also writes a column for the Tampa & State section of the St. Petersburg Times. Lunch With Ernest is edited for brevity and clarity. To suggest lunch partners, call Ernest at 226-3406 or e-mail hooper@sptimes.com
