Do You Like Me?

Denise E. Brogan-Kator spent much of her life learning how to earn a place in worlds that did not expect her. She survived a submarine emergency aboard the USS Grayback, built a successful career as an accountant and executive, married, and became the devoted parent of three children. By every measure she then understood, she had built a successful-and genuinely loved-life.

She was also carrying a truth she could no longer keep hidden.

When Denise began living openly as a transgender woman, the consequences reached far beyond her. Her marriage ended. A motion asked a court to terminate her parental rights. The ordinary acts of parenting, working, traveling, and belonging became matters other people believed they were entitled to judge.

Denise responded first by surviving, then by learning the law. Her path led through law school, a small practice serving LGBTQ+ clients, transgender advocacy, marriage-equality campaigns, the White House, and national leadership at Family Equality. She worked to secure recognition and protection for other families even as she struggled with fractures in her own.

Candid, self-questioning, and often funny, Do You Like Me? is not a simple story of transition or triumph. It is an account of the people Denise loved, the ways they loved and hurt one another, and the choices she made while trying to become more honest over time. At a moment when transgender people are increasingly reduced to political arguments, her memoir offers something more intimate: a life in full, with its love, contradictions, losses, and stubborn hope for belonging.