It seems safe to say few of us give our
gender a second thought. Doctors exclaim, "It's
a girl," and the rest is a matter of organs,
clothing facial hair, or lack of it. But for two
in every 100,000 people, the gender they are
born with is a horrible mistake, a nasty joke
played by nature.
As a girl, Mark was revolted by his female
body - he was convinced he was really a boy. He
kept his thoughts to himself, aware that people
would think him crazy. Moreover, he was still
confused, being attracted to girls on the one
hand but drawn to the male body on the
other.
Ed, likewise, couldn't relate to anyone when
he was growing up.
"I didn't think there
was a difference between me and boys until I
started growing breasts, which freaked me out.
After getting my periods, everything went
downhill. I couldn't express my feelings. No one
even mentioned the word 'lesbians' where I
lived. I was 20 when a doctor told me I might be
a transsexual".
There are few official statistics available
on transsexuality and fewer still on
female-to-males, or "FTMs" as they are called.
Even in America, at the clinic of Dr Don Laub, a
clinic which specialises in phalloplasty (an
operation which creates a penis out of skin and
nerve tissues taken from the forearm) and which
sees more FTMs than anywhere else in the United
States, figures are hard to come by. The most
reliable estimates indicate that there are
approximately 5,000 post-operative transsexuals
living in America. In Australia the figure is
probably close to 1,000.
In psychiatry textbooks, transsexuality is
described as a disorder that causes people to
seek to change their sex either by surgery or
through hormones. A decade ago, the figures
showed that for every four gender dysphoric men
who wanted to become women, there was one woman
who wanted to go in the opposite direction.
These days, experts agree the ratio is
equal.
Mainstream literature, however, tends to
focus on the transition from male to female
through familiar celebrities such a Martina
Navratilova's former tennis coach, Renee
Richards. Throughout history, there are stories,
hundreds of them, of women who have dressed and
passed as men: writers like George Sand,
adventurers like Isabelle Eberhardt. But since
the Forties, when technology made actual sex
change possible, the enduring image of
transsexuality has been that of 185cm "women" in
gaudy clothes, of flamboyance, drag balls and a
good time. In short, the male experience. The
women who become men rate only a footnote in the
text, in much the same way lesbians so often
remain in the public shadow of gay men.
If there is little protest from the FTM
community, it may be because most don't want to
be visible. The goal is to become the gender
they think they should be and lead as normal a
life as possible. It is not just the fear of
being found out, although that is a constant
worry, but the belief their former life has
nothing to do with what they are now. As many
scholars of gender observe, once male signatures
like a beard are in place, few people question
whether a man is really a man. Judy van Maasdam,
explains, "Female to males are not as
recognisable as male to females. They can blend
in."
Ed bears out van Maasdam's theory. At 48, he
is a short, stocky man with a thinning frizz of
close-cropped hair, sideburns and a moustache,
wearing a grey suit, white shirt and a tie that
matches the handkerchief in his breast pocket.
He worked in the construction industry until an
accident forced him into a mid-life career
change and he is now training as a chef.
Ed describes himself as "a little macho" but
says he has mellowed out in his middle age. I
ask what his life was life when he was female.
"I was never female," he says firmly. "I was
just born that gender."
Ed says he knew early on that he was just not
like other girls. From childhood, he rejected
traditional female roles - playing with dolls,
wearing dresses - for male activities like
fighting, fishing and hunting. He would dress in
pants, slick his long hair back in an
approximation of male style and hang out with
boys. The onset of puberty dismayed him.
"My sister took
femininity in her stride," he says. "We were
like day and night: I was aggressive, she was
very timid. I knew I didn't fit in with the
group of girls. I had crushes on girls, a lot of
crushes, and I felt they were my
friends."
Ed says he did try to be "normal". He had a
brief flirtation with a boy but when his father
found out, he was severely beaten. This, he
says, put him off the idea of "going
straight".
Feeling confused, he withdrew from society,
spiralling into depression, believing that no
one else in the world was like him. For a while,
Ed thought he could live as a lesbian - after
all, he was attracted to women. At 18, he had a
girlfriend and hung out the butch-dyke
community, but the feeling of being off-kilter
would not go away. At 20, a doctor ran some
chromosome tests on him and found he had more
than his share of male chromosomes. That was
when he first heard the word "transsexual". It
came as a relief to know his condition had a
name.
Ed was dressing like a man but says he
occasionally cross-dressed in both directions.
At one point, working in a post office, he wore
long, dangly earrings and the uniform of a male
worker. "I asked for it and they allowed it," he
says. After starting a program of hormone shots,
he decided to drop everything female from his
life. He says he now plays all the traditional
"male" roles, from demanding his wife cook him
breakfast to seeing himself as the breadwinner
of the household.
Hormone shots - the first step in gender
reassignment - changes the body in dramatic
ways. Shots of Depo-Testosterone result in
facial hair growth and a restructuring of body
fat - less waist, more bulk. It hardens the
fingernails, deepens the voice and sends sex
drives up the wall. Unfortunately, say its
users, it also leads to baldness: many mourn the
loss of formerly thick hair. According to all
reports, testosterone shots can provide quite a
"high". "It's a rush," says one transsexual,
Martin, who hid in his apartment for a year
waiting for the time when he could emerge as a
man.
At this point, life becomes even more
complicated. Take Ed, who had been living within
a lesbian relationship. His girlfriend did not
want to live with a man but he was about to
become one. Family and friends also had to be
told. And what about future relationships? Men's
toilets? Dressing rooms?
Ed's nephews and nieces refer to him as
"Uncle Ed" and his mother and father have become
used to the idea. His girlfriend left him at
first, then came back and they are now
"married". The mates he's made in the
construction industry, where he had worked after
the hormone shots know him as a man. He says
some were a little suspicious that he might be
gay.
Other transsexuals have mixed experiences.
Mark's father has been "very insulting" and
still will not talk to him; the rest of his
family have copied, although at one point they
would make him visit them after dark in case he
was spotted by the neighbours. Mark, like most
FTMs, opt for male toilets, using the
cubicles.
Almost all mention the loss of a female
community. John says his decision to become a
man has meant exile from the feminists and
lesbians he knew.
"It's perceived as
'becoming the enemy', and people think you
should be able to live as a strong, butch
woman," he says. "But the lesbians who think
like that have never known a transsexual. When
they do get to know one, they will realise that
this is not a butch woman they're looking at.
This is a man."
There are no formal assessment procedures for
FTM surgery in Australia. However, it is
recommended that those interested in FTM surgery
consult psychiatrists, endocrinologists, social
workers and relevant surgeons, so they are fully
briefed on what is involved. The surgery is
expensive - to get the works (a mastectomy,
hysterectomy and a phalloplasty) can cost
thousands of dollars (Medicare rebates are
available for about half of procedural costs in
some cases).
One of the big quandaries for FTMs is whether
to get a penis or not. Some feel that to be male
you must have it, while others think the benefit
is entirely psychological since a surgically
created organ cannot fully replicate the real
thing.
The process is painful and, if anything goes
wrong, the results can be frightening. Martin
who had a phalloplasty, developed blood clots
below his knees. He now walks with splints on
his legs and is bringing a lawsuit against the
hospital. However, he has a penis and to him it
was worth it. "I
don't have a moment's regret," he says stoutly.
He speculates that "many" transsexual men
experience "minor" problems after surgery. For
instance, they have the urethra in their new
penis opened up again and again because of
hair-follicle infections.
A less drastic step is metoidioplasty, in
which a testosterone enlarged clitoris is shaped
into a small penis, and the labia majora
sculptured into a scrotum. It's not much use in
penetration, but looks more male than a vagina.
This is the operation Ed is working towards;
when asked why, he tells how he once tried to
get into the Freemasons. He got as far as the
final stage when he was asked to undress. When
he refused, they ripped his pants off and there
he was. He laughs at the story, but to him these
things - a penis, Freemasons' membership - are
important male status symbols. Next time, he
wants to pass the test.
To penis advocates, metoidioplasty is a waste
of time.
"As soon as I knew
phalloplasty was available, I wanted to do it,"
says Martin. "A lot of FTMs don't want to do it
and, for me, that calls into question their
motives. Are they really gender dysphoric? To
me, it's black and white."
However, another transsexual, John thinks
that aside from the cost, penises are overrated.
He uses a prosthetic device, and reports his sex
life is thriving.
At the University of Chicago, Dr Bernice
Hausman has been researching the relationship
between transsexuality and technology for a
forthcoming book, Changing Sex. She is
one of the few people who question the value of
sex-change surgery, saying the availability of
new technology has created a situation where a
psychiatric disorder is treated with surgery.
Although she is wary of sounding judgmental
Hausman believes transsexuality is rooted in
feelings of alienation.
"In reading the sense
the person doesn't feel he can organise his
desires to fit with his perception of himself,"
she says. "Perhaps he can't make a living the
way he wants to, he's shy or thin and that
doesn't fit the image of the man he wants to be.
Reinventing himself as someone else is a way of
producing an identity that allows him to feel
the way he is."
While transsexuals believe they are living
proof that biology is not destiny, some
feminists, like Hausman, say they are simply
reacting in an extreme way against the rigid
conformity of gender roles. And occasionally, it
can sound that way. "I knew I was a boy," says
Ed. "I could fight, my sister couldn't; I could
fire a gun, she nearly blew her head off when
she tried to." Mark's "proof" he was meant to be
male started in kindergarten: "I wanted to play
with blocks: that wasn't allowed for girls."
John, however, says he grew up in a liberal
household where boys and girls were not forced
to conform. Gender dysphoria, he says, has very
real symptoms. He is adamant his desire to be
male had northing to do with any lack of
opportunities he had as a female.
The men interviewed for this article say
without hesitation that sex change has made
their lives better. Do they have any qualms
about what they did? No. Do they feel nostalgia
for their other life? No. Are they happier?
Maybe. Ed says there is "nothing glorious" about
his life. Mark says he has suffered from
depression during his transition and admits that
having an operation and hormone shots is not a
panacea for everything. If he had not been able
to go through surgery and attain a man's body,
he says he would have lived a much unhappier
life. He is sure of it. "A silent life," he
says. "Who knows? Maybe I would have gone
crazy."
