Australia —
Alan Finch's decision at 19 to become a woman - a
decision supported by health-care professionals and his
mother - took him on a journey from which he has
painfully discovered there is no sure way back.
Mr Finch has spoken to
ABC TV's Australian Story <www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2003/s934839.htm>
in the hope that people considering gender reassignment
surgery will think fully about the procedure and then
proceed very, very carefully.
As an adolescent boy, Mr
Finch thought he might have been gay. Then he thought,
maybe not. Maybe he was "trapped" in the wrong body.
In his 20s he had his
penis and scrotum removed and a false vagina fashioned
from the penile skin and inserted into his body, and he
became a woman called Helen.
He got married illegally
and was later in another relationship that fell apart
when his male partner discovered Helen was born a boy.
Then he had a
relationship with a woman, who encouraged him to become a
man again.
"I knew with my whole
being that was what I wanted to do," Mr Finch, 36, of
Melbourne, said.
About five years ago, he
began taking male hormones, something he says now was "a
roller-coaster ride emotionally". He was angry at himself
for having been so gullible that he was sucked into the
fantasy that becoming a woman would solve his identity
crisis.
And he was angry with his
then-girlfriend. "I blamed her for having awakened this
in me, and I just pushed her away. And there was this
total confusion again wondering if I could function as a
man, let alone function as a man who has been mutilated
to this degree."
Like about 10 per cent of
people in Australia who have the operation (about 80 a
year in Sydney, Melbourne and on the Gold Coast), he was
desperately unhappy with the result.
Australian Transgender
Support Association Inc <www.atsaq.com>
president Gina Mather said there were between 48,000 and
50,000 transsexuals - most of them male to female - in
Australia. Not all had had surgery.
Mr Finch said:
"Anatomically, I was never a woman. [The surgery]
was creating a battleground within my own body. It's just
rearranging flesh, but the tissue that's used is still
male tissue. I was never able to have any orgasm or
sexual pleasure. Everything was fake about it, from top
to toe."
His psychiatrist Byron
Rigby said: "In the absence of much more adequate
counselling than I understand he received, the test
showed that he in fact - even in the presence of
oestrogen treatment - was well on the masculine side of
average."
Just how did Mr Finch end
up in the middle of this fiasco?
Dr Rigby said it began
with the lack of a positive father figure.
"[Alan] never had any positive role modelling.
The whole reason that he attempted to take refuge in
womanhood was that he simply couldn't learn from his
father how to be anything that he wanted to
be."
When he was 19, Mr Finch
migrated to Australia with his mother and sister.
It was a chance to begin
a new life - as a woman.
"My focus was to be the
best-looking woman I could be. I got a job, I was getting
attention from men. I felt powerful."
The final hurdle before
the surgery that would effectively castrate him was the
psychiatric test.
First time around, he
failed. Then he learned how to fudge the test and answer
the questions to put him into the female zone. The
operation got the go ahead.
Dr Rigby wants to know
how that happened.
"He's more masculine than
I am, if you like," he said.
"I would think a great
spotlight should be placed on this kind of surgery in
general, and this case in particular. I think it warrants
a full investigation at governmental level."
Mr Finch is looking at
the possibility of genital reconstruction to restore his
penis and is hoping to find a monogamous relationship -
with a woman.
Alan Finch's story, Boy Interrupted, will screen
on Australian Story, ABC TV, 8pm tomorrow.
<www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2003/s934839.htm>
