Melbourne,
Australia — Yesterday afternoon, Melbourne time,
a great gentleman peacefully departed this life.
Dr Herbert Bower was 89
years old and, while his mind retained its brilliance,
his body finally failed him. He died quietly at home
after enjoying the pleasures of friendship and family on
a beautiful day that was surely an early harbinger of
Spring.
Herbert devoted near half
a century of professional life to the care and guidance
of people living with transsexualism. He was a devotee of
Hirschfeld and Benjamin, always convinced of the somatic
nature of transsexualism, and dismissive of those who
regarded us simply as deluded deviants. He held fast to
the notion that the essential element of the diagnosis of
transsexualism is the overwhelming desire on the affected
individual's part to bring the external phenotype into
harmony with their brain by all reasonable means
available, including hormone therapy and sex affirmation
surgery.
In more recent years
Herbert received, with great excitement, each revelation
of science as to the sexually dimorphic nature of the
human brain and its relationship to transsexualism while
his confidence in a biological explanation became, at the
same time, ever more justified.
He understood, better
than anyone, how important it was for our eventual
acceptance in the wider community that people recognise
we who live with transsexualism are simply born this
way.
In 2001, Herbert gave
evidence to the Anti-Discrimination List of VCAT that
transsexualism is not a mental disease but a biological
condition of the brain which alters the person's
psychological processes so they have a deeply-held
belief, despite the evidence of their body's external
anatomy to the contrary, that they are a person of the
opposite sex. The Tribunal accepted this to be the
case.
In the months leading up
to his death he continued his pursuit of knowledge into
this unusual phenomenon of human sexual formation by
encouraging a joint research project between Professor
Vincent Harley of the Prince Henry's Institute in
Melbourne and Professor Eric Vilain of UCLA. Early
reports of significant genetic keys for gender identity
being located on chromosomes other than the X and Y gave
further justification for his unvarying stance on issues
of aetiology.
