Melbourne,
Australia — A Melbourne man who regrets becoming
a woman has launched legal action against the surgeons
and medical centre that gave him a sex-change operation.
A County Court judge is
considering whether to extend a six-year limit on
litigation to allow British-born Alan Finch to sue Monash
Medical Centre's gender dysphoria clinic over the removal
of his testicles and penis and the construction of an
artificial vagina in 1988.
Finch, now an anti-sex
change activist who took his campaign public on national
television last year, claims that, far from being a man
trapped in the wrong body, he had in fact been clinically
described as displaying above-average masculinity before
the operation.
The neuropsychological
report made as part of the process to determine his
suitability for a sex change found he did not display
female gender identity but instead escaped into fantasy.
The findings were not made known to Finch until eight
years after he became a woman.
Finch, who runs a support
group called the Gender Identity Awareness Association,
claims he was misdiagnosed. He has had his
hormone-induced breasts removed and again lives as a man,
although without a penis.
In May, the Monash clinic
came under attack for its decision to begin hormonal
treatment on a 13-year-old girl identified only as "Alex"
in preparation for a sex-change operation she can have
only after she turns 18.
The treatment was allowed
by a Melbourne court after expert evidence.
The clinic has been
conducting sex-change operations since 1975 on patients
assessed as true transsexuals and after hormone treatment
lasting between 18 months and two years.
Finch's organisation
estimates that 5000 patients have been referred to the
clinic since it opened, with referrals continuing at the
rate of two or three a week.
Of these, the group
estimates that 4000 were approved for a sex-change
operation, although most did not complete the treatment.
Only about 500 to 600 had
changed sex surgically, with about 30 patients a year
still completing the process.
Finch underwent the
operation at the age of 21 because of what he now
describes as an identity crisis. But he told ABC TV's
Australian Story last year <http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2003/s934839.htm>
that the results had been disastrous, leading him into an
illegal marriage, another failed relationship with a man,
and finally a relationship with a woman who had urged him
to change back to a male.
"Anatomically, I was
never a woman," he said. "[The operation] is just
rearranging flesh, but the tissue that's used is still
male tissue."
International research
indicates that up to 20 per cent of sex-change patients
regret the operation.
"After discovering that
the removal of their sexual organs did nothing to address
their gender confusion these patients now have no way
back to their former selves," Finch's website says.
"Faced with the prospect
of living an isolated and lonely life on the outskirts of
society without any real possibility of marriage and
family, too many have found suicide their only remaining
option."
A 2001 report by the
Victorian Psychiatrist's Office reportedly expressed some
concerns at the Monash Centre's procedures, and a
confidential review was ordered last November.
This week Melbourne
County Court Judge Michael McInerney reserved his
judgement on an application by Finch to extend the
six-year limit to sue for negligence in wrongfully
diagnosing him as a person born a male but from an early
age exhibiting a female identity.
