Australia - 39-year-old M2F gender-variant anti-spamming expert Michelle Sullivan heads back to UK for school reunion... [2009-07-04 Brisbane Times]

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/transgender-woman-heads-back-to-uk-for-school-reunion-20090704-d883.html

Transgender woman heads back to UK for school reunion

Chris Barrett

July 04, 2009



When Michelle Sullivan goes to her school reunion in the United Kingdom, it will be the first time her former schoolmates have seen her as a woman.

School reunions can be a nerve-racking experience for anyone.

So spare a thought for the 39-year-old Brisbane anti-spamming expert Michelle Sullivan, who will next week travel to her former home town in the English county of Norfolk to see her past schoolmates for the first time in more than two decades.

It will be the first time she sees them as a woman.

The transgender Griffith University technical specialist began her transition from male to female with a course of testosterone blockers and then hormones two years ago but to her old friends at West Flegg High School near the city of Great Yarmouth, she was just the young boy from the schoolyard.

"A lot of them have found out on Facebook," she said.

"They've seen photos but of course my transition has been across here. It's been very, very...different for them. They're all cool with it. I think some of them are just really, really intrigued more than anything. Nobody ever knew."

Regardless, there is still an overpowering feeling of trepidation about the long-awaited catch-up in the Old Dart next weekend.

"I'm actually terrified about the whole thing. I'm not scared as in running, screaming and shouting. I'm just nervous," she said.

"If you imagine getting dressed up as a woman and going out for the very first time publicly and on your own, that's comparable."

--

© 2009. Fairfax Digital

Rep of South Africa - Am I a he? Am I a she? Intersex Sally Gross (nee Selwyn Gross...) [2009-07-04 TheTimes.co.za]

http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Lifestyle/Article.aspx?id=1026760

Jul 04 2009
      
The quest to be one
Gender politics   



No time to choose: Funeka Soldaat, left, and Patrick Maseko, right, claim neither of them was consulted sufficiently before they underwent operations to engineer their identity



Solitary cat: Sally Gross was born to Jewish parents and later became a Catholic priest

Pictures: Araminta De Clermont


‘I asked the doctors why they couldn’t have waited until I was older to do the operation, so that I could decide’

‘Years later, my father complained that the stupid ritual circumciser should have known I was female’

Am I a he? Am I a she? Oliver Roberts speaks to three South Africans about the torment of achieving identity when you are both male and female.

Sally Gross has been many things in her life, including a revered political activist, a philosophy lecturer and a Catholic priest. She also spent time in the Israeli army.

Gross was born a man and still is; but she’s also a woman. At least, she decided to become a woman in the early ’90s. She went into hiding in the south of England to adapt to wearing dresses and makeup and turning right instead of left when visiting a public bathroom.

She didn’t have any surgery to change her sex, though — it wasn’t necessary. Gross doesn’t really have a gender. She is both. She is what’s commonly known as a “hermaphrodite”, though the preferred term is “intersexed”.

This condition — atypical sexual differentiation — occurs in about one in 50 people. These figures make it feasible that between 45000 and 90000 South Africans are intersexed. According to www.intersex.org.za, we have one of the highest occurrences of intersexed people in the world.

Gross could then add to her extraordinary list of experiences “has been man and woman”, but the truth is that Gross — who now works as the research and policy advisor for the Regional Land Claims Commission — has never felt she was either. Her life’s struggle has been to achieve humanness or, more correctly, a sense of someoneness. What we take for granted — our sex — is our basic identity and, though Gross most certainly exists, she could also be seen as a flicker of shadow in the murky back streets and alleys of convention; she’s an entity unknown, a trick of light that passes us by and makes us look twice.

“I’ve had a hell of life and, certainly, only a portion of it is about me being intersexed,” Gross tells me. “You’re looking for a label.”

I’m sitting in Gross’s home in Observatory, Cape Town. When I walk into it on this chilly Thursday evening, I immediately suspect it is the abode of a somewhat solitary intellect. Chairs are sunken from prolonged use, boxes full of papers chunk up the rooms and there are stacks of books everywhere. In Gross’s study is a computer where an online contest of the ancient Chinese board game “Go” is in progress, and two cats are scurrying about the place, tickling the wooden floors with their claws and leaping suddenly from open boxes.

I have just asked Gross, who is dressed in a black skirt and pale blue top, to tell me her story. Three hours later, having moved from her study into the lounge, Gross is reclined on her brown La-Z-Boy, shoes off, toes curled, eyes drooping with sleep, still talking about her life.

“I was born in Cape Town in 1953 to Jewish parents,” she tells me, earlier in the evening. “I don’t know that much about what actually happened when I was born, but it’s blindingly clear in retrospect that it caused somewhat of a fuss; there were questions immediately. It was evidently decided to assign me as male. This involved an attempt at circumcision on my eighth day, which proved to be problematic. I know this because it left a lot of scar tissue. There was clearly a degree of ambiguity.”

Gross’s circumcision took place before an assembled horde of relatives and parents’ friends.

“The difficulty and fumbling would have been seen by lots of people, and a hell of a mess was made of it. A few days later, a second attempt was made and a little bit more was hacked off to tidy up aesthetically. Years later, my father complained to me bitterly in an e-mail, saying that the stupid ritual circumciser should have known I was female.”

Gross has a kind of phallus, but almost all of its ‘length’ is inside her. She has a scrotum too, and two gonads that are not always descended. She is able to grow light facial hair. On her head is a crop of ash blonde hair, and she wears earrings and light lipstick. She also wears gold-rimmed, feminine glasses. Physically, she could easily pass as a woman which, in part, she is.

It is only Gross’s voice that might make you notice and follow the shadow down the alleyway. It is deep and deliberate, a bit like the way a voice sounds on television when it’s slowed down to protect the speaker’s identity. Except in Gross’s case, her tone does not conceal her, it exposes him.

Gross was raised as a boy named Selwyn (nicknamed Sally) and, while his childhood was a reasonably happy one, Gross describes it as “a lonely business”. He was gentle and isolated and, though unable to comprehend his condition, Gross remembers feeling obviously different.

“From a fairly early age, I had a sense that something was awry, but I didn’t really know; it seemed to bear on gender. I didn’t feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, but I certainly had a sense that something was different, but I didn’t have the foggiest idea.”

Gross’s parents, and even doctors, decided to almost ignore his ambiguity. Aged 10, Gross was hurt when he slipped down some stairs. A visit to the doctor resulted in a head-to-toe examination, from which the doctor concluded that “everything is okay, there’s just one thing, but don’t worry about it; just leave it”.

“Parents are capable of a great deal of self-deception,” says Gross. “I wasn’t brought up to be inhibited about my body; I used to strip down on the beach on holiday. As I grew up my assumption was that there was a range of the way bodies are. I assumed some were more well-endowed than others; I just thought I was an extreme of the range.”

Still unaware of his gender duality, Gross entered adolescence. Though he did not experience the hormonal turmoil of most his peers, he did begin to wonder about his sexuality; not because he felt attracted to other boys, but because he felt attracted to nothing. Gross is asexual.

“Asexuality is bloody frightening in adolescence. I wondered whether I was gay, or a transvestite, though I had no particular inclination to cross-dress; the thought of it gave me no pleasure.” Now Gross laughs at this, holding onto the arms of the chair and throwing her head back. Just then, I see Gross’s body briefly enveloped by its lurking masculinity. But it’s just a glimmer; seconds later, Gross is a lady again.

Earlier that day, I met with Funeka Soldaat, 48, and Patrick Maseko, 29, two intersexuals from Khayelitsha.

In contrast to Gross — whom you feel has a tentative grasp on her condition — Soldaat and, especially, Maseko, feel betrayed by doctors and even their own families.

In June 1982, on the advice of surgeons, a 21-year-old Soldaat — who has a vagina and grew up as a girl, but also has internal gonads — had surgery to remove her “penis”, which was probably just a large clitoris.

Before the operation, language barriers made it difficult for Soldaat to comprehend what the operation involved; she was handed a copy of Drum magazine and asked to flip through it and say which she was “interested” in — the men or the women.

“I always looked at the pictures of girls and the doctors said, ‘No, no, no — you have to look at this picture,’ and then they would point at the male,” says Soldaat. “I didn’t know what the issue was. When I woke up after the operation they said to me: ‘We have made you into a woman.’” She has severe scar tissue where her clitoris used to be.

Though tall and broad, Soldaat is inherently feminine. But, like Gross’ s voice, it’s Soldaat’s hands that tilt your perspective. They are strong and masculine, as if transplanted from a man who spent his life working a plough.

“I don’t like someone to emphasise the fact that I’m a woman,” she says. “I don’t want to be boxed. People say ‘You are a woman, you must wash clothes,’ and I’m like, ‘Piss off!’ It irritates me. Maybe I still don’t know if I’m a woman or a man. But I’m probably comfortable as a woman.”

Soldaat, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, is an activist for intersexuals and lesbians, conducting workshops for the Engender organisation and speaking publicly about the surgery performed on intersexuals. Though the medical attitude is far less gung-ho than two decades ago, surgery is still seen as the dominant “solution” for an intersexed person.

There are, however, many doctors in the country who are strongly opposed to what Gross describes as an “indescribable form of abuse”, especially when you consider creating a vagina requires several surgeries and repeated dilation of the artificial aperture as it tries to heal.

“It is always better not to have the surgery,” Soldaat says. “The tricky thing is that people believe that one must either be male or female. I believe I just had a big clitoris, not a penis, so why did they have to cut it?”

Maseko, though small and delicate- looking, appears completely masculine. He is deeply shy and seems folded into himself, both physically and emotionally. On the rare moment when he speaks, his faint tone is just a struggling echo in the stark halls of the community centre where we’re sitting.

I ask him whether he’s had any surgery. “Ha-ha... lots,” he replies. Maseko was born with an unusually large vagina and a tiny penis. His penis was removed a few weeks after birth.

“I never felt like a woman. I did man things, I even stood up when I urinated; so when I was 16 I had a penis and testicles created. But the penis doesn’t work, it cannot get stiff.”

Unlike Soldaat, who is still able to have a sex life, Maseko yearns for intimate companionship, but is physically unable.

“I asked the doctors why they couldn’t have waited until I was older to do the operation, so that I could decide; they said there was no time to wait, they had to do it immediately. That’s their excuse.”

Both Soldaat and Maseko have been for counselling, but no longer go. Maseko now lives on anti-depressants.

“A person becomes proud of themselves when they realise who they are,” says Soldaat. “But if you don’t really know who you are, what can you be proud of? I am a lesbian and a woman; but I feel sad for Patrick because he’s really stuck and there’s no way out. He lives on his own in a little shack and his mother won’t have anything to do with him.”

I ask Maseko if he believes in God. He says he goes to church every day, and I ask if that helps him. He laughs, plays awkwardly with his hands, looks down and says “... no.”

It was while Gross was studying English literature at university in the mid- ’70s that he sought God — his creator — for solace and understanding.

“Something overwhelmed me. I realised there was a gap in my life, and it was God-shaped,” she says. “My own confusions and personal struggles were all taken up and symbolised by the image of Christ crucified. Life, I saw, was in many ways a crucifixion, but resurrection symbolised suffering being redemptive, and showed there is hope beyond suffering.”

Gross went to the Roman Catholic Church for instruction, and was baptised in 1976. He kept his conversion a secret from his parents. And though his conversion was based on this redemptive revelation, Gross observes that the church was also the perfect, if not the only, place for an asexual to be free.

“In contrast to the world of traditional Judaism, there is a healthy respect for celibacy in the Catholic church,” she says. “There were roles for celibates, and it was valued; and I sure as hell was one of nature’s celibates.”

After living for a few years in Israel, primarily to escape apartheid police (he had strong ties with the ANC by this stage), Gross made contact with the English Dominicans in 1980 and went to the order in Blackfriars, Oxford, where he was ordained in 1987 and taught philosophy. After several more unsuccessful attempts to decipher his condition — one even via a kind of counselling hotline for transsexuals — Gross saw a gender counsellor.

Following a few sessions and an assessment of Gross’s testosterone levels (they were unusual for a ‘man’), it was suggested that Gross make the transition to become a woman.

Discussions with the church were, in the end, messy and futile (the superior suggested he be institutionalised), and he cut ties with the cloth. It was a few months later, aged 40, that he went into hiding in the south of England, and learnt how to become a woman. She returned to South Africa in 1999.

“It was quite scary initially because I didn’t know how to judge people’s reactions,” says Gross. “Then I realised it’s not my job to engage in an Oscar- winning act, I must just be myself... and then it was kind of okay.”

For all her acceptance, the one thing that remains socially insurmountable to Gross is her asexuality.

“In my ideal world, there would be forms of intimacy and unions that weren’t sexual,” she says. “Unfortunately, in our society, intimacy and being sexually active are inextricably tied up; and, if you’re not sexually active, you can find yourself being very lonely. I would like to share my life with someone, with people. The truth is, I think I need a check box that isn’t male or female. In a sane society there would be one, but in our society you’ve got to choose.”

I glance to my right at a shelf stacked with hundreds of classical music CDs. I scan the titles, listed alphabetically, and ask if she’s heard Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No 3: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs — three pieces about motherhood, war, Christ’s crucifixion and Mary’s agony as she watches her son die on the cross. Before she can answer, I spot it on the shelf, misplaced among Mahler and Mozart.

It’s very late and I suggest to Gross, who is almost dozing off, that we call it a night. She sighs and, with a last surge of energy, concludes her story.

“I went through so much pain and difficulty in adapting (to) the female role, that part of me is just being bloody-minded,” she says. “It’s been hellishly costly in personal terms, so I won’t give anyone the satisfaction of presenting me differently; but I see myself as human. I don’t perceive myself as gendered, I just want to be considered a person and accepted as this.”

-

For more information on intersexuality, visit www.intersex.org.za and www.engender.org.za

--

© 2008 AVUSA, Inc.

US - Books - "Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes..." [2009-07-05 New Scientist]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.700-review-sex-in-shades-of-grey.html

Review: Sex in shades of grey

05 July 2009 by Deborah Blum
Magazine issue 2715.

..........

Book information:

Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes by Gerald N. Callahan
Published by: Chicago Review Press
Price: $24.95

..........

"I AM satisfied with a wild free Nature," the psychologist-philosopher William James once wrote to a quarrelsome colleague. "You seem to me to cherish and pursue an Italian Garden, where all things are kept in separate compartments, and one must follow straight-ruled walks."

I've always admired the way James challenged what he perceived as scientific dogma. In this case, he raised a conundrum we still wrestle with today. Science, with its love of classification, seeks to impose a strict order on the world around us. Yet life on Earth is (forgive the pun) by nature tangled, messy and, in James's words, "everywhere gothic".

This Jamesian perspective pervades Gerald Callahan's smart and compassionate book. Callahan's argument arises from the fact that human sexuality spans a slippery biological spectrum. The stereotypical view of two sexes - me Tarzan, you Jane - is not only cartoonish, it limits our understanding and appreciation of our own biology.

   The stereotypical view of two sexes - me Tarzan, you Jane - limits understanding of our own biology

"We still see a gap where none exists," Callahan writes, "a mirage that shimmers over the hot land of sex." He argues instead that there is a range of sexual characteristics that stretches from the testosterone-inflated Tarzan to the womanly "perfection" of a stereotypical Jane and all the variations that lie in between. "In truth, we are all intersex," he concludes.

The standard model of human development is built on 46 chromosomes, including two that determine sex: XX for female, XY for male. But, as Callahan points out, not everyone ends up 46XX or 46XY.

Variations in sperm or egg, in the mixing of cells from mother and father and in the cell division that follows can all stir the genetic soup into alternative outcomes. The possibilities, Callahan writes, "are as grand and as varietal as the fragrances of flowers: 45X; 47XXX; 48XXXX; 49XXXXX; 47XYY; 47XXY; 48XXXY; 49XXXXY; and 49XXXYY." These variations are familiar to geneticists - the first on the list, for instance, is known as Turner's syndrome - but the general public is still stuck in a black and white, XX/XY world.

Much of Callahan's book is spent exploring our understanding of intersexuality, from the physicians of ancient Greece to today's neuroendocrinologists. He also weaves in the stories of people who live in the stretch between the classic male and female endpoints. "Truthfully, I think the most important thing I would like people to understand about me is that I am a person," Kailana, who is hermaphrodite, tells him in a diatribe of anger, grief and courage.

Callahan, an associate professor of immunology and the public understanding of science at Colorado State University, is an accomplished and versatile writer. His work has appeared in everything from Nature to the Southern Poetry Review. As a result, the book has an appealingly literary flair, even in the descriptions of complicated biology. Sometimes it verges on purple prose, as when he describes Los Angeles as a place of "limp palm trees curdling in the oily light", but for the most part the language is nicely polished.

Do I think the result is smooth enough to change the minds of those who prefer the standard model of sexuality? Not really. Such attitudes are grounded in habit and faith more than scientific logic. I hope, however, that it adds to the forces moving us toward a more generous perspective. We are all better off for appreciating, as James wrote long ago, that real life never does follow that straight-ruled path.

-

Deborah Blum < http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/users/dblum > is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Sex on the Brain: The biological differences between men and women (Penguin, 1998)

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© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Britain - Awards to researchers helping gender-variant people... [2009-07-05 GIRES]

http://www.gires.org.uk/awards.php
   
Latest Research Award

Details of previous years awards may be found here < http://www.gires.org.uk/pastawards.php >

Award 2009

“Endocrine Society Guidelines – 2009"
< http://www.gires.org.uk/medpros.php#endocrine >

The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) is most grateful to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) for allowing its Award for 2009 to be announced on 18 June 2009 at the Biennial WPATH Symposium < http://www.gires.org.uk/gires-wpath09/php > in Oslo, in the presence of HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway.

The Award is made in recognition of influential published work that will improve the lives of gender variant people.

The 2009 Award recognises the importance and excellence of the Endocrine Society “Guidelines on the Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons”. This document is co-sponsored by the European Society of Endocrinology (ESE), European Society of Pediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society (LWPES), and World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The guidelines cover, in a highly practical way, the treatment of both adult and adolescent transsexual persons.

The Guidelines include a clear recommendation that suppression of pubertal hormones should start when girls and boys first exhibit physical changes of puberty, but no earlier than Tanner stages 2-3. That treatment is already available in highly reputable centres in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and the USA. The guidelines should now provide a substantial impetus to improving treatment in other countries, such as the UK, which require these young people to endure inappropriate full pubertal development before any physical intervention is offered.

As often in previous years, distinguished members of WPATH were among the recipients of the 2009 Award, who comprise:

   • Wylie Hembree MD, Chair of the Task Force that developed the Guidelines
   • Peggy Cohen-Kettenis
   • Walter Meyer III
   • Vin Tangpricha
   • Henriette Delemarre-van de Waal
   • Louis Gooren
   • Norman Spack
   • Victor Montori

GIRES was delighted that the first four members of the Task Force named above were in Oslo to receive their Awards in person.

--

© 2009 GIRES
GIRES was delighted that the first four members of the Task Force named above were in Oslo to receive their Awards in person.

--

© 2009 GIRES

France - Obituary - Shi Pei Pu - Chinese M2F gender-variant opera singer inspired M. Butterfly... [2009-07-06 LA Times]

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-shi-pei-pu6-2009jul06,0,6520406.story?track=rss

Shi Pei Pu dies at 70; Chinese opera singer inspired M. Butterfly

Shi Pei Pu began an affair with Bernard Boursicot, telling Boursicot that he was a woman pretending to be a man. Boursicot took Shi at his word. They later went to prison in France for spying.

By T. Rees Shapiro

July 06, 2009

Philippe Bouchon / AFG/Getty Images

Bernard Boursicot, left, appears in court with Shi Pei Pu in Paris in 1986. Boursicot said that it was during the trial that he learned Shi’s true sex.

Shi Pei Pu, a Chinese operatic soprano who along with his French lover was convicted of espionage and whose complicated affair inspired the Tony Award-winning Broadway play "M. Butterfly" and the movie of the same title, has died. He was 70.

Shi died Tuesday in Paris. An aide confirmed Shi's death to Agence France-Presse.

Shi had been working as a librettist and soprano for the Beijing Opera and taught Chinese to diplomats' families when he met Bernard Boursicot in 1964 during a Christmas party at the home of a mutual associate. Boursicot, then a 20-year-old clerk working for the French Embassy in Beijing, later said the relationship started platonically, out of interest in forging "a good friendship with a Chinese person."

It turned romantic, with Shi going to extraordinary lengths to hide his sex. Shi told Boursicot that he was a woman and only pretending to be a man. Boursicot, who was not experienced in such things, took Shi at his word.

Boursicot soon left China for assignments that kept him away several years, but Shi reinforced their relationship by claiming to have given birth in Boursicot's absence to their child.

The child, a boy named Shi Du Du, was later revealed to be a Muslim minority Uighur sold by his mother to Shi.

After Boursicot returned to China in the late 1960s, secret police discovered his relationship with Shi. The police were alarmed that Shi was involved with a Westerner at a time when China was closed to much of the outside world.

Afraid for Shi's life, Boursicot said, he began passing French Embassy documents through Shi to a Chinese agent. Boursicot continued to spy for China while posted in Mongolia in the late 1970s and used Shi as an intermediary.

The stress of spying and the strained long-distance relationship led Boursicot to return to Paris, where he lived with another male lover. In 1982, he arranged for Shi and their "son," known as Bertrand, to emigrate on diplomatic visas. For a time, they and the other man lived together.

The arrangement attracted the attention of French counterespionage authorities, mostly because Shi was a foreign national living in the apartment of a foreign service employee. After an investigation, French police arrested Shi and Boursicot in 1983 on charges of espionage.

In 1986, they were convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. Boursicot later told the New York Times that only during the trial did he learn Shi's true sex. In tes- timony, Shi described how for years he had kept Boursicot literally in the dark -- in large part by having sex rarely, quickly and with the lights off.

Boursicot said he felt betrayed and attributed Shi's romantic modesty to Chinese tradition. Shi testified that he had never explicitly told Boursicot he had been female but never corrected the assumption either.

French President Francois Mitterrand pardoned Shi in 1987, after 11 months in prison.

Shi was born in 1938 in China's eastern Shandong province. After his conviction, he remained in Paris singing in minor opera productions. Survivors include his son and three grandchildren. Boursicot, now 64, kept in sporadic touch with Shi since their conviction and is recovering from a stroke at a nursing home in France, according to the New York Times.

The Broadway production "M. Butterfly," written by David Henry Hwang and the 1988 Tony Award winner for best play, re-creates the romantic tribulations of Shi and Boursicot. John Lithgow and later Anthony Hopkins portrayed a fictionalized Boursicot on stage, with actor B.D. Wong in the Shi role. The 1993 film, directed by David Cronenberg, starred Jeremy Irons and John Lone.

-

Shapiro writes for the Washington Post.

--

Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

Britain - £10m NHS bill as sex change operations soar... [2009-07-06 Daily Express]

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/112058/-10m-NHS-bill-as-sex-change-operations-soar

£10M NHS BILL AS SEX CHANGE OPERATIONS SOAR

Monday July 06, 2009

By Martyn Brown

RECORD numbers of people are having sex-change operations on the NHS, costing the taxpayer up to £10million.

More than 1,000 have had the surgery in the last decade, according to new figures obtained by the Daily Express.

The number has trebled since the procedure became a “right” 10 years ago.

Almost 80 per cent of the operations are to change a man into a woman.

But critics argue that sex-change surgery is a waste of valuable NHS resources when patients are suffering because of healthcare rationing, especially as Britain is in the grip of a major swine flu outbreak.

Sex changes on the NHS became a right in July 1999 after the Appeal Court recognised that those who believed they were born into the wrong body were suffering from a legitimate illness.

In 1999, the year sex changes became free, 49 people had the operation on the NHS in England.

But last year that figure had increased to 137, according to the latest figures from the NHS Information Centre.

Since 2005 between 135 and 145 people have had the surgery each year.

Transsexuals can also get psychotherapy and hormone replacement therapy on the NHS. Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers Alliance, said: “Patients with life-threatening conditions who are on waiting lists or who are not being given the latest medicines, will find it very unfair that the NHS prioritises sex change operations over saving lives.

“What’s even more incredible is that taxpayers’ money has then been used in some cases to reverse operations.
   
“This goes to show that the NHS is not meeting the priorities and expectations of patients. Reform is long overdue.”

One person who contacted the NHS said they were unable to get an X-ray appointment at a London hospital because staff were “too busy” handling sex change operations.

“I wanted an appointment but they said ‘No chance, all we are doing at the moment are sex changes on the NHS,’” he said. “I don’t believe so much NHS time should be taken up by this, especially to the detriment of other patients. Hospital staff are already struggling to cope as it is.”

Surgery for individual procedures during a patient’s sex change treatment can take up to 10 hours. The Department of Health said the procedure is a clinical need for some people.

It said: “Each case is based on a clinical decision. Each NHS trust has their own budget and will allocate money accordingly.”

Before the change in the law, if transsexuals could not afford the basic £10,000 cost of surgery, the local health authority had to decide if an operation would be funded. If applicants for grants were unsuccessful, they would have to go private. It is estimated at least 150 Britons had their sex-change operations privately last year, either abroad or in the UK.

The surgery can comprise more than one procedure in a single operation.

For a man wanting to become a woman, surgery involves the removal of male genitalia and the creation of female genitalia.

Breast enlargement is not normally carried out on the NHS, although some breast tissue is formed “naturally” as a result of hormone doses which are given during a sex change.

For a woman to become a man, the breasts, uterus and ovaries are removed and male genitalia is created.

A quarter of sex change operations take place at Charing Cross Hospital in central London.

--

©2006 Northern and Shell Media Publications.

Britain - Post.operative M2F gender variant Kate Craig-Wood (nee Robert Hardy Craig-Wood): 'I'm lucky, many men would never pass for a woman...' [2009-07-07 Daily Telegraph]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/5761265/Kate-Craig-Wood-Im-lucky-many-men-would-never--pass-for-a-woman.html

Tuesday 07 July 2009

LIFESTYLE

Kate Craig-Wood: 'I'm lucky, many men would never pass for a woman'
Award winning businesswoman Kate Craig-Wood talks about her extraordinary transition from Robert.

By Cassandra Jardine


Kate Craig-Wood Photo: TOM STOCKILL

As Kate Craig-Wood bends to grab something from the office photocopier she waves one wedge-heeled foot in the air. It's a feminine gesture that matches her expressive way of talking while waving her arms about so that her bracelet jangles. If I didn't know that four years ago she was Robert, a married man, I would never have guessed. "It's funny," she says, "I didn't have to try to behave in a more feminine way after I transitioned. It was like suddenly taking the brakes off. I could speak and move in a way that felt natural, which I never could before."

Her voice is no deeper than that of the other few women at Memset, the IT company Craig-Wood started with her brother, Nick, seven years ago – and for which Management Today has just named her one of the 35 most important businesswomen under the age of 35. Her clothes, if anything, are more feminine because "the novelty still hasn't worn off".

But there are, she admits, still a couple of clues to her former gender. Her hands are large for a woman of 5ft 8in, and her size 8 feet, with their painted nails, are a little broad. Perhaps her brow is a trifle narrow, too. But these are tiny points. Visually, she appears such a normal woman that no one passing her in the street would nudge their companion and titter, as they might when confronted by a 6 ft 3in vision with five o'clock stubble. "I'm lucky, I know," she says. "Many people don't dare transition because they know they would never pass for a woman."

She could easily get away with "going stealth", as it is called in the transgender community, and blending in with the crowd. "I know married transwomen who haven't even told their husbands about their gender transformation," she says. "They say they have had a hysterectomy."

Kate, 32, is open about her history in order to provide the role model that she never had as a confused teenager. "When I was growing up, there was no one I could relate to. Since I started speaking out, I have received hundreds of emails thanking me. Many parents are taking second jobs and remortgaging their homes because they are desperate to help children, who say they will kill themselves if they have to go through puberty in the wrong gender."

Kate comes across as comfortable with herself and the world. As "Robert", she was so consumed by self-loathing that, one day, she got into her car, left the seat belt off and drove at 100mph, hoping to hit a tree.

Nor is she critical of the muddled attitudes she encounters among "normal" – her word – men and women. In the past 10 years, Kate e_SEnD who has an MA in Biomedical Science – says that understanding has developed so rapidly that it is hard for society to keep up.

"Gender is not binary, as was thought, but a mosaic. Nor should it be confused with sexuality: sexuality is about who you fancy; gender is about who you are. It's innate, not acquired, and you cannot change it.

"Many doctors still say that gender dysphoria is about being gay, but not being able to deal with it. For some it may be. But for me it wasn't. I didn't become a woman in order to have sex with men, though I did start finding men attractive when I started taking female hormones. There are chromosomal reasons why some people have a male brain in a female body or vice versa. It may also have something to do with the womb being flooded with hormones during pregnancy."

According to the NHS, 20 in every 100,000 people have a gender identity that "conflicts with their visible sex characteristics," 80 per cent of whom are men who feel like women. Numbers are doubling every five years as it becomes more acceptable to admit to a disjunction between mind and body, and 6,000 people in the UK have undergone "corrective" surgery. Very few of them are women becoming men. "That may be because it is more socially acceptable for women to behave like men: the stereotypical butch lesbian. Women who take male hormones become passably male, with lower voices and facial hair. Transwomen are more visible."

From early childhood, Kate knew she was really a girl. "I hated football and wanted to spend time in my tree-house, which was clean and tidy and had a stove. I was so ashamed that I couldn't talk about it and became introverted. It was worse as I hit puberty. I envied my sister developing breasts while I was becoming a man. I tried dressing up in her clothes but when I looked in the mirror I saw a boy's face looking back at me. It was horrible."

Wretched though she was, there was an advantage to growing up as a boy. Her father - a technology entrepreneur – talked business to her and she was expected to be good at "boys' subjects", like maths. Early on, she knew she wanted to be a businesswoman, though she only achieved the latter part of that ambition at the age of 29, after nine years of marriage.

"I loved my wife deeply, but I feel terribly guilty at the pain I caused her," she explains.

She thought she could control her desire to be a woman by siphoning it into playing computer games as "Kate". The reverse was true. She became increasingly tortured. "When my wife said she wanted to have children, I knew I had to do something."

After the night when she tried to wrap herself around a tree, she knew the only alternatives were "kill or cure". The NHS could not help her. "I was told that I had to spend a year living as a woman with no treatment – not even laser-hair removal. It would have been ritual humiliation, so I started taking hormones and became androgenous. Then, in 2005, when facial feminising surgery became available I decided on gender correction. Until then I knew that even if I changed my gender, I would still look like a bloke. It's immensely traumatic, complex and risky. No sane person would do it unless they knew their body was wrong."

Changing her face as well as her body cost her £50,000. Sadly, her father had died before she became the person she had always believed herself to be, but her mother and siblings coped with the change. Nevertheless, she had a difficult time learning about being a woman. "I found myself in abusive relationships with men," she says; now she has fallen in love with a woman she is much happier, though she is still attracted to men. It amuses her to observe how she has become better at multitasking, and communicating. Her only sadness is that she cannot have children.

She has two remaining wishes: for more women to join her in IT in order to correct the gender balance; and for more children to be helped at an early stage over issues of gender. Through the charity Mermaid she campaigns for those who feel they are in the wrong body to be given hormones to delay puberty until they are 16. "Of the 1,000 people who say they have gender dysphoria each year, only 50 are children yet they all say they knew something was wrong in childhood. They should have to undergo the irreversible changes of puberty until they can make an informed choice, as is the practice in the US and most other European countries."

Alongside the awards on display at her office in Guildford, I notice driving manuals. Now she is hormonally a woman, does she have trouble parking? "No," she says, with a girlie laugh,"but I have never been any good at map reading."

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Related Article:

Award-winning female manager was born a man
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5734948/Award-winning-female-manager-was-born-a-man.html

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