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The exact number of transgendered Canadians
is hard to estimate. |
The precise number of transgendered
Canadians is hard to pin down.
The medical establishment says that 1 in 30,000
adult males and 1 in 100,000 adult females seek
sex reassignment surgery. These numbers do not account
for those who may not seek sex reassignment surgery,
but question their gender identity. The prevalence
of transgendered people in society is much higher.
However, the true number remains a mystery...
Here are some of their stories.
Michelle
Duff
Michelle was once Mike - then
and still today she is the only Canadian to win
a world championship motorcycle Grand Prix.
In the eighties, Mike’s Canadian doctors refused
to recommend him for sex reassignment surgery. But
Mike was determined to become Michelle.
The fifth estate
first met Michelle in 1987, just after she returned
from a private sex change clinic in Belgium. Reporter
Hana Gartner told Michelle’s story just as
she was starting to live life as a woman. At the
time she had high hopes for the future.
Michelle Duff, seventeen years ago, when she
was first interviewed by the fifth estate.
Michelle Duff today.
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Michelle Duff: "I
don't want to spend the rest of my life alone. I am
female and I hope to have a partner and at this stage,
I hope it will be a male partner."
Seventeen years later, Michelle
sat down with Hana Gartner once again to reflect on
life after spending half of it as a man and the other
half as a woman.
Michelle Duff: "You
get a lot of rejection from people. You lose all your
friends and you may have to make totally new friends."
"I've often thought, if I could go back to being
a guy, I could probably live my life more comfortably.
I won't say more comfortably than I am now, but more
comfortable than I was before as a guy."
She has some advice for people
considering sex reassignment surgery.
Michelle Duff: "My
recommendation is you have to think about it very
carefully. If you can live the way you are, do so.
Because the change is not something that is taken
lightly."
Alan
Finch
Thirty-seven year-old Alan Finch lives in Melbourne,
Australia. He had sex reassignment surgery at twenty-one.
Alan Finch: "At eighteen
I started on hormones. I had breast implants not
long after. At the age of twenty-one, which is the
minimum legal age that you can have it done, I had
the genital amputation surgery, my penis and testicles
were amputed. This was supposedly done as a therapy
for my mental problems."
Alan became Helen Finch at 21.
Then decided he was a man after all.
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Alan became a woman named Helen.
The operation was a success; Helen even married.
But the marriage didn’t last. Neither Helen
nor her husband could deal with the fact that the
bride used to be a man.
At age 30, Alan stopped taking female sex hormones
and started living as a man again. Finch and other
former patients are now coming together to sue Australia’s
top gender clinic. They’re accusing their
doctors of misdiagnosis.
Alan Finch: "At
the end of the day the choice is with the man holding
the scalpel. Nobody's got a gun to his head and
is forcing him to do this. He's the one who makes
the ultimate choice. Now he better be sure he's
got it right."
Alan admits he desperately wanted
to become Helen, but says his doctors should not
have treated his psychiatric problems with surgery.
"Every hospital has at least one Jesus Christ
who wants to be crucified. Do we do it to him? No,
we don't. No matter how much he wants salvation."
Alan Finch: "I'm
not arguing that these people are not in pain. I'm
not arguing that they don't need relief. I've been
there...I know what it's like. Whether amputating
their body parts is the correct therapy is what
I'm questioning."
Aaron
Devor
British Columbia Sociologist Aaron Devor says most
people who have sex changes never look back.
He hasn’t…
Holly Devor wrote two books
about transgender.
Then she became Aaron.
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When Aaron was still Holly, she
wrote two books about transgender. After writing FTM:
Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society,
Devor had a personal realization.
Aaron Devor: "I came
to the end of that process and published the book.
After that, I started to think, you know what, I think
that's maybe my story too."
Devor has lived as Aaron for two
years now. It’s been a successful transition,
but he says he'll never leave Holly behind completely.
Aaron Devor: "There's
a whole variety of core elements that are part of
what makes a person male or female that are not affected
by a sex change. We don't have the technology to affect
people on that core level. However, if we're talking
about the look, the feel and the smell and the shape
of a body, we can change that quite successfully."
Hana Gartner: "It
almost sounds as if we are creating a third sex."
Aaron Devor: "In
some ways we are."
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