How All This Came To Be

January 21, 2005

Nine days before we leave for Scottsdale, Eleven days before my surgery date of February 1^st, 2005. The days appear to pass faster as my date with Dr. Toby Meltzer draws near. It’s been a long road and journey for me. Back in 2001, I had an orchiectomy done to deal with part of my need for surgery. While this step for ever changed me hormonally and allowed me to deal with the legal aspect of changing my sex designator. It was only a matter of a few months post op that the problem of being physically incongruent reappeared. Due to the cost of vaginoplasty, I was not able to afford this procedure, so I tried all I could to accept my self as is. As the years passed, I bottomed out my ability to cope with this problem and this is when depression began to set in. At one point, I felt totally hopeless and so very depressed over the whole thing.

I filed a grievance with my HMO and eventually the grievance went to the California Department of Managed Care. No matter what I presented as fact or case history, coverage was denied.

I learned that the health care system does not have your best interest as their goal, but it’s simply a matter of $$$$$ and covering their liabilities. I honestly believe they would rather see you dead and no longer a liability rather than provide proven effective treatment. My case is also a reflection of this society’s view of transsexual individuals. Our lives are disposable and not worth wasting resources on. The total lack of proper and proven effective transgender / intersex specific health care education in medical schools everywhere only adds to the problem. This problem can be traced back to the John Hopkins Medical School gender program run by John Money, Paul Mc Hugh, Jon Meyer and staff. Their faulty theories were published and became accepted fact regarding health care protocols for Trans and intersex individuals without solid scientific proof. They have based their findings on their beliefs and morals instead of using real unbiased scientific facts or worst, biasing the study data to prove their beliefs and ideas. There is a growing current body of scientific facts and research that proves their theories are wrong regarding surgical treatment of transsexual and intersex individuals and the casue of this state of birth. Paul Mc Hugh is a current member of the Bush Administration’s board of bio ethics committee. He still hangs on to his dated views against surgical treatment for transsexuals based on his morality and religious based value system all current science and studies that proves he is wrong is totally ignored by him.

There are tens of thousands of very successful post-op transsexual women living well and making quite and very significant contributions to every society world wide. These success stories are totally ignored by Paul Mc Hugh as refuses to see the reality of these successful post op transsexual women.

I believe the only way trans and intersex individual are ever going to receive proper and specific health care is when the law mandates it. Nothing else will change the ways of the established health care provider and education system. This is the legacy left for generations of transgender, transsexual and intersex individuals to deal with. They have affected countless thousands of TG/TS/IS lives world wide based on their flawed theories to this day.

Being transsexual is not a choice, but a state of birth. No one gets to chose how you are born.
We only get to chose how we deal with the results of being born this way.

One of the core issues regarding gender identity is our basic freedoms. How can we be truly free if something as basic as your core sense of identity has been chosen for you based on visual inspection of a small part of an individuals anatomy or other unit of measure. No only is your identity chosen for you, but the script for your life has been dictated for you based on these factors. If we are truly free, each individual will have the ability to chose, decide and declare who they are not based on another individual’s judgment of any kind and society will respect this declaration from any member of society. Procreation should not be the prime directive for members of any society.

Based on my experience, if you are a transwoman considering an orchiectomy as a stop gap measure, it might not be the best answer to the problem. For some, it will be a viable one, but for others, an orchiectomy might not be enough and you will need to get vaginoplasty done one way or another to be at peace with yourself.

If not for the love and generosity of my partner, my surgery date would still be a far off reality that may never happen and who know where my state of depression would have left me.

Vaginoplasty is just another stop along my journey of life, not the finally to my story by any means. I can’t say that I’m really excited about having this procedure done, what I can say is the sense of relief when the surgery part is done and over with. I still have the entire recovery and post-op care process to deal with when we are back from Scottsdale. I just want to be done and over with this medical procedure so we can get on with our lives.