Original subtitles

you

Most of us don't question our sexual identity.

We know whether we're male or female.

For others, it's not so simple.

This person is a transvestite.

Transvestites are men with an obsession to wear women's clothes.

My sister, who was six years my junior, was getting an incredible amount of

approval, love, and attention.

And I think I looked at this in a great deal and said, you know, maybe Mom and

Dad are like a girl better than a boy.

Mother's clothes were suddenly available, and I tried it.

This person is a transsexual.

Transsexuals feel they were born into the wrong body.

and are driven to change their sex permanently through surgery.

Why did you want to be a woman?

I just knew I was a woman. It wasn't about wanting to be a woman.

I felt that I was misplaced.

In other words, the way my life developed, I knew that I was supposed to

have been a woman and something went wrong.

I feel like I was born with a birth defect and I finally got it straightened

out.

This film looks at people living in a gender crisis.

whose mind and body are in conflict, who must face every day with the question,

what sex am I?

An ex-GI from the Bronx is back from Denmark, where physicians converted him

into a woman.

Here are the first motion pictures of Christine Jorgensen, 26.

High heels, smart feminine attire, and a friendly willingness to meet the press.

In 1952, George Jorgensen sailed from New York to Denmark.

A year later, he returned home a woman, Christine Jorgensen, the world's first

renowned transsexual.

Christine, are you happy to be home?

Yes, of course.

What American wouldn't be?

I'm very happy to be back, and I don't have any plans at the moment.

And I thank you all for coming, but I think it's too much.

Fine, thank you very much.

Now, more than 30 years later, twice engaged but never married, with an

active career as an entertainer, author, and lecturer, Christine has no regrets.

You were a young kid going to a foreign country.

to have a so-called sex change operation.

I didn't even know that the sex change operation existed.

I knew they were doing research in the direction, but I wasn't sure how far it

had gone, and even my doctors didn't. How did you have the courage to... I

don't think it takes any more courage to do that than it would be a person who

says, I'm riding in a wheelchair and I want to walk.

I don't think that's courage. I think it's need.

Christine Jorgensen's story paved the way for other transsexuals. A barrier

was broken.

Today, most of us are only aware of transsexual celebrities like Christine.

Dr. Richard Raskin caused controversy on the women's tennis circuit when he

became Renee Richards.

James Morris, a British journalist who had climbed Mount Everest, shocked the

literary world when he became Jan Morris.

Karen Ullane had worked as a pilot for 20 years.

After surgery, she filed a suit against Eastern Airlines to keep her job. She

too became a celebrity.

But very few of these people make headlines.

There are, in fact, over 6,000 transsexuals living anonymously in the

United States today.

Kathy

is a

26-year-old man.

In just a few days, she will have major surgery at a Texas medical center to

complete the transformation from male to female.

Kathy's feminine appearance is the result of hormones and silicone

implants. She's been living as a woman now for 18 months.

She's dancing in this club to earn the money for her sex reassignment surgery.

Not a person in the audience would suspect that Kathy is a man.

Were you nervous when you went up for your first job? Oh, but of course.

There I was in front of a bunch of men that were looking upon me as nothing but

a woman.

How does it feel knowing that you're up there turning on every man in the house

and you're fooling them?

A satisfied feeling, and yet kind of a little giggle inside.

These could have been the people that were making fun of me at one time, and

here they are now enjoying me.

I've got the last laugh, I guess you could say.

Have you developed a way of living in your own world that cuts out a lot of

the pain for you?

Oh, yeah, you have to. You have to put that aside and go on with yourself.

You have to not let anything stand in your way, especially in a predicament

like this.

So you just kind of build your own little dream world and live in it.

Most transsexuals are rejected by their families.

Kathy is one of the lucky few.

Her mother has taken her first plane trip to see her child through the

serious operation.

She does not wish to appear on camera, fearful of repercussions in her small

southern town.

How did you explain this whole process to your parents?

One visit at home, I just had to tell them, and my father just went off.

So my mother finally calmed him down, and I just sat down with my mother and

tried to explain it the best I could.

It's still strange to her, still unusual.

But I have faith in her. I'm sure she'll come through.

She said, she said, that's my baby.

Yes. And I look up to her. I find her one of the most beautiful people that

I've ever known.

I enjoy my meal very much.

I didn't know what a good cookie was.

That was really good.

Kathy and her mother are having dinner with Kathy's roommate, Mary.

Mary is also a male-to-female transsexual. She had her surgery nine

months ago in a Galveston, Texas hospital.

Mary is a great support to Kathy.

Why don't I, like, clean the dishes and you, like, put them in the dishwasher?

Okay. I know you're not very good at kitchen.

I like your apartment very much. It's pretty.

Well, it'll do until the right man comes along.

Kathy, what was your childhood like?

It was fun. I had a happy one, but it just seemed like I liked feminine

things, pretty things, all the things that anybody else didn't usually like.

Kind of got a little hectic, you know, name-calling and such. Like what? What

kind of names did they call you?

Oh, Sissy, mostly.

That was the main one.

How did you feel? Was it painful for you?

Very much so.

It hurt. It hurt real bad.

I suffered long and hard. Thank you for cooking the dinner. You're welcome.

Stick around and help you finish it.

Can I help you? No, no.

I'll get it. This is your holiday, and I want you to have fun.

I just think that you're doing well.

You really are. I could do better.

But I think Kathy's going to do real good.

Do you? Yeah, we've had some real long talks about it.

But you do really feel, I mean, everything's natural and completed.

For a while, I had my doubt.

And then about two weeks ago, we had a real heart-to-heart, knock-down, drag

-out, crying and screaming and yelling.

Really? And at the end of it, I said, I'm just worried about you. You're my

friend.

And I want you to be happy, but I don't want you to do something that I don't

think you're ready for.

Don't worry about what other people think, because it's what you think.

And if you're not ready, that's the worst thing you can do.

And we talked a lot more, and I finally came to the realization that she is

ready for it. It is so crucial. I mean, it's such a decision to make. She's

ready.

She's ready.

Kathy has been away for several years, and I do get these pictures out and look

at them occasionally.

And I looked and I thought, yeah, I can see those little eyes. They're

beautiful, and look how sad they look. But see, I didn't notice that at the

time because we were a happy family.

Other than liking to play dolls and all with his sister, Glenn acted no

different than any other child at all.

In the seventh grade, names had been called, like queer.

And he came home crying, and he didn't know why. You know, why are they saying

this to me? And I said, well, honey, I don't know why.

Yeah, I don't know why.

As with most transsexuals, Kathy's struggle has been lifelong.

The confusion and pain begin in early childhood. Then comes the determination

to change the body to fit the mind.

Surgery can only take place after completing a rigorous program demanded

by the 40 reputable gender clinics in this country.

Kathy had psychiatric evaluation and counseling.

Legal documents were changed to conform with her new identity.

She successfully completed the real-life test, living and working as a woman for

the past year and a half.

She has taken large doses of female hormones, which she must continue for

life.

This operation is a well-established medical procedure performed by

urologists and plastic surgeons.

Over 250 operations take place each year at some 15 hospitals across the country.

Nonetheless, most insurance companies will not cover the fee, the cost of

Kathy's surgery.

I need you to read this over and see if you have any questions.

In signing this release form, Kathy is giving the doctor permission to change

her sex.

The operation will take from three to five hours.

Her testicles and most of her penis will be removed.

The remaining tissue and skin will be shaped into female genitalia and a

vagina will be constructed.

Healing can take as long as six months.

Once she's recovered, Kathy can experience sexual intercourse and orgasm

as a woman. But surgery does not create internal organs.

She will neither menstruate nor have the capacity to bear children.

So I need you to sign right here.

This operation is irreversible.

We've heard other parents say that if their child did something like this,

they would rather die than have their child. No.

Now, I've been hurt, and my husband's been hurt, and we don't understand it

all. But to me...

I love both of our children, and my husband loves both of our children. And

they're both special.

And I'm not the most excellent person in the world, nor is my husband. And as far

as I feel, either one of our children, no matter where, or no matter what kind

of trouble they got into, that they could call home or come home.

Just come home.

That's the main thing.

Just come home.

Kathy's surgery lasted five hours.

There were no complications.

What causes transsexualism?

If you'd asked me ten years ago, I would have said it was a psychological

phenomenon. Some abnormality in rearing or family

dynamics, etc., etc.

I've come full cycle. I really believe it's a...

biologic and organic phenomenon from hormones a hormone dysfunction or a

hormone imbalance yes the hormone imbalance but probably that occurs

prenatally uh while the fetus is developing within within the mother the

hormones in the uterus while the baby is being formed may set some kids up to be

more vulnerable to transsexualism and then it will require something else in

early childhood to to kick it off what is the thing in early childhood is there

a common history We really don't know. We've investigated all these families.

We find that these people come from many different kinds of families, so we can't

point a finger of blame at the mother or the father or a certain trauma at any

particular age.

We sometimes think that the families are a little bit similar in giving the kids

mixed messages about sexuality.

For example, that you're a boy and that you ought to act masculine, but males

are rude and they're abrasive and they're ugly and they're vicious and

never be like that.

And they give kids those kind of confusing messages.

Unlike Kathy, Jody, who is 45, had some difficulty passing as a woman.

But her six-foot frame and masculine features did not stop the yearning to

change her sex.

Why did you want to be a woman?

I just knew I was a woman. It wasn't about wanting to be a woman.

I felt that I was misplaced.

In other words, the way my life developed, I knew that I was supposed to

have been a woman, and something went wrong.

I feel like I was born with a birth defect, and I finally got it

straightened out.

Jody is the father of three children.

She had transsexual surgery three months ago.

At that time, she and her second wife, Paula, had been married for eight years.

Jody is now unemployed.

Why are you moving?

Well, because we ran out of money, basically.

I don't know how to say it.

Jody lost her job when she went for surgery in December, and my income isn't

sufficient to support this operation.

So we found a much smaller place in San Francisco.

I think it'll be okay.

The people I was working with wanted me to wait, and I had everything set up. I

had it paid for. I had the date booked and the transportation arranged, and I

just wasn't willing to change all that.

Paula, is it usual for the wife of a transsexual to stay in the relationship?

I don't know. I'm the only one I know.

I'm not willing to say that there are none.

I don't have time anymore to go off creating lifelong relationships.

So that's why I stayed in this one.

Four months later, Jody is still unemployed despite 20 years' experience

as a computer analyst.

I've got to figure out why I'm not getting a job.

Maybe they think my mom addresses me funny or something.

Look at that, Terry.

Look at this. God, there's three, four columns.

I always don't know what to tell them.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, the truth usually works.

Truth hurts.

When did you meet Paula?

I met Paula in 1972.

We both...

Started at a new job about the same time.

What were the things that drew you together?

I suppose drinking experiences.

I already had had considerable trouble from drinking, so I stopped drinking.

And it was a funny thing. I had more objectivity about her drinking than I

could about myself.

So I did try to help her any way I could.

Were you in love with her?

No. That came later.

Are you in love with her? Yes.

What are you to her now? You're not her husband. What are you? Well, we're

lovers. In California, I'm legally a woman, so I can't be married to Paula.

But in our minds, we're still married. There's nothing that has really changed.

How did Judy help you?

Well, I guess mostly by showing me that it was possible to live without

drinking. What about your sex life together?

Well, now it's different.

You've had a penis all your life, and you've used it.

Yes. And you've had a lot of sexual pleasure.

That's true.

How could you... Well, how could you castrate yourself, I mean, in a sense?

Well, my doctors warned me about that, but that wasn't important to me.

It was more important to me to be who I am than to worry about...

trying to maintain the equipment of a life that was a lie.

Did you try and stop her from having surgery?

No. I only told her she should do what she had to do.

But as a wife?

Sure, I would have stopped it in a minute.

As a wife.

As a friend, I want her to have whatever it is that's going to make her life

happy.

How did your parents treat you as a child?

I had the impression my father didn't like me, actually, all my life.

For a long time in my early childhood, my mother treated me like one of the

little girls.

And she used to tell me that men were no good, and relative to my genitals, that

I should have been a girl.

What do you mean?

Well, like my genitals should have been inside me instead of outside, and things

like this. How did she show that to you? Well, she would, like, push them in

there, and so on.

After a confused childhood and traumatic adolescence, Jody joined the Navy

determined to be the man his father wanted him to be.

The guys on the ship at the time were calling me queer.

So then I thought my problem was I wasn't manly. So I began to invent a

character to be.

I did a lot of heavy drinking and I got in fights. I went to jail and I learned

how to really yell at people like,

Jody, like most transsexuals, tried to prove his masculinity.

He met his first wife and fathered three children.

They stayed together 13 years.

And all that just evaporated. And I felt that it was my fault. I took all the

guilt out of there in a bag. I'm dragging this bag around.

If I hadn't been a sissy or a queen or a faggot, this would have never happened.

And everybody agreed with me.

They said, sure, you're right.

In those days, I considered suicide on a very frequent basis. I would actually

take a loaded rifle and stick it in my mouth and sit there with my...

thumb or toe on the trigger, you know, and trying to make up my mind whether or

not I should kill myself. And I just didn't really want to do that. I didn't

have the guts.

Although two of Jodi's children have rejected her, she and her third child

have built a new relationship.

How do you feel about your dad being a transsexual?

She's a lot more sensitive outward than she used to be.

She was always very masculine and would never show.

feelings of hurt or anything like that. It was always anger and now she's

really sensitive to people.

Do you feel that there are certain aspects of Jodi that have changed since

he became a she?

More closeness.

So what do you have? You have another mother?

Yeah.

Add another one to the stack.

What frustrates you most about yourself as a woman? Well, in my case, I had to

work very hard at appearing as a woman. I have electrolysis treatment, for

example, on my face.

No, not now. I'm also working on voice training. It's very hard for me. I keep

slipping back. Although I have come an incredibly long way with my voice, it's

still a problem for me.

No, there's no one home at all.

I also had to learn...

How to dress conservatively and not appear outlandish in society.

What do you find most beautiful about yourself as a woman? Well, for the first

time in my life, I'm 100% out.

I just don't have to put up any more bullshit images.

So there's no alternative for me now. In other words, if I can't make it in

society as a woman, then I just can't make it in society.

And? I can't go back.

And I just considered I would rather kill myself than just think about going

back.

I think the most important thing about the transsexuals is this is not

something someone does on a lark. This is not something they chose.

These people have felt this way and wanted this usually since earliest

childhood, and they fought it and they fought it and they fought it.

And even though they may appear to family and friends as having been

normal, happy kids or teenagers, they were living a private hell.

with a lot of depression, self-hate, fear of discovery.

And it's not that one day they choose to, oh, I give up, I'm going to go get a

sex change.

One day the burden of living a lie just becomes intolerable. They simply cannot

go on any longer, as they have been.

And then they will announce their intentions.

Again, it's not choice, and it's not something that they dreamt up that rainy

Tuesday. It's been with them for years.

And it's not easy. You just don't go into a hospital one day and come out the

next with a new sex, not just a sex change operation.

It's a long series of procedures with hormones, shrink, electrolysis, changing

legal papers, facing job discrimination and sex discrimination in the new life.

And I really have to admire the guts of those who get through it and survive.

Surgery is clearly not the answer to all sexual problems, and it can have

terrible consequences.

Clifford is 35 years old and lives in Northern California.

He comes from a military family and a fundamentalist church.

A gay man desperately running from his homosexuality, he tried to resolve his

conflict by becoming a woman.

When did you first feel that something was wrong?

That was probably when I got married. My sister had got married. My brother got

married.

And I was the only one that hadn't got married.

My folks kind of made me feel that I was obligated also to get married and have a

family like my brother and sister.

Did you hate the idea of being a homosexual?

I was afraid, because at the time I felt, from what society was thinking

about homosexuals, that they're sick people, and there's abnormal behavior,

and should be destroyed, and there's also the possibility that I might get

locked up for life because of that behavior.

And you went to therapists then?

Yes, I went to the therapist.

Clifford was not part of a reputable gender program.

In gender clinics, a safe place is provided to anyone who wishes to examine

their sexual problems.

Therapists find that 9 out of 10 patients who think they are transsexuals

decide not to go through with the surgery.

Clifford, on the other hand, read books on transsexualism and convinced doctors

that he was a candidate for surgery.

When it came to surgical time, I was so dragged out of it that I couldn't stop

the surgery. I couldn't call my friend and say, come and get me.

I only remember going into the surgery room just a few moments, kind of like

how you flash in and flash out.

I see the anesthesiologist for probably about two or three seconds.

I tried to make a sound to him saying stop.

I couldn't get it out of my mouth. My mouth was open. Nothing would come out

of my mouth. I said, don't do this.

Next thing when I woke up, it was probably about a day and a half later,

and it all happened.

I don't know. I was totally delirious.

I wanted to pull what they call the catheter tube out.

I wanted to leave the hospital. I wasn't worried if I was going to bleed to death

or not bleed to death.

I felt the end of the world had come for what had happened to me.

I don't know.

It's really been a big tragedy.

Since then, I've been trying and trying to resolve what has happened to me, the

tragedies of having my penis removed.

Clifford tried to get legal classification as a mutilated male in

order to obtain state aid for the $20,000 necessary for reconstructive

surgery. His request was denied.

But no surgery can restore functioning genitalia.

Why would some find it more acceptable to be transsexual than homosexual?

Many research studies have shown the kind of bias that goes on here.

Transsexualism is...

It's considered a medical problem. It's treated by hormones. It's treated by

surgery. And it therefore has that medical legitimacy.

Homosexuality, still among some people, is considered a moral problem or a

religious problem. It's sinful.

Transvestism is considered a psychiatric problem.

So if you had your choice between having a moral problem, a psychiatric problem,

or a medical problem, you would rather label yourself with a medical problem.

Hey, baby!

Hey! We're here for a good time!

Prostitution is a fringe underworld in most large cities.

These prostitutes in San Francisco are transsexual.

And a new phenomenon, the she-males.

Women from the waist up, men from the waist down. They pass their will for

women now that many Johns never know that their lady of the night is no lady.

For some, this kinky new phenomenon is a big attraction.

None of these women were born female.

Availability of female hormones, silicone, and plastic surgery has opened

the doors to anyone who can pay for it.

Drag queens and male hookers can fulfill most of their wildest fantasies thanks

to medical technology.

Have you gone to bed with guys when they haven't known that you had a penis down

there? They never knew.

How come? You tucked it away or what?

Because I'm brilliant.

What do you consider yourself? A woman. A woman or a man?

No,

a woman.

But you have to remember the gender we're born under.

Because the fact that I still have a queen doesn't make me look like a

female. Okay, well, what he did is he injected silicone in these spots up in

my breast.

Yeah. And it falls down.

into where you have like an underwire bra, and it holds up under here.

And the more treatment you get, the more it builds up.

And it has that softness just like any other fresh wood.

And what did you do? We inject in the thighs and the hips to give you that

curve in the body.

It's very shapely.

This could be more of a woman. That's what film hall is about.

Who do you go to bed with?

Only guys.

I go to bed with women and guys.

Only men for you? Well, no, men and women. I like them both.

Are you going to go through with an operation? Are you going to become a

trans?

Stay, like, part woman and part woman? Well, I'm already a transsexual woman,

and I am going to go through with the complete transition, which will end up

in surgery.

Transsexual heaven, gay boy heaven. That's why we all do what we want to do

and look like we look.

Theatricality is a stamp of this life.

A hunger for attention with a courting of risk.

While night people are the most visible members of the sex change world, they're

the smallest fraction of it in numbers.

This is suburban San Jose, California.

There are other men who dress in women's clothes, but they have a lifestyle

totally opposite to the she-males.

Far from being exhibitionists, these are men in hiding who have an uncontrollable

obsession to cross-dress.

This is a transvestite. He is a member of one of 300 transvestite groups that

meet in secret across the country.

Explain what the necessity is.

Everybody has a way of relieving the pressure.

Everybody does. Some people drink, some people gamble, some people jog. It

doesn't matter. You know, my way of relieving that emotional pressure within

me is to cross-dress.

It's very difficult to explain. It was just a compulsion.

I would do it.

The average person who walks into my office for the first time walks in with

the expectation that I'll cure them. And they'll say, I'm here to stop cross

-dressing. It causes me pain. Cure me.

And then I let them know the bad news, which is there is no cure for this.

These people were almost always heterosexual, most often married men

with children, most often in very masculine, even macho jobs.

In fact, many of them, their masculine career has a uniform of its own. Police

officer, military officer, construction worker.

So their masculinity has a set of clothing and their femininity has a set

of clothing. The first time I can remember putting on any female clothing

would be in the area of 10 to 11 years old.

And whose clothing was it? Mother's.

In the beginning, did you masturbate with women's clothes on? Very

definitely, yes.

Did everybody here?

Sure. Did anybody here have homosexual experiences? No, absolutely not.

Although I had a great fear that I was a homosexual because I'd raised them. Were

you afraid that you were a bad person or all the things that were tossed at you

by society?

My concern was in explaining to my son that I was a transvestite. In the

beginning, he was hostile, but he...

Came up to me one day and he put his arms around me and he says, I don't care

that you are a transvestite.

I know that you love me.

Guilt is a terrible thing to have around. And when you can't express

yourself as a human being and whatever that happens to be, whatever you as an

individual are, then you're going to generate a tremendous amount of guilt.

and it'll react in various ways.

I had a phone conversation with somebody on the phone a couple of weeks ago, and

I told him I was writing out a will.

And my will was, one, that I would be cremated at my death, but at the laying

out prior to the cremation, I would be laid out as Maria, not as my other half.

And the person on the phone said to me, you're giving the world a message,

aren't you? And I said, yes, my message is, fuck you, world.

Because I'm here, I'm Maria, and you didn't get me.

Not to the bitter end, you didn't get me.

It's only in the last few years that transvestites are letting us know where

their anger is coming from.

Some psychologists say their choice in clothes, the 40s and 50s, is reinforcing

a primary bond with their mothers.

TVs have what we call purges.

in which they get so overwrought by guilt that they not only tear the

clothes off on that particular occasion, but they'll take their whole wardrobe

out and burn it or give it away to the Salvation Army or something like that.

Because this is ridiculous. I'm a man. I'm not going to do such silly things as

this. And they have big resolutions how they're going to reform.

Virginia Prince, formerly Charles Prince, is now 71 years old and has

unofficial status as Grand Dame of Transvestism.

She has lectured and written extensively on the subject, and in the late 1950s,

she began publishing the journal Transvestia.

She does not wish to appear on camera.

Was it a sexual turn-on for you?

Oh, it is for most everybody to begin with. You have to grow past the stage of

being an erotically aroused male in a dress, which results eventually in an

orgasm. But when the orgasm is over, if you continue to stay in the dress, you

eventually begin to discover there's this other part of yourself.

You cease being an erotically aroused male and you simply become a man who

becomes to recognize, gee, there's something nice about girlness that I'm

enjoying experiencing.

Of all the transvestites we met, only Ken and Joe agreed to be filmed as men.

Ken is a psychologist who works with other transvestites. He is the divorced

father of three children.

Joe, also divorced, is a designer.

Typical of transvestites, they are dressing in a hotel room, often the only

place assuring anonymity and safety from discovery.

I brought two wigs.

Ken, who are you when you take off those clothes?

Ken.

Always Ken.

You're always Ken.

Yeah. You mean there's no new personality when you dress?

There's a new mood, a real high.

Is it sexual?

It's sexual as well as everything else.

It's like all the things in your life that you thought were crap.

suddenly come through and are positive.

Did your wife know that you were... She did.

She thought I was gay, and she was going to change me.

All I needed was a good woman, and she couldn't cure me, and consequently, it's

not the only reason the marriage didn't last.

I lost two houses, three kids, a family, a job, self-respect, alcoholic.

Three years later, I said, one of the things about it is you aren't even

yourself.

I thought, the worst that'll happen is I'll be a transsexual, and then I'll

have to figure out what to do about that.

That seemed the worst possible thing, because they go through hell.

What we go through is a lifetime sentence.

We're transvestites till we die.

I was four years old. I remember I was at my grandmother's house, and she had

these wonderful silk panties.

And I was a small little guy at the time.

And I just completely wrapped those things around me several times, but they

felt so wonderful.

I'm going to try these pads and see if they work because I don't need a lot of

them.

At least, see, this makes me flare out a little bit. After this, it won't make so

much difference. Yeah.

Sometimes you can pad clear down here, but I don't need to.

You like them with big breasts?

I like me with big ones. Oh, yeah?

I used to like women with big ones. Now it's not so important.

Are you in love with yourself?

No, not really. I emulated women, though.

I had to live vicariously through women with large breasts.

So at that time it was important because I didn't think I had any potential that

way. And now you've got them. Now I've got them. And what do you need with a

woman? I need women for relationships.

When you were a kid and you did that, did you feel it was wrong?

I didn't stop to think it was wrong until it was afterwards. I got erections

immediately.

This little trick changes your whole expression.

The Japanese have been doing it for years with leaves, wet leaves.

And I just use the old pantyhose technique.

What it does from sagging eyes to sensuous eyes.

I think.

And I just wrap it around.

Don't do it too tight, or you'll really stop circulation and you'll be in

trouble.

Now I can do the eyes.

But

it's

not enough to be all dressed up.

There has to be a place to go.

Since transvestites can't be safe in public, where do they party?

This is the back room of a restaurant which a local transvestite group has

rented.

There is a network of transvestite groups across the country who hold

parties like this where their members can go without risking scandal, loss of

jobs, or their marriages.

No one is allowed in without permission, though sympathetic wives and girlfriends

do attend.

There is a growing business catering to transvestites. Since most of them are

oversized as females and have difficulty finding clothes, there are mail-order

catalogs, boutiques, and tall girls' shops which attract the transvestite

trade.

Virginia, what do men really get from cross-dressing?

There are expectations laid on a man in our society.

He's got to be a provider.

He's got to be the strong shoulder to lean on. He's got to take care of the

wife and the...

Any woman, as far as that goes, you've got to have all the answers to

everything.

Boys are called fizzies if they vary very much from the standard pattern.

All men have a feminine side, like all women have a masculine side. The

dressing is an escape from these expectations of masculinity.

I know the harm and the hurt that comes to people when wives seek divorce and

parents disown and bosses fire because they find out that somebody likes to

wear dresses.

They never do this to women who like to wear pants.

Why are there no female transvestites?

A woman can go into a man's store and actually buy men's clothes.

Nobody asks her any questions. She can take them home, put them on, walk down

the street, go to the market, do anything.

What is there to escape into or from that society cares about?

But men couldn't do this because of this sissy business which they learned as

children.

In more repressed times, women needed to pass as men under certain conditions.

Joan of Arc was told by her voices to dress as a man.

Hannah Snell passed as a sailor in the 1880s. In the aristocracy, women cross

-dressed to shock, as George Sand did, and Vita Sackville-West, an act of

rebellion in a society where women held no rights at all.

Sometimes it was economic, a few dressed as men to earn a living on stage, like

Colette, which was shocking at the time.

Today, for women to wear men's clothing is simply high fashion.

But for female transsexuals, women who feel they were born into the wrong body,

there is also surgery.

50% of all transsexual surgery is now from female to male.

Stephen was born female.

His parents named him Doris and they raised him as their daughter.

But Stephen always thought of himself as a boy.

Seven years ago, at the age of 35, he had surgery to change his sex.

Stephen has been married twice, once as a woman, once as a man. Both marriages

ended in divorce.

My torment came inside, inside me. I wanted to be who I was.

I wanted to also fit.

And to be who I was and fit would not go together.

I can remember feeling different way back in elementary school, probably even

before then.

I knew that I was a female, I was a girl because of my anatomy and was taught

about those kinds of things.

I was more of a tomboy than the girls were that were tomboys.

And I just was always different than my classmates.

Starting even in elementary school, I used to have upset stomachs all the time

and we couldn't correlate what was going on in my environment.

I went through this all the way through high school and college.

How'd you get through high school?

What difficulty?

I found the girls silly and giddy.

I identified more with the guys.

I was a tremendous athlete, and they didn't have much of an athletic program

for us, so I longed for that kind of an opportunity.

I was laughed at, so I'd break out in sweats. I didn't know how to behave.

Just a total awkward stage for me.

If I didn't have the good connections I did with teachers, plus my family, I

don't know what I would have done.

And the counselor that I fought at that time felt that I had masculine

protesting, as the term they used at that time, or penis envy.

I wanted to be a boy, and if I didn't get straightened out, I would be a

lesbian.

I would rather live as a female in our society.

But you see, if I wasn't female gendered, I was female sex. It's the

gender that lets you be who you are, not your sex.

So if I'm male gendered, I've got to line the body up.

Now I'm a whole person.

One, two.

Surgery puts the period at the end of the sentence.

I look completely male, poorly endowed, but I'm completely male.

And I can face a partner in intimacy without having to be awkward about it.

I went to an institute in San Francisco, and there was a hot tub, and we were all

in it.

And one of the gals who knew that I used to be a female asked if she could see my

genital surgery more closely, and we were all nude.

And I said, sure.

Well, a male was just getting out of the hot tub.

And I guess he asked her afterwards, he was horribly embarrassed for me because

I was small, number one. And number two, why would you do that when, you know, he

was there? And when she told him that I used to be a female, he could not

believe it.

So that's how beautifully done the surgery is that I've elected.

So you were glad to see your breasts go?

Oh, yes.

I was lucky enough to have keyhole surgery.

What's that? They mean to just go in around the regular ring.

And they can take out, if you're small, a small amount of tissue and suture you

back up. And I believe in vitamin E, and so there's no scarring.

Ah. So my chest looks just like any, I can't say any other man's chest. I'm

lucky I've got a lot of hair and I'm muscular, but it looks fine.

In addition to his breast surgery, Stephen has had a hysterectomy and

surgery to free the clitoris, elongated by hormones so that it resembles a small

penis.

Although he has sexual sensation, he cannot produce sperm.

This is an album of the publicity.

that was written up over there. Even though he had been named Teacher of the

Year, Stephen lost his job in 1977 because he chose to have surgery.

He had to defend himself in court for almost four years.

Although the court declared him a fit teacher, no one would hire him again.

Basically, it started out that I was suspended on immoral charges and I was

going to withdraw from my teaching position.

What did you teach? Physical education.

I taught grades 7 through 12. And I was going to withdraw from that school and

go to another area and teach.

And I was encouraged to return by the school board and get reassigned.

And we changed superintendents at that time.

And he, along with I'm sure some people in the district themselves who couldn't

deal with this, did everything they could to make it difficult for me, and I

did.

There was a person who would call my athletes in.

I had winning basketball teams call my athletes in and tell them that they were

appearing to turn into men themselves.

These were girls who you taught? These were students that I taught, and this

was an administrator, and would call them in and tell them that I couldn't

possibly be a man because I couldn't shoot sperm.

And it was awful, the kind of treatment.

that he was allowed to execute on the students. You talk about psychological

harm. The students were in support of me, and the majority of parents were in

support of me, and so were the teachers, so was society.

Otherwise, I don't know if I could live through all this.

I have for seven years struggled to hang on to what I did get as Doris, my house,

my car, and I'm deciding that maybe I ought to let go of those kinds of things

so I can step out of the self-employment situation where I don't have to deal

with people saying, no, I won't hire you. But remember, there's very few of

us. It's not something everybody's running out to do.

What kind of work have you been doing?

I've been struggling trying to set ceramic tile. I have a license now as a

tile setter.

I was hired as a laborer in construction, but tile setting I love to

do.

Why didn't you go back to teaching?

I would love to be back in teaching. I love students.

I miss that more than anything. I miss my kids, as I call them, in Emeryville

more than anything.

It's difficult because the educational system is so conservative. If one parent

or two parents on the block who belong to PTA and are very vocal object to my

being there because they think, even though I've been proven psychologically

sound and fit to teach and still retain my teaching credential, they would cause

such headache that the superintendents aren't willing to deal with that.

And I've been taken in a personnel office when I applied for substitute

teaching in this area.

And the woman closed the door and said, Mr. Dane, do you really think you'll

ever get back into teaching again? In other words, how stupid was I to even

apply for a substitute teaching job?

So it's been very, very difficult, and I miss it.

Explain about the hormone.

For the woman that's becoming a man, she'll take testosterone.

It's an injection every two weeks, and the results are rather dramatic.

The skin will coarsen up somewhat.

Acne will form.

She'll have a teenage male acne problem.

The beard will grow, body hair.

all over the body, just like the men in both sides of her family tree.

So if they were hairy, she'll be very hairy. If they were not, then maybe the

beard will be sparse.

The breasts will shrink, but only slightly.

The clitoris will elongate, and in some cases it can elongate almost to the size

of a small, normal adult man's penis.

The female-to-male patient just seems psychologically a bit more stable,

steadier, more down-to-earth, perhaps less so.

flamboyant, less narcissistic. They just seem to do better.

They also seem to have mates.

Yeah, almost all have a consistent partner, be it a spouse or a lover.

Sometimes people are brought into this world and they're not as fortunate as

others, you know, and I feel that that's the same thing that happened to me.

I always felt that I was brought into this world with a deformity and because

of medical technology now that it can be taken care of.

And I'm not a freak anymore.

John and Susan live in Northern California.

They've been together for more than 15 years.

It was only two years ago that John, born female, completed surgery.

He and Susan are now legally married. Both of them work at a naval shipyard.

You described yourself at one point that you thought of yourself as one of those

laughing women in the circus.

Yeah, the lady in the fun house out in San Francisco.

When I was a child, we'd go there.

and sometimes I used to think that that's what I would grow up to be, that

lady. I mean, I used to think of myself as being a freak.

I always felt like a little boy.

I mean, I had a lot of friends in school, but nobody ever really knew me.

Everybody thought I was just a lot of fun and a good kid, but deep down

inside, I was really hurting and afraid.

The very first time we were together, he told me how he felt.

you know and that he wanted to have a sex change and i just fell apart like no

you know you can't do this well what did you did were you in love with janet

yeah at that particular time and i think that at that particular time i thought

it was janet that i was in love with and he kept she kept telling me you know

well you know i'd be the same person and

I think I was fearful, maybe now, looking back on it, I was fearful of

what other people would think or say.

You mean that they'd say more if there was a sex change operation than if it

was a gay relationship?

I think so.

Describe yourself as a woman before you went into surgery.

I was really disgusted with myself.

At one time in my life, I weighed 260 pounds.

I hated my body so much that I just totally grossed out.

Did you have big breasts?

Oh, huge.

I was like 40 Ds.

To me, they were big and gross and ugly, and besides the fact that I always felt

they were dead and had no feeling, I mean, there was just no way I could even

admit that they were a part of me.

John, whose breasts were so large, was forced to go through a tedious breast

-binding procedure in order to pass as a man.

Female to male transsexuals are also required to live and dress as the

opposite sex before they're approved for surgery. I had a mastectomy first.

And then that surgery went really well.

You weren't sorry?

Oh, no.

Susan, how would you feel thinking of a mastectomy? Unless he was getting these,

well, objects removed that he hated so much.

Everything I have now is all mine, except for the implants, the testicle

implants or silicone. But the outer skin is all mine.

and so i mean i have all the feeling and sensation everything is very natural and

normal and has feelings which before i didn't so um before our

in our relationship it was just a one-way relationship you know i would

make love to susan in our relationship and my body was always totally off

limits to her now since i've had my surgery My body has feeling, and I'm

getting to where I enjoy my own body. I like my body now.

You mean you're allowing yourself to have sexual feelings? Right.

Well, you didn't before?

Right. You two got married? Yeah, we did. We got married up in Tahoe on a

boat.

Do you both want a family?

We've been trying for about a year now.

How? I've been going for artificial insemination.

Had a couple, well, the doctor thinks I had a, what do you call it, spontaneous

miscarriage. I was, you know, like three weeks overdue type thing. Why does that

happen? So we just keep hoping.

And we've been thinking about going to an independent adoption agency also,

try to adopt.

Do you ever miss Janet?

No. In fact, sometimes when I look at him now, I can't even picture.

Damn it. This is so natural and so right that this is right.

Why people shouldn't, if they feel that they should have a sex change, any

reason that you feel they shouldn't? No, I really think they should. I think it's

all in the pursuit of happiness. But whatever you want to do yourself, as

long as it doesn't affect someone else, you should do it.

When John and I were working together, he told me about it. And the first thing

I said was, You've got to be shitting me off.

What else can I say, you know?

And then, you know, we just, hey, I'm just a nice guy, you know, and John is a

nice guy, and we all get along, we all get along.

I was afraid of him.

I really was. But after I got to know him, nice guy.

Do you think that most people would feel that way? Yeah.

A lot of them were, yeah, afraid of him. They didn't know what to say in front of

him or anything.

Kind of had something to do with Susan being here.

What's that?

Father. Way back in the beginning, was it difficult for you to accept the fact

that Susan was gay? Oh, my God, yeah.

It was. Oh, yeah. What did you feel about it? Well, I'd done something

wrong, or possibly my wife.

I'm sure it was her fault.

But, well,

I mean, you can't have something like this happen in your family without

feeling some responsibility for it.

So you blamed yourself?

I suppose so.

Is it like a real kind of triumph for you now because your daughter's in like

a real normal marriage? Well,

she's not gay anymore.

Did you grow with this situation? Do you feel you learned something out of it?

I don't know.

I was very prejudiced. I was one of the people that when I first moved into

Gregory Gardens and Pleasant Hill that they were going to form this big thing

about keep the colored out. And boy, I was gung-ho for this. Let's keep the

colored out.

I don't remember ever what happened to that because I happened to like a guy

that I worked with that was colored.

And so, I don't know, I just dropped out of that town.

You've changed a lot. Oh, probably.

I've always wanted the same things everybody else wants in life.

I wanted to buy and give Susan what I felt any other man could give her. I

wanted to be able to give her a home, you know, and a family just like any

other guy would want to.

You know, I would like for us to be able to have our child.

And, you know, I know that's not possible, but now maybe it's going to be

possible for her to be able to have a child, and it'll be able to be our

child.

Now that I have my act together in my life straight, you know, maybe I can

help somebody else Susan has not been able to conceive

John and Susan have decided to adopt a child

Stephen has given up on being hired as a teacher.

He is now a supervisor on a major construction site Kathy

is starting a new life She is being trained in secretarial skills by a large

company.

Jody went back to work as a computer programmer.

She is earning $10,000 a year less as a woman than she was as a man.

For these people, the battle between the mind and the body is over.

They are now the person they want to be. And for the transvestite, there are

beginnings of self-acceptance.

But for countless others who have to ask themselves, What sex am I? The struggle

continues.