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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.

Transvestite's 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-- I think I looked at this in a great deal and said,

You know, maybe mom and dad like a girl better than a boy.

Mother's clothes were suddenly available. And I tried it.

This person is a transsexual.

Transexuals, 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?

The next 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, Jorge Jorgensen sailed from New York to Denmark.

A year later, he returned home a woman, Christine Jorgensen.

The world's first renowned transsexual.

Oh, yes, of course. What American wouldn't be. 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.

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 didn't think it takes anymore 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.

When the story broke.

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 Rene Richards.

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

shocked the literary world when he became Jan Morris.

Karen Ulane 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 6000 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, you're fooling them?

A satisfied feeling. And yet kind of little giggle instead.

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 would say.

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?

When visited home I just had to tell him and my father just went off.

For 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 says, That's my baby.

And I look up to her.

I find her just one of the most beautiful people that I've ever known.

I enjoyed my meal very much. I didn't know what a good cook you were.

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.

I know you're not very good in the kitchen.

I like your apartment very much.

It'll do until the right man comes along.

Kathy, what was your childhood like?

It was fun. It 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.

Kinda 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.

Suffered long.

Thank you for cooking the dinner sorry I couldn't stick around and help you finish.

This is your holiday and I want you to have fun.

Break a leg.

I could do better. And I think Kathy's gonna do real good.

Yeah, we had some real long talks about it.

Do you really feel I mean, everything's natural completed?

For a while. I had my doubts. And then about two weeks ago,

we had a real heart to heart, hard knock down,

drag out, crying and screaming and yelling.

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, if 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.

I look and I thought, yeah, I can say those little

eyes. They are beautiful and look sad they look.

But see, I didn't notice that it 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.

But 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, honey, I don't know why.

I don't know why.

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

The confusion and pain began 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 is eight thousand dollars.

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 that if their child did something like this,

they would rather die than have their child.

No 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, is to 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 psychologic phenomenon.

Some some abnormality in rearing or family dynamics, et cetera, et cetera.

I've come full cycle. I really believe it's a biologic and organic phenomenon.

From hormones, hormone dysfunction or a hormone imbalance.

Yes, a hormone imbalance. But probably that occurs prenatally

while the fetus is developing within within the mother.

The hormones in the uterus, while the baby's'

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.

And 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 this 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.

Jodie 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.

Jodie is now unemployed.

Why are you moving?

Well, because we ran out of money basically.

I don't know how else to say it.

Jodie lost her job when she went for surgery in December.

My income isn't sufficient to support this operation.

So we've found a much smaller place in San Francisco.

I think it will 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 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 to, anymore, to go off creating lifelong relationships.

So that's why I stayed in this one.

Four months later, Jodie is still unemployed,

despite 20 years experience as a computer analyst.

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

Maybe they think my momma dresses me funny or something.

See look at that.

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 troubles 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's really changed.

How did Jodie 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 a different.

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

Yes.

And you've had a lot of sexual pleasure from it.

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. 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.

Jodie 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 HOO frighten them.

And things like this.

And I became more and more macho.

What I really want to do is just to run away.

Change my name, become a woman and forget the whole thing.

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

He met his first wife and fathered three children.

They stayed together 13 years.

I had worked real hard at college and so on business and built up.

We bought a home, lived up on top of the hill

and the sunset and all that just evaporated.

And I felt that it was my fault.

I took all the guilt out of there in a bag, you know dragging this bag around.

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

And everybody agreed with me.

Said, sure, you're right. And so I've I just you know, in those days,

I considered suicide on a very frequent basis.

I actually take a loaded rifle and stick it in my mouth.

And sit there with my thumb or toe on the trigger.

You know, try to make up my mind whether or not I should kill myself.

I just didn't really want to do that. I didn't have the guts.

Although two of Jodie's children have rejected her.

She and her third child have built a new relationship.

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 and would never show

feelings of hurt or anything like that. There was always anger.

And now she's really sensitive to people.

Do you feel that there are certain aspects of Jodie that have changed

since he became a she?

Um. 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 treatments, for example, on my face.

No, not now.

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.

Not on the ground.

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 percent 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 as if 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.

It's not something that they jumped 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 as a new sex,

not just a sex change operation.

It's a long series of procedures with hormones,

shrinks, 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 go 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 gotten married.

My brother got married and I was the only one who hadn't gotten 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 there are sick people,

it's abnormal behavior and should be destroyed.

Nor is there also the possibility that I might

get locked up for life because of that behavior.

And you went to therapy?

Yes, I went to a 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 nine 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 surgical time, I was so drugged

out of it that I couldn't stop the surgery.

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

I only remember going into the surgery room just a few moments.

Kind of like, you know, how you flash in and flash out.

I saw the anesthesiologist for probably about two, three seconds.

I tried to make a sound to him saying stop and

the reason I couldn't get it out of my mouth.

My mouth was open. Nothing would come out of my mouth to say, don't do this.

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

And it all happened.

And I know I was totally delirious.

I want to pull what you call the catheter tube out.

I wanted to leave the hospital.

Wasn't worried if I was gonna bleed to death or not bleed to death.

I mean cause 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 and since then I've been trying

and trying to resolve this, 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?

It's ah, many research studies have shown the kind of bias that goes on here.

Transsexualism is considered a medical problem.

It's treated by hormones, it's treated by surgery

and therefore has that medical legitimacy.

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

or religious problem with 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.

Prostitution is a fringe underworld in most large cities.

These prostitutes in San Francisco are transsexuals and a new phenomenon.

The She-males. Women from the waist up, men from the waist down.

They pass so well for women now that many johns never know that their

lady of the night is no lady.

Maybe 5050.

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.

Had 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?

Cause I'm brilliant.

What do you consider yourself? You consider a woman?

A woman? Okay, look.

Yes a woman.

What a woman. Women. You have to remember it's the gender we're born under.

Because of the fact I still have a penis doesn't make me less of a female.

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

Yeah.

And if it falls down into where you have like an underwire bra.

Yeah. And it holds up under here. Right.

And the more treatment you get the more it builds up and it has that softness.

Just like any other woman's breast would.

And what did you do?

We inject in the sides in the hip to give you

that curve, and then in the, in the buttocks.

Very shapely, makes me more of a woman. That's what silicone 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 both.

Are you gonna go through with an operation are you gonna become a trans.

Or are you gonna stay like part woman and part man?

I'm already a transsexual woman, and I am going to go through

with the complete transition which will end up in surgery.

That's right.

Transsexual heaven, gay boy heaven.

And that's why we all do what we wanna do and look like we look.

The theatricality is a stamp of this life.

Hunger for attention with the 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's 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 are 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 ten to eleven years old.

And. And whose clothing was it? Mothers.

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

Very definitely, yes. Did everybody?

Yeah, sure. Did anybody here who have homosexual experiences?

No, absolutely not.

Though I had a great feeling that I was a homosexual because of this.

Were you afraid that you were a bad person, all

the things that were tossed at you by society?

My concern was in explaining to my son,

that I was a transvestite and 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 in, in 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 that choice in clothes.

The 40s and 50s is reinforcing a primary bond with their mothers.

TV's 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 Salvation Army or something like that.

Because this is ridiculous. I'm a man.

I'm not gonna do such silly things as this.

And they have big, big resolutions how they're gonna reform.

Virginia Prince formally Charles Prince is now 71 years old and has unofficial status

as grand dame of transvestitism.

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.

You got to see what I got.

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.

That's beautiful.

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?

I'm Ken, I'm always Ken.

You're always Ken.

I mean, there's no new personality

when you, 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 I'll 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 a lot of.

At least see, this makes me flare out a little

bit. After this it won't make so much difference.

Yeah.

Sometimes you can cleared down here, but I don't. 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, now, it's not so important.

Are you in love with yourself?

No, I emulate.

No, not really.

I emulated women, though.

It's the only way, 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 'em.

Now I've got it.

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 till it was afterwards.

I got erections immediately.

This is the trick.

This changes your whole expression.

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

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

the 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 over-sized 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 the men 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 ah,

any woman as far as that goes.

He's got to have all the answers to everything.

Boys are called sissies if they vary, vary much from the standard pattern.

All men have have a feminine side. Like all women have a masculine side.

The dressing, it's 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 asked 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 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 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 Collette, 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.

Fifty percent 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 Steven always thought of himself as a boy.

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

Steven 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. I 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.

With 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, was laughed at,

so I break out in sweats.

I didn't know how to behave.

Just a total awkward stage for me.

If I didn't have good connections.

I did with teachers.

Plus my family.

I don't know what I worked done.

And ah, the counselor that I saw at that time felt that I had masculine protesting.

As the term they use at that time, or penis envy.

I wanted to be a boy.

If I didn't get straightened out, it would be a lesbian.

I would rather live as a female in our society.

But you see, if it wasn't female gender.

I was female sex.

It's the gender that lets you be who you are, not your sex.

So if I'm male gender, 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'd went at the institute in San Francisco

and it 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.

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.

That means they just go in around the areola ring

and they can take out if you're small breasted

the small amount of tissue and suture you back up and I believe in vitamin E

and so there's no scarring.

So my chest looks just like any I can say any other man's chest.

I'm lucky. I've got a lot of hair and I'm muscular. 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 now more 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 ah, 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 seven through 12th 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 um, 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 they did. There was a person who would call my athletes in,

my, had winning basketball teams, call my athletes in and tell them

that they were appearing to turn into men themselves, that I wasn't.

These were, these were girls who you taught.

These were students that I taught and this was an administrator.

And he'd 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, if I could live through all this.

I have for seven year struggled to hang onto what I did get as Doris.

My house, my car, and I'm deciding that maybe

I ought to let go to those kinds of things,

so I can step out in a self employment situation,

where I don't have to deal with people saying,

no, I won't hire you, because you

remember, there's very few of us.

It's not something everybody is 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.

That's. 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 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 a headache that ah, these the superintendents

aren't willing to deal with that.

And I've been taken into the 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 hormones.

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 the

size of a small normal adult males penis.

The female to male patients just seem psychologically a bit more stable,

steadier, more down to earth, perhaps less flamboyant, less narcissistic.

They just seem to to do better.

They also seem to have mates.

Yes. Or 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.

And I feel like that's the same thing that happened to me.

I always felt that I was born in 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 describe yourself at one point that you thought of yourself

as one of those laughing women in the circus.

The lady in the funhouse,

in San Francisco, when I was a child we would go there and

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

I mean, I-- 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.

You know, everybody thought I was just a lot of fun and a good kid.

But deep down inside, I was really pretty afraid.

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

you know, that he wanted to have a sex change,

and I just fell apart like, no, you know, you can't do this.

What did you, 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 just 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.

Then if I was gay I guess. I think so.

Describe yourself as a woman before you went in for 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. Was like 40 D's.

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 was 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. I mean. Oh, no.

Susan, how would you feel if you're thinking of a mastectomy?

But 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 are 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 ah, before or 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 my body has feeling.

And I'm getting to where you know, I enjoy my own, I like my body now.

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

-Right. -Where 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.

I've been going for artificial insemination and

had a couple. Well, the doctor thinks I had

a, what he call it, spontaneous miscarriage.

I was like three weeks overdue type thing.

Twice that's happened. 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 Janet.

This is so, so natural and so right. That it just is right.

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

That reason that you feel they shouldn't.

I really think they should.

I think it's all in the pursuit of happiness.

What? Whatever you want to do yourself, as long as it doesn't affect someone else.

You should. You should do it.

John and I was working together.

He told me and the first thing I said was, you've got to be...

What else could 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.

We all we all get along real well.

I was afraid of him.

I really was.

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

Do you think that most people would feel that way?

Yeah. A lot of them were, afraid of him, they

didn't know what to say in front of him or anything.

I kind of have 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.

What did you feel about it?

Well, I 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.

Is it like a real kind of triumph for you now because

your daughter's in like a real normal marriage?

Hell she is not gay anymore.

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

I don't know. I was very prejudiced.

I was one of the people that when I first moved in to Gregory Gardens in

Pleasant Hill, that they were going to form

this big thing about keep the colored out.

Boy, I was gung-ho, just keep the colored out.

I don't remember ever what happened to that because I

happen to like a guy that I worked with that was colored.

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

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 the 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.

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 and 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.

Jodie 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.