Transgender Today

Transgender woman sues under law she helped write

Sara — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:12:54 +0000

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) – A transgender aide to a Montgomery County councilwoman is suing the county for $5 million under an anti-discrimination law she helped write.

Dana Beyer, an adviser to Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, helped draft a 2007 law that outlawed discrimination based on gender identity.

Now Beyer contends the county’s ethics commission broke that law during an investigation of her.

Beyer was investigated by the commission after a complaint by a group that opposed the anti-discrimination law. The group said Beyer used her position to try to intimidate opponents of the bill who were gathering signatures.

Beyer filed the $5 million lawsuit in February.

County spokesman Patrick Lacefield says the county believes Beyer’s claim has no merit and will ask a judge to dismiss it.

GLBT community pressing for census question to declare sexual orientation

Sara — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:54:02 +0000

By Tom McGhee
The Denver Post

They’re here. By their own description, they’re queer. And a gay advocacy group wants the U.S. Census Bureau to ask them about it.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has launched “Queer the Census,” attempting to petition the census to start counting members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

The task force is distributing hot pink “It’s Time To Count Everyone” stickers that can be affixed to the census form return envelope. Respondents can check a box on the sticker to identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or a straight ally.

The GLBT Community Center of Colorado is working with the task force on the campaign, which also asks people to sign an online petition requesting a census question allowing people to identify themselves as members of the GLBT community.

“LGBT people are basically invisible in the survey that is supposed to reflect the diversity of America’s population — and that’s a big problem,” says the queerthecensus.org website.

Data collected through the census are used to determine political representation and direct federal funds to state and local governments. Campaign organizers worry that GLBT communities won’t receive the funding if they aren’t counted as groups.

But getting the question of sexual orientation included on the next census will take an act of Congress, and U.S. Census Bureau assistant division chief Tim Olson says lobbying efforts would be better directed to elected officials.

“The number of people who choose to put a pink sticker on the envelope will have no effect,” Olson said. “There is not a write-in campaign like that.”

There are 10 questions on the form, all approved by Congress. The Census Bureau has no plans to add others, he said.

The 2010 census is the first that allows same-sex couples who report themselves as legally married to be counted as married.

Same-sex couples can note their relationship to another member of a household as an unmarried partner or spouse, Olson said.

“We can parse out and put out data to the American people about how many same-sex couples there are,” he said.

This sticker is being given out to be put on census envelopes.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14682202#ixzz0iPzJFlfu

Spurned by Nev., transgender woman to wed in Calif

Sara — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:35:57 +0000

By MARTIN GRIFFITH Associated Press Writer

RENO, Nev.—Danielle Pauline Severson takes female hormones, dresses and acts like a woman and plans to have sex reassignment surgery so she physically looks like a woman.

Yet the pre-operative transgender female, who was born Dana Paul Severson, will have to tie the knot to a woman in California.

After being jilted by officials in Nevada—which bills itself as the wedding capital of the world—Severson and Rebecca Love were granted a marriage license Wednesday by officials in Severson’s hometown of Redding, Calif.

While both states prohibit same-sex marriage, officials in California said the two qualified for the license because Severson’s birth certificate lists her as a man. But officials in Nevada nixed the request, saying they consider Severson a woman because that’s what her driver’s license says.

“I just wish all these states would come up with one law for everybody,” Severson said. “Why should I not be allowed to get married? Why should I be lonely the rest of my life?

“I’m in love with Rebecca. There are not too many women who would love a transsexual,” she added.

The two plan to get married sometime later this month in Redding. It’ll be the fourth marriage (but first nontraditional one) for Severson, 49, and the first for Love, 21, of Reno.

Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said the circumstances of the case are unique.

But he said transgender people are often caught between conflicting state laws and policies about how to determine a person’s gender.

“The same person may be considered legally a male in one state and legally female in another,” Minter said. “This is a very painful and confusing situation for trans people.”

Shasta County (Calif.) Clerk Cathy Darling said her office issued the marriage license only after consulting with the California Department of Health.

“The state told us to reference the birth certificate,” she said. “It’s a legal gray area. State law doesn’t speak to this.”

Washoe County Deputy District Attorney Herbert Kaplan said he supports the decision of the county clerk’s office in Reno not to issue the marriage license to Severson and Love.

Nevada voters have spoken clearly that they don’t want same-sex marriage, he said, and officials can’t issue such a license to two females.

“What they were presented with was at least some confusion as to what the gender of this individual was,” Kaplan said. “I don’t think to their satisfaction, and frankly to mine, they could determine what the gender of this individual is.”

But he agreed there are no clear-cut answers as to how to deal with such cases.

“There’s case law to support that the gender of an individual at birth remains that person’s gender regardless of what procedures are taken,” he said. “But there’s case law to support that at a certain point in this procedure the gender of an individual would change.”

Lee Rowland, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada, said her group is determined to do away with statewide bans on same-sex marriages.

“Until that day comes, however, we believe it is appropriate for clerks to rely on the gender on a government-issued ID to avoid the risk of invasively investigating someone’s gender,” she said.

Love criticized the Reno office’s handling of the license request. She said they had hoped to become hitched in Reno so her family could attend.

“They were so rude and ignorant. They just wanted to get us out of there,” she said. “They totally discriminated against us and I’m not going to let them get away with it because it was wrong.”

Love said she and Severson met on Craigslist and have enjoyed a close relationship for about 10 months despite their age difference. She wants to become a paralegal while Severson is pursuing a nursing career.

“We’re both really loyal to each other and honest and tell each other everything,” she said. “We’re like a regular couple. We’re just really committed to each other.”

Severson said she began transitioning to a female at the age of 40 after determining she “didn’t feel right being a man.” She has since legally changed her name.

“I tried my best. I was in the Navy and played high school football,” the San Jose, Calif., native said. “I’m being true to myself. I got to be me, period.”

Scotsman who underwent sex change wins legal battle to be officially declared neither male nor female

Sara — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:35:46 +0000

From dailyrecord.co.uk

A SCOT has become the world’s first person without an official sex.

Norrie May-Welby won a battle with Australian authorities to have a birth certificate which says “sex not specified”.

Norrie, 48 – born a male – had a sex change 20 years ago.

But Norrie, originally from Paisley, was not happy being a woman either – so stopped taking female hormones.

Norrie, who lives in Sydney, said: “The concepts of man or woman just don’t fit me.

“Stating my sex as male or female makes the statement false for legal ID.”

A spokesman for the UK’s Gender Trust said: “There are people here who like the idea of being genderless and will welcome this news.”

‘I am a boy’ insists child born a girl

Sara — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:32:42 +0000

By EILEEN ZAFFIRO – Dayton Beach News Journal.

DAYTONA BEACH — There’s a wiry little 7-year-old in Deltona who can name an impressive number of Major League baseball players, NFL bruisers and NBA stars.

The second-grader also loves reading astronomy books and watching “Jeopardy,” and is a political junkie particularly smitten with President Obama.

Maybe it was the burden of lugging around a weighty secret from the age of 3 or 4 that sparked the early maturity.

The child is a girl biologically, but wants nothing to do with anything female.

“He doesn’t say ‘I want to be a boy’; he says, ‘I am a boy,’ ” explained the youngster’s mother, who wants to remain anonymous to protect her child’s identity.

After years of battling over hairdos and clothes, puzzling over why the child preferred bugs over Barbie dolls, and snuggling up for heart-to-heart talks to understand what was going on, the mother of four and her husband have concluded their second-youngest child is transgender.

They’ve been raising him as their son since August.

The words “her,” “she,” “girl” and “daughter” are words they no longer want anyone using for their bespectacled child, and The News-Journal is honoring their wishes.

The child’s 33-year-old mother and 44-year-old father don’t think it’s just a phase that will pass. They believe being transgender is for keeps, and explains what their child has been trying to tell them.

Transgender is a closeted topic that has only recently started to lose some of its taboo taint. Not everyone agrees it even exists.

Some experts suspect mental or physical problems explain the deviation. Some of those experts even think parents are just indulging bizarre behavior.

Others believe the unshakeable sense of being male or female is hardwired into everyone’s brain at birth, and not even body parts that don’t match can change that.

The Deltona couple see their 7-year-old as walking, talking proof that some people just don’t fit traditional gender roles.

Since kindergarten, the child has been pleading to be their son. By the time he was 5, he was already dreading having periods and getting pregnant.

“I’m very certain he knew early on,” his mother said.

They’ve cut his dark blond hair short. They shop for his clothes in the boy’s department. They’ve enrolled him in Cub Scouts.

His best friend is a boy, and he has a major crush on a little girl. He’s happier than they’ve ever seen him.

SCHOOL STRUGGLES

The couple have accepted who their child is, and they wish some people at the child’s Deltona elementary school would, too. They claim one school office worker insists on using “her” in front of other students, although a school spokeswoman said the employee just accidentally slipped a time or two.

They say all school records still list his former feminine name despite their request for a change. Last year, his teacher would cross out the new name he uses on his schoolwork, his mother said.

A few weeks ago, she said a substitute teacher used his former name “in front of the whole class.”

The couple cite several examples of children arguing with their son over whether he’s a boy or girl. One day back in October after school, they say a group of third-graders waiting outside for parents and bus drivers to pick them up formed a circle around their son and kept insisting he was a girl.

They understand the kids are probably confused since many of them knew their son as a girl in kindergarten and first grade at the same school.

But they have little tolerance for adults’ reactions.

“The kids are kids. I look to adults to set the tone,” the child’s mother said. “That’s not OK if you disrespect my child … How do we expect the kids to change when adults don’t? I’m not telling people to accept it, but respect it.”

She said the school turned down her offer to have an Arizona woman who runs a non-profit, educational agency focused on transgender issues talk to staff.

She and her husband are working with a local American Civil Liberties Union official in hopes of convincing the Volusia County school system to add gender identity to the district’s bullying and harassment policies. The policies already list sexual orientation, but the parents say that has nothing to do with gender identity.

DEFINING TRANSGENDER

Transgender doesn’t always equal homosexuality or bisexuality, experts say. They say transgender covers a broad spectrum of gender identity and sexual expression.

Included in that bell curve can be extremely masculine women who like sports, car engines and hunting, and very effeminate men enthralled with ballet, crocheting and cooking who both still desire the opposite sex.

“Transgender is basically someone who feels they are the opposite sex,” DeLand psychologist Don Sanz said. “It doesn’t have to do with sexual orientation. It’s just who they feel they are.

“It could be a man physically who feels female and is attracted to women.”

The therapist the Deltona child has been seeing said she can’t discuss him. Sanz has never met the child, but he has had other transgender patients, and he’s skeptical of anyone drawing conclusions at such a young age.

“I couldn’t call a 7-year-old transgender,” Sanz said. “I’d be really reluctant to lay a label on a 7-year-old.”

A 22-year-old who was an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student until last year disagrees with Sanz’s conclusion. The former ERAU student is male biologically, but said he’s always felt female.

“It’s not uncommon to know as early as age 3,” said the man, who didn’t want to be named because he’s afraid it could cost him his job in the Orlando area. “I never felt comfortable with the body I was born with.”

When he was little, his older sister and her friends would dress him up in girl’s clothes and put makeup on him.

“It made me feel who I was supposed to be,” he said. “It’s not a psychological condition. We’re not sexual deviants.”

He calls his male physical characteristics a birth defect. In the next few years he’d like to have a sex-change operation, which he refers to as sexual reassignment surgery. He’s already on hormone therapy, and he’s been living as a woman the past few months.

“It feels more natural than ever before,” he said. “I felt I was cross-dressing as a man.”

He wishes he could have made the full transition in grade school.

Within the next few years, the Deltona child’s parents will have to decide whether they want to try puberty blockers, drugs that suspend development. Eventually they’ll have to decide if they want to pursue hormone therapy and surgery.

“I don’t want him to have a period,” his mother said.

BATTLE BREWING

For now, they’re focused on him being more comfortable in school.

The 7-year-old’s principal, teacher and various other school officials who come in contact with him were all informed of the situation last summer, school district spokeswoman Nancy Wait said.

Wait said steps were taken to help the child with his transition, such as allowing him to use a one-person bathroom. Similar adjustments have been made in the past for other transgender children in the district, she said.

But there are no plans to change any harassment or bullying policies, Wait said.

“The school system believes the way it’s written is based on federal regulations and state statutes, and it covers all our students,” said Wait, the only school official who agreed to comment on the situation.

“We reviewed the policies of districts that have incorporated gender identity into their language, all of which were in their bullying policies,” she said. “Upon review, we believe gender identity does not need to be spelled out in Volusia’s bullying policy because our policy prohibits the bullying or harassment of any student, regardless of the reason.”

She noted kids do face consequences already for bullying, and can even be expelled.

“We have 62,000 students, and a very low number we’re aware of are transgender,” Wait said. “We’re dealing with it on an individual basis. That seems to be working.”

Some people who’ve dealt with transgender issues in schools say that case by case approach invites trouble. Staff and students need specific gender identity education and policies, they argue.

“It leaves a loophole if you don’t have a policy,” said Stratton Pollitzer, deputy director of Equality Florida, a statewide education and advocacy organization dedicated to eliminating discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, race, gender identity and class.

“There needs to be a little bite behind a parent’s complaint in school policy,” agreed George Griffin, president of the ACLU’s Volusia/Flagler chapter.

Griffin complimented Volusia County for being one of 18 school districts in Florida that have sexual orientation written into their policies. But he’d like to see them join the 14 that also include gender identity.

Pollitzer said a lot of the policies were adopted after a state law passed in 2008 required schools to protect gay and transgender kids from bullying.

Without both specific training and policies, teachers won’t know what to look for or how to react to harassment, said Pollitzer, who lives in Miami.

“Transgender kids are the most likely to be attacked physically,” Pollitzer said.

That’s the worst fear of the 7-year-old’s parents. They say their son won’t tell them when something happens at school, so they feel they have to get involved.

TOUGH DECISIONS

“I’m not trying to pound my chest or change laws,” the boy’s father said. “I just want my kids to be OK.”

Switching schools could give their child a new start, but they don’t want to try that.

“I don’t want to teach my kids to run,” his mother said.”And everyone likes him at his school. He has a lot of relationships there.”

If private conversations don’t achieve the results they’re looking for, they’ll have to decide if they’re willing to lose their cloak of anonymity and go before the School Board. That’s an option they’re strongly considering.

“My fear is they’re just going to push it under the rug,” his mother said.

Ultimately, they say they just want their child to be happy.

A few years ago, they thought their son was introverted. Now they think he was probably confused and depressed.

“He never really played girl games,” his dad said. “He was always the father in make believe.”

Two years ago, he wanted a boy’s bathing suit with no top. At restaurants, he always wanted to use the men’s restroom.

It took a few years to put the pieces together and accept what was happening.

Doctors did discover a few things out of the ordinary, including very high testosterone levels and a chromosome that detached and reattached upside down. But the child’s parents said physicians concluded neither of those things could make a girl want to be a boy.

“Trust me, it was hard for me saying ‘him,’ ” the father said. “I’m as traditional as they come.

“I was hoping it was just a phase. In the back of my head, I thought ‘maybe this is just a tomboy.’ But he’d be so unhappy as a girl.”

They saw the pained look on the child’s face when he glimpsed the feminine name he used to go by on his report card. They know he can’t stand looking at an old picture in their house taken when he still had long hair.

“Whatever I feel doesn’t matter,” his mother said. “All that matters is he’s happy.”

The parents hope eventually everyone can see past their child’s gender identity to get a closer look at the things that make him special.

“He has the biggest heart. He’s so caring,” his mother said.

“He seems more mature than his age,” his father said. “He’s very empathetic to pain. He’s so loving.”

They hope the day comes soon when he can blend in with other kids, and the only things they’ll want to talk to him about are sports, video games and astronauts.

Survey targeting gay Coloradans stresses need for safe schools

Sara — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:20:59 +0000

Dylan Sayers, 17, shoots pool Thursday afternoon at Rainbow Alley, a drop-in center in downtown Denver offering support to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post )

By Heather McWilliams
The Denver Post

Schools need to be safe for gay students. That’s the top priority for most gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Coloradans, according to a recent statewide survey.

The survey — conducted by a new gay-rights nonprofit called the One Colorado Education Fund — showed “expanding recognition of GLBT families” as No. 2 on the priority list.

One Colorado ran the survey targeting Colorado’s GLBT community in February. More than 4,600 people from 62 of Colorado’s 64 counties responded. Results of the survey were announced Thursday to about 120 state legislators and GLBT community leaders at a luncheon near the state Capitol.

The results show a diverse community spread across the state.

“We’re white, black, Asian, have children. We’re veterans,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for One Colorado. “We’re no different than you,” and like most people, want safe schools for children.

“Kids can’t learn if they’re not safe,” said Sarah Doughty, 16. She attends an area charter school that often attracts gay students who have been harassed at other schools — kids such as Dylan Sayers, 17, who said he dropped out of his Louisiana high school because of harassment.

“Verbal harassment. Emotional. Constant. Everyday,” Sayers said. He plans to get his GED but has not yet enrolled in a program.

In addition to safe schools, results showed gay Coloradans — 22 percent of whom have children — want their families recognized. Committed relationships were the norm among respondents, with the average couple together for nearly a decade.

Most GLBT community members, 71 percent, faced verbal abuse based on their sexual orientation, but fewer than 15 percent reported the harassment.

One Colorado also hired two research firms — Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and American Viewpoint Inc. — to conduct a random poll of Coloradans assessing their views about gay-rights issues.

The poll showed 72 percent of state residents favor “legal recognition” for same-sex couples, up from 48 percent in 2006.

State Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, attended the luncheon announcing the survey results.

“I disagree with some of these policies (in the poll), but we need to acknowledge basic humanity,” he said.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_14660035#ixzz0i75kVoTl

Women’s pharmacy ends ban on transgendered clients

Sara — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:09:46 +0000

Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier

A policy that added controversy to the opening of North America’s first women-only pharmacy has been changed. Lu’s: A Pharmacy for Women and the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective now welcome transgendered clients and others who self-identify themselves as women. Members of the relatively new local feminist collective the Femininjas are pleased.

“I feel great about this change,” said a transgendered woman and member of the Femininjas who identified herself only as Brook for fear of employment discrimination. “It just means that the trans women in that area, who are probably the most in need of accessing these services, can access these services and that there’s a change in perception.”

When Brook and other Femininjas heard the policy of welcoming only “women born women” had been changed, three of them visited Lu’s to check if it was true. One had her prescriptions transferred from London Drugs to Lu’s and said she was treated with sensitivity and respect.

Caryn Duncan, the longtime executive director of the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective’s resource centre, left the position shortly before the policy change. Duncan said her departure was not a surprise. She said she’d told the collective’s steering committee that she’d stay until the pharmacy, a social enterprise meant to direct profits back into the collective that runs it, was operational, and her departure was delayed because construction took more than a year, rather than the expected three months.

Duncan says collective members have debated for years who they should serve. She denied Brook’s suggestion that a split in opinion on transgendered individuals comes from a generational divide among feminists.

Duncan said it was time for the nearly 40-year-old organization to restructure and the timing of her departure freed up financial resources for the organization. Volunteers are running the resource centre while Lu’s employs a paid pharmacist. Hours at both have been reduced Monday to Thursday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the pharmacy remains in want of more referrals, said the collective’s new spokesperson, Nataly Richardson. The organization’s website has yet to be updated with the new policy.

Richardson said there’s some truth to Brook’s suggestion that older generations of feminists weren’t confronted with transgender, transsexual and intersex issues in the same way as younger generations. But she said many of the collective’s older feminists give such concerns careful consideration.

The Femininjas wasn’t the only organization pressing the health collective to change its policy. Other groups included Women Against Violence Against Women, Battered Women’s Support Services, RainCity Housing and Qmunity, B.C.’s queer resource centre, according to Brook. Atira Women’s Resource Society wrote the collective to let its members know it did not support the “women born women” policy.

Read more: http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=a55bb741-a52a-4ab2-b574-221991a7ecd9#ixzz0hudF8BIh

San Francisco LGBT Center asking city for $1M

Sara — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:21:07 +0000

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center is asking the city for some big financial help to stay afloat.

Since opening in 2002, the $12.3 million, city-subsidized center has struggled to pay its mortgage and is now on the verge of foreclosure.

Officials are now asking the city for a $1 million line of credit.

The LGBT Center’s staff of 24 provides counseling, job training, HIV prevention and other programs. Center officials had expected to rely on income from community room rentals and donations, but both have dropped off in the recession.

The bailout plan still needs approval from the Board of Supervisors and mayor.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty says it’s a tough time for cash-strapped San Francisco but says keeping the center alive would be a “tremendous benefit” for the city.

Washington weddings begin for same-sex couples

Sara — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:35:08 +0000

By JESSICA GRESKO (AP)

WASHINGTON — It’s a day of wedding bells for some gay couples in Washington.

Couples who applied for marriage licenses on the first day they were available last week can pick them up Tuesday and tie the knot.

Three weddings are planned at the city’s Human Rights Campaign office. The advocacy group helps with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

An afternoon wedding is planned at All Souls Church — the same place where DC Mayor Adrian Fenty signed the bill legalizing the unions.

The District of Columbia is the sixth place in the country permitting same-sex unions. Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont also issue same-sex couples licenses.

Trinidad surgeon helps women escape past of mutilation

Sara — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:52:58 +0000

Karen Auge
The Denver Post

Dr. Marci Bowers slipped into a chair in Exam Room 3, folded one long leg over another, looked at her patient — a young woman with wide eyes and a nervous smile — and got to the point.

“We want to help make your life better,” Bowers said.

Mariama is as tiny as the 5-foot-10-inch Bowers is formidable, as soft-spoken as Bowers is confident. Mariama speaks softly and smiles easily, but a few hours with her make clear that her determination is as strong as it is quiet.

She is 26 and lives with her husband and daughter in Virginia, and didn’t want her last name used. Originally, she is from Guinea, a country about the size of Oregon on Africa’s western coast. Guinea has about 10 million residents, and about

96 percent of the women there have, like Mariama, been genitally mutilated.

Mariama and the six other women, all originally from Africa, crowding Dr. Bowers’ tiny Trinidad clinic have traveled a long way to get that fixed. The women have come to this former coal-mining town in southern Colorado looking for more than just reconstructive surgery. They want relief from pain. They are looking for a chance, as one put it, to be normal.

“I want to be like everyone else,” said Kady Meite, the only one of the women who agreed to have her full name used. “Now, I feel nothing. I feel pain” during sex, she said.

The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 140 million women worldwide, but especially in northern and central Africa, have endured female genital mutilation, or FGM.

Usually done to girls before age 15, the practice involves at least slicing off part or all of the exposed clitoris. In some cultures, the cutting is more extensive, and disfiguring. It’s done occasionally by health care practitioners but most often by an older female relative.

A lot of people inflict the damage. Bowers, whose clinic is known around the world as a destination for those seeking gender-changing

surgery, is one of a few trained to surgically restore the clitoris, as well as repair other damage.

Since 2003 when she took over the work of Trinidad’s pioneering sex-change surgeon, Dr. Stanley Biber, Bowers’ practice has exploded to more than 200 of the surgeries a year, and there is a waiting list of patients. Bowers certainly didn’t need more to do.

Nevertheless, she went to France a little over a year ago to learn a reconstructive technique developed by Dr. Pierre Foldes, which essentially cuts away scar tissue and surrounding skin to expose whatever is left of the clitoris.

In many cases the procedure also requires more extensive reconstruction.

The women gathered in her office last week are the second group Bowers has performed the reparative surgery for; both times she has donated her services.

Because the procedure is new and rare, insurance seldom covers it. But Trinidad’s Mount San Rafael Hospital has agreed to a flat rate of $1,500 per patient for use of one of its two operating rooms.

Like most of the women in Bowers’ clinic, Meite had no idea repair was possible until she learned about Bowers on the Internet. “I said, ‘Oh, my God. I don’t believe it.’ ”

Meite is 43. She has been married 22 years and has four children. She would like, after all this time, for sex with her husband, Mustapha, not to hurt.

Bowers hugs Meite on Monday before Meite's reconstructive surgery. Bowers donates her skills and has an agreement with Trinidad's Mount San Rafael Hospital to use its facilities for $1,500 per patient.

Betrayal of trust

As Bowers made her way from exam room to exam room Monday, a theme began to emerge as each patient recounted her story: A young girl would visit some trusted female relative in a different town or a distant village. One day during that visit, she would be taken somewhere. Someone would hold her down, and a knife would appear.

“We went on a vacation to visit my aunt,” Mariama said, describing her experience. “Then one day, she took me and her granddaughter — my cousin — to a different village. It was like there was going to be a party or a big ceremony. They were cooking food.”

Mariama remembers being taken outside into the bush, where “a lady had a small knife.” They forced her to the dirt. “I think they didn’t want to get blood on a blanket.”

She remembers being sliced three times. “The knife was not sharp enough. It hurt so much, I thought I was dying. I screamed so loud one lady physically was sitting on my face” to muffle the screams.

It took two months for the pain and bleeding to stop. In the meantime, the wound became infected, and Mariama got sick with a fever.

She was 8 years old.

When Mariama asked her mother why this happened, her mother explained that it was their culture.

The custom is most closely associated with Islam. Newsweek has reported that Dr. Foldes has received death threats as a result of his surgeries. Still, the women who have come to Trinidad don’t believe they are doing anything contrary to the Muslim faith.

“There is nothing written in the Koran saying you need to do that,” Meite said.

Growing up in Guinea and the Ivory Coast, Mariama and Meite watched girls who were not cut be ostracized, whispered about, called “unclean.”

It wasn’t until she came to the United States, as the bride of a Guinea-born chemist, that she learned that in many places what happened to her was not acceptable, or even legal.

The first time she was examined by a doctor in the U.S. — who had never heard of FGM — “his face was like he had seen a ghost,” Mariama said.

When she gave birth to their daughter, it had to be by cesarean section; nurses couldn’t even insert a catheter, she said.

Her daughter, now 5, has never been to Guinea, and she never will, Mariama said.

“I refuse to go back. I won’t let them near my daughter.”

A path toward healing

After they met with Bowers and filled out paperwork at the hospital, the women went to their rooms at the Morning After Guest House.

Typically, the Morning After is a haven for those who have come to Trinidad for sex-change surgery. But this week, it had been reserved for the women.

The night before the surgeries, that guest house was a bustling, noisy place. The television on, the radio was blaring, exotic smells wafted from the kitchen as owner Carol Cometto threw a dinner for them.

The women come as a group for pragmatic reasons — Bowers blocks out time for surgery, the guest house is reserved.

But there is another less tangible benefit to the mass scheduling. As the evening proceeded, the women got acquainted, and for many, it was the first time they met others who faced the same traumas and made the same decision to seek healing.

Eventually, a woman in a plaid schoolgirl miniskirt, fishnet stockings, boots and a fur-trimmed white jacket walked in, carrying a large box of vibrators.

“Tonight I get to play Santa Claus,” Nadine Gary said.

Gary is with the organization Clitoraid, which she describes as working toward twin goals of “ending FGM worldwide and to help as many victims as possible through surgery.”

To fully help them, Gary believes, means more than just ending the women’s pain. It also means beginning their pleasure.

Female genitalia is “just like any part of body that has been cut,” Gary said. “You need physical therapy so it starts to work again. The nerve paths need to be reactivated so they reach the brain.”

If that notion was a bit much for a group of women whose childhood lessons taught that sex may be enjoyable for men but a source of pain for women, they didn’t say anything.

Early Tuesday morning, while darkness still clung to Trinidad, a car pulled up outside the guest house, for the first of four trips that day to the hillside hospital.

The surgeries took little more than an hour each, and by 3 p.m. four women were back at the guest house, sore and resting.

Wednesday, the process was repeated with the remaining three.

Bowers had prepared them for some post-op pain, but that didn’t deter them.

Meite, who said she has converted to Christianity, believes “God has a purpose for everything.” Now, she said, she has found the answer to why this happened to her.

“Now, I have found someone who can help me, and so I can help a lot of other women.”

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14527014#ixzz0hdFwdCm6

Transgender Today

Transgender woman sues under law she helped write

Related posts

GLBT community pressing for census question to declare sexual orientation

Related posts

Spurned by Nev., transgender woman to wed in Calif

Related posts

Scotsman who underwent sex change wins legal battle to be officially declared neither male nor female

Related posts

‘I am a boy’ insists child born a girl

Related posts

Survey targeting gay Coloradans stresses need for safe schools

Related posts

Women’s pharmacy ends ban on transgendered clients

Related posts

San Francisco LGBT Center asking city for $1M

Related posts

Washington weddings begin for same-sex couples

Related posts

Trinidad surgeon helps women escape past of mutilation

Related posts