By Sola Ogundipe

Lifeline

Coming out as Transgender is a personal decision and one that is not easy to make. In 2014, I had my first personal encounter with a Transgender named Samantha. She is an American from Chicago, Illinois in the US. We met during the Women Deliver Conference that took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sam, as she likes to be called, was born male and Christened Samson but at age 30, underwent what is known as a Male-to-Female (MTF) gender-reassignment surgery in an Asian country, to become a full-fledged female. Sam did not just undergo superficial gender-reassignment hormone therapy, but went the whole nine yards and now has everything that a woman should have biologically. And when I say everything, I mean everything.

Looking at the eye-catching 35-year-old close up and interacting with her for almost a fortnight, it was almost beyond belief to imagine she was originally a man. Sam is proud of her new gender orientation and has no regrets. She confessed that before her sex change surgery she had always been “uncomfortable” because her body felt “wrong” even as a boy.

Her decision to live her life as an authentic female represents an important step forward; both for her personally and for all that are committed to advancing discussions about fairness and equality for transgender people.

Today, gender-reassignment hormone therapy or surgery is readily available for men looking to become women, and women looking to become men. Theoretically and practically, the experts say it is easier for a man to transform into a woman than for a woman to transform into a man. This is evidenced by the higher numbers of Male-to-Female (MTF) surgeries than Female-to-Male (FTM). This explains why there are significantly fewer FTM transgender people.

People who underwent sex change

Thousands of Transgender individuals are scattered across the world and even though it is not easy to gauge the size of the Transgender population in Nigeria, it is obvious that the number is growing as gender-reassignment surgeries gain popularity.

But why do people want a sex change in the first place? Findings show that one of the greatest concerns of Transgender, among others, is support. They usually have strong belief that they were born the wrong sex coupled with persistent discomfort about their natural sex and a strong and persistent desire or an insistence to be the other sex.

They develop significant distress or problems functioning and exhibit frequent pronouncement of wishing to be the other sex, keep trying to pass as the other sex, or wanting to live or be treated as the other sex.

Transgender individuals might change their bodies hormonally or surgically to alter their gender. To express their chosen gender, they may transition, or change, from the gender they were given at birth and also change their names, pronouns or style of dress.

Some, like Sam, choose a medical transition, with the help of medical specialists, who will prescribe hormones and/or surgery.

Transgender differs from “Transsexual” who a person living in a different gender to the one that was given when they were born. For instance, someone who was called a “boy” at birth may feel very strongly about being really a girl.  Such would be called a trans-woman.  If someone was labelled a “girl” at birth, and later realises to be male, such would be called a trans-man.

Beyond physical sex change, experts say gender reassignment surgery addresses larger issues of gender, sexuality and sexual orientation.

As a matter of fact, the terminology of “gender” is often confused with “sex” and “sexuality.” For practical purposes, gender refers to the social (masculine or feminine) nature, while sex is the biological (male or female) identification. Sexuality is the erotic (heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, autosexual or celibate) definition.

A study in the journal BJU International found that the majority of patients who undergo MTF gender-reassignment surgery are happy with the results, despite complications that were mainly minor and easily corrected by secondary surgery, 76 per cent of the patients who provided detailed feedback were happy with the cosmetic result of their surgery and 80 per cent said the surgery had met their expectations.

But there are exceptions to this rule. There are some people that are not satisfied with their transitioning. So it is not surprising that some people that undergo gender reassessment and sex transition often undergo reverse sex change known as Detransitioning, or Retransitioning which is the process of reverting back to the gender assigned at birth after transition has taken place.

A number of people have gone through the journey of gender change twice—gender reassessment and detransitioning.

One instance that readily comes to mind is that of Mark Marzo, who underwent sex change from being a man to a woman, then went back to being a man.

The youngest of 13 children, Mark, a self-proclaimed gay since birth, had a sex change operation to become a female. After his sex change, he changed his name to Maria Corazon Marzo and got married.

Maria’s terminally-ill father requested she give him a grandchild. Surprisingly, she agreed to grant her father’s wish and had a sex reversal, despite her sexual preference. Maria respected her dying father’s wish to have a grandson, she gave up the “big change” and returned to being male (Mark).

A friend and co-worker, agreed to get pregnant via Invitro Fertilization, IVF for him. In 2001, their son Andrei was born.

In 2011, after years of begging to be turned into a girl, 17-year-old Brad Cooper became Ria Cooper and made headlines as the youngest sex change patient in the UK. But after living as a woman for less than a year, she decided to change back in to a man after suffering huge mental anguish as a woman.

Ria cancelled the full sex change operation that was scheduled and ceased the female hormone therapy that saw her develop breasts, saying that she found the changes overwhelming and that they made her deeply unhappy.

As Brad, she began dressing as a girl at 12, and at 15, begging doctors to help her become a woman.

Although she underwent a thorough psychological assessment and counselling prior to starting her sex change therapy, Cooper suffered such torment living as a woman that she tried to commit suicide twice.