Appendix D Autobiography of a female transsexual [1] by Joe

EDITOR'S NOTE: Joe is a female transsexual who, subsequent to surgery and hormone treatment, has achieved legal status as a male and has been happily married for some years. From early childhood the patient felt herself to be a boy. This led her, at the age of thirty, to an attempted suicide; and, following that, to two years of psychiatric treatment that did nothing to alleviate the desire to change sex. The patient then embarked upon the hormone treatments (androgen), which greatly improved her mental and emotional state. This was followed by mastectomy and, several years later, panhysterectomy. The legal sex change was accomplished and Joe became free to marry. The marriage, including the sexual relationship, has been satisfactory to both partners and their union seems a stable one. The following is a much-condensed account of the patient's life beginning with her assessment of her present situation.

Legally and otherwise, to the extent that is possible, I am now a man. For seven years I have been married to Helen, with whom I lived for three years before the legal wedlock became possible. As I write this now, in 1965, I think I have been long enough "transformed" to say with confidence that there will be no regrets, no wish ever to return to the unhappy life I now have left behind.

As mentioned in my longer autobiography written some ten years ago, and which will follow, I cannot believe that my wish to be a man resulted from anything done by my parents during either my infancy or early childhood. The craving to wear the clothing of boys, to play with boys' playthings, to be a tomboy, and so on was all my own doing.

Never did my parents indicate they wanted a boy instead of a girl. There was nothing unusual in my home environment and my life at home and at school was average, like that of others in a similar social condition. I was sent to private schools for girls, had psychiatric help and, as a woman, I married twice. But nothing could shake my personal conviction that I wasn't born to be a woman and nothing could ever change my longing and desire to be a male. No known treatment could efface my desire or change my mind, from my first consciousness of that desire as a very young child on up to the present!

More than eight years ago, as a result of hormone injections given by an understanding physician, my voice dropped to a deeper, husky male pitch. This started a few days after administration of the hormone solution. I never menstruated again after the first few injections. Before that, I had had a history of very irregular menses. Later, I underwent surgery to reduce the size of my breasts so that they resembled those of a male. My breasts had always been very small. Still later, I had the complete hysterectomy I felt to be necessary. In spite of the anatomical limitations, my sex life now is a satisfying one.

Before the hormone injections I had no body hair other than that considered normal for a woman. Nor did I have facial hair. However, this rapidly changed and my heavy growth of body hair conveniently covers and hides the small scars from the breast surgery. Facial hair developed and grew to the point where I am obliged to shave daily. As a result of the hormone injections there was also a change in the distribution of fatty tissues in buttocks, thighs, and other body areas where women normally are padded. In other words, my body took on contours like those of the male physique.

While taking the hormones and effecting this transformation I continued to reside in a rather small, semirural community in Texas. After Helen joined me there, we continued to live in this same community during the whole of the transforming process. After my birth certificate had been changed, Helen and I married. Everything was accomplished through perfectly legitimate channels, with no publicity, either in our home town or in the city of my birth.

All the members of both of our families are aware of my before-and-after situation and have shown and voiced an understanding acceptance, while admittedly more than a little amazed at my changeover. We now live elsewhere, but we continue to go back to visit our former community. And we find we are still accepted there by friends, acquaintances, and business people with "no questions asked," no "raised eyebrows," or anything of the sort despite the change I underwent in my appearance and my adoption of complete male attire.

Today, among old friends who are "in the know," Helen and I are as warmly accepted as any normal married couple. We participate in every phase of social life, including sports. I am perfectly at ease in swim trunks with the upper torso exposed, and just as much at ease on the dance floor with my own or another man's wife.

Hard to believe though it may be, there isn't a person I know, among either family members or friends, who hasn't approved of my transformation. Not one has been lost because of it. As for myself, I truly feel that at last I have achieved my rightful station in life, my birthright formerly denied me through some strange quirk of nature and now restored to me by what I regard as the miracle of endocrinology.

I no longer have the haunting frustrations which kept me very nervous and on edge and which were inclined to make me impulsive and immature. I have lost a great deal of my former shyness, which apparently was nothing more than a defense mechanism used as a protective veneer at a time when I was completely confused and lost in a world where I seemed unable to find a place. Now that I have found my place in life I am eternally grateful to science for having carved out this niche for me; and especially to those physicians and surgeons who "took my hand" and led me out of the abyss in which I had been wandering for a great part of my life. My autobiography, now to follow, and which was written in 1956, tells something of those wanderings.

I was born in 1920 in a New England city of moderate size and was one of four daughters. My father, a salesman, was away from home a good bit of the time while I was growing up and mother mostly raised us. From earliest childhood I demonstrated two major traits that have stayed with me always: a preference for things masculine, and a great love of animals.

As a very small child I refused to play with dolls and demanded as toys, instead, stuffed animals and, later, electric trains. (when it came time for me to have a bicycle, I held out for, and finally got, a boy's bike instead of a girl's.). I especially liked dogs and cats but was never permitted to have a pet since father disliked animals. From age three up to around eleven, I would play at being a dog - crawling on all fours, growling, demanding to be "fed," and so on.

When I was five or six I used to play baseball and other boys' games with a playmate, George, who was about my own age. One day, as a matter of curiosity, we went "off to the bushes" to compare our sex organs. This curiosity had been with me for some time, since I knew I was a girl but wondered why I wasn't a boy and what physically made the difference between girls and boys. Learning about that difference, I got the impression that I, perhaps, had just "grown short," and trying to produce for myself a penis like George's I would tie little strings to my vaginal labia and try to stretch them down with the hope that they would finally grow into a penis. I would often cry, looking for the answer to why I wasn't a boy, since I was aware I had all the traits of a boy but not the right physical attributes. Something seemed all wrong somewhere, but as a child I could find no answer to the puzzle.

At age five I started to kindergarten and, while I tried to dress like a boy when at home, had to wear girls' clothing when at school, I chose my playmates usually from among children who were not my schoolmates; and they, seeing me dressed like a boy, would ask me whether I was a boy or a girl. Then I would answer: "Boy," and they often accepted me as such. In "playing house," I took the role of the husband; and, playing "doctor and nurse," I was always the doctor. When my father was away I would dress in his clothing, parading around the house in his wardrobe, even to the shoes.

At about age seven, my mother bought me boy's rather than girl's clothing. During weekdays I generally wore overalls and shirts, but on Sundays I was permitted to wear a white shirt and tie and duck pants in and out of the house and around town. I even dressed as a boy when attending birthday parties given by childhood friends. Dressing in boy's attire was always sanctioned by my mother and grandfather. Father, on the rare occasions when he was home, accepted my dressing as a boy, most likely because it was agreed to by the others. I had to dress as a girl only on school days and hated school for that reason.

Father being away so much, he took no great interest in my sisters or myself and, for the most part, left our upbringing to my mother. Yet we were always a closely knit family and lived in a tranquil, convivial atmosphere. My mother and grandfather were staunch supporters of our (Protestant) church and we children went to Sunday School regularly. Holidays always found the family together and were festive occasions.

All sports pleased me and I learned to swim and ice skate at an early age. Twice, my uncle helped me acquire pets. The first were guinea pigs, which I hid in his barn, but they were killed by rats. Later there was a dog, but my father made me get rid of him. Much, much later, I had two other dogs, but one ran away and the other was run over. I had no other pets until I was "on my own."

At age nine, my parents enrolled me in a private coeducational school. There I was able to take manual training instead of the cooking and similar classes offered for girls. Because of ear trouble, I usually did poorly in school and brought home bad report cards. Then father would punish me, call me "dumb," and tell me what a "good for nothing" I was. My poor performance and the scoldings from my father continued after I entered a public school. The happiest times were spent with my uncle, fishing, hunting, camping, and roaming through the woods. Being out of doors was my chief delight, and dressed in shorts or jeans I also played ball and went fishing. Other diversions I enjoyed were the making of puppets, riding my boy's bike, and raising some mice in the cellar in a cage I had constructed.

At fourteen, because I had done so badly with my studies, I was sent to a private girls' school and also received special tutoring in the summer, I enjoyed riding horseback, but otherwise did about as badly as usual. It was at this school, when I was sixteen, that I developed my first "crush" on a girl. There was some necking and petting but nothing I considered sexual. I had just become aware of my "difference" and attraction to my own sex and feared making any sexual approach that might be rejected.

At the age of seventeen I was enrolled at another girls' boarding school, rooming with two girls. As always I avoided groups and had just a few close friends, mainly because of shyness and feelings of inferiority. With a girl who lived on another floor of my dormitory I established a very close and inseparable friendship. During our friendship this girl, Cathy, and I indulged in much "petting" and "necking" but there were no sexual relations. The following year, Cathy and I were allowed to room together, which surprised me, since I was sure the Dean knew of my homosexual inclinations. There was proof of this in the hours the Dean spent lecturing me on the subject of Cathy's and my relationship. These lectures only made me withdraw into myself all the more, convinced by now I was a freak. This feeling about myself troubled me greatly, so that I constantly wrestled with myself in an effort to subjugate my desires. I was additionally miserable because the school had a kind of uniform that made it impossible for me to wear boy's clothes.

In my eighteenth year, though we still roomed together, Cathy and I were good friends but my desire for her had largely subsided. Meantime, since it was the custom of the school to assign the old girls to assist a newcomer in making an adjustment to the school's routine, I was charged with looking after Karen. At first I disliked her, then became so smitten with her I was beside myself. She was extremely affectionated, not at all quiet and shy as I was, but active and mischievous and I followed her blindly in breaking all sorts of regulations. It was with Karen that I first experienced passionate sexual contact, leading to a year that became a nightmare of punishments and threats. It was the first time for both of us and we did just about everything in the way of sex, discovering all the methods for ourselves without benefit of previous experience or reading.

Karen invited me, during the summer, to spend two weeks of my vacation at her home. While I was there, the nature of our love and sex relationship became obvious to her parents. The result was that Karen did not return to school, where we had planned to be roommates, and once back home I never heard from her again although I wrote to her repeatedly. Then Karen's mother wrote to my mother, saying she'd have me put into an institution if I tried to see, call, or write to Karen. Sheer fright, bewilderment, and the knowledge I could never see Karen again left me emotionally torn to pieces.

During my senior year I roomed alone, avoided everyone, and was desperately trying to come to terms with myself and to figure things out. I graduated with barely passing marks and then, at my mother's insistence, was enrolled in some special classes in music composition, for which I seemed to have some talent. I accepted this with great reluctance and would have much preferred to study the training and care of animals - something my family refused to hear of.

My musical studies lasted for only a few months and both at home and at school I was miserable. Dad was constantly picking on me and I started cutting classes in order to go hiking. When home, I stayed in my room as much as I could. Especially I hated mealtimes, when Dad would belittle me at the dinner table. I begged to be sent away to school - anything to get away from home. Instead, when all my truancy came to light, I was scolded until I became mentally and physically sick. Then I was sent to a psychiatrist, which made me feel that Mom, my supposed ally, had turned against me and was trying to pry into my desires and troubles. I suspected the psychiatrist was relaying to her all that I told him, which made me withdraw even more into my shell. Finally things got so bad that I worked out a scheme to marry a boy who had always liked me, and who I knew would make it possible for me to move back where I could be close to my uncle. I had always felt and feel it now, that my beloved pal, Uncle Pete wasn't fooled about me and fully sensed and condoned my desire to be a boy rather than a girl. He was the one, in fact, who started everyone calling me Jo, which I - and, I think, he - knew really ought to be spelled Joe.

My plan was successful and Jack, my childhood friend, and I were married with all the usual ceremony. It was at least ten days after the start of our so-called honeymoon before I could muster up courage to let Jack consummate the marriage. Unlike most girls, I had never allowed a boy to become promiscuous with me. I loathed any contact in that way, with boys. I had thought that maybe, if I married and were "free," I could somehow adjust to the role of wife. Fortunately, Jack was a patient, unaggressive boy. If he hadn't been, I'd have fled, in self-defense. I found intercourse most distasteful in every way and only performed the marital act twice during our marriage. The second time it happened, I discovered I was pregnant. I then miscarried, in about the third month, but said nothing about that or the pregnancy to Jack. Shortly afterward I left him and a little while later he joined the Navy.

During the next few years I had several close friendships with women, for the most part platonic. Then, falling in with a fast crowd, I started to do a good bit of drinking and partying. This had disastrous results, since on one occasion I was evidently drugged and awakened to find myself in bed with a male member of our crowd, a fellow named Johnny. As a consequence of this mishap once again I found myself pregnant. To do the right thing by the expected child, Johnny and I were married. Less than four months later, I miscarried for the second time. And, a few months after that, I secured a divorce from what had been only a marriage of convenience. My experience with the second pregnancy was one of the reasons why I so strongly wanted the complete hysterectomy I finally achieved some years later.

It wasn't until I was almost twenty-six that I met for the first time, so far as I know, other people of my kind. Up to that time, I had never realized that there were hundreds and hundreds of homosexuals, like myself. Even in meeting them, however, I never felt that I was in quite the same category. I felt that somehow my "personality" differed in some important way from theirs. As time went on, I was introduced to more and more of them but did not particularly seek their company or solicit their friendship since I was too busy planning, building and working. I had moved, by this time, to the Southwest and started in the business of raising purebred cattle.

In this business, which prospered, I designed my own barns and equipment and was active in various groups of persons with similar interests. I met a young woman named Barbara and after a while she came to live with me and help me around the place. Our sexual relations were fairly infrequent and consisted only of my using my fingers on her. I never allowed her to reciprocate. There were times, even so, when I'd become aroused to the point that I would experience an orgasm. But Barbara proved to be a heavy drinker and would embarrass me in front of groups of friends. Sometimes, in one of her many drunken stupors, she would beat me unmercifully, but I could never strike her in either retaliation or self-defense. If it hadn't been for some unusual circumstances, I never would have chosen her for a companion in the first place.

Barbara and I stayed together for several years and then, while traveling cross-country together, I met Helen, a friend of Barbara's, who eventually became my wife. After returning home I began a correspondence with Helen, meanwhile having more and more trouble with Barbara because of her addiction to alcohol. I had given up drinking altogether, hoping this would lead Barbara to do the same, but nothing availed. As a result, I suffered a complete physical collapse and had to be hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. Barbara returned to her home in the East, marking the end of an affair that had raised havoc in my life.

During my recovery period I met the Carters, who gave me much help and moral support. They were homosexuals and Doris (Mrs. Carter) accompanied me to Hawaii for a much-needed vacation. She and her husband were married solely as a matter of convenience and it soon became clear that Doris was in love with me - an emotion I could not fully return. She wanted sex with me and was the aggressor. She insisted I "go down" on her. I found all love-making with her distasteful and would beg off at every opportunity. However, Doris was a good companion and was kind to me.

On returning to this country I again met Helen and still found her extremely desirable. But she was accompanied at the time by a girl friend and had, I presumed, "affiliations." Since I would not try to encroach on someone else's relationship not too much came of the meeting with Helen.

Also there was another girl, Ann, who was in love with me. I was the first woman she had ever been attracted to. One night she asked me to make love to her and I found that I also wanted this. Our only means of sex was "dyking," from which we derived mutual satisfaction. She came and lived with me for a month, but then she got drunk one night and beat me, when I asked her to leave. I'd had quite enough of that already.

Another brief love affair also ended badly and I found that my thoughts turned increasingly to Helen, with whom I kept up a correspondence. Finally I visited her, found her to be free and willing to return my affection, and brought her back to live with me. I stayed at her home for a time, met almost all the members of her family, and found them prepared to accept our relationship. No one attempted to alter her decision to begin what we hoped would be a lifelong companionship.

Helen and I find ourselves to be completely compatible in every phase of our lives together. We did not enter into our relationship precipitously but took time, through daily correspondence at great length, to learn as much about each other as we possibly could, while apart. We are now inseparable and experience mutual enjoyment in our constant comradeship. We respect each other's personal desires and pursuits and neither encroaches upon the individuality of the other. We have no wish to make one another over.

We feel that we are both adult enough to know what we want of each other, not by demand, but rather, by mutual consent, and what to expect of life in general. We are both well aware of our responsibilities to our families and to society and we have no wish to defy the conventions of society if we can possibly comply with them without snuffing out our own justifiable existence. Mutually, we have learned that neither of us has any preference for congregating with homosexuals to the exclusion of normal people. On the contrary, while we count a few high-caliber homosexuals among our friends, we prefer the normalcies of life and want to be accepted in circles of normal society, enjoying the same pursuits and pleasures without calling attention to the fact that we are "queers" trying to invade the world of normal people. As our situation is now, the living of a normal life is not always easy and sometimes we are in a position where we are the subjects of eye-brow-raising and may overhear the speculations as to who and "what" we are.[2]

In my case, there is the embarrassment of being in public places and not quite knowing what rest-room facilities to make use of. In using a men's room, when dressed in male attire, I subject myself to possible apprehension as a "male impersonator." In using a women's room, other women there might possibly regard me as a man invading their privacy. So, in this regard, I have always an insoluble and potentially dangerous problem. Other difficulties too might arise. Were I to be stopped while driving, for instance, I would have to display a license with a woman's name although appearing to be a man. Yet, on the rare occasions when I wear female attire because of absolute necessity, I feel inwardly that I am masquerading as a woman. I never have this feeling of impersonation when I am dressed as a man. Rather, I feel comfortable and as if living in tune with what has been part and parcel of me all my life and has been so accepted by my family and is now accepted by most of my friends and acquaintances.

In our sexual relations Helen and I have run the gamut of homosexual acts, not in the sense of experiencing variety but in the sense of expressing our love as we are able and wish to express it. We are not sexual thrill seekers nor do we attempt to arouse each other for the sake of sex and sex alone. It is just a part of our entire lives together, and totally an expression of love. It is our mutual desire to be legally married in the future and not have to continue this fraudulent, homosexual pose as husband and wife, but eventually to live in the peace and acceptance of connubial happiness and as normal people.

In probing my life and my mind and the intense desire I have to achieve masculinity. I feel I have never dressed as a man just to flaunt my deviation or for any other reason except that to dress and behave as a man is natural for me while to try to live any other way gives me always the feeling of being an impostor. I fully realize that should I achieve the possible measure of masculinity there would be many problems to face. However, I have given all this much more than an average great deal of thought - thought concerning not only my own well-being, but also the effect on my family and those close to them. I would have to protect these people from the consequences of my transformation, by banishing myself from their lives, or else by concocting some explanation that others would find acceptable.

As I reflect upon all this I recall how my mother, through my childhood years, was often criticized and questioned for sanctioning my pose as a boy, since she expressly permitted me to wear boy's attire and yet, on occasion, when demanded, contrarily plunged me into feminine attire. I would not assume now that she was merely appeasing my wish to play at being a boy, but that perhaps, without my knowledge (which I gained so late in life), she knew, better than I, that I was a boy, by nature if not so physically endowed. I have always felt, too, that my uncle accepted me as a nephew rather than a niece, since it was he who nicknamed me "Joe" and who made of me much more a boy companion on our hunting and fishing trips than a niece. I believe that Uncle Pete very clearly saw through my first marriage as an escapist measure rather than a true marriage, and yet condoned it with perhaps a "crossed fingers" attitude as to its eventual success and permanency in the guise of a normal marriage. As I think back to the day of that first marriage, I suppose that even then he knew it would fail, and yet, perhaps, hoped that somehow it wouldn't. I feel he must have been completely noncommitable, in a most unexpected and broadminded way. Whatever the explanation, Uncle Pete was always most understanding.

All through my life, all through the knowing and being with every woman I have known, I have always wanted to be in a socially accepted category. I have always wanted to pursue the normal aspects of life without the stigma of being an invader of normal avenues. Yet naturally my social life as I have felt obliged to pursue it has been warped to some extent by my homosexuality. I like men as companions, or to deal with in business, but loathe them when they pursue me as a woman, whether as suitors or as lovers. I have always felt that the natural thing would be for men to accept me as one of their own kind and it has seemed unnatural whenever they showed interest in me as a woman.

Looking back over the years I recall how, when I was about ten years old, my uncle surprised me by making the remark, "Joe, don't you think you're too young to be shaving?" He had evidently guessed that I had been using his shaving equipment and he cautioned me about its effect on my complexion as a girl, inferring that I was too good-looking to be taking such chances. His wise words, even though I was young at the time, penetrated and, as far as I recall, I refrained from shaving any more for a long while.

Over the last ten years or so, I have resumed the shaving to remove a light fuzz that appears on my face. Here again, realizing that I am forced to play a dual role, I shave at times in order to enhance my masculine appearance and as a protection for myself when appearing in masculine attire; and yet, at the same time, heed my uncle's warning that I might eventually make a monstrosity of myself if I continued to do so regularly.

Although mother had fortified me with complete sex information when I was about fourteen years old and had explained the mysteries of menstruation to me, from that time on I prayed repeatedly that by some miracle or stroke of good fortune I would never menstruate. However, when I did, at the age of eighteen, I cried bitterly to the point of making myself sick over the emotional upset it caused in me. In spite of mother's warnings about not going swimming or engaging in sports while I was menstruating, I did all these things, and did them especially so that people would not suspect I had the curse. It was, in my estimation, a denial of the fact that I had it. As far as the knowledge mother gave me about sexual intercourse was concerned, it repulsed me even to think of myself as ever being on the receiving end of intercourse, as a woman. On the contrary, since the age of five, and up through the present, I have always had a strong desire to have a penis and have envied all men because they have one and I do not. I have always envied a man's physique and wished so strongly that I had the same wide shoulders and narrow hips instead of my own womanish broad hips and bucket bottom!

As far as the thought had occurred of my ever being in the position of having to bear children as a woman, I absolutely abhorred the idea and considered myself to have been singularly blessed when I had the miscarriages during my two unfortunate mariages. It seemed to me a stroke of Fate, particularly since I had done nothing to induce them! When I knew I was pregnant I had seriously thought about killing myself rather than face a future of being a mother rather than a father. I gave no thought to having abortions, as the easy way out, since I knew with my conscience that I was to blame for getting myself into the stupid situations of becoming pregnant and that I had no right to destroy the lives of unborn babies.

These foregoing mixed emotions over the things I have mentioned have existed throughout my entire life, causing me to search and experience great conflict within myself in an effort to reason them out and reconcile myself to the fact that I should not let my problems dominate my life to the point where I would be frustrated and unable to accomplish anything worthwhile. As I have grown older I have been able somewhat better to deal with my inner turmoil and not to become so upset as I did when a child. Yet, fundamentally, I know that the mixed emotions still exist and will always exist until they are untangled by some means or other. The writing I do now seems to me to be, in a sense, the bringing up and revealing of secret things that at times I have almost tried to deny to myself. I did this in the hope that by the denial I could become a happier person. I never really felt that anyone could understand such mixed emotions, not even a doctor, and therefore never revealed them, partly because of a fear that they would be thought of as some peculiar obsession that might even place me in the classification of a mentally unbalanced person.

Now that I have found an understanding doctor, I am able to speak. And again Fate seems to have intervened in my behalf in leading me to such a doctor through my acquaintanceship with June (a male transsexual), who gave me my first hint that the sex change possible for males might also have its counterpart for the female.

In my thoughts concerning a transformation, I would naturally desire that every measure be taken (even including surgery, if necessary) to give me all the physical attributes of a man to the inclusion of the sex organ, growth of beard, deeper voice, and all.

However, if it must be that I will have to settle for less then I still would desire as many of the attributes as could be given me, even if this does not include the sex organ of a male. In my so-called daydreaming, I have often visualized the satisfaction I would derive from possessing a penis and in being able to perform normal intercourse with a woman rather than engage in homosexual acts. Even such daydreams have made me a bit happier.

Despite this, I have never in my homosexual relationships resorted to the use of a dildo or artificial organ as a means of substituting for the penis that I do not possess. To me, that seems a pretty poor substitute and would involve too much kidding one's self. On the other hand, I have always been grateful for the fact that the women I have been associated with have accepted me as I am, and have been satisfied with homosexual relations with me in the only manner in which I am able to perform sex acts because of my limitations.

In the matter of considering having a hysterectomy, I have always envied women who have had cause to have them for medical reasons; and, in a certain sense, I have wished that I could have one for some minor reason. But again here I argued it out with myself, fully knowing I had no reason that I could fully convey to someone else, and here again the question arose, "What doctor is going to perform this operation when he can see no apparent reason for doing it?" Then, too, it seemed to me an incomplete solution to my problem since a hysterectomy would not in itself help me to achieve complete masculinity but would only serve to eliminate my menstrual cycle and prevent any chance of pregnancy. I understand that a hysterectomy of convenience would seem to some a mutilation of my body serving no sensible purpose. Yet I feel that this is something I require, and want it especially if it will contribute toward my achieving masculinization.

Finally, I would like to stress again how deep and strong has always been my desire to be a normal person and to be accepted as such by others. This goes back as far as I can remember. The irresistible desire I have had to dress and represent myself as a man has forced me, sometimes, to go to gay bars and similar places. Yet these do not appeal to me otherwise and I think of them as being gathering places for low-caliber homosexuals who are frustrated and confused and have only the capacity or tendency to seek the company of other unfortunates or dissolute persons like themselves. I do not personally approve of the looseness of living that the general run of homosexuals engage in as they seek the superficial and meaningless pleasures of life, or try to lose themselves in nightly rounds of excessive drinking or promiscuous sex orgies with countless others that they encounter in their wanderings. It is not because my sympathies are not with them, but rather because I feel there are only a rare few who work toward achieving successful careers and who earn the respect of other people in their communities. It is my feeling that, homosexual or not, one should strive to make something of one's self and to walk the better roads of life rather than the crooked paths.

Now that I seem to stand at the beginning of the course of treatments that may bring me to my always hoped-for transformation, I have behind me a great deal of thought and other preparation for what is to come. I have read whatever scientific literature I could find in order to have as full as possible an understanding of what is possible in my case. I have considered all the implications of my action not only for myself but for others, especially my family. I am wholly convinced that my decision is the right one and am willing to accept to the last detail the diagnosis and treatment offered me by a doctor whom I trust.
  

Footnotes

[1] See also Benjamin's discussion of this patient on page 158 [Chapter 10: The female transsexual; Results of therapy].

[2] The patient is of course writing previous to her sex conversion and change of legal status to that of male.