Appendix D Biographical Profiles K: Male transsexual. Age twenty-eight. Operated upon at age twenty-six. Now living successfully as a woman.

K was born in the Pacific Northwest and is one of five children: a brother and three sisters, all apparently normal and now married. His mother "had wanted a girl," and K "from earliest childhood always felt like a girl." He was encouraged in his feminine role identification by his mother, and the father raised no strong objections. The parents were divorced when K was five years of age and the mother subsequently remarried. Up until age eight, he was permitted to dress as a girl.

After his eighth year, K dressed occasionally as a girl. He would have preferred to dress and be regarded as a girl, but his step-father raised strong objections. He was rejected by the step-father up until shortly after his surgery; now, the step-father has come to accept his "new daughter."

At age fifteen, K had his first sexual experience when he was assaulted per rectum by an adult homosexual. This resulted in a severe sphincter laceration and probably psychological trauma.

At age sixteen, K read about the Christine Jorgensen case and immediately decided that his problem was the same as Jorgensen's. He visited, on his own initiative, a physician who agreed to remove his male organs. This operation would have been performed, but at the last moment the step-father intervened, refused to consent to the surgery, and insisted that K wait until his twenty-first birthday.

K has never had, or desired, a heterosexual experience. He says that he did not begin masturbating until age eighteen; and then the practice was infrequent and provided little satisfaction. The first homosexual experiences (other than the previously mentioned assault) took place at about the same time. These, too, were "unsatisfactory" and mainly "for the purpose of obtaining tenderness and affection" from the sex partner.

K's confusion about his sex orientation is shared by many transsexuals, who feel that they are not homosexual, but who know that they are regarded as such by most persons with whom they come into contact. "If all the world thinks of you as being homosexual," K says, "it is very difficult not to have that image imposed upon you, to resist it in your own mind." The transsexual, however, while he may participate in sex relations with homosexuals as a result of his own confusion, finds, as did K, that the homosexual life provides no solution for his (or her) problems.

Also at age eighteen, K began working as a female impersonator - a career he pursued with some success. For two years, he was employed both in clubs and with a traveling show that included other types of performers. On stage, he always felt himself to be a woman; but the necessity for continuing to live as a man offstage was increasingly difficult to endure.

Nonetheless at age twenty K enlisted in the Army. This represented an all-out effort "to make a man of myself." He successfully completed a four-year tour of duty, testimony to the very considerable capacity for self-discipline he possesses. But throughout his period of service, he always felt himself to be a male impersonator, that is, a woman impersonating a man. In the beginning especially, he rigorously suppressed all effeminate or feminine mannerisms, tried to deepen his voice, and so on. Later, when he had "won acceptance for myself as a person" he found that he could dispense with much of this "acting."

Throughout the four-year "hitch" he was never ridiculed because of his effeminacy, accused of homosexuality, or otherwise treated any differently from his fellow G.I.s.

After receiving an honorable discharge from the service, K was again employed as a female impersonator. The experiment, he knew, had been a failure. His feeling that he was a woman was just as intense as before. He then began hormone treatments, let his hair grow to shoulder length, and began living as a woman. He acquired a wealthy lover who consented to pay for the sex change operation.[1]

In addition to castration, penotomy, and construction of an artificial vagina, K, like many transsexuals, has had electrolysis to remove his beard and body hair and a plastic surgical operation on his nose. Additionally, in the only procedure of its kind thus far to come to our attention, he had another operation to remove a portion of his Adam's apple. The results of this latter operation, apart from about a month when the voice was temporarily deepened, are described by K as "excellent." There have been no complications and the operation, while the cosmetic need was not urgent, has yielded continuing psychological satisfactions.

The artificial vagina, lined with the inverted skin of the penis, became responsive - that is, orgasm was experienced in coitus - about five months after the conversion surgery. Orgasm is presently experienced on the average of once in every three acts of intercourse. The vagina is "perfectly satisfactory." Artificial lubrication is not required, since there is, according to K, sufficient internal secretion (perspiration?) for a penis to enter without difficulty and for the act to be completed without unpleasant friction. (This, if true, is unusual; the need for employing some lubricant is almost universally reported.)

K engaged in some prostitution for several months just subsequent to the surgery (and while the vagina was still insensitive). He did this "for psychological reasons," and "to prove to myself that I was really a woman." However, once the vagina had become responsive, the prostitution became odious and was abandoned. He now finds the idea of being a prostitute "extremely distasteful."

Since the operation, K's appearance has become increasingly feminine and attractive. Breast development has continued. K has been regularly employed as a salesgirl, but also has done photographic assignments as a fashion model. He bears a remarkable resemblance to a well-known actress of several years back.

Following a trip home to visit his mother and step-father, K "won complete acceptance as their daughter." Since that time, his relations with his family have been good. He sometimes thinks that he should "move back home and help to look after" his parents, who are in their late sixties; but some unfortunate and unsolicited publicity that attended his first visit after his operation, is a deterrent to this.

K's main objective is to "marry and settle down." He would like to marry "a man who is divorced and has several young children who need a mother." He has "a strong maternal impulse" and "would make a good mother" for the children. If he marries a man without such a ready-made family, K hopes to be able to acquire children by adoption.

K had, until recently, a boyfriend to whom he was planning to be married. Their "engagement" has never been formally broken off, but it now seems unlikely that the marriage will take place. The couple had sexual intercourse, including oral-vaginal and coital relations, about three times a week. K will not permit even finger caressing of his anus, much less anal intercourse. He says: "I didn't go through all of this [the sex change, other surgery, and so on] so I could have sex like a homosexual."

K has started writing, with the help of a professional writer, a book about his change, his life as an impersonator, and about the experiences of the numerous transsexuals with whom he maintains contact. K, who gives the impression of greater stability and maturity than most of his transsexual "flock," acts as a kind of mother confessor and adviser to the fifteen or so sex changes who live in his own city. He also keeps in touch, by letter, with transsexuals throughout the United States. Consequently, he has much valuable information in this area, some of it different from and possibly more accurate than that to be elicited by the physician or other professional interviewer. He says, in this regard, that some of the transsexuals try to win acceptance by telling the physician or interviewer "what they think he wants to hear." Also, he feels, "they know that I am one of them, that I have had the same experiences, and it would be hard for them to lie to me or try to put anything over."

Of fifteen transsexuals with whom K is in regular contact, he has inspected the surgery of all fifteen. He says that in his own case, and as far as he can learn from the others, males having intercourse with an operated-upon transsexual do not regard the experience as different from intercourse with any normal female. He thinks that his experience of orgasm once in every three acts of intercourse is typical. Multiple orgasms are said to be "not infrequent." The orgasms "tend to become more intense as time goes by" (following the surgery). These climaxes also are typically more intense than any experienced by the individual before removal of the male organs.

Of K's group of fifteen, he says that about ten are regularly having sexual intercourse, or are able to do so. In four cases, the vagina is too small; in one case, the walls of the vagina adhered following surgery. (These are cases in which the vagina was not properly dilated subsequent to operation, the patients failing to do this because of carelessness, or because communication between physician and patient was faulty, probably owing to language barriers. He also reports the case of one transsexual who dilated the new vagina with such enthusiasm that it became too large for satisfactory coitus. All these conditions are, of course, subject to correction.)

In none of the cases known to K is the depth of the vagina any problem; when a problem exists, it is "one of width." He does not know of any case, including those whose vaginas are not functional and require further surgery, where the operation is regretted or the individual would want to have his male organs restored if that were possible.

He staunchly maintains that some of those transsexuals who are unable to have vaginal intercourse are able to have anal relations "without the man knowing the difference." The artificial vagina, he says, "is very close to the anus," and "the girls just throw their legs up a little higher" and the man thinks he is entering the vagina. The reader will have to make his own assessment of the plausibility of this contention, made also by some other transsexuals.

K (like a good many transsexuals) takes pride in his "ability to be more female than most women," to be able to "project sexiness in a way most arousing to the male," and to know how to "give a man what he most wants." The transsexual, he says, having been a male, "has an edge" over women by virtue of his knowledge of the male body and what provides males with the greatest pleasure. (One may compare this to the claims of lesbians that they are able to satisfy a woman better than a man can do because of their superior knowledge of the female anatomy.)

At the time of K's psychiatric examination preliminary to surgery, he was described as having "a somewhat restricted range of affectual response," and as leading "a rather isolated existence with no evidence throughout of any warm interpersonal relationships." His psychological-emotional condition, subsequent to "sex change," would seem, therefore, to be much improved: Today, K gives the impriession of a warm and friendly personality. He exhibits unusual tolerance and compassion for the problems of others, and is, as indicated, a source of strength for some others who are less stable. His own stability has definitely increased during the period since his surgery, and he continues to function in society far more effectively as a woman than he ever was able to do as a man.
   

Footnotes

[1] The psychiatric report in this case states (in part): "I believe that the chances of any possible benefits occurring from psychotherapy for him would be minimal. I do not see any psychiatric contraindication to a plastic surgical procedure to aid him in improving somewhat an already borderline social adjustment."