Kando, 1973
Dept. of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

This is an ethnographic field study of a partial sample of patients described by Hastings (1974) and Hastings & Markland (1978) who were treated in the Dept. of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, USA. The goal of the research was to find out how females generally got along after surgery and if there were any differences in control groups. The author says that the 26 patients indicated for surgery by Hastings, resp., Hastings & Markland had been selected from hundreds of applicants and were subjected to a schematic treatment regime so that one can almost speak about an experimental design where therapeutically responsible and differential diagnostic thoughts had a secondary role. Corresponding to their methodological principles, the research contains long interview transcripts as case studies.

• Sample
• Study Methods
• Evaluation Fields and Criteria
• Results
• Suicide Attempts
• Authors' Conclusion
• Follow-up Studies Mentioned
• Remarks

Sample
Seventeen females (MFT) were compared with two control groups with 17 males, resp., females, each (so-called "normal" females and males) who were matched according to age, education, marital status, religious beliefs, socio-economic status and number of inhabitants of the place of birth.

Study Methods
All 17 females of the research group answered a katamnestic questionnaire. Twelve females of the research group were interviewed and tested (projective procedures, MMPI). Some females were visited with their families and/or escorted into the environment of their sub-culture.

Evaluation Fields and Criteria
In the center of the study were the social relationships of the females. It was divided into two groups - one who got along well ("passers") and those who did not get along well ("non-passers").

Results
For the 10 passers: Their surgeries had been a longer time before. They had no surgical complications, were attractive females who normally would not have been recognized as former males. They moved far away from their hometowns, normally did not tell anything about their previous history except in trusted relationships, for example, to a permanent partner. Pre-surgically they had mostly worn female clothing in secret and avoided contact to the transsexual environment. They came out of farming communities, came from worker or lower middle class backgrounds, had no particularly high education levels and fulfilled the traditional role rigidly. For them the surgery was necessary to harmonize the female identity they said they always had.
For the non-passers: Their surgery generally happened shortly before the follow-up study. There had been complications. Generally the females were older, as a rule did not look as good and were easily recognized as former males.

Suicide Attempts
One female had attempted suicide after surgery when her friend -- who was married to another female -- threatened to leave her.

Authors' Conclusion
The conclusion of the author is that females after a sex reassignment behave overall more role-conformed than females without a transsexual past.

Follow-up Studies Mentioned
Benjamin, 1964a, 1966; Hamburger et al., 1953; Pauly, 1965; Wålinder, 1967

Remarks
This publication is the first sociological description of a sample of operated patients with transsexual symptoms and works with a comparison group. This attempt is to be noted - even though the results of the publication do not come to much at the end. It is noteworthy that all females in the sample behaved heterosexually after surgery. Exactly this finding -- that is not found so clearly in other follow-up studies -- makes the validity of these results doubtful. A possible explanation for this result is that the females did not give the correct information but directed themselves to the results believed to be expected by the researcher, or that it is a sample effect caused by the selection of patients for surgery. This publication gives interesting views into the beginning of the gender identity clinics of the 1960s and 70s in the United States.