Sunday, August 19, 2007
Singer's cousin in sex-op imbroglio
August 19, 2007
Stefanie Imbruglia: Fears new laws will make overseas travel for a sex-change operation unsafe.
Photo: Jacky Ghossein
A TRANSGENDER cousin of singer Natalie Imbruglia says new federal laws will force Australians seeking sex-change operations overseas to risk humiliating body cavity and strip searches.
Stefanie Imbruglia, first cousin of the actor turned pop star, said that under the new laws, which came into effect last month, she would have to be identified as a man on her passport, even though she had breasts, or she would have to travel on the lesser document of identity, which did not state sex.
Either way, it would attract unwelcome attention from immigration and customs authorities, who could demand the embarrassing searches.
"By asking me to travel on a document of identity, this government is asking me to put a spotlight on myself in a foreign country when it is totally unnecessary and makes me fear for my safety," said Ms Imbruglia, who lives in Sydney.
"The alternative is that I travel on a passport that says I am a man, when I am presenting as a woman with breasts. And on my return I will be forced to travel on a false passport and what if they were to do a body search and I am all swollen, with a vagina? Either way it is unacceptable."
Before July, a person seeking a gender reassignment operation overseas could apply for a limited validity passport that listed their intended sex on return. Making false or misleading statements carries a penalty of up to 10 years' imprisonment or a $110,000 fine under the Australian Passports Act.
Ms Imbruglia said she had hoped to have the $20,000 sex-change operation in Thailand. An estimated 200 to 400 Australians have sex-change operations in Thailand each year. . . .
Freeing Up Deborah
When Dr. Roy Berkowitz-Shelton decided to live as a woman, he gambled that his marriage and medical practice would survive the change. In the conclusion of our two-part series, Dr. Deborah Bershel emerges and confronts her new reality.
Part 1: A Family Doctor's Journey From Man to Woman | PART 2
At age 52, Deborah Bershel made her first trip to the mall. It lasted nine hours. It was July 2006, and there was barely a rack of clothes in the Burlington Mall that she didn't comb through. The next day she headed to the Natick Mall and logged another five hours shopping. She was making up for lost time. In each store, her approach was usually the same. She'd march up to a salesclerk and explain, "I'm a transsexual, so I'm new to this." Then she'd ask her particular question, whether it be which cut of jeans would cover the top of her panties or which type of fabrics wouldn't cling to her arms. "I have questions that no 50-year-old woman should have," she said.
It was behavior so uninhibited it would have been unthinkable in her previous life. As a husband, father, and family physician, Roy Berkowitz-Shelton was many things – compassionate, dutiful, funny. But no one would have called him uninhibited. For years, he had struggled to understand the feelings inside him that made him question whether he really was a man and made him attracted to the clothes that went along with being a woman. Yet that struggle had been almost entirely internal.
A month before the maiden visit to the mall, he had gone public. He told his patients and colleagues what his family had known for some months: that he was a woman and would soon transition to live life that way. He stressed his hope that even after Roy Berkowitz-Shelton, MD, was gone, replaced by Deborah Bershel, MD, his patients, colleagues, and family would naturally become hers. Whether that would actually happen was anybody's guess.
On June 29, 2006, after more than a year and a half of taking female hormones, Roy Berkowitz-Shelton lay on an operating table while a Boston University School of Medicine plastic surgeon smoothed down his forehead, made his nose smaller and more upturned, lifted his brow and upper lip, softened his jaw line, brought his hairline forward, and performed what's called a "tracheal shave," removing the lump on the throat that is so identified with being male that it's named after the original one. Seven and a half hours later, bruised and drained, Deborah Bershel emerged.
She quickly found that more than her appearance had changed. As a man, Roy cared little about clothes, and a trip to the mall held all the appeal of a dental cleaning. As a woman, Deborah was surprised to learn that she genuinely enjoyed shopping. Of course, not everything had changed. She was still compassionate and well informed. And frugal. She blanched at the price tags on the designer outfits she saw at Macy's and ended up making many of her purchases at TJ Maxx. For one brown top, she splurged and plunked down $50, but that was an aberration. More common was her pattern of acquisitions at Payless: nine pairs of shoes for a total of $85.
In the weeks after surgery, everything was building toward her July 24 return to Davis Square Family Practice, the Somerville medical office she had run as Roy for nearly 18 years. Alison, who had married Roy a quarter-century earlier and served as the practice's office manager, had helped care for Deborah in their Newton home during the week immediately following her surgery. But the future of their marriage, like so much else, was uncertain. However supportive she may have been, Alison had made it clear there was a reason she had married a man. Deborah had agreed to move back into the Brighton apartment where Roy had lived during the months leading up to the transition and stay there until their daughter left for college.
The Saturday before her return to the office, Deborah spent hours organizing all her new clothing, by color. It was a move that Roy, who had been infamous for his clutter, would have resisted. It felt good to be packing up all of Roy's clothes, a ho-hum collection of off-the-rack suits, button-down shirts, and khakis. It was only when she came to a favorite colorful tie that she lingered. Roy had taken pride in his many vibrant ties, which were especially popular with his pediatric patients. Holding the tie, she felt a small pang of sadness, the same pang she'd felt at the supermarket when she spotted a young father roughhousing with his son on his shoulders. That scene, that tie, were part of the past now. There was a whole new life to be lived. . . .
Fa'afafine definition still shaky
 Tafi Toleafoa ( ) |
(Published: August 19, 2007)
FA'AFAFINE: (pronounced fah-ah-fuh-fee-nay) means "like a woman" in Samoan, and describes a third gender, with characteristics both male and female.
There's disagreement among anthropologists about the origins of fa'afafine, but there's evidence of their presence in Samoa over at least the last century, though some anthropologists believe they were part of Samoan culture for much longer. Many other Pacific island cultures have similar words for a third-gender person born male but seen as female.
Fa'afafine are generally accepted in Samoa, but their social position has become more complicated with the introduction of Christianity and continuing western influence on the islands.
Fa'afafine aren't like American transgender people. They don't identify themselves as women in men's bodies. They are identified as children by mothers or other females close to their family, a decision influenced by their behavior, and possibly by a lack of girls in a family to do "women's work." Some take on western-sounding female nicknames.
Because they aren't likely to have children of their own, fa'afafine often excel professionally and many become teachers. They commonly live with their extended family and care for their aging parents. They are seen as excellent housekeepers and babysitters.
Sexuality for fa'afafine is complicated. Many see themselves as women and enter into clandestine, short-term relationships with men who see themselves as straight. Some fa'afafine, motivated by social pressure and the wish for children, leave their feminine identity behind and marry women, but many others don't. Occasionally they live openly with male partners.
Depending on where they live and the expectations of their family, they express their gender differently. In cities, some fa'afafine live more openly, dressing flamboyantly, performing in American-style drag shows, having public relationships. In more remote places, and in Christian families, fa'afafine are generally expected to be more discreet, maintaining at least a public image of celibacy.
Some among the most recent generation of fa'afafine, which has been most influenced by Western culture, have begun experimenting with physically changing their sex, taking hormones obtained from doctors or on the black market, and in rare cases, traveling to the U.S. or Asia for gender reassignment surgery.
Sources: Assistant Professor Ann Jache, University of Alaska Anchorage; "Paradise Lost? Social Change and Fa'afafine in Samoa," by Dr. Johanna Schmidt; "Male Transvestism and Cultural Change in Samoa," by Jeannette Mageo; Tafi Toleafoa.
