Dani Bunten Berry [1949-1998] "Special Note to Those Thinking About a Sex Change, by Danielle Berry
[Compiled from a number of emails I sent in response to requests for input from those considering their own change.]
Don't do it! That's my
advice. This is the most awful, most expensive, most painful, most disruptive
thing you could ever do. Don't do it unless there is no other alternative. You
may think your life is tough but unless it's a choice between suicide and a
sex-change it will only get worse. And the costs keep coming. You lose control
over most aspects of your life, become a second class citizen and all so you
can wear women's clothes and feel cuter than you do now. Don't do it is all
I've got to say.
That's advice I wish
someone had given me. I had the sex change, I "pass" fine, my career
is good but you can't imagine the number of times I've wished I could go back
and see if there was another way. Despite following the rules and being as
honest as I could with the medical folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and
said "Are you honest to God absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for
you?!" To the contrary, the voices were all cheerfully supportive of my
decision. I was fortunate that the web didn't exist then - there are too damn
many cheerleaders ready to reassure themselves of their own decision by
parading their "successful" surgeries and encouraging others.
I can speak the
transgender party line that I was a female trapped in a male body and I
remember feeling this way since I was 4. But, it's never that easy if you look
at it sincerely and without preconception. There's little question that a
mid-life crisis, a divorce and a cancer scare were involved in at least the
timing of my sex-change decision. To be completely honest at this point (3 yrs
post-op) is not easy, however, I'm not sure I would do it again. I'm now
concerned that much of what I took as a gender dysfunction might have been
nothing more than a neurotic sexual obsession. I was a cross-dresser for all of
my sexual life and had always fantasized going fem as an ultimate turn-on.
Ironically, when I began hormone treatment my libido went away. However, I
mistook that relief from sexual obsession for validation of my gender change.
Then in the final bit of irony, after surgery my new genitals were non-orgasmic
(like 80% of my TG sisters).
So, needless to say, my
life as a woman is not an ultimate turn-on. And what did it all cost? Over
$30,000 and the loss of most of my relationships to family and friends. And the
costs don't end. Every relationship I make now and in the future has to come to
terms with the sex-change. And I'm not the only one who suffers. I hate the
impact this will have on my kids and their future.
Anyway, I'm making it
sound awful and it's not. There are some perks but the important things like
being comfortable with myself and having a true love in my life don't seem like
they were contingent on the change. Being my "real self" could have
included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made
sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the
life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I
jumped off the precipice. I miss my easy access to my kids (unlike many TS's I
didn't completely lose access to them though), I miss my family and old friends
(I know they "shouldn't" have abandoned me but lots of folks aren't
as open minded as they "should" be ... I still miss them) and
finally, I hate the disconnect with my past (there's just no way to integrate
the two unrelated lives). There's any number of ways to express your gender and
sexuality and the only one I tried was the big one. I'll never know if I could
have found a compromise that might have worked a lot better than the "one
size fits all" sex-change. Please, check it out yourself before you do
likewise."
- Danielle Berry -
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