Features » June 27, 2007

He Shoots, She Scores (cont’d)

In 1972, Richard Raskind reached the final of the men’s national 35-and-over tennis championships. Three years later, he underwent sex-reassignment surgery, becoming Renée Richards. In 1976, the U.S. Tennis Association denied her entrance into the U.S. Open. In 1977, the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor, allowing her to reach the doubles final at that year’s competition. She went on to coach Martina Navratilova to win two of her 20 Wimbledon championship titles.

For nearly 20 years, women’s golf, which has a significant number of lesbian players and fans, has excluded transsexuals from competition. Two years after transsexual Charlotte Wood placed third in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur in 1987, the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) added a “female at birth” clause in its entry forms and many other golf organizations around the world followed suit.

In 2004, however, the Australian Ladies Professional Golf Association (ALPGA) reversed its 1991 “female at birth” decision and allowed Mianne Bagger to join. Bagger, who was born male and had SRS in 1995, was ranked sixth on the national amateur circuit before turning professional in 2004. She currently plays on the ALPGA and Ladies European Tours. Bagger’s success has had an international impact, as well. In 2005, the USGA changed its policy, allowing transgender athletes to compete in the U.S Women’s Open. The same year, the Ladies Golf Union did the same, which allowed Bagger to play in the Women’s British Open.

And in May 2004, the International Olympic Committee published its “Stockholm Consensus,” outlining eligibility for participation in gender-classified competitions. It states that eligibility of transgender athletes to compete should begin no sooner than “two years after gonadectomy,” that “verifiable” hormone therapy has been administered, and that “legal recognition of their assigned sex has been conferred by the appropriate authorities.”

Changing medical consensus

The confusion manifested in the sports world over transsexuality is understandable when one considers the lack of settled opinion in the medical world. Much has changed in the past 50 years and definitive classification is still in flux.

The term “transsexual” entered popular parlance in the ’50s to describe a person who identified and often presented as a member of the opposite gender. In 1980, the American Psychological Association added “Transsexualism” to its Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM-III). In 1994, the group replaced the diagnosis with “Gender Identity Disorder” (DSM-IV). The term “transgender” emerged around the same time to describe those with unusual gender identities without psychopathologizing them as “disordered.” This is considered an umbrella term covering all types of “gender dysphoria,” which literally means being uncomfortable with one’s gender.

Medical professionals have different opinions as to the appropriateness of hormones, surgeries, transition counseling and even conversion therapy, which would seek to reverse the gender dysphoria and reconcile the individual to his or her biological gender. Treatments can cost between $15,000 and $50,000 and are not covered by most U.S. health insurance policies. Many countries that have comprehensive nationalized health care, including Canada and most European countries, do cover the cost of treatment, to varying degrees.

Surgery and legal recognition

Legal recognition of gender change varies around the world. In the United States, only Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee prohibit the change of sex on a birth certificate. Every province in Canada permits this, as do most western European countries. The latter, however, require proof of a diagnosis and HRT, in addition to SRS. Spain requires proof of HRT for two years, but not surgery. Germany will grant the official change of gender only if the person is unmarried, permanently infertile, and has had surgery changing the “outer sexual characteristics.” The United Kingdom requires only that the person prove s/he suffers from gender dysphoria. Japan will grant the legal change, but only if the person is unmarried and childless. Australia is one of the few countries that will issue a new birth certificate, as opposed to amending an existing one.

Thailand has become a haven for inexpensive SRS procedures for transsexuals from around the globe, making it a hotspot for this type of “medical tourism.” Ironically, Thailand does not grant changes in gender in official records for its own citizens.

The small town of Trinidad, Colo., is known as the gender reassignment capital of the United States, due to the work of former Army surgeon Stanley Biber, who specialized in the surgeries in the late ’60s. Before his death in 2006, he estimated that he had performed 5,800 such procedures and trained hundreds of other surgeons. The International Foundation for Gender Education estimates that more than 30,000 Americans have undergone SRS.

Unlike the rest of the Muslim world, Iran sanctions SRS, as it has been valid under Islamic Shariah since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1983. Since homosexuality is punishable by death, however, it appears that surgery is the only option for many who might otherwise be hanged for being gay. As a result, an unregulated and marginally underground surgical industry has developed, leaving in its wake many post-operative patients who are not technically transsexual.

Life goes on

Discussing her public transition with In These Times, Daniels acknowledges that hard work lies ahead. “The overwhelming warm, positive and supportive response I have received has done much to buoy my spirits and get me emotionally prepared for the next career hurdle: covering sporting events and interviewing athletes and coaches as Christine,” she says. “You know, for more than 20 years now, I have been a woman sportswriter going into locker rooms all the time. Only then, nobody, myself included, realized it.”

Daniels will likely remain an expert in two realms. On her Woman in Progress blog, she will continue to share her own journey and transition from male to female, educating and provoking thousands of casual onlookers, while providing support and comfort to those on a similar journey. In her “Day in L.A.” column, she will remain the first stop on many a fan’s morning read-through of the Sports section, continuing to digest and contextualize the world of sports with her characteristic wit.

In a recent blog entry, Daniels addressed, if indirectly, the many questions people have asked about the extent and timetable of her transition. She wrote, “Gender identity is not about genitals. It is about what’s in your head and in your heart. I am not taking a vacation to have SRS. I am taking a vacation to have a vacation.”

Regardless of what comes her way, Daniels will do what she does best: churn out 2,000-plus words a day that speak to her readers. For reporter and reader alike, there’s not much better than that.