Promote what you love instead of trashing what contradicts your beliefs. “It is not about becoming another person – I am already who I am – I just want my body to reflect that.”
Cooper Lee Bombardier
I heard that Charlize Theron is raising one (or both) of her sons as girls. I am not sure how ethical or unethical this is. Do sex organs assigned at birth determine gender identity, or not? Or who gets to decide?
The Charlize’s story reminded me of Makena* and his struggles with gender/sex identity. Makena felt he lived in the wrong body. While biological sex/organic sex organs and gender identity are the same for most people, many identify differently from what they were born as. For example, some people born with female genitalia identify themselves as men and vice versa. For the majority, they feel they are in the wrong body and only gender reassignment would rectify that feeling.
Many claim to know their identity from an early age. But at what point in life do people feel their biological sex determines their gender identity, or not? Is it right for parents to raise their children as their at-birth gender or wait until the child tells them how they identify as and then raise them as such? And in this day of social media mania what is ‘typical’ for girls or for boys? Or should all people be raised as neutral until they have to capacity to decide for themselves?
The following is a true story. Names*, location and specifics have been fictionalised to maintain anonymity.
Makena was born in Kenya to a modest family and lived a life of luxury. At the age of eighteen, he left his modest family life and travelled to the UK to study medicine at a prestigious university, thanks to the kindness of a local monastery. He was the first in the family, not only to travel abroad but to excel in his studies to secure the coveted scholarship. As much as his family were proud and excited to see him soar, he was more grateful for something else – the freedom to live as he really felt.
Since the age of four or five, Makena knew something didn’t sit right within him. He had an ever-present feeling of living in someone else’s time and space. Whenever he looked in the mirror, he saw a stranger; the dangly bits between his legs felt alien and foreign. He couldn’t explain it to himself let alone anyone else, so he grew up resenting parts of himself. He was also afraid of his father, the only male role model – a modern-day Okonkwo who once hit him hard on the head because he ‘didn’t possess the natural propensity for all things boys’.
By the time he hit puberty things were at breaking point – he hated the stubble on his face, and his genitalia repulsed him. While his age mates were excited about traditional-transition-into-manhood ceremonies, he was battling hell, wishing he was his sister. He hated his body and constantly felt like his spirit was in the wrong body. In a way, he envied his agemates, happy as clowns, and wondered what wiring went wrong in his brain at conception or at birth that made him feel the way he did. On some level, he knew it couldn’t be his fault because he hadn’t done anything wrong. One day he was born, he grew, and whenever he looked in the mirror, he saw a stranger. His spirit was trapped in a body he couldn’t relate to.
The first few years in the UK were a Godsend – not only did he learn what he felt was a medical condition and not a mental illness like he thought, he learnt there was a whole support system willing to help him. Even though his genitalia and brains took different routes during foetal formation, he realised his out-of-sync-body-mind situation was not unique to him.
And therein started the journey of Makena transition into Lynette; from countless hours of counselling to quieten the voices inside his head that said what he was about to do was an abomination, to endless journal entries on the plan to ease his parents into his new identity. On his 25th birthday, the transition started – from hormone therapy to breast implants to sex reassignment. It was an arduous journey because he’d undergone natural puberty, but determination and strict adherence ensured a smooth transition. Finally, he could get rid of this wrong body.
That was the easy part; transitioning his parents would be a whole new ball game. There was a very high chance that one or both would die from broken hearts or severe-disappointment-induced illnesses. However, she could not hide in the UK forever.
The flight to Kenya was long and the food bland, partly because the anxiety levels in Lynette were at frightening levels. She took a sleeping pill and a shot of whiskey to help her sleep but all it did was give her nightmares and hallucinations. The thought of her parents, and how they’d react to see the son they sent abroad to further his studies return as a daughter was enough to induce eternal nightmares. She had changed her course too, but that bombshell paled in comparison. As her sister, Mweni had advised, “take it one day at a time.”
To avoid a total meltdown at the airport, she’d requested no airport pickup. She’d check into a hotel, take a day or two to acclimatise and rehearse. Mweni, the only person who knew her secret, would pick her up and drive them home. It goes without saying that the parents had organised a large ‘welcome home’ party for their only son. They’d invited anyone worth meeting a surgeon – so the crème de la crème had gathered in her parents’ home.
When the car pulled up, and everyone ululated in eager anticipation to meet the surgeon, all Lynette could do was pray. When two gorgeous women emerged, the waiting party assumed the beautiful woman with Mweni was Makena’s girlfriend or wife and waited in anticipation for him to emerge from the back seat. He didn’t.
Mweni was edgy. She called the mother to one side and spoke to her in low tones. The woman collapsed and wailed horrendously as she went down. The dad ran to her aid asking what was happening. “She will explain,” Mweni said pointing to the beautiful woman. Lynette walked up to her father, tapped him on the shoulder and with all the courage in the world, said: “Dad, it’s me…… Makena. I am now Lynette and has been for the last 7 years. I was in the wrong body all my life and …..”
The dad stood up. Stretched his height to capacity and surveyed the beautiful woman in front of him. “What did you say?”
“Lynette. I’m sorry you had to find out like this, but I am the happiest I’ve ever been. I am the person I was meant to be.” It took several minutes but, the famous Okonkwo was reduced to rubble.
The pandemonium that followed knew no bound – gasps, screams, and utensils dropping as the news spread around the compound. Within minutes, the local news crew had arrived and curious people were converging in the compound. A camera crew arrived with a thousand questions. However, for the first time in her life, Lynette was not ashamed, and she was happy to explain how Makena morphed into Lynette. Meanwhile, her mother was mumbling to herself about the devil and his workshop. The dad was lying down because his whole body felt like jelly.
Her grandmother, who’d been observing events unfold and saying nothing finally spoke.
“People, people,” and by people she meant her daughter, “you have to stop blaming the devil for everything. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it evil!”
Lynette’s grandmother was insightful, wise, intelligent and compassionate and when Lynette told her of her life’s purpose, she promised to support her always. Ever since her transition, she’d decided her mission was to find people like her and offer counselling and help.
Just because you don’t agree or understand something doesn’t make it wrong.
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