multiple identities and I suppose I’m
told that mine are a bit more complex
and after all that’s why I’m invited
here to speak with you today so let me
explain further I am a woman
first and foremost and I’m very proud of
that womanhood because for me it has not
come easy it has been with struggle to
beautiful when I want to be and at times
I could be beautiful my legs are long
I’m tall which in itself objectified me
to the unknowing public the stairs the
looks it’s something that’s hard to get
used to until age advances and you
really don’t give a rat’s ass anymore
about what they think about your body
parts and you move forward and also a
partner to cooperatively together
nasturtiums rarely alone and a lover
fortunate to be a love fortunate to have
had many lovers ok not so many lovers
but a select few and a recipient of
passionate love deep love caring love
sensual love and also a practicing
physician an obstetrician who is
mentioned I’m over 20 years delivered
2200 or so babies somewhat north of that
and during that process I became an
meshed in the lives of the women I cared
for I was part of their struggle to
bring newborns into the world to
struggle with them to feel that pain the
empathy the low back pain the weeks of
nausea I understood that I was there
with them I was part of that experience
for so many and the blood so much blood
in pregnancy the blood volume increases
by 40% to prepare for delivery but to
see that blood without even a flinch and
sometimes soaked in it at the end of a
day my socks still wet when I went home
and the dog looked at me sniffed my
socks and just simply said knowing that
life was with me and sometimes having to
reach deep inside another woman’s body
to find a small part a hand no a foot
yes the second of a breech twin pulled
down and out and brought into the world
beautifully skillfully confidently to
have been there for so many but also a
parent clutching the hand of my little
son and walking the beach making lunches
for my gang as they came home after a
full day of fun wiping noses seemingly
constantly bottoms drool from the
corners of a mouth tears from the eyes
sometimes picking lice during a school
effort at a school outbreak one year
from the nits on their hairs their head
and as all kids do they grow and as I
introduce my kids slowly into the world
is now confident young adults Andrea and
Julia and Thomas now 21 years old and
having done this all raising them with
another woman I suppose would be
considered unusual not that unusual
anymore and but not the end of the story
because the complexities are even deeper
you see I was assigned male at Birth I
was born with a penis and apparently a
penis means you’re going to be dust and
become a man someday
or at least that’s what they told me and
after all that’s what they tell you but
as an obstetrician you realize that
genitalia all comes from the same place
we all come from the same soup the
tissues are all the same we all start
out female and in fact in embryology
that process often isn’t complete at a
surprising that surprisingly high rate a
condition known as intersex where the
genitalia even is represented by
diversity but I took the cards I was
dealt and I played with them quite a bit
and I was loved by my mother and my
father and I really grew up in an
idyllic environment in southern
Wisconsin I was a tall thin kid but I
had a lot of friends and a bicycle and a
fishing pole and I pretty much went
wherever I wanted there were no cell
phones no curfews no restrictions and in
small-town America we could go anywhere
doors unlocked nothing but the freedom
of our minds and the flow of the river
and the depth of the lakes but that all
changed when we our family moved in
ninth grade my ninth grade from rural
Wisconsin to suburban st. Louis and I
assumed a new identity through no chosen
of my own because I became at that time
a bully victim and if you’ve never been
the victim of bullying hmm you cannot
imagine the shame the pain the fear
knowing that you would have to walk a
different route each day to school or
each day to class the utter pain of
being driven into the ground on a daily
basis or your head into a locker glass
is broken but spirit intact and I still
remember the names of my bully victims
I’m a bully I’m sorry my bullies Brian
and Steve and Tim and I don’t hate them
anymore
or rather I really never hated them
because they made me stronger and this
too shall pass and time moves on and I
didn’t perish as I found out later in a
study in 2009 by the National Center for
transgender equality that more than half
of transgender bully victims at one
point attempts
side I did not perish I persevered
through the love and strength of my
family and through my own hard work and
I attended the University of Wisconsin
in Madison where I excelled and the
University of Minnesota Medical School
where I was elected class and student
body president and then the University
of Washington where my fellow residents
elected me chief resident and then
teaching ward at the teaching award of
the year but I was deeply unhappy in
medicine somehow some were within my
skull there was another person I did not
I could not deal with those feelings but
they would not go away I tried to outrun
them I tried the person to be the person
they said I was I even grew a beard I
joined a bowling team I did the things
men are supposed to do I play golf with
the guys I shook hands like a man I walk
like a man I talk like a man some
thought I must have been in the Marines
I was so good at it and I’m married to
the same person you saw before who after
all these years has stayed with me a
partnership 28 years together no longer
married in that sense legal yes but
effectively no different lovers
different lives but still partners as we
will be forever but eventually things
must change my soul was rotting and I
needed to become the person who I was
meant to be and so there comes a point
of actualization where you simply have
to do what you have to do and so in that
short period of time while serving as
department chairperson in at the largest
hospital in Seattle
mark became Marcy and so began a new
change a new career a new identity and
my practice thrived and I continued on
until I met this man dr. Stanley diver
who’s known as the father of sex change
surgery in the United States and around
the world and at one point had delivery
had performed more than two-thirds of
all the world’s sex change operations
and dr. Biber working in a very small
town in southern Colorado by the name of
Trinidad once was on a show on the show
Jeopardy and was the answer her I should
say was the question – the answer what
is the sex change capital – world and so
dr. Biber instilled in me I thought a
consideration that maybe I too would
come and join and assume a new identity
and that being transgender surgeon and
so several years later I did I moved to
Trinidad and since that time I’ve been
changing boys and girls and girls into
boys male parts and a girl parts penises
into vaginas and vaginas and Volvo’s
into penises and that’s what I do
I literally deconstruct and reconstruct
genitalia amazing and in so doing became
a biven a bit of an icon myself a media
sensation on numerous shows including
even Oprah and when you make it to Oprah
you know you’ve made it but also CBS
Sunday morning and so many other
programs I can’t even mention and Katie
Couric is on my speed dial and came to
our party last week in my honor in New
York City and then I met another man in
2009 who further added complexity to the
identity that I take this man Pierre
foulness work with Mother Teresa Gaza
victims victims of
of war repairing obstetric all fistulas
around the world and traumatic injuries
as a result of shrapnel and IEDs PR fall
diseases name and he practices in
suburban Paris and so I worked with him
in 2007 and 2009 to learn another aspect
of my career building on the fact that I
work with the genitalia is to help
restore not just visual images of the
clitoris
but functional sensory restoration of
the clitoris after a practice known as
female genital mutilation and if you
know what that is it is a profit is a
ritual procedure done to young girls and
women to control their sexuality leaving
these women with little or no sexual
feeling and beginning lives of misery as
there’s simply unable to respond
sexually sometimes with pain sometimes
with severe pain sometimes with vulvas
that are so sewn shut in their severes
form that only men store fluid in a
trickle of urine can drop through
sometimes so severe that babies are
obstructed in so the blade babies
rupture the blat through the bladder or
the rectum creating additional problems
and then being ostracized because of
Sanitation so it’s a cycle of misery
that’s perpetuated on missed truths and
lies but also with a cultural basis so
very complex hopefully ending in our
lifetimes but I began to work with dr.
foulness and then in our clinic in San
Francisco to help these women who came
from all over the world westernized
those who could come because we don’t
charge for the surgery but the average
income throughout much of Africa is less
than $100 per year and so these women
even if the surgery is done for free
cannot afford to come to San Francisco
and so we went to Africa and first we
built a hospital in Burkina Faso we went
there but we had troubles with al Qaeda
who
firebombed the hotel we were staying at
a year ago and so we’re not we are not
going back but later this year actually
just three weeks away I’m going down to
Kenya and I’ll be in Nairobi for two
weeks where we have 57 women on queue
who will be operated on over two weeks
and I’ll be training for doctors in
Africa and another one from Australia
who’s coming to learn the procedures
because 130 million women affected we
cannot do all the surgeries I cannot do
all the surgeries
my plate is full but my life is enriched
by this experience and I’m gifted to do
what I do I’m amazed at the wonderful
beauty around the world I’m part proud
to be part of it and the most amazing
thing about the stories that I hear from
the women who come for surgery to have
their clitoris restored instead of all
the reasons given for having the surgery
the one that strikes me and the one that
they all say is that they feel that
their identity was stolen by genital
mutilation and that the goal of surgery
for them is to restore their identity
and so in my life with a transgender
community and the life I lead with these
women I offer the one thing that I think
should all sustain us and that is hope
thank you
[Applause] you