NOTE: You have to read the first part of this story to understand what is going on here.

Dr. Gold thought long and hard about the Convent of the Holy Spirit and their approach the problem of passing. The more she thought about it, the more she disagreed with it. In fact, she was so upset that when the Mother Superior wrote to her and told her that her compromise solution was declined by the sisters, she wrote back that she was very sorry that that was their decision, but that she had chosen to accept their invitation to give a talk in any case, if she was still wanted. She felt that she had some things to say which she felt they should hear.

Sister Mary-Hope wrote back that she was very grateful for that decision, and suggested a date three weeks away. Dr. Gold accepted. She requested that arrangements could be made for a screen behind her, so that she could project images from her laptop computer while she talked. Sister Serena sent her a message that there would be no problem - a screen and a projector which could connect to her computer would be provided.

When Dr. Gold arrived at the Convent of the Holy Spirit on the appointed day, she was greeted again by Sister Serena, who assured her that all of the technical arrangements had been duly made. She escorted Dr. Gold into a large room, in which a dais had been set up for the speaker and chairs had been arranged in front of it for the audience. Three of the walls of the room had large stained-glass windows which gave it an ecclesiastic look, despite the fact that the images in them were not religious. Light streamed in through the colored glass, giving the room a bright and airy feel. However, Dr. Gold immediately noted that, because she would be facing the windows when she gave her talk, she would not be able to discern the faces of individuals in the audience clearly. She was sure that this was not accidental, and was rather miffed by it. She was being put in a box, and she did not at all like that. The fourth wall, which was to Dr. Gold’s rear, was covered by a large screen which had been lowered from above; the room was also used for showing films, as it turned out.

While Dr. Gold set up her computer and connected it to the projector provided for her, the audience filed in with the usual murmurs and shuffling. Sister Mary-Hope stepped up to the dais and motioned to Dr. Gold to sit in one of the chairs on the dais. She, herself, approached the lectern set up at the corner of the dais.

In her introductory remarks, Sister Mary-Hope briefly reviewed the thoughts which led to the current precedent-breaking series of lectures by outside speakers. She hoped that they would stimulate discussion within the convent community. She then spoke briefly of Dr. Gold’s credentials as one of the world’s foremost clinical psychologists specializing in gender problems, emphasizing that Dr. Gold herself is a post-op transsexual who chose to be very open to her colleagues about and during her transition and who then continued in her same profession. She was sure that this first talk would provide the appropriate stimulation. She apologized for the fact that she, herself, could not stay for the talk because of urgent convent business which had to be taken care of.

Dr. Gold was even more irritated at what she took to be a deliberate snub on the part of Sister Mary-Hope. What possible convent business was so urgent that it had to be dealt with on a Sunday morning? Nonetheless, she tried to maintain a calm visage as she approached the lectern.

As usual, Dr. Gold began her talk by thanking her hosts for the invitation and the interest in her work. Since she was a psychologist, she would not talk about the physiological aspects of sexual reassignment surgery and the many advances which, over the past generation, have turned what was once considered an extremely difficult and risky operation into a procedure which was almost routine. If, during the 1960’s and 1970’s, only a handful of premier surgeons were willing to attempt it, SRS is now considered part of the basic toolkit of any successful plastic surgeon.

Along with this, she pointed out, went further advances in such areas as facial feminization surgery, safe methods for reduction of bone mass and muscle mass, vocal-chord tightening, hormone replacement, as well as other techniques which would make the post-operative patient feel a more complete woman. (Here she flashed several “before and after” pictures on the screen to make her point, eliciting several “oohs” and “ahs” from the audience.)

Unfortunately, Dr. Gold said, these advances in physical medicine had led to considerable problems from the point of view of a clinical psychologist. Because of the relative availability of SRS surgery, often at the hands of doctors who are not specialists in the area of gender, there has been a considerable retreat from the protocol established in the early days by Dr. Harry Benjamin to insure that the patient is indeed ready for what is going to happen. The required year of Real Life Experience before surgery has, for the most part, been shortened and sometimes abandoned altogether. Comprehensive psychological testing and counseling has too often been replaced by a short interview or two between the surgeon (who was not necessarily a gender expert and who, of course, was interested in the handsome income from each SRS operation) and the patient. There was always the latent threat of “if you will not perform this surgery, I will just hop a plane to Thailand or the Philippines or the Dominican Republic and have it done there.” The result is a sharp increase in the number of post-ops who are not ready for the life they now have to lead, not prepared for their future, and not able to cope with it. They all too often end up in a crisis mode which leads either to fervent (and futile) requests to “undo” their operation or to clinical depression and even suicide.

An increasing, and even more dangerous, phenomenon is the lowering of the age at which SRS is performed. There have been recorded cases of SRS being performed in Europe on children as young as 12, and most likely unrecorded cases of even younger children. At this age, of course, the child’s gender identity is certainly not developed enough for him or her to make any sort of rational decision, and so the operation is inevitably a wish-fulfillment on the part of the parents or guardian (“we always wanted a daughter …” or “he was just too beautiful to be a boy …”) with the child as an unwitting guinea-pig. Again, the doctors were faced with the latent or blatant threat that if they do not agree to perform the operation, the parents would just take the child to a clinic in some third-world country where questions are not asked and fees are paid up front and in cash.

What happens when the child matures and the consequences of this operation suddenly overwhelm her, was not the surgeon’s concern. (Here Dr. Gold quoted the famous lines from one of Tom Lehrer’s satirical songs: “ ’I make the rockets go up, but where they come down / Is not my department’, said Werner von Braun.”) Informal communication between psychologists indicates that the results of such early SRS operations are more often than not disastrous. What is becoming very clear is that the controls on operations performed on minors, if they exist at all, are highly inadequate.

People have lost track, she concluded, of the fact that should be obvious - removing one’s penis is not the same as removing one’s appendix. It involves definite far-reaching psychological ramifications which have to be dealt with first, before the irrevocable surgery is even attempted.

From her own experience as chief resident psychologist at the clinic of the noted gender surgeon Dr. Jayne Mautner, Dr. Gold could say that over forty percent of the applicants for SRS are rejected on the grounds of psychological incompatibility or unreadiness. In many cases, the patients are referred back to gender counselors for further preparation, before Dr. Gold will agree to look at them again. Some, unfortunately, are felt to just be there for the wrong reason - and are told so. The fact that someone has not been able to make it in the world as a male does not mean that he is going to make it as a female, no matter what his fantasies are. The root of his problem is somewhere else, not in his gender.

“This,” Dr. Gold remarked, “leads me to the notion of ‘passing’, and I would like to take some time to dwell on it. The notion did not begin with transsexuals, and has a long history. Members of marginal groups in society often try to alter their perceived identities in order to fit in with the majority. Thus, immigrants to the United States would often change their surnames (as my own great-grandfather did when he came to America and changed his name from ‘Goldstein’ to ‘Gold’ so that it would be easier for him to find a job as a mathematics teacher), have plastic surgery on their noses or ears, jettison the cultural traditions and religion of their forefathers, take expensive lessons to mask their foreign accents and mannerisms, all in order to fit in with, what was then, the dominant Anglo-Saxon majority.

The most noted case of passing, and the source of the term (immigrants usually talked in terms of ‘assimilation’ rather than ‘passing’), had to do with Afro-Americans. Until very recently, white skin color was essentially a necessary condition for success in mainstream society. Therefore, light-skinned Afro-Americans would further bleach their skins, straighten their hair, operate on their faces if necessary, and then move to a new location, passing themselves off as whites. This was usually a process which was very psychologically painful since it inevitably entailed cutting themselves off from their families and often choosing not to bring children into the world, lest some errant recessive gene produce a black baby.

If one reads the fiction and nonfiction written by and for Afro-Americans during the early decades of the 20th century, one finds that the theme of passing plays an important part, and is considered at great length. A plethora of ads for skin bleach, hair straightening creams, and even cosmetic surgery could be found in all magazines aimed at the Afro-American community well into the 1960’s.

Stories of successful passing (including rumors that senator So-and-So, Hollywood celebrity Such-and-Such, or Wall Street tycoon You-Know-Who are really homeboys, one generation removed from the cotton fields, who successfully passed) were continually repeated and embellished. In fact, the pros and cons of passing seemed almost an obsession among various layers of Afro-American society at the time.

Thus, passing provided an escape hatch for a few Afro-Americans to make it in the mainstream of society, but only for a few. Those who were too obviously black or obviously negroid in their features could not pass, and they knew it. So for them, this escape hatch was unreachable. What was the alternative? For some, the alternative was to close in: if the predominant society did not want them, then they will just go off and live by themselves. (A slight murmuring in the audience indicated to Dr. Gold that her point had been made.) This led to various movements, the most extreme of which were a variety of “back to Africa” movements. Fortunately, there was also another approach, namely a concerted effort to alter the definition of what constituted success in the mainstream of society by excluding color or race as a factor. After many generations of hard struggle, this is finally reaching its culmination. If we see many Afro-Americans reach high positions in society now, including the presidency of the United States, it is not because they have learned to pass as whites but because skin color is no longer considered as a relevant criterion for advancing within the mainstream. There is no longer any overwhelming need to pass.”

“Now,” said Dr. Gold after taking a drink of water, “let us talk about women and about transsexuals. Beauty has always been a criterion for a woman to advance in society, any society. Beautiful women automatically get the social breaks, and respect, which other women have to work for. Transsexual women, no less than genetic women, are faced with the dilemma of having to meet this criterion.

We all dream of being accepted not just women but as beautiful women. At the very beginning of the transition process, when we think about how it would end, we all fantasize ourselves as looking something like this (and here Dr. Gold showed several pictures of fashion models and playmates of the month). Most stories posted on the internet and aimed at the transgendered community are based on the premise that an “ordinary guy” dresses (or is forced to dress) as a woman for the first time and finds that he is not only passable but in fact stunningly beautiful.

This is not surprising or even unexpected. Most ten-year-old genetic girls also see themselves in their fantasies as blossoming out into a raving beauty. The vast majority of them won’t, of course, and neither will the vast majority of transsexuals. True physical beauty is prized, inter alia, because it is a rare phenomenon.

A much larger number of women, but still a definite minority of the whole, will turn out to be sufficiently attractive so that, with the aid of cosmetics or cosmetic surgery, diets, exercise, and continual effort, they can become reasonable facsimiles of the above, at least enough to pass as beautiful women for a few years of their lives. Consider these as being the analogs of the light-skinned Afro-Americans who could, with considerable effort, reach a stage where they could pass as whites.

What about the rest? It is an unfortunate fact of life that most genetic women, and most post-op transsexuals, are not all that beautiful by contemporary social standards. They are just ordinary. With appropriate cosmetics, skin care, dieting, etc. they can get by as being fairly good-looking, and most likely even attract a man (though he will probably be no movie star either). Just go to any supermarket at 10am on a weekday and see the housewives - all married - with their hair in curlers and without makeup, to see what reality is like. These women would never be considered as beautiful women, but they manage to live as women without doubting themselves. Most transsexuals will eventually find themselves in this group and adjust their expectations accordingly.

And then, finally, there are those women who are, to call a dog a dog, just plain ugly. They may be big and rawboned; they may have a lantern jaw or a beaked nose; they may be too fat or too scrawny. In any case, they are not ‘passable’ under even the most liberal definitions of beauty. Genetic women who fall in this category have really no recourse but to rue their fate and try to make the best of it. Transsexuals tend to rue theirs even more, and blame God or whomever for trapping them in an ‘unpassable’ male body.

What should they do? They could hide themselves from society, choosing to live in solitude so as to avoid the scorn and pity of others. (Again, there was definite murmuring in the audience, as well as a spate of coughing.) Or they could live with it, somehow.

And then there is another strategy, the same as that of the Afro-Americans: work to remove physical beauty as a criterion for female achievement and acceptance in society. Now the admiration of physical beauty is not going to go away, of course, but one can and should take the stand that women (genetic or transsexual) who are not blessed with a beautiful body nonetheless are equal members of society and deserve the same chances and respect as all other women.

This has always been possible to some extent, if one has some other irons in the fire. Samuel Butler, in his novel The Way of all Flesh which attacked the hypocrisy of Victorian society, maintained that in order to get a man, a girl had to decide which of three criteria she was going to meet: she had to be either beautiful or intelligent or talented. Otherwise there was no hope for her. Certainly, intelligent or talented women have often managed to make their mark even if they lacked physical beauty. (Here Dr. Gold showed images of famed Russian/American mathematician Olga Tausky-Todd, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, American ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and former U. S. Attorney General Janet Reno.) These women lived and advanced in society and what a shame it would have been had they decided to retreat to a convent because they thought they were not beautiful enough to be ‘passable’ according to the criteria of their day.

The problem, of course, is to insure as well that those women who are neither beautiful nor particularly intelligent nor particularly talented still get their fair chance to live their lives to the furthest extent.”

Here Dr. Gold again took a sip of water and let her point sink in.

“The important thing to realize is that this is not so much a problem of transsexuals as it is a problem of all women. Actually, I suppose that I should say that is a problem of all humans since men, too, who are far from the norms of male beauty also have their problems - but that is a different issue that it is best not to let this sidetrack us at the moment.

In short, we have a problem that transsexual women, perhaps in disproportionate numbers, tend to fall into a category that is hampered in its enjoyment of its rightful share of the social pie because of certain physical criteria. People tend to look down on a woman with a deep voice or a lantern jaw. That is true whether her vagina was there when she was born or was created by a skilled surgeon. There is nothing we can do about physical attraction, but we can insist that it not be a reason for denying anyone her place in society.

In this connection, I would also like to mention one other group of people whose lot is perhaps even worse than ours, namely the physically handicapped. If you think that you are shunned or scorned because of the tone of your voice or the size of your body, consider what it must be like for those who are missing limbs, or whose faces and bodies are severely disfigured. How many of them would like to retreat to a safe haven where they are not seen by society? Leprosaria served two functions - to keep lepers out of the public eye so people didn’t have to look at them and to protect the lepers themselves from social scorn (contrary to what many people think, leprosy is not particularly contagious).

Some physically handicapped managed to be quite successful in insuring that their bodies do not limit them in their advancement in the world. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though confined to a wheel chair for a good part of his life, managed to ‘pass’ because he was able to manipulate the media so that he was never photographed sitting in it. Christian Herter, Secretary of State at the end of the Eisenhower administration, walked with leg braces and crutches but also made sure that these never appeared in official photographs. But the physically handicapped no longer feel the need to do this and the Americans with Disabilities Act insures that they are not barred from social advancement because of being disabled. “

Here Dr. Gold stopped for a moment and took another sip of water.

“If I had a chance to talk to a post-op transsexual who now feels that she cannot live in society because of her physical appearance, my immediate question would be to ask her why she did not anticipate this before she had her operation. Did she really believe that changing her genitals would also change her physical stature or the timbre of her voice? The answer I would surely get is that the need to live externally like the woman she knew she is internally was so great, that it overwhelmed all other considerations. Fine, but those problems are still there. Why didn’t you think ahead of time of the strategy you were going to going to adopt to confront them or adapt to the limitations imposed by them? As I said at the beginning of my talk, there are great advances in medical techniques which would help make a post-op transsexual fit in better with the social norms, but they are expensive and sometimes hazardous. Of course, one can take a ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!’ approach - in which case one can hardly cry afterwards about the torpedoes being in the water. A much more fruitful approach would have been to sit down with a gender counselor and gameplan strategies for dealing with the most likely situations which will arrive after one starts living fulltime as a woman. The year of Real-Life Experience which Dr. Benjamin insisted on was intended to aid in doing just that. Once you realistically face problems you are likely to encounter, you can undoubtedly overcome them or learn to live with them.”

At this point Dr. Gold unplugged her computer from the projector and closed it. “I had hoped to talk individually with some of you, but Sister Mary-Hope made it clear that that would be against your rule. Even a compromise solution of communicating anonymously by email or a closed secure private chat room was ruled out. Under these circumstances, I think that questions from the audience would also be a waste of time, and so I prefer not to answer any. I thank you for your patience in listening to my views, which I realize went against the grain of the beliefs on which this convent was established. But I understand that this series of talks was intended to provoke an internal dialog among your community, and I hope that I have done that.”

With that, Dr. Gold strode off of the dais and out of the room, not waiting for Sister Serena to accompany her. She made her way back to her car and left the CHS, hoping that, if she ever saw it again, it would be a very different place.