A LETTER WRITTEN BY KAREN GURNEY TO ADDRESS GIDAANTS

I've only been called beautiful on a very few occasions. The first and by the far the most important to me was at my first meeting with the very dear and wonderful Dr Herbert Bower (deceased) at the GD Clinic in Melbourne. I felt he must be someone rather special when I walked into the wing of the Melbourne Clinic in Richmond, named after him. And he most certainly was!

I stumbled and sobbed my way through my problems and he helped me get it out with judicious interventions and helpful prompts. After I had finished and lapsed into silence he said: "Well, Karen. We will look after you and you will become a tall and elegant lady." He was sort of right... I am tall!!! Herbie was an absolute gentleman and loved his girls as we loved him. He is sadly missed. I confess the tears are welling up in my eyes as I think about him even now.

The GIG people down in Gippsland arranged a seminar not long before Herbie passed away. It was a wonderful celebration of his achievements in front of his professional peers and many of his former patients. I collected him from his home and drove him to the function. He came to the door of his very stately home in South Yarra and I was shocked at how he had aged in the 12 months or so since I had seen him. He was in his late 80's but had always been spry of manner and very dapper in his dress. He was now very frail. I gave him a little kiss and then offered him my arm as he slowly negotiated the couple of steps out onto the driveway. He went to pull back and started to tell me he was "quite alright, thank you". I told him a gentleman always took a lady's arm when they went out together and he smiled and pulled me a little closer.

He was his usual brilliant self at the seminar. He spoke beautifully and with great knowledge and passion. He told us of his nearly 50 years of research into the transsexual condition and his unswerving conviction that it is biologically based. He sat and listened to some of his peers speaking about their own efforts and acknowledged their warm praise of his own. After the formal proceedings, we were enjoying drinks and nibblies when he came over to me. He again looked drawn and frail. He said, "Karen, when you wish, I am free to accompany you home again."

I drove him home and saw him inside the door. He bent down (I was on the lower step) and put his arms around me and gave me a very gentle kiss on the lips. "Thank you for a wonderful day", he said. I drove away in tears with a most dreadful premonition. He was dead just a few weeks later.

I know that he would have lived years longer had it not been for the legal actions commenced against him and others from the GD Clinic by Alan/Helen Finch and a handful of hangers-on. Their cause was in negligence... they claimed that they had been misdiagnosed and irreversibly damaged by inappropriate hormonal and surgical treatment. The matter was finally settled out of court by the insurance people --- an unfortunate outcome as it should have been strongly contested, in my view. This was the second such case in Victoria, the first having been lost by the woman who said she thought she was a man until she got "saved" by a fundamentalist church group.

We who need treatment are the real losers when such things occur. If people tell the story, not from truth and personal experience, but from a repository of anecdotal accounts, and if in their deluded fantasy they do so in such a manner they appear credible and are accepted into the program on this basis, it harms all of us. It diminishes the opportunities for those that follow to obtain lifesaving treatment. It deters good, professional practitioners from working in the area. It results in stricted assessment guidelines. And it demeans all of us in the eyes of a very judgmental world.

The treatment is irreversible. It is a most serious step to take. It makes you dependent on hormonal health support for the remainder of your life. It sets you apart from the 99.99% of the population who regard themselves as "normal". It breaks down many family relationships and friendships. It destroys careers. And it leaves us open to prejudice and worse as we try to live our lives in peace.

There are good sides to all this, too:-) For me, I finally stopped trying to end my life and instead started to try to discover how to live it all over again. I met some wonderfully kind and supportive people. I learned that some do it harder than me. I learned that we are all different yet we share a common essence. I came to really know my Dad, even if only in the last few years of his life. I regained some self-esteem. And I discovered that the best escape from the black hole of depression is to always stand well back from the edge. I have made some wonderful friendships as me, Kaz, and am ever-increasingly involved in my very accepting local rural community. Now I am back in the job market --- just as I qualify for the old-age pension --- and hope to win a fulfilling job with a legal sort of bent.

The GD Clinic operates under State funding in Victoria. It suffered a continual decline in funding in real terms over the last decade or more. Governments do not generally see the work it does as sufficiently important to warrant any extra attention. One of the ironies of the inquiry by Department of Human Services that followed the recent suit by Finch, McGuire and others, however, was a substantial increase in funding. Nowhere near enough. But an increase just the same. The psychiatrists bulk bill so the assessment phase is not an expense to individuals. For those with a Health card, most hormones are on the "free" list. Surgery is still a private affair and anyone heading down the path would be well-advised to obtain private health insurance cover very early in proceedings with one of the big providers such as HBA or Medibank Private. The biggest expense by far, for most of us, is electrolysis and all I can suggest here is that you find a good provider so you will not be scarred in error. Laser and light treatments are improving but the only permanent procedure is electrolysis.

Education is the answer, as you say. But it is a slow process and there are an awful lot of bigots to be educated! Our rights have been advanced greatly in all the states in recent years, especially with the advent of laws to protect us from discrimination and to allow a correction of details on the births register, even though these rights are still qualified in many respects. While I agree that Groups do need to work more cooperatively with one another, I believe the "come one, come all" TG approach that includes us in with all the GIDAANTS does nothing to advance our cause in the political arena. I support the rights of cross-dressers, transvestites, drag persons, and other gender challenged people to be free of discrimination and harassment, but our issue is with our physical sex, not with our psychological gender (how silly is it to call our treatment "gender reassignment surgery" as if surgery can change one's mind?. I don't agree with their claims that they are just like us and should be free to change their legal identity on a whim. Neither do I agree with the GL lobby's attempts to include us in their numbers - sexual orientation and sexual identity are two entirely different and independent phenomena. Our specific medical needs and vulnerabilities are different, too. It is the fact we all face discrimination that unites us, not just the  mistake of birth.

Karen