Boy, (Un)Interrupted
Transpinoy Rising!
By Sass Rogando Sasot
PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 2009

BIG WORDS
SEX ASSIGNMENT AT BIRTH The sex declared by the doctor's upon our birth; the one entered on our birth certificates. GENDER IDENTITY Each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth. TRANSSEXUALISM The medical condition of having a gender identity opposite to one's sex assignment at birth. CISGENDERED MEN Refers to men who were given a male sex assignment at birth.   TRANSSEXUAL MEN (FEMALE-TO-MALE/FTM/TRANSMEN)ranssexual Men (female-to-male transsexuals/FTM/transmen) These are boy and men who were declared female by the doctors upon their birth. TRANSPINOY Filipino males of transsexual experience. TRANSITIONING The process of externally manifesting one's gender identity. STEALTH Being accepted according to your gender identity well enough to live without divulging you're a transsexual NON-SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY DEPENDENT GENDER RECOGNITION LAW A law that grants transsexual people to legally change their sex without requiring them to undergo sex reassignment surgery. The United Kingdom pioneered this kind of law in 2004.

It was in Japan that he started to manifest fully his inner reality. Luckily, James was with a supportive and nurturing company. “My company was so professional; they know how to respect me.  I didn’t even have to tell them to use male pronouns when I was transitioning, they just did. They even called me Mr Roque.” This is a sharp contrast to what James experienced in the Philippines, James compared: “In the Philippines, it’s always about religion, I am always a sinner for them, I am always judged.  Too many gossips, and even if they see how you look like, if they know you are female in your documents, they will stick into calling you with female pronouns, or your female name, and then laugh... they make fun of you.”

“I was always questioned whenever I present identification papers, I always have to explain. But after my explanation, I get a strange look from them…then they laugh. Nakakainsulto lagi (It’s always very insulting). One example, when I changed my driver’s license, I had to get a drug test. After taking the urine test, the whole room was laughing and making a joke about me!”

In October 2006, James started a blog to document his physical transition. His first entry narrated how much he was depressed, he wrote: “Depression is killing me, I feel like dying, every day I have nothing in my mind but to think of death. I desperately need to be [myself].” James explained to me that he had always been depressed but it reached its peak in 2006: “I hated my old voice, I hated my body, I hated monthly periods, I hated wearing binders. I can’t live my life forever like this, I believe I also deserve to be happy and live my ‘real’ life as a male in the correct body.”

On December 22, 2006, accompanied by his girlfriend at that time, James undergone subcutaneous mastectomy in Yanhee Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Narrating the last five minutes of him having breasts, James said: “I was very nervous and excited at this moment; I lie on the stretcher labeled with the operating room number. A Filipino male nurse was there. I talked to him for a few minutes while my stretcher was in line for surgery. He made me feel comfortable – that eased my nervousness. He said I was probably their first Filipino FTM patient, mostly were Japanese, Singaporeans, Malaysians, etc.”  Several hours later, James was awakened by a nurse calling his name, “that moment, I realized, the surgery was finished that I now have a male chest.”

It took a month for James to completely heal. He fondly remembered the first time he took a shower without the binders on his chest. “It was so good and satisfying! I can now wear just a shirt in public without inner wear. But this is just the beginning of my new life…”

On April 14, 2007, James had his first testosterone shot (T-shot) in a clinic in Tokyo that specializes on transsexuals.  He was referred there by an FTM shop in Asakusa, where James bought shinobi (height increasing in-soles) and Microgen, a testosterone cream James applied on his face to thicken his beard and mustache. He started with 150 mg, then later it increased to 250 mg; these were all to be taken every two weeks. After his second T-shot, James already noticed several changes: increased sex drive; his clit started to grow bigger; his appetite raged; he became more hairy; and he had an oily face. It was after his fourth T-shot that James’s body gained more muscles, and his voice became masculine.

Years later, James went back again to Thailand, this time with his mother, to have his uterus, ovaries, and other female reproductive organs removed through a TAH-BSO surgery (Total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy).

Since he physically transitioned, James hasn’t seen his father yet, who is a born-again Christian pastor. He had only told him about it on the phone and their conversation didn’t go too well. “He can’t accept my gender. He kept on telling me Christian reasons [against it],” James recalling that phone call, “But then he said, ‘Anak kita (you’re my child), and I love you.  But I will not support you on that.”

Nonetheless it was only his father who doesn’t fully accept him. “I told my mother before that I’m a man and not a woman. My mother told me she knew it all along. But she’s still having difficulties calling me with male pronouns, or my male name. My sister is the most supportive and open-minded. She told me that she’s happy for me, and that she accept and support me.” 

But with or without the full-support of his family, James would still continue his physical transition. In the next years, he plans to undergo phalloplasty or metadoiplasty.

LIVING IN GERMANY

In October 2007, James was sent by his company to Bordesholm, Germany for a business trip. While in Germany, his company decided to transfer him permanently to their German branch to work as a Senior Manager for Quality Management.  Even if he is still legally female, James is already considered male in his company. His company ID shows his male name; and his colleague, as well as the suppliers and customers of the company, treat him as male. It’s only in his legal documents such as in his bank account and contract that James’s sex assignment at birth still echoes through.  But that echo shall die soon, to be replaced by the voice of James’s internal truth.

On July 17, 2008, James filed a petition to change his name and legal sex from female to male in a court in Amtsgericht Kiel, the nearest city to Bordesholm.  Updating the status of the petition, James said: “We expect it soon before December [of this year]. Since I need to renew my visa in December, my company hopes that I’m already using the new name before the renewal para isang procedure na lang (so it will be just one procedure).”  It was his German boss who encouraged him to file the petition. “He told me it’s possible, he gave me the idea to do it,” James said. “Legally, I may even get married and sponsor my spouse to come here.”  James’s German boss was so supportive that he was even the one who looked for a lawyer.

“And as I was still new in Germany, my boss even asked the company assistant to help me with the rest of the process, to contact the court, to look for an interpreter, etc.,” James added.

He is very hopeful that his petition will be granted. “Yes, it’s possible,” he said. “There is no discrimination even to foreigners.”

Indeed this is definitely possible as there’s already a precedent to this case. Sometime in 2008, Jenny, a Filipina transsexual woman who now lives in Germany and one of the four original founders of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP), won her legal petition to change her name and legal sex from male to female. Jenny was introduced to James and she helped James in processing his petition. It’s unfortunate that this right to change one’s legal sex is not possible yet in their country of birth.

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