Martin J. Smith - Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads

GOING TO

TRINIDAD

A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from

an Unlikely Gender Crossroads

MARTIN J. SMITH

Bower House

Denver

Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, A Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads . Copyright 2021 by Martin J. Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact Bower House.

www.BowerHouseBooks.com

Designed by Margaret McCullough

Cover photography thanks to iStock

Printed in Canada

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943997

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-917895-10-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-917895-12-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To those with the courage to be themselves

Whats that?

Dr. Stanley H. Biber, in 1969,

responding to a friend who had asked if he might

consider performing a delicate operation

by explaining, I m transsexual.

Table of Contents

Preface Crossroads

In deciding to pursue this story, I relied on a central truth Ive always known as a journalist and as a novelist: The best stories are about people who find themselves at a crossroads. They face a critical choice, and the choice they make in that crucible moment tells us who they are. It has been my privilege while writing this book to meet many thoughtful and articulate individuals who have stood at that crossroads.

I set out to interview some of the people whose personal journeys brought them to Trinidad, Colorado, and to talk to them about their pre- and post-surgery lives, to understand their range of experiences, and to tell the stories of some remarkable people who were part of it all. I couldnt agree more with Andrea Long Chu, a writer and critic who concluded a remarkable New York Times essay published the week before her 2018 gender confirmation surgery with the line: There are no good outcomes in transition. There are only people, begging to be taken seriously.

I tried to take seriously the people youll meet in these pagestheir pain, their confusion, their decisions, their triumphs, their disappointments, and their courage to find their destiny, regardless of anyone elses definition of happiness or success. To them and to all those with the courage to be themselves, I dedicate this book.

I did not set out to argue whether gender confirmation surgery is good or bad, or effective or not. My focus remained on the individuals whose stories unspool in Going to Trinidad . I did not choose their particular stories to advocate for any specific point of view or agenda, even if the individuals themselves do. I chose them because they struck me as endlessly compelling people who, at their personal crossroads, made a difficult choice, and in doing so committed to living with the consequences of that choice.

That includes Walt Heyer, a rare exception among the overwhelming number of Trinidad success stories, which are embodied in this book by Claudine Griggs. Walts role in recent years as a self-styled leader of what he calls the sex-change regret movement has understandably made him a lightning rod for the LGBTQ community, and his story is colored by complicated personal, religious, and political views that some may find objectionable. I chose to focus on his lifelong struggle with mental illness; telling his story is not intended as an endorsement of his ideas, to offer him a platform, or to make his unusual experience seem more common than it is.

I accept that I began this journey ill-prepared and uneducateda consequence of growing up in an era when most people believed gender was a binary thing. Im still learning, and hope others who read this book will learn with me. I appreciate the privilege of being trusted to tell these stories.

Finally, Im convinced of one thing with absolute certainty: This often overlooked chapter in transgender history is an effective prism through which to view a vastly more complex story that in recent years has become a long-overdue national discussion. My sincere hope is that Going to Trinidad will be an important part of that conversation.

Dear Dr. Biber

On December 12, 1990, a law-office secretary and part-time English graduate student in Rancho Cucamonga, California, sat down to write a letter that had been nearly four decades in the making. Her name was Claudine Toni Griggs.

The diminutive Griggs had lived as a woman for sixteen years, since the summer of 1974, though shed been born and spent the first twenty-one years of her life as Claude Anthony Griggs. So complete had been her outward transformation from male to female that few of her friends and professional colleagues suspected. Her physical staturejust five-feet-five and one-hundred-thirty poundsgave her an advantage. All I had to do to look sexually ambiguous was shave what little facial hair I had, she says. Plus, for seventeen years shed been taking hormone treatments that eased her even further toward the female end of the gender spectrum. Her transition had stalled short of the next logical step, surgery to transform her male genitalia into that of a female, but by early December 1990 Griggs had made peace with that decision.

During a routine appointment with her endocrinologist less than two weeks earlier, though, her doctor had asked a direct, provocative question: When are you planning to have surgery?

Never, she replied. Ive learned to live without it.

The doctor pressed. Why dont you want to have the surgery?

When shed explored the possibility in the 1970s, Griggs told him, shed found the attitudes of the doctors she approached off-putting. Her half-dozen encounters with various surgeons, medical centers, psychiatrists, and others left her feeling they were less than knowledgeable, sometimes less than competent and less than ethical. In her journal, she later allowed herself to remember those difficult encounters: If you do everything we tell you, when we tell you, and convince us you will be successful as a woman (their definition of success ), then we will consider, after keeping you under our scrutiny for several years, whether to authorize final sex-reassignment; and bear in mind, we rarely approve surgery (no alternative was ever mentioned). On one occasion, I met with a slightly more dangerous attitude: If youve got the money, Ill do surgeryimmediately.

Once, in 1977, shed gotten as far as scheduling the operationonly to find out the chosen surgeon lost his medical license just weeks before he was set to put her under. I was told by another physician that he had butchered a couple of people, Griggs later recalled. To this day, I do not believe I have completely recovered from the experience.

The endocrinologist shook his head, assuring Griggs that things had improved. And despite her anxiety about revisiting the idea, she couldnt escape that thought as she left his office that Saturday morning. A familiar and terrible emotional storm began to swell, and she found herself crying during the drive home. Five days later, by phone, she asked the doctor to help her identify and locate one of the specialists hed suggested might help. The doctor referred her to a nun in nearby Orange County who he said had experience in connecting transsexuals with a doctor who could do the type of surgery she was seeking. Although they never met, Griggs today believes the nun was herself a transsexual woman and was prepared to make a referral based on personal experience.

Griggs made the call. After a phone consultation in which Griggs answered questions about how long shed lived as a woman, whether she was taking hormones, and if she was in counseling, the nun simply said: Most patients go to Dr. Biber.