02 August 2008 Melody Brandon WEEKEND POST REPORTER
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NATIONAL Women‘s Day next week will be her third annual celebration of being a woman for Christina Engela, who was born male. And despite being ridiculed, rejected and misunderstood, she hopes to assist others like herself on their tough road to happiness.
Born and bred in Port Elizabeth, Christina – more affectionately known as “Tina” – has gone through a painful journey of self-discovery and surgery to become a woman. “I knew from a young age I was in the wrong body. I started out as a lost little boy who very soon realised when he was sitting on the potty that ‘that‘ shouldn‘t be there!” she said this week. To the casual observer, Tina would look like any other attractive woman having a cup of coffee at a café. No-one would guess looking at her smile and friendly disposition that she has gone through years of emotional and physical pain to become the woman she is today. Teased and ridiculed during her school years, Tina tried desperately to fit the “mould” of other boys. “They would chase me with sticks, calling me ‘moffie‘ and ‘meisie-gesig‘ (girlie-face). I got tired of the bullying and started building muscle. I copied the butch walk of a male friend and learnt to act tough,” she said. When Tina finished school in 1991, the 17-year-old faced the daunting task of doing military service. Ironically, despite her  Gender Reassignment, she still works in the military. “I daydreamed of having the operation, or somehow performing it myself. When I finished school I faced having to go to the army in January 1992. National service was still compulsory then so I had to go or face a jail term.” In an ironic twist of fate, when she was three weeks into basics, national service was repealed. “As I had already been taken into the army, I couldn‘t leave. I had to finish my time.” Throughout her reassignment process, Tina continued to work for the army and is now a multimedia specialist. “Unfortunately when I was 17 there was no information available on trans- sexuality. We did not have the internet and I couldn‘t very well ask the local librarian for any books on transgender,” she laughed. She suppressed her desire to become a woman and tried desperately to fulfil her male role. She dated a woman for six years and eventually married in 1998. After a year of marriage, she told her wife she wanted to have a sex change. They divorced two years later. “I remember standing on the church steps after the wedding asking myself what I had done. For 25 years I had been trying to make everyone else happy but I was miserable.” When Tina came out with her decision to become a woman, she lost all her friends and faced ridicule from family. “It was difficult for me too. My wife was my best friend. I loved her. I thought I was in control of the situation but I wasn‘t. You don‘t want to admit it to yourself because of the stigma and persecution, or you deny it because your family is religious, but in the end you realise you are a woman stuck in a man‘s body.” The same year she made her decision to become a woman, Tina approached a social worker at work for help. She was then sent for psychological evaluation. A team of medical professionals, including a social worker, psychologist, occupational therapist, speech therapist and a gynaecologist helped her to realise her dream. She was put onto hormone treatment and learnt how to walk, pose, speak and live her life as a functional female. It was not an easy process, but the routine soon became part of Tina. Her first operation to remove her male organs took place in June 2004. The second operation, sexual reassignment surgery, was completed in January 2006 and the final operation in February of the same year. “It was all very painful and frustrating, but worth it in the end!” she said. According to Gender Dynamix, a South African-based organisation solely focusing on the transgender community, there are more transgendered individuals in mainstream society than one might think, although due to the stigma attached, they may not be open about it. “It‘s hard to say how many transgendered people there are living in the Eastern and Southern Cape because many are not open about their status ... both before and after they have gone through the reassignment process,” said the organisation‘s Caroline Bowley. Bowley said the acceptance of transgendered individuals depended largely on the community in which they lived. “In more western cities people seem to be more open and more accepting of them. We find in more rural areas there is a lot less understanding and tolerance. It depends a lot on the religious upbringing of the individual as well. Cape Town is a lot more cosmopolitan and people are more open than in other conservative areas. It definitely depends on culture too,” she said. Bowley said while the Constitution protected the rights of transgendered individuals to not be discriminated against due to their gender or sexual orientation, they very often were persecuted for who they were. “Just because it is against the Constitution doesn‘t mean it doesn‘t happen. We have heard of a few people who, when they started their transition, were discriminated against by their employer. While labour legislation states that it is not grounds for dismissal, very often the employer will make life so unbearable for the individual they are forced to leave,” she said. Bowley said while there were a few organisations in the country that fell under the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and intersexed organisation‘s umbrella, few of them had any real experience to assist transgendered individuals. Tina feels that she waited too long to become the woman she was inside. “I really want to start a group to help others in my position. You only get one body and one life,” she said. GENDER TERMS: TRANSSEXUALS Transsexuals are individuals who strongly feel that they are, or ought to be, the opposite sex. The body they were born with does not match their own inner conviction and mental image of who they are or want to be. Nor are they comfortable with the gender role society expects them to play based on that body. This dilemma causes them intense emotional distress and anxiety and often interferes with their day-to- day functioning. Transsexuals frequently report they feel trapped unless they correct the situation with hormones or sex reassignment surgery. The following criteria are used for diagnosing individuals with Gender identity disorders: A strong and persistent cross-gender identification, manifested by a repeatedly stated desire to be, live as or be treated as the other sex or by the conviction that the person has the typical feelings or reactions of the other sex. Children may insist that they are the opposite sex and exhibit a strong preference for clothing, games and pastimes that are stereotypically associated with the other sex. TRANSVESTITES Transvestites, or cross-dressers, are individuals who wear clothing of the opposite gender primarily for erotic arousal or sexual gratification, although some do so for emotional or psychological reasons as well, especially as they get older. Whereas some transvestites cross- dress only occasionally, others do so on a daily basis and adopt a female name and persona. Many transvestites are able to compartmentalise their “female side” so successfully that they exhibit no hint of femininity while in the male role. DRAG QUEENS Drag queens are homosexual cross- dressers who don female clothing for their own erotic and sexual pleasure or for that of partners who are attracted to female presentation in a male. Drag queens don‘t aspire to be females, and their partners don‘t want anatomical females – both value their own and their partner's maleness.
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