Born in Queensland in an outwardly male body, Jaye Weir grew up knowing she somehow didn’t quite fit in. After years of slowly changing her appearance and life to reflect her self identification as female, Jaye took the step of going for gender reassignment surgery in 1996. In 2004 Jaye decided to took take things a step further and apply for a female birth certificate. In support of her application she had further testing, and discovered that although born with male genitals, she had an XX chromosome, and was therefore genetically female. Further investigation uncovered that the gender re-assignment surgery has more likely been gender correction surgery, as she had internal female organs. Believed to be one of only a handful of people in the world with this condition, Jaye is now applying to have her birth certificate changed to reflect her true gender. This is Jaye’s story.
‘Growing up I lived in a very masculine environment. I was a kind of androgynous kewpie doll kind of creature and didn’t really identify with any specific sexuality.
I was hassled a lot by both boys and girls at school. You know I had one PE teacher who was incredibly offended by me. I was very withdrawn and school was quite traumatic Socially I was known as a boy, but I think everyone knew it was a different kind of picture. I didn’t really discuss it and talk about it people just naturally assumed that I was like a butch girl or a lesbian. I suppose I was just in a bit of a strange place, some people were sympathetic to some degree and then on the complete other side of the scale of people were very, very offended and very violent.
I met my first gay friends at fourteen and really realised I suppose that I was different from them and umm I don’t know in way I suppose bit of a sexual outcast I think because I was so incredible feminine, We started going out nightclubbing from about 14 or fifteen, that was in the eighties, so it was an era about punk and androgyny. Thank God for our gay icon Boy George – boys were apparently allowed to wear makeup. When things were found out it was a big gossipy sort of issue and I don’t know, being young you don’t really challenge other people’s ideals, you don’t even challenge your own ideals. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I really went, well I don’t really fit this boy mould, you know I’d just tried to make my parents happy and that sort of thing and you know it didn’t really work.
I had a funny thing happen to me when I moved to Sydney and applied for a job. I had this interview with this woman, I was still using my male name and I made a big effort to dress up as male as I could. I had the pants, the tie, hair all slicked back, no makeup, and when I sat down she said ‘Oh my god, what an interesting name for a girl….’ It was a breaking point as I realised that people didn’t know me and although I was trying to be male as I could, it still wasn’t cutting the mustard…..That was it, I just went home and threw my clothes out, went and bought new stuff, and slowly adjusted my day time self.
In 1989 because I had this intimate intellectual relationship with this guy and one day he came at me and said ‘Well are you gay? And I said no, I don’t think I’m gay… I felt quite feminine though’ I think it was that conversation that led to me going and getting tests done. I went to a GP and I got recommended to see an endocrinologist to go have tests done to see if there was anything inside that made me so feminine. I mean, you look at my brothers, they’re all like he-man and I just didn’t fit the bill, which let me know that things weren’t quite how they were meant to be. I got told my chromosome report said I was XXY -that I was male, but extra feminine. I think at the time I just brushed it off. I didn’t realise at the time it was something that would help me or make me feel better.
I always intended to have the surgery but it was another situation where I didn’t really check everything out. I just went and did it – it was like getting on a rollercoaster not knowing where it was going to take me but needing to get to the end of the trip. My consultation about the surgery was over in about 5 min max. I felt that there wasn’t a lot of care. When you’re a marginalised person as I felt I was, you don’t really get proactive about yourself, especially when you’re dealing with specialists and doctors you more or less see them in a god like position and you tend to leave it in their hands. At the time there’s a lot of turmoil going on and sometimes people don’t know how to ask the questions they need.
The feeling after the surgery was incredible. It was like a very big burden was lifted. It’s funny you become part of the pussy posse but you don’t know anything about your pussy!
I came to Perth, following a sister who had been adopted out of the family. I studied here for a two years, and that was very good and very positive and I got some of my confidence back. I knew about births deaths and marriages and being able to have your birth certificate changed over here, they have a gender centre and something specific set up. I’d finally found a fantastic female doctor and I thought well I know about my chromosomes being XXY so I thought let’s go along and do it again and check it all out. When the reports came back the results were different – they came back as XX. From there we did lots of testing and found out my chromosomes were female, so externally while I had been male externally, chromosomally I was completely female. I also went to a gynaecologist as a result of complications from my surgery and they identified that I had actually had pre-existing internal female organs.
I felt happy, but heartbroken at the same time realising that, if I had had this information at eighteen and had it explained to me it would have made everything fall into place. I don’t know if I would have had 100% confidence, but I wouldn’t have felt like a complete mental case. To this day a lot of people don’t know whether transgenderism is psychological or physiological and then they throw it off as ‘it’s a matter of sexuality, it’s a matter of your lack of acceptance’ and you know it just doesn’t work like that. I’ve been in this process from age 19 to 26 and then to find out a good 8-9 years later that things aren’t the way you believed them to be… well to be so misread it really stuffs with your identity. You know you can’t go backwards, you can only go forwards, but this is the main reason I’ve spoken out because I want people to understand, that we need more understanding and acceptance. Times have changed you now have transgender kids who are coming up now who are getting assessed and helped and put through all the right panels and seen to properly, but this is a situation if not dealt with properly it can nearly destroy a person.
Unfortunately I spent most of my teenage years growing up in Brisbane and to use the vernacular I stuck out like dogs balls, before and after, I always did, and even if I’ve had my wallflower moments, my personality doesn’t allow me to disappear. I’ve always just been a bit sensational just by even existing. I’ve done a bit of hairdressing, but not my apprenticeship. The people I worked for in Brisbane knew of my previous gender status and made it hard for me. Clients were told about my previous history, you know, she’s a man, she’s a bloke and commented about how I looked and harangued and called a freak and not accepted. I offended people just by my existence. Unfortunately if you look at dealing with the general male heterosexual population, if they find out things aren’t in symmetry as they appear to be, you can get nasty reactions. If your confidence isn’t there if you’re used to be abused or attacked by other people nasty things can happen to you. You sort of have to live in a netherworld, and you more or less have to deny your sexuality or you can end up in tricky positions, I’d been assaulted by the time I was 21.
The gender situation was something that was always used against me but hopefully I can pull through. I’m now trying to find some sort of work and some sort of network and hopefully that’s possible, but it’s really hard if you can’t explain why you haven’t done so earlier and I can’t explain without judgement. We live in such a patriarchal society it’s like how dare you cut off you totem pole, you’re disenfranchising yourself and then there are women who say you’re not real, you can’t have babies, you can’t bleed, this isn’t right. Unfortunately it’s offensive to both parties, masculine and feminine.
Our community its very visual, and sometimes if you don’t fit within a certain look, or shape or a size you can be judged quite harshly but I think we as a community should treat each other gently and be more open to accepting. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, you might be missing out on something. I just see the beauty in everybody, especially marginalised people. I look at what other people tend to miss – there is nothing better in my day than walking past a complete stranger and getting a smile -it’s like ‘Hello! I’ve seen you, you’re not invisible!’.
I’m now at a stage where I realise that the totem pole surgery was corrective, and I may not bleed or be able to have children, but I still have the same chromosomes and makeup as every other woman.
So it’s acceptable in my terms and that’s where I’m okay now.’
Jay Weir spoke to Zoe Carter.
