Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 51

A political science professor takes a look at the federal budget mess. Page 3 Miss some news last week? The Week in Review fills you in on what happened. Page 4 Comment Education Asbury Park Press Nov. 29, 1981 Doctor still believes in sex changes A decade ago, area physician did controversial surgery jv if'' if 1 "A great deal of effort along those lines has been tried," he said. "What psychiatry does is help patients with their disability." To be sure, he was only too happy to give up sex reassignment procedures because of "the day-to-day headaches and aggravations" and because it was a "losing proposition." Male transsexuals, in particular, "have all the usual things wrong emotional instability, financial difficulties, bad work habits and rehabilitative potentials.

They are largely being supported by welfare; they don't pay their bills. "THE FEMALE transsexuals who have been assigned to male identity are exactly the opposite: they are generally stable, responsible and often productive persons who can be depended upon to pay their bills, have good work habits and normally wind up as a responsible member of the community." Four of five transsexuals doctors see are male-to-females, although the ratio of transsexualism in both sexes runs about the same. Transsexuals are in continual need of money for such expensive procedures as hormone treatment, electrolysis to remove facial hair, breast transplant, and to buy clothes and makeup. A complete sex change can cost as much as $20,000. But in tions and make them difficult to deal and live with," said Whittle.

"The sad part about all this is because of neglect of these people by the legal, medical and social sources, there's a fairly high rate of suicides among transsexuals, especially the young." No exact figures are available but "at least, half of these people ultimately commit suicide," he said. "They have an impossible situation; they find themselves acting out a role they're not psychologically suited to act out. They live in a fantasy world." ALTHOUGH THE best time for undergoing the operation is when a person is very young, Whittle says, that hasn't been the general practice. "The time to recast a person who has been determined to be miscast in his gender identity is not when they are in their 20s or 30s, but early in childhood, even before puberty," he said. Physicians, however, are leery of operating on minor patients for fear of suits, he added.

True transsexuals are not mere homosexuals people attracted to the same sex or transvestites those who derive pleasure from cross-dressing but have no desire to change their anatomies. Psychiatric care, he contends, has never succeeded in resolving the true transsexual's problem. 4- Asbury Park Press Dr. George T. Whittle inspects sample of tissue in his office.

Iff in r- Transsexualism: Is it heredity or environment? THE SAVI SAVING PLACE "4' 1 i i 'J Asbury Park Press DR. GEORGE T. WHITTLE Jobs, they face hostility and ridicule, if not outright discrimination. Paula Grossman, a Plainfield transsexual born Paul Grossman, found this out when she was fired from her teaching Job after her operation. She fought her case all See AREA SURGEON, page D10 12" Boots For Men 2 great-looking styles Polyurethane with vinyl Comfortable lining Fancy accent stitching profession should be able to help the true transsexuals persons who feel trapped in the wrong body and have an insistent desire to transform their anatomy into that of the opposite sex.

"In the last 10 years there has been an awareness that this problem does exist and "All you had to do and you can publish this to destroy any program and progress is let the lawyers and suits govern your daily activity. This was exactly what happened that it's a significant and ever-increasing problem," said Whittle, who is an attending urologist at Riverview Hospital, Red Bank, Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch, and at Jersey Shore. He also is a clinical instructor of surgery at Hahnemann Hospital, Philadelphia. "Transsexuals have tremendous problems which place them in intolerable posi Q5asciiators Our Regular 28.97 Pr. (Til all A 9 ALSO At a mi 1 JiMI mm3i TERN By ERLINDA VILLAMOR Press Staff Writer TEN YEARS AFTER he stopped performing sex -change surgery, Dr.

George T. Whittle remains convinced the procedure has its place "in carefully selected transsexual cases." Dr. Whittle, of Little Silver, a urologist with offices in Red Bank and Neptune, gained widespread publicity in the area in the early 1970s when he performed eight sex-reassignment surgeries at Jersey Shore Medical Center, Neptune. Because of the controversy they generated, and a suit by one of his patients, Jersey Shore has since barred the procedure there. Whittle, however, has continued to see' transsexual patients.

"They are referred to me by physicians in the community who don't know what to do with them," he said. "I have channeled these patients in appropriate treatment facilities. "It's become more apparent that there are several true transsexuals who are ideal candidates for sex reassignment surgery, who had been born and raised in this country, and that at present, there are no satisfactory treatment facilities available to them." WHITTLE BELIEVES the medical Associated Press CHRISTINE JORGENSEN The former George Jorgensen Scientists in Britain and Canada, said Whittle, who has performed several sex change operations in Monmouth County, have long held this view. At the second International Gender Identity Meeting held 10 years ago in Canada, he recalled, psychologists reported that using available tests, they were able to identify the transsexuals from among preschool children, long before puberty. Sex-change clinics flourished in the '60s See EXPERTS page D10 through another door and made a dash for the bathroom where he locked himself in.

His mother knocked at the bathroom asking Ronnie if he had seen a Mexican girl run out of the house. "I shouted back 'no. She called the police. They all sat down and talked while I remained locked in the bathroom. Later everybody calmed down and and I hung everything back in my sister's room.

It was all terrfying for me." Time, hormone treatment and pills since have rendered Lisa more and more of a woman. But the anguish of living in a fantasy world also has Intensified for her. She now prefers to be addressed and referred to as a female. Despite her talents and an above-average intelligence, she has had to settle for menial Jobs. She finished high school in Los Angeles and took a filmmaking course.

She has a number of documentaries and advertising films to her credit, and she said, even had her own film company in Hollywood. She can also write, she adds. After her father's death in an car accident 10 years ago (her mother had died earlier,) Lisa moved to New Jersey where she has some relatives. Unable to find a good Job, she pumped gasoline, sold stereos and tiled prostitution. At present she sells carpets for an Eatontown company.

See TRANSSEXUALS page Dll it I A I DESPITE NEARLY half a century of research, experts still don't know what causes transsexualism. Some say it results from hormonal imbalances in the mother; others say it's, a psycho-social phenomenon largely determined by oneis upbringing. The two principal theories, said Dr. Harry Benjamin, a retired New York endocrinologist and leading authority on transsexualism, concern the organic, that is biological, causes; the other with purely psychological factors. Research in the past 20 years, however, has tended to show that transsexuality is determined more by biological than psychological or social factors.

There have been studies documenting the failure of psychotheraphy to help people who feel miscast in their genetic gender. Dr. Paul M. Packman, a psychiatrist at Washington University, evaluated 75 transsexuals and found that no two of them had the same kind of upbringing, background, or family circumstances. Some were from broken homes, some from stable homes, some from families in which all siblings were from the opposite sex, some from families with all siblings of the same sex.

The patients included blacks and whites and were from every socio-economic level. Some families had strong fathers, some with weak mothers and others with strong mothers. FOR SOME REASON, said Dr. George Whittle, an area urologist, "we are seeing more and more people who are basically put together properly yet showing some abnormality in personality development, which makes us believe that it must be something they are bom with and which develops long before they're aware of it." 'm RSMRDDS Z- Our Regular 28.97 to 29.97 Pr. Your Choice Women's Westerners Leather-look polyurethane Polished, wrapped heel Soft, tricot lining Contrast stitching detail Survival difficult in straight world -v Our Texas Steer brand high iHU ySSZSt performance quality, designed to I (w fs.

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A symbol of quality THE PHONE rings in Lisa Simone's apartment. Startled, she picks up the phone. "It's soma store offering me a credit card, but it's in my male name, Ronnie," she says in a worried voice. "I've got to think of a way to get around this; they can't have a male name and have a woman, Lisa Simone, using it. Maybe I'll Just give them initials and a last name.

This is exactly the kind of game I have to play all the time a game of wits, I guess." It always has been that way with Lisa Simone, a 29-old-male transsexual: one crisis after another. When she was 11 she tried for the first time to indulge her strange longing to be a woman and almost got "clocked" or found out by her mother. Lisa was then growing up as Ronnie. One day, alone in his family's home in Los Angeles, he went into his older sister's bedroom and started trying on her clothes and makeup and imagining himself as a girl. -Suddenly, he heard his mother come up the stairs calling for him.

"She really caught me by surprise," she recalls. "Here I was decked out in my sister's clotlies, a brown fall (hairpiece) and all, and I didn't know what to do. didn't know what made me do it." I RONNIE RAN fAnt. his sister's room lnsole rf JSP0' Goodyear welt fc i-' yr construon Available At Your Local mart Store. "WIIMG PLACE J1.