Sam & Rachael

by Sam Davies

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I'm a thirty three year old F.T.M. whom has been legally married to an M.T.F. (Rachel) for the past eight years. She is twenty nine and I am her fulltime sole carer. I had a double mastectomy four years ago and have been on hormones now for about twenty-two months. Unfortunately due to many complex health issues Rachel can undergo very few gender re-assignment procedures. Such treatment is also far out of reach financially. Rachel lives as a female and we have changed our names to reflect our true genders. Rachel was born with cerebral palsy and has been a quadriplegic from birth. She can, however, speak and has partial movement in her hands and gets around in an electric wheelchair.

Rachel developed schizophrenia in her late teens, which the doctors have been reluctant to confirm, as she also suffers from posttraumatic syndrome from the brain damage she received at birth. Life for her has had more than its fair share of traumas with hardly anyone taking her claims of gender dysphoria or schizophrenia seriously. But our God knows us so we don't get overly concerned anymore.

I am an active member of the religious organisation I joined nearly thirteen years ago, attending all meetings, conventions and assemblies where permitted, despite our having been excommunicated. Yes, we join a long list of people in our situation who have been accused of violating Deuteronomy 22:5. Never mind, I joined a Bible guided organisation to serve God, not man, who is always making mistakes. I'm happy so I have no complaints. There is nothing more satisfying than doing what I know to be right in our Creator's eyes and being honest. The truth will come out in the end. Being cut off from being able to talk with my friends doesn't bother me too much. What bothers me is having the Creator falsely looked upon as a shallow God who only sees people as flesh and genes as though He has insight only equal or inferior to man.

He doesn't violate His own words such as are found at 1 Samuel 16:7. I have wanted to write for some time but due to my circumstances I have been very reluctant knowing some people may consider me a religious brainwashed nutcase. I don't want to talk about religion in Polare. If anyone wishes to talk about the Bible (which I have become very familiar with over the past thirteen years) and what it may or may not say they can write to me personally. Religion makes me sick, the Bible doesn't.

Putting religion aside, my life has been seen by some as intimidating, even scary. Scary? Yes, scary. Or maybe it's my irritating honesty which has got me into trouble several times during my interesting and apparently unbelievable life of thirty two years that tends to leave people just not quite sure what to say to me. But after living with a quadriplegic schizophrenic transsexual my life couldn't really be expected to end up dull could it? But enough of the prattle, here's some more about myself.

I was born in 1969 and my parents chose to name me Samantha Louise not knowing that the tiny petite baby with shocking blond hair and blue eyes they held was actually Sam Luke-Anthony. Oh well, these things take time to come out sometimes.

We moved from Britain to Australia when I was three and a half years of age and traveled Australia for about two years. The bush became truly infused into my blood and young but sad heart. Plants and animals were my only happiness. I knew there was something very wrong with my life, but at such a tender age I couldn't be expected to know why I was uncomfortable around people and indeed even uncomfortable by myself, but I was soon to find out.

Yes, I played with children, at least I tried, but they were not very co-operative so that didn't last long. I approached other little boys, but they told me to go away and play with the girls. I protested and said I wasn't a girl and wanted to play with them.

They didn't agree with my claim to boyhood and when one of them pushed me over in the sand pit I laced into him. There was no competition - I flattened him even though I was smaller. The boys could only look at me in silent fear having never come across any "girl" who fought - let alone with clenched fist. I could not force them to play, I realized. I left the pit and searched for what I knew and loved, the bush and the wildlife. Maybe I could find some better company such as my favourite creepy crawly, the spider, or maybe I could find one of those interesting insect eating plants which I sometimes showed to mum.

Hoping I could stay around the adults for company, especially the men, I sought them out when not with the wildlife. But who was I fooling? Before I knew it I found myself in a place they called school surrounded by little people with no means of escape. If this wasn't bad enough, wait until I wanted to go to the toilet. Innocently making my way to the boys toilets I was redirected by my female teacher. My pleas that I was a boy and had to go to the boys' toilets fell on deaf ears and I was led reluctantly into the girls' loo. There was nothing I could do. I was about to wet myself and the teacher was a lot bigger than me. It was then that the horror really hit me. I was a boy with a girl's body and there was no way I could prove it. The sausage-like piece if flesh which I was sure was going to sprout in between my legs any day was refusing to come to my defence. I was alone.

Through fourteen torturous years of school I found my only outlet for my frustration was to use my fighting talents and my hatred of any injustice to defend people. So from day one I intervened whenever I saw someone getting beaten up or picked on so that I very soon earned a reputation for keeping school bullies in check. After I gave a boy a bloody nose during a lesson in fourth year teachers would even threaten their misbehaving students with being sat next to me if they didn't behave. I was an explosive keg of anger, which of course led some boys who were a little adventurous to rub me up the wrong way to see me in action, especially if they could do it in class. I usually waited until lunchtime to let the offending individual do battle with me.

When I was eight, when a girl kept dobbing me in to the teacher for standing in the boys' line, I vowed in silence that one day the whole world would know I was a boy. I didn't know how I was going to do it or when, but it would happen. Little did I realize what a big fuss would be made over it all and to what extent the lives of Rachel and myself would nearly be ripped to shreds. But we came through it all, and what is more we came through it all stronger and richer and for the first time, and I have tasted a little of what it is like to be happy this past year and a half and have a generous measure of peace of mind.

My fighting days came to an end after I left school in 1988. I felt lost and planned a couple of ways of doing away with myself. Since my attempts to understand the Bible came to naught after so many years it seemed suicide was the only option left. I was too alone and in endless, indescribable emotional pain. Then, after many years of searching for the Creator so I could ask Him to give me the right body to be happy and get on with life - two days before my planned suicide - I finally found a couple of people who could simply show me what the sacred writings were all about. Things were no longer hopeless and I didn't have to die to find peace. Of course all that knowledge didn't miraculously get me the body I needed but at least I found out that my and other peoples situations no matter how difficult or apparently insoluble are not permanent and that the world so full of precious plants, animals and some very special people wasn't and never will be blown to smithereens by madmen in their quest for power and world dominance as I had gloomily feared. So I no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel as a crushing oncoming train but a light of sure hope. Getting out of bed in the morning is still hard but at least I get out and get on with helping Rachel have some sort of life; no longer sinking into a hole of self-pity and despair.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.