Special Feature: Retired M.D. taking long journey into womanhood

Written by Ken Hedler

A driver honked at me as I entered the intersection of Man O War Road and Bloomington Drive April 2 from the Virgin River Trail. Curious, I walked over to the parking lot for the trailhead. I recognized Robyn, and she joined me for a walk headed back north on the trail.

Robyn dressed for walking with an athletic outfit, athletic shoes and headscarf. We walked together for about a mile and a half before she turned around.

The walk was brief, but Robyn has been on a journey since childhood thousands of miles away in her native Alberta, Canada. Born male and named Robert, she felt uncomfortable in her own body since as far back as she can remember. I had met her only a few months earlier and knew her as Rob at the time.

“I have gender-identified as a female since my earliest memories,” Robyn told me in March. “It is that sense of extreme discomfort of appearing in the gender that is opposite your brain.”

Robyn, a semi-retired radiologist at age 64 who lives in St. George and requested The Independent not publish her full name, said her mother dressed her as a girl until her father put a stop to it at age 4.

Robyn also played with dolls and girls at an early age.

“Boys are mean and stupid,” Robyn said with a laugh. “I always wanted dresses and skirts.”

Robyn, a native of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, said other boys teased her constantly starting in elementary school because she was horrible at sports as a boy.

“By early puberty I was very effeminate, and they teased me about that all the time,” she said. Other boys poked fun of her because she crossed her legs and smoke cigarettes “like a woman.”

They ridiculed the way she walked and talked, Robyn recalled, adding she was small for her age at 5 feet tall and weighing only 85 pound. She now stands 6 feet tall.

Robyn chose medicine as a career, and graduated from the University of Calgary Medical School.  She did her residency at McGill University in Montreal, and earned a doctorate in molecular pharmacology at the University of British Columbia.

She spent the majority of her medical career at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, working under her former name. She started there in 1983 as a research associate and assistant professor of radiology, and was later promoted to associate professor and then professor, according to the media relations department at the university. She served as program director of nuclear medicine, a division of the Department of Radiation, until 1999.

The gender dysphoria continued to tug at Robyn. She first pursued gender reassignment in 1990 and underwent nine months of therapy. However, she dropped out of the program because she was married at the time and feared proceeding would ruin her medical career.

Now retired from medical practice and teaching while still doing medical consulting, Robyn feels no such constraints.

She began therapy Dec. 8, 2014 by conferring with Linda Helquist, a St. George-based licensed marriage and family therapist who has worked in the field 30 years.

“Robert appears to have a solid understanding of what he will embark on and has done significant research on all aspects of his decision to transition,” Helquist wrote in a letter addressed “To Whom It May Concern” dated Jan. 8. “At this point I am supportive of Robert moving forward in his pursuit of hormone therapy under the care of a qualified physician.”

Helquist wrote she interviewed Robyn in two separate hour-long sessions but did not administer psychological testing.

Helquist said in an interview she has transgendered clients who are much younger than Robyn, but said, “I would not be surprised if we see more of the older folks coming out.”

She said celebrities such as former Olympian Bruce Jenner, 65 are blazing a trail for transsexuals who are in their 60s and 70s, adding society has become more open. She said people in their 20s might be reluctant to pursue hormone therapy and surgery because they lack the financial means and are not established in their careers.

Others in their 30s and 40s might not be ready because they fear losing their jobs and becoming alienated from their families.

Robyn, twice married, divorced for seven years and with no children of her own, said she faces “zero” opposition from her immediate family. She began dressing as a woman on Halloween and started hormone therapy Feb. 2.

Therapy consists of wearing a hormone patch that a Las Vegas-based endocrinologist prescribed for her. She changes the patch twice a week, and sees the specialist once every three months.

The patch produced immediate effects on her body, she said, adding she will wear it for the remainder of her life. The patch triggers mood swings that include crying.

Robyn began using the patch on the same day that she started taking an anti-androgen pill once a day to block the production of testosterone and the effects of it.

Robyn said she began appearing full time as a woman in public March 22, and applied for a legal name change April 10.

She is growing breasts, and is learning how to modulate her voice to sound more like a woman. She said she must live as a woman for a year and be observed by two mental health gender specialists before undergoing surgery. She plans to see a gynecologist in San Mateo, Calif., to perform the surgery in April 2016.

Robyn acknowledges surveys that show transgendered people face the most harassment of the LGBT population as well as research that indicates they are more likely to commit suicide. She said she is attracted to women but might become bisexual after her surgery.

An LGBT advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, refers on its webpage to a 2011 national transgender survey that states 47 percent of respondents reported experiencing a negative job outcome – such as being fired, not hired or denied promotion – because they were transgender or gender non-conforming.

A new state law in Utah that had the support of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Republican leadership protects the LGBT community from discrimination in housing and employment. Transgendered people who believe they face discrimination may sue in court under the law, said Preston Hilburn, field representative for Equality Utah, the main LGBT advocacy organization in Utah.

Hilburn said he does not know how many transgendered people live in the Beehive State but indicated the Williams Institute at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, did a study estimating transgendered people constitute 0.3 percent of the nation’s population.

He acknowledged the figure could be higher.

“There is still more fear for trans people to come out,” Hilburn said, referring to fear of harassment and violence for going public.

Equality Utah this past November launched a video series as part of its Transgender Awareness Project. One video contains an interview with Candice Metzler, formerly a man.

The public spotlight first shone on transgendered identity in 1952 when the New York Daily News reported a World War II-era veteran underwent surgery and emerged as Christine Jorgensen. Years later, I watched a television interview in which she recalled comedian Bob Hope telling a joke that Jorgensen “went abroad and came back a broad.”

Gender-reassignment still garners media attention, especially when it involves a famous person or a prominent member of a community. Steve Stanton, city manager of Largo, Fla., gained the spotlight after privately telling the mayor and other top city officials that he wanted to become a woman in January 2007.  “I was totally unprepared for the reaction and rejection of almost everyone who’d been close to,” Stanton told the Tampa Bay Times.

Stanton underwent surgery and changed his first name to Susan after losing his job in Largo in March 2007. Susan Stanton has been city manager of Greenfield, Calif., since 2012.

That is the same year Jenna Talackova, who was born a boy, became the first transgendered woman to compete in the Miss Universe Canada pageant.

Transgendered identity became a media side show in the saga of whistleblower Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for giving classified documents to WikiLeaks. The Washington Post reported in August 2013 that Manning had identified as a female since childhood and wanted to live as a woman. A widely circulated photo showed Manning wearing a wig.

By contrast, Robyn has been largely private about her gender transformation, sharing it only with the leaders of several clubs where she presents herself as a woman. I was surprised when Robyn divulged such personal information to me a few months ago while hiking with a Meetup.com group in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. I thought she was joking. She appeared as Rob and was dressed as a man that morning.

She said, “It’s very hard to be transsexual in Southern Utah because there are so few of us and few places to meet people. There is no organized group.”

She stated in a follow-up email: “I am definitely going to become an activist; in fact, I think it may become my passion. I joined Equality Utah, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Equality Federation and I intend to become politically active in Stonewall Democrats, the LGBT group.”

Robyn plans to come out with a speech titled “Inner Peace Begins with a T: My Transition to Womanhood” at 11:30 a.m. June 7 in the World Peace Gardens at Green Valley Spa & Resort, 1871 W. Canyon View Drive, St. George.

Ken Hedler is a freelance writer based in St. George. Contact him via email at [email protected]