Katherine Cummings
She said she was born twelve years ago, when she was fifty-two years old. That is why sometimes she heard herself saying "When I was a little girl, I ..." and she pull her self up and examine this false memory that has been created from her knowledge of other women's childhoods, or from childhoods absorbed from her sister's story books and from her longing from earliest infancy to be female. This empty is a very sorrow she had: “There is a deep underlying desire in me for a complete life but a complete life is something I will never have”.
Katherine, in a way, was the victim of a terrible accident. She was born with XY chromosomes but some unpredictable hormonal wash during pregnancy (the latest theory to account for transgenderism) created a need to be female in the deepest recesses of her psyche. Katherine Cummings underwent gender re-assignment surgery in 1989. Prior to that, she had been married and raised three daughters. She was about to lost them when she decided change her life, she thought about suicide but she at the end went on.
Her autobiography, Katherine's Diary: the Story of a Transsexual, was published in 1992, and her essay 'The Life and Loves of an XY Woman' in No Thanks or Regrets (1996) continues the story of her life. Cummings grew up in the Gilbert Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Scotland and Australia. Her autobiography received the Human Rights Prize for non fiction books in 1992. Her books are recognized as part of the England Literature and it is an important reference to approach at new forms of identity constructions.
Reference:
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/KatherineCummings.html
