THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 11, 1995 TAG: 9511090092
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 299 lines
She says she is not afraid.
It is 6:45 a.m., and the 50-year-old woman with a thin, warm smile is sitting delicately, right leg folded over left, on a fluffy couch at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, waiting for the nurse to call.
``Roberta,'' the nurse says, waving a clipboard. ``Follow me.''
``I'm not afraid,'' Roberta Monell says, her hand shaking slightly. ``I just want to get it over with.''
It is June 30, 1994. After a 50-year wait, Roberta Monell will shed the last remnants of an old identity - Robert, a Navy shipyard investigator, Portsmouth police officer and race car driver - and be born in a new one. The rebirth is called gender reassignment, or sex change.
Roberta is not gay or lesbian. She is a transsexual, one of thousands of people who believe since early childhood that nature has played a trick on them. Transsexualism, called ``gender dysphoria'' in medical language, is defined as a state of mind in which people feel a persistent discomfort about their gender. Some preliminary evidence points to biological factors.
For a half century, Roberta's mind has cried female, but her body has said male. When she has looked in the mirror, she has seen a stranger in the reflection. She has seen rough, angular lines where she had wanted to view soft curves and supple skin.
Each year, hundreds of people who question their gender contact Norfolk's Gender Reassignment Team - a group of doctors, psychiatrists and clinical therapists brought together by sympathy and a desire to help ease such pain. Norfolk, which has two gender reassignment clinics, attracts hundreds of people from around the world who want the surgery. Only a few dozen are accepted each year.
Roberta passed the test. For months leading up to this day, Roberta has dressed as a woman. Now, the surgeons are about to make it real. For the next 16 months, she will struggle to become a woman not only in her eyes, but in the eyes of everyone else.
Robert Dawson Monell Jr., or Bobby, was the oldest of five siblings. His father worked in the machine shop at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and his mother was a homemaker. They were the typical American family. Everyone got married and lived normal lives, except Bobby.
No one suspected Bobby's discomfort. After all, he dated a high school majorette and married twice. He played ball, he got in fistfights, he became a Mason and then a Shriner.
He created an illusion because, in high school, the sissies got taunted, and Bobby Monell did not want to be one of them. So the somewhat introverted teenager became a man, learned to swagger and swear with the guys.
Bobby joined the Portsmouth police department, first as a street cop and then as a detective who won several awards for nabbing crooks. His investigative career blossomed at the shipyard, where he received almost annual merit raises for saving the Navy hundreds of thousands of dollars by catching workmen's compensation scams.
On weekends, he raced cars or took his wife, Flora, on spur-of-the-moment vacations.
Flora, a robust woman with dark hair and ruddy cheeks, knew and accepted his transsexualism. His first wife, whom he married when he was 23, didn't. He told her the truth two years after their marriage, and she left in shock.
Flora and Bobby were best friends. They went to dinner with other couples. They frequently took vacations to the mountains and to Atlantic City, where they'd play the slot machines all night.
Everything was right until the day Flora discovered a growth in her breast. She acted as if nothing was wrong, the same way she had done when she learned her husband's hidden side.
Flora died April 13, 1993, of cancer. She left a husband torn over how he would live the rest of his life. Although Flora would have accepted her husband's gender change, Bobby had shielded her from rejection from family and friends, curious stares, whispers, and incredulous laughter.
Two months after Flora's death, Bobby told a clinical therapist his secret. The man with the dark, receding hair and strong, purposeful gait despised everything masculine and adored everything female. He told her he had tried to bury the feeling but could no longer pretend.
Sitting in the therapist's office in Virginia Beach, he talked about the time he first knew he was different - when he was 5 or 6 years old. A frilly dress was hanging from the door. It belonged to his cousin. Bobby badly wanted to try on the dress. He didn't know why.
He put it on. His cousin walked in and yelled. Bobby's face was on fire. It was his first warning that everything he felt was wrong. From then on, he would have to be careful.
The therapist noted what Bobby Monell had known for life: gender identity disorder.
There is some evidence that transsexual people might be victims of a cruel biological joke, placing a man in a woman's body or a woman in a man's. A recent study by researchers in the Netherlands indicates that male transsexuals have a brain structure similar to that of women.
Some transsexuals say they are perfectly satisfied dressing full-time as the opposite gender without ever undergoing the surgery. Others, like Bobby, want to erase every part of their born gender. Gender reassignment, a year- to two-year procedure, is the only way doctors knew how to help Bobby.
In fall 1993, Bobby began dressing part-time as a female and introducing himself as Roberta. He appeared to be a she: a 50ish woman with a few gruff features. She was someone who could walk among strangers and not attract stares. Or maybe not. Sometimes people had heard rumors about the man-turned-woman. Then, they began whispering and pointing.
There was the local guy who invited her to his restaurant table, snickering as he asked, ``So are you a man or a woman?''
``Have you ever had a 5-foot-6 woman kick yer ass?'' Roberta responded, reverting to her macho past as she pointed her finger in his face.
Roberta's problems didn't stop there. Shortly after she began cross-dressing at work, her position as an investigator at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was eliminated and Roberta was given a new job in the yard's machine shop.
The Navy denied that Roberta's gender reassignment played any role in the elimination of her position. A spokesman said Roberta's investigative position was deleted along with many jobs as the Navy absorbed its share of defense budget cuts.
Roberta didn't believe it. She wondered why the Navy couldn't keep her as an investigator when her evaluations were so stellar.
She thought maybe the Navy, her close friends and some family members would be open-minded about her decision, allowing her to begin life a second time, as a woman. She grew increasingly frustrated as they didn't.
Dr. Jill Taylor Flood could never claim to understand all of Roberta's pain, but she knew her patient was miserable. Flood, reproductive endocrinologist and member of Norfolk's Gender Reassignment Team, knew Roberta and other transsexuals had been living a lie. They couldn't get away from it.
Roberta certainly couldn't. And she couldn't, on her own, have found help. There are no Yellow Pages advertisements for gender reassignment clinics, only referrals from licensed clinical therapists. Most of the Gender Reassignment Team's members do not want their names published, fearing backlash from conservative religious groups.
Still, they were willing to do Roberta's surgery and allow it to be documented. The clinic members were so impressed by Roberta's determination that they relaxed one rule, allowing her to have the operation although she had cross-dressed full-time for less than a year. The clinic generally requires 12 months.
The clinic members liked how Roberta kept all her appointments and organized the paperwork. On her own, she had her driver's license changed to read Roberta Diane Monell in January 1994. She also handled her name change in Portsmouth Circuit Court, and had her gender altered on her birth certificate.
The clinic members liked Roberta's appearance as a casually dressed, middle-aged woman. She had avoided dressing as a female caricature: frilly, prissy and frou-frou.
Roberta had to work hard at her illusion. Some male-to-female transsexuals are born with soft, hairless skin and feminine curves. But not Roberta. Even after the driver's license was changed to reflect a new name and gender, Roberta still had rough edges, razor stubble and skin as tough as nails. It would take more than a year of electrolysis and hormone injections to eliminate the hair on her face and neck.
The 5-o'clock shadow was several hours away from appearing, though, on June 30, 1994, the day Roberta waited nervously on the hospital's couch. She was ready to try for the brass ring.
I'm not afraid.''
Roberta said the words out loud, and repeated them silently in her mind as she was led to a dressing room inside Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. She removed her clothes, put on a hospital gown and then took off her red fingernail polish.
By 9 a.m., Roberta was unconscious and lying in a sterile operating room with a plastic surgeon and urologist peering over her. Several hospital workers, curious about the surgery, peeped through a window until a nurse closed the blinds.
The first incision was made. The skin was peeled from Roberta's hips. Surgeons would use the inner layer of skin to help build her vagina.
``Here goes nothing,'' said the urologist as he cut into Roberta's penis.
Male-to-female surgeries involve removing the testes and penis, and forming a pseudo-vagina. Female-to-male operations can include a double mastectomy, hysterectomy and formation of an artificial penis.
After the operation, Roberta woke up giddy. She looked under the hospital bed sheet and stared. She was proud. She felt a sisterhood with the nurses and female acquaintances who stopped by to visit her.
She declared a truce with her body but not so her friends, family and co-workers - many of whom accepted Robert but shunned the cross-dresser. Now he is she. Now she will see how the world reacts.
At first, everything was fine. An old friend hugged her in a public building. She attended another friend's wedding in Norfolk and grabbed for the bouquet.
In September 1994, three months after her surgery, Roberta returned to the shipyard's machine shop.
She liked her supervisor, Glenn Winters, because he was a friend. He was watching out for her.
At first, Winters was shocked when he heard about Roberta's change. He began to think of ways he would meet his old friend, now new employee. Then, the unease wore off. Roberta, under her new exterior, was still someone Winters knew.
In his shop, Winters found Roberta to be a good mechanic who established a rapport with her co-workers.
Roberta said people from other parts of the shipyard would wander over to point and laugh at her. Winters would shoo them away.
But in October 1994, she didn't make it into Winters' shop. Roberta said she was locked out of the shipyard. A shipyard security officer, she said, told her she needed to fill out a detailed document because of her gender reassignment. She claims the officer was sarcastic and verbally assaulted her, comparing her situation to that of a ``cocaine felon.''
The Navy denies that any abuse occurred. The security officer did not return telephone calls.
Roberta feared filling out the form. She thought the Navy would ax her job. While Navy workers at other locations have kept their jobs after gender-reassignment surgery, Roberta was not as confident that her situation would be the same. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard had no experience in dealing with transsexuals.
She didn't wait to find out whether she'd lose her machine-shop job. She left the shipyard and never returned.
But the bills kept coming. For Roberta, gender reassignment was expensive. Her health insurance, like most, did not cover the operation.
Male-to-female surgeries start at $15,000. Female-to-male operations can cost more than $60,000 because the surgeries are more complicated.
But the surgery is only one cost. Roberta also had to pay hospital bills, and pay for hormone therapy, electrolysis, breast implants, counseling and cosmetic surgery. Then, she paid attorney fees for the name change and battles with her employer over workmen's compensation. The total, for Roberta, was nearly $85,000.
Roberta struggled as she borrowed money from her retirement fund and charged everything else on credit cards.
Then the bank came for her home, the boat that Bobby and Flora had shared.
In May, Roberta slumped in a chair on the deck of the motor yacht she was about to lose, venting about the world.
``I just want them to leave me alone,'' she said, anger battling fatigue in her voice. ``I'm not bothering anyone. I do my job well. I'm nice to everyone
Roberta spiraled into cop mode. She had her hands on her hips, winding up for a lecture. Her voice got louder and louder. Her face got red.
``F--- them,'' she exploded.
Roberta hates the stereotypes. That's why she went public with her story. She doesn't like the talk shows that feature transsexuals and transvestites in sequins, the ``Las Vegas show girls,'' as Roberta calls them. She doesn't like the insane portrayals, either. In ``The Silence of the Lambs,'' the thriller starring Jodie Foster, a serial killer is mentioned to have applied for gender reassignment. Roberta cringes at these portrayals.
Still, few people understand. Roberta's mother, who recently died of cancer, once told Roberta that she shouldn't call the house. Roberta's father wants limited contact. Most of Roberta's friends shun her. How could anyone want to be a different gender?
Roberta became a recluse, hiding from her worsening financial and personal problems. She stayed up until the wee hours and slept through the mornings. Her boat, the Rumplestiltskin, was dark inside. Life as Roberta wasn't supposed to turn out this way.
Short on cash, she has taken on roommates. But she kicked them out because, she said, they weren't paying rent on time. By the spring of 1995, she was flat broke. The bank repossessed Roberta's yacht, and she was forced to look for a new home.
On her last day on the Rumplestiltskin, she sat on the deck in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her face was clear of cosmetics. Her newly permed hair, styled to cover the thinning sections, was unbrushed and topped with a baseball cap.
She was mad at her co-workers for not taking her side against the shipyard. She was mad at her family for not calling. She was mad that her friends weren't her friends anymore.
``I'm disappointed with everybody,'' she yelled. ``Nobody has done anything they're expected to . . . Everybody who has had anything to do with me is a f---ing liar. And it hurts.''
Louder and louder. Then she was crying.
``They won't let me be a person.''
In November, she was working part-time as a taxi driver. Soon, she says she will move from her garden apartment in Portsmouth, leaving Hampton Roads. She has applied for work as a truck driver in the Midwest - a job she hopes will lead her towards a more contented life and give her enough money to retire.
``In all my police and investigator's years, I've always been driving,'' Roberta says. ``It suits my personality. I can just blend into society.''
It will be a society far, far away - where no one will know her. Where she won't have to be afraid. MEMO: [For a related story, see page E4 of The Daily Break for this date.]
ILLUSTRATION: BORN IN THE WRONG BODY
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN
The Virginian-Pilot
Left: Robert Monell returns from work on the last day he will ever
dress as a man. Right: He is now she. She leaves her motor yacht
home dressed as a female, which she will continue to do for the
months before the gender-reassignment, or sex change, surgery.
To appear more feminine, Robert spent thousands of dollars on
electrolysis to remove hair from his face, arms and chest.
LIFE AS A MAN
Robert Monell drove a 1984 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS on the NASCAR
late-model stock-car circuit.
Robert with his second wife, Flora.
Robert talks about his wife, Flora shown in the background, who
accepted her husband's transsexualism. She died in 1993.
SURGERY
The male-to-female operation lasted 6 1/2 hours. After being wheeled
out of the operating room, Roberta woke up to her first day as a
woman.
REBIRTH
Above: Jody Davis, the wife of Roberta's ex-police buddy, hugs
Roberta after seeing her for the first time as a woman. Top left:
Roberta grimaces while receiving injections of female hormones - a
once-monthly ritual. Left: A few weeks after her operation, Roberta
lunges for the bouquet at a wedding.
Roberta takes a taxi to a job interview in Washington, D.C. She
wasn't hired.
KEYWORDS: GENDER REASSIGNMENT SEX CHANGE by CNB