More than just a sex change

Sara-Jane Cromwell hit the headlines last month when she appeared on the Late Late Show to promote her autobiography, entitled Becoming Myself, which tells the incredible story of her transformation from Thomas to Sara-Jane.
She says: “Since I appeared on the Late Late Show there has been a huge amount of goodwill out there. What has been lovely is that we’ve had parents contacting us for the first time, which I think is a spectacularly positive development for us. We are actually hoping that some of those parents will come onto the GIDI board of management.”
Gender Identity Disorder is a condition in which a person born into one gender feels that they properly belong to the other. Essentially, it is a psychiatric classification, for which there is potentially a physical cure – undergoing a sex change operation.
Sara-Jane, who is chief executive of the Gender Identity Disorder Ireland voluntary organisation, is planning to have surgery later this year, to complete her physical gender transformation. “I entered my transition period in a very tentative way two years ago,” she says. “One day I’d be walking out as a male and the next day I could be walking out as a female – depending on what I was doing that day. Anybody who ever met me as Sara for the first time got it instantly and would say, ‘Please, don’t ever go back to the way you were’. I’m now hoping to have my surgery later this year.
“A lot of people are under the misunderstanding that gender identity disorder is like having a sex change – this idea that you wake up some day and you want to look like a woman, so off you go and have surgery. But what they don’t understand is that gender identity disorder is first and foremost – and only – a medical condition. And the surgery is part of the treatment. It’s not an optional extra.”
MUSICIAN APPEAL
Cromwell and her organisation hope to raise awareness of Gender Identity Disorder as a medical condition. To that end, she has appealed to Hot Press readers, in the hope that members of the Irish rock community will volunteer for a charity concert, for the purposes of drumming-up funding for a planned awareness campaign.
She says: “We really do need financial support and because Hot Press has access to the music world, and I know your magazine is read by musicians, it would be a wonderfully positive thing to have some sort of musical fundraising event for people with Gender Identity Disorder. It would be great if some of Ireland’s well known bands or singers would agree to get involved.
“We have been up-and-running over a year and we became a registered charity just before Christmas. We have received a commitment from the Department of Health and from the HSE to engage with Gender Identity Disorder. But we don’t receive any funding. To be perfectly honesty with you, I have been running the organisation completely at my own expense, which doesn’t do wonders for your bank balance or lifestyle!”
You can contact GIDI at 021-463-8562 or by logging onto their website www.gidi.ie