When Brother Becomes Sister
By MARY NORRIS
Published: November 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/magazine/07lives-t.html?_r=1When my brother Dennis, now known as Dee, announced that he was transsexual, he gave me the Jan Morris book "Conundrum." He explained that before he could do anything drastic — that is, undergo what is delicately referred to as "gender-reassignment surgery" — he had to have permission from a psychiatrist and live as a woman for a year. I let myself hope that Dennis would be content to stay semi-in-the-closet so he could keep his job teaching music at a Catholic school in the Bronx, that he might be content to feel subversive playing the organ in the choir loft while wearing ladies' underpants. I should have known better: Dennis had always been capable of achieving with surprising speed things that seemed impossible, like saving up from his paper route to buy a pool table while in grade school. Within days of telling me he was transsexual, he was taking hormones. They stopped hair from growing on his hands and arms, encouraged breasts to grow (but not enough to please him) and discouraged male hormones, causing, eventually, a form of chemical castration.
