ABC News Editor Don ‘Dawn’ Ennis Comes Out As Transgender
In a lot of ways, not an atypical mid-life transition, and I wish her well.
She says:
Ennis has not yet undergone a sex change operation, but says her marriage is “wrecked.”
“Despite the heartbreak, [my wife] has encouraged me to start this new life that we both believe better fits who I now am,” Ennis continued. “Trust me, this is NOT the midlife crisis I was counting on — I’d much prefer to have bought a sports car. Even an affair, I think, would have been something we might have recovered from.”
So, yeah. That’s all true.
The link didn’t work, so I used Google to find the article. The link I found for the article is at the end of this comment. I was surprised by the explanation the report offered for her being trans –
‘Ennis said she suffers from an “unusual hormonal imbalance,” and blames her mother, who fed her female hormones as a child to prolong a commercial acting career.
“I have a rare medical condition — nothing deadly or infectious — but it has resulted in an unusual hormonal imbalance, ” she explains. “One so profound that I don’t resemble the man you first met 10 years ago.” ‘
I’ve read a lot about what makes us trans, and respectfully, I’ve never seen anything remotely like that. The article suggests we can be made trans by hormones as a child. That report is going to perpetuate the heresy that we can wake up and decide we are now a different gender.
As a transgender person, I know the difficulty that Ennis is trying to deal with, but puhlease! I can’t explain what made me trans, but I can’t imagine offering that explanation makes it easier or helps the rest of the world to understand us.
I apologize if this seems harsh…I just can’t believe that stuff like that would either be said or printed.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/dawn-ennis-abc-news-producer-comes-out-as-transgender-2013-5#ixzz2SxbkMpoM
Agreed. This is not uncommon, however, for trans people to say things like this about what’s made them trans, and for the journalists not to do any fact checking on it. I think my favorite so far has been the person who said she’d been stung by a bee.
Magic pink bees, medicating moms, why not just say “I don’t know, it is what it is”? Isn’t that the easier and more accurate reason? I know for a fact my parents went to amazing lengths to discourage my cross-gender presentation and play when I was growing up.
At least the bee tale was a reason to discover an underlying medical explanation and not the “cause” for being T. I expect most of us want to know why at some point, but I’m more troubled by leaving an impression with the public that trans people are hatched late in life and that we can mentally come and go as we please. We aren’t a fashion or fad and the immutability of who we are is the foundation for the world beginning to recognize us as real people with real lives…