Mario Martino | |
---|---|
Other names | Angelo Tornabene |
Occupation(s) | (previously) Nun Nurse, author and trans rights activist |
Known for | Early trans male autobiographer |
Mario Martino (also known as Angelo Tournabene) is a former nun and transsexual male author. He is known for writing one of the first autobiographies on the trans male experience. He also worked with the Labyrinth Foundation in Yonkers, New York.
As a nun, he was removed from his convent when it became clear that he had sexual feelings for women. [1] In his autobiography, Martino explicitly connects his sexual orientation to his gender identity, saying "I was a boy. I felt like one, I dressed like one, I fought like one. Later I was to love like one." [2] [3]
While working as a laboratory technician prior to his gender transition, Martino and other technicians took a 17-ketosteroid urine test, where it was found that he had "the 17-ketosteroids of a 17-year-old male". [4] While working in the laboratory he met his wife, a registered nurse named Rebecca. [4] [5]
Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography was published by Martino in 1977, alongside a collaborator named Harriet. [lower-alpha 1] The book discussed his gender dysphoria, a lack of attachment to traditional feminine pursuits, his sexual attraction towards women and not men, [6] and difficulty coming to terms with his gender identity as a child, and how these contradicted with his Italian-Catholic upbringing. [7]
Martino's autobiography has been described as "the first complete autobiography of a trans-sexual who has undergone medical treatment to change to male from female". [5] [8] It was notable for including explicit mentions of sexual activity, which are often absent from transgender autobiographical accounts. [9]
Martino's gender transition consisted of a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy, phalloplasty and hormonal treatment. [10] While transitioning, he nearly died after three surgeries proved unsuccessful. [11] However, following surgery, he was able to obtain a new drivers' license, an amended birth certificate and college certificate under his preferred name. [10]
Despite this, Martino faced discrimination by employers and school admissions officials, having been fired from his job in a nursing home when officials were told of his gender identity. [1] One landlord kicked Martino out of his house, and he "lost out on several good jobs because of" his trans identity. "I still cannot get a teaching position in a college because of it", Martino said in 1980. [11]
He worked with the Labyrinth Foundation, a facility in Yonkers, New York for counseling those with gender dysphoria. [11] He and his wife gave marriage and psychological counselling to trans people. [5]
Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. The term replaced the previous diagnostic label of gender identity disorder (GID) in 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.
Gender-affirming surgery is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender. The phrase is most often associated with transgender health care and intersex medical interventions, however many such treatments are also pursued by cisgender and non-intersex individuals. It is also known as sex reassignment surgery, gender confirmation surgery, and several other names.
Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual's gender identity. Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this is not always the case. While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. The term gender identity was coined by psychiatry professor Robert J. Stoller in 1964 and popularized by the controversial psychologist John Money.
Christine Jorgensen was an American actress, singer, recording artist, and transgender activist. A trans woman, she was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transgender topics.
A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men choose to undergo surgical or hormonal transition, or both, to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with their gender identity or alleviates gender dysphoria.
The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism is a 2003 book by the American psychologist J. Michael Bailey, published by Joseph Henry Press.
Androphilia and gynephilia are terms used in behavioral science to describe sexual orientation, as an alternative to a gender binary homosexual and heterosexual conceptualization. Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men and/or masculinity; gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women and/or femininity. Ambiphilia describes the combination of both androphilia and gynephilia in a given individual, or bisexuality.
Ray Milton Blanchard is an American-Canadian sexologist who researches pedophilia, sexual orientation and gender identity. He has found that men with more older brothers are more likely to be gay than men with fewer older brothers, a phenomenon he attributes to the reaction of the mother's immune system to male fetuses. Blanchard has also published research studies on phallometry and several paraphilias, including autoerotic asphyxia. Blanchard also proposed a typology of transsexualism.
American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard proposed a psychological typology of gender dysphoria, transsexualism, and fetishistic transvestism in a series of academic papers through the 1980s and 1990s. Building on the work of earlier researchers, including his colleague Kurt Freund, Blanchard categorized trans women into two groups: homosexual transsexuals who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance; and autogynephilic transsexuals who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body (autogynephilia). Blanchard and his supporters argue that the typology explains differences between the two groups in childhood gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, history of sexual fetishism, and age of transition.
Gender incongruence is the state of having a gender identity that does not correspond to one's sex assigned at birth. This is experienced by people who identify as transgender or transsexual, and often results in gender dysphoria. The causes of gender incongruence have been studied for decades.
Sexuality in transgender individuals encompasses all the issues of sexuality of other groups, including establishing a sexual identity, learning to deal with one's sexual needs, and finding a partner, but may be complicated by issues of gender dysphoria, side effects of surgery, physiological and emotional effects of hormone replacement therapy, psychological aspects of expressing sexuality after medical transition, or social aspects of expressing their gender.
The Sex Orientation Scale (SOS) was Harry Benjamin's attempt to classify and understand various forms and subtypes of transvestism and transsexualism in biological males, published in 1966. It was a seven-point scale ; it was analogous to the Kinsey Scale as it relates to sexual orientation, which also had seven categories. Much like Kinsey's understanding of sexual orientation, Benjamin understood the nature of gender identity and gender expression not as a discrete scale, but as a spectrum, a continuum with many variations. However the Benjamin scale does not reflect a modern understanding of gender identity and is not useful as a contemporary diagnostic tool, especially due to its conflation of gender identity with sexual orientation.
The classification of transsexual and gender non-conforming people into distinct groups has been attempted since the mid-1960s.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual. Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex, it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer. Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender. The term may also include cross-dressers or drag kings and drag queens in some contexts. The term transgender does not have a universally accepted definition, including among researchers.
Louis Graydon Sullivan was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts.
Transsexual people experience a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desire to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually seeking medical assistance to help them align their body with their identified sex or gender.
Rupert Raj is a Canadian trans activist and a transgender man. His work since his own gender transition in 1971 has been recognized by several awards, as well as his inclusion in the National Portrait Collection of The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives.
Transgender health care includes the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of physical and mental health conditions, as well as sex reassignment therapies, for transgender individuals. A major component of transgender health care is gender-affirming care, the medical aspect of gender transition. Questions implicated in transgender health care include gender variance, sex reassignment therapy, health risks, and access to healthcare for trans people in different countries around the world.
This article addresses the history of transgender people across the British Isles in the United Kingdom, the British colonies and the Kingdom of England until the present day. Transgender people were historically recognised in the UK by varying titles and cultural gender indicators, such as dress. People dressing and living differently from their sex assignment at birth and contributing to various aspects of British history and culture have been documented from the 14th century to the present day. In the 20th century, advances in medicine, social and biological sciences and transgender activism have influenced transgender life in the UK.
For example, in his 1977 book, Emergence, female-to-male transsexual Mario Martino writes of feeling that no matter what he did (as Marie), he could not produce a convincing identity as a woman, which in his view included making baby Pablum in the right consistency without using up the whole box, and being in love with men, not women (Martino 1977). Martino's discussion of his inability to match conventional standards of femininity-rehearsal for motherhood, heterosexuality-is based on the "natural attitude" toward gender; in the context of this ontology, he understands his birth as a female to be a mistake.