Mario Martino

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Mario Martino
Other namesAngelo Tornabene
Occupation(s)(previously) Nun
Nurse, author and trans rights activist
Known forEarly 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.

Contents

Work prior to gender transition

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]

Autobiography

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]

Gender transition and aftermath

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]

Related Research Articles

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, although 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 psychologist John Money.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), formerly the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), is a professional organization devoted to the understanding and treatment of gender identity and gender dysphoria, and creating standardized treatment for transgender and gender variant people. WPATH was founded in 1979 and named HBIGDA in honor of Harry Benjamin during a period where there was no clinical consensus on how and when to provide gender-affirming care. WPATH is mostly known for the Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People (SOC).

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transgender topics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trans man</span> Man assigned female at birth

A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men undergo medical and social transition to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with their gender identity or alleviates gender dysphoria.

<i>The Man Who Would Be Queen</i> 2003 book by J. Michael Bailey

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Androphilia and gynephilia</span> Sexual orientation to men or women

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.

The 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. 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.

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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.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transgender</span> Gender identity other than sex assigned at birth

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 can function as an umbrella term; in addition to including binary trans men and trans women, it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer. Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, conceptualize transgender people as a third gender, or conflate the two concepts. 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.

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References

  1. ↑ Only identified by her first name
  1. 1 2 Clark, Steve (11 March 1979). "Transsexual tells of his 'Emergence'". The Herald Statesman. p. 96.
  2. ↑ Vipond, Evan (2 January 2019). "Becoming Culturally (Un)intelligible: Exploring the Terrain of Trans Life Writing". A/B: Auto/Biography Studies. 34 (1): 19–43. doi:10.1080/08989575.2019.1542813. hdl: 10315/33778 . S2CID   149817621.
  3. ↑ Roughgarden, Joan (14 September 2013). Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Univ of California Press. p. 274. ISBN   978-0-520-95797-8.
  4. 1 2 Newman, Donna Joy (29 November 1977). "'I didn't know I wasn't a boy': Story of the Transformation of Marie to Mario". Detroit Free Press. Chicago Tribune. p. 27.
  5. 1 2 3 "Former Franciscan nun tells of sex-change". The Windsor Star. Toronto (CP). 24 January 1978. p. 17.
  6. ↑ Hausman, Bernice L. (Autumn 2000). "Do Boys Have to Be Boys? Gender, Narrativity, and the John/Joan Case". NWSA Journal. 12 (3): 124. ISSN   1040-0656. JSTOR   4316765. S2CID   13078758. 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.
  7. ↑ Beemyn, Brett Genny (2015). "Autobiography, Transsexual". glbtq, Inc. Archived. p. 2
  8. ↑ Londono, Ernesto (18 May 2015). "Increasingly Visible, Transgender Americans Defy Stereotypes". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  9. ↑ Latham, J R (March 2016). "Trans men's sexual narrative-practices: Introducing STS to trans and sexuality studies". Sexualities. 19 (3): 353, 355–356. doi:10.1177/1363460715583609. S2CID   147597591.
  10. 1 2 Barkham, John (30 August 1977). "Transsexual surgery was only answer". Lincoln Journal Star. p. 8.
  11. 1 2 3 "'Surgery has allowed society to see me as I see myself'". Morning News. 22 April 1980. p. 17.
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