Once he was David from Kenmore. Now she is Donna from Austin

By JANE KWIATKOWSKI
News Staff Reporter
10/20/2002

She checks her look in the mirror. Nose $4,000, brow $6,000. Add another $7,300 for jaw and chin combo. The breast augmentation was a steal at $4,500. Donna Rose admires what she sees before turning off the car engine, gathering her purse and taking a deep breath. It's her high school reunion, and Rosen's return would not be remarkable except for one thing.

When she left Kenmore West High School in 1976, Donna was David Rosen, captain of the wrestling team, an iron-pumping athlete who within years would marry his college girlfriend, have a son and settle in Rochester.

"You have no clue how difficult this was, dealing with my son, my wife," Rosen said, pausing to retrieve a photo album from her car's back seat. "You can't go out and buy a dummies' guide to transsexuals. There are no guides. The only thing you've got is your instincts. And I haven't been in this life for that long."

Donna Rose's manicured nails point to the photo of a square-jawed young man whose face is marked by a determination that transcends gender. David's muscled arm holds high a wide-eyed baby in blue. Page after page of flannel-shirt football, high-fives and the spark of testosterone follow.

"Nervous?" she repeats. "Not at all." Changing from sandals to heels, Donna Rose starts walking away from the car, smoothing her dress and hair. "It's a very scary prospect to think that everyone who looks at you will be pointing, but usually your fears are a lot worse than what actually happens."

• • •

Gender identity was always a struggle for Donna Rose, who at age 43 spent decades perfecting a masculine veneer - all the time believing she was very much a woman. As a transsexual, she could not assume the role biology had crafted, and while Rosen underwent sex reassignment surgery in August 2000, many transsexuals never get that far.

"Transsexuals have a problem in the area of gender identity," said Thomas Mazur, a clinical psychologist at Children's Hospital. "For a person who has these difficulties, it's not like choosing what flavor of ice cream to have. We just don't know a whole lot on how a person's gender identity develops. We do know that it's not something that people choose."

Mazur has been involved in gender work for 25 years. He estimates that 20 percent of his clients are transgendered. In the underground network that defines alternative sexual issues, Mazur is a sought-after psychologist in Western New York.

There is no single determinant for transsexualism although scientific theories usually come down to a question of balance between genetic, physical, hormonal and neurological factors. Many psychologists agree that gender awareness - that deeply held conviction that we belong to one gender or another - is in place by age 5.

Remember Christine Jorgensen? Her highly publicized sex reassignment surgery in 1952 created awareness of transsexual issues in this country. Other transsexuals - including tennis player Renee Richards, composer Wendy Carlos and writer Jan Morris - followed.

Currently, there are no reliable methods for gathering accurate statistics on the incidence of transsexualism in the United States. Data from smaller European countries suggests that one in 30,000 adult males and one in 100,000 adult females seek sex reassignment surgery.

"Surgery for male to female has been around for a long time and it's really quite advanced," said Maureen Osborne, a Philadelphia clinical psychologist and national expert on transgender issues. "There are plenty of people - the slang term is non-ops - who, because of financial or employment reasons, are not able or willing to go ahead with the surgery."

The progression from male to female begins with therapy, expands to hormone support and is followed by transition, or Real Life Experience, requiring the person to live for a year as the other gender.

Donna Rose - who grew up in Kenmore - now lives outside Austin, Texas, with her son. Employed by Dell as a computer specialist and project manager, she points to her lifelong journey as a lesson.

"It's one thing if my life as a guy had been a pathetic failure, never having a meaningful relationship," said Rosen, during a series of recent interviews. "I had a wife who I loved. I had a job. I had a career. I had everything society uses as a yardstick to measure success, but at the same time I got so unhappy with having to hide who I knew myself to be that it really never meant anything."

David

They were known as the Irving Terrace Terrors, the group of boys who would string three lawns together to craft their neighborhood gridiron. David Rosen and younger brother Jacob were regulars.

"He was the football player and the wrestler and all that stuff," recalled Jacob Rosen, who lives with his wife and family in Rochester. "Big Bro" or "Bro-ski" is what David was called, and like any big brother he looked out for his younger siblings.

"David was always fearless," said Judith Rosen, recalling how her brother punched out a bully when he was 8 years old. "David crossed the street to confront the bully and tell him to leave me alone."

But despite the bravado and all that aggression, David was also playing house, putting on hand and face lotion just like his mother did. David didn't find anything odd about his play. After all, his toy chest was stuffed with soldiers, not dolls, his sister remembers.

"Here I was, the little sister going through puberty while David, 18 months older, was watching his body take him further and further from where he wanted to be," Judith Rosen said from her home in Rochester. "I was having my ears pierced, buying my first bra, and David's voice was changing.

"A lot of the aggression came out toward me," she added. "All I knew was that David was mean. I always thought he suffered from testosterone poisoning."

Clinical psychologists would say that David was acting hypermasculine, his effort to deflect his gender identity. "Sometimes they join the military or do something very macho to prove in their own minds and to the rest of the world that they're really men," said Osborne.

David was almost too masculine, a popular athlete who turned his friends on to new music by Rush and Elvis Costello. It was David who turned down many prom invitations from his sister's girlfriends. At Syracuse University, though, David started dating a young woman whom he later married. They had a son, and when the boy was 12 - in 1996 - the family moved to Scottsdale, Ariz.

Transition

"The hard part about transition is disengaging your life," said Donna Rose. "When I moved to Arizona, I felt free of restrictions."

Donna's son, meanwhile felt something was wrong. The tension between his parents made it impossible for both of them to stay in the same house, much less the same room.

Still, the connection between father and son remained strong. "He and I growing up had a relationship I wished I would have had with my dad," Donna Rose said of [her son]. "That's one of the things that was real hard, that all of a sudden all of the changes started, and I was given an ultimatum by my wife and eventually I decided to leave. I didn't see Andy for six or seven months. That crushed me. It's hard to be shunned when you're living four miles away; you might as well be 4,000."

Wives of transsexuals have rocky roads to navigate. Rosen's wife, like many others, has remained out of touch since the transition.

"I feel so much for these women," said Osborne, the psychologist. "They entered into good faith relationships with people they thought were men, and they fell in love. They want to support them but at the same time, their husband is changing in ways that are really uncomfortable. They start taking hormones. They develop breasts, and even that's not as bad as when their voice starts changing. That one seems to really throw the wives the most."

In time, Donna Rose underwent about $75,000 in surgery, $32,865 of it spent on facial reconstruction. Her voice therapy targeted word choice as well as inflection. She learned how to move in a dress, how to walk like a woman. According to Rosen, recovery from facial surgery was much more difficult than the almost five-hour sex reassignment surgery performed by Dr. Eugene Schrang in Neenah, Wis.

"Transition is typically one year," said Osborne. "You want to make sure a person can consolidate their gender identity the best they can. It's a little difficult sometimes because you are not legally secure. Just think about it. Getting stopped by a police officer and looking like a woman but having a male driver's license. I give people a letter of explanation."

Donna

The morning after the surgery, pink bubble gum "It's a Girl" cigars were handed out by Donna's mother. Now age 73, she fully supports her child, but declined to be interviewed by name for this report.

"I sort of went through a period as if there were a death in the family," said Donna's mother, a retired nurse. "Over that year, I was able to face the fact that what Donna did was not self-mutilation. Donna is a beautiful woman. Donna was a handsome man."

No question that Donna's family has stood beside her, but perhaps the most powerful statement of support was offered by her son, who chose to live in Austin with Donna.

"She's my dad and will always be my dad no matter what," said [Donna's son], now 16, during a phone interview from their home. "At first it was difficult. At first I wouldn't talk to her."

[Donna's son], like many teenage boys, talks sparingly. His spiked hair no longer is bleached. He plays drums - a pastime that Donna, too, has adopted - and hopes to be picked up by one of three heavy metal bands. Sometimes Donna and her son go to concerts. Oftentimes they just go out for pizza or steak Diane. [Donna's son] doesn't talk often to his real mother. He said she's too strict and controlling.

New lives, it seems, are measured by a series of firsts. Donna's is no different. She remembers the first time she went to Wilson Stadium as Donna - as well as the first time she used the ladies room.

As for Austin, Donna for now is not telling people about David.

"To my son's friends, I am his mom and this is accepted and fine," she said. "To the people I work with, I'm just Donna, the girl with the big muscles."

Donna's siblings are growing accustomed to the pronoun switch that marks many conversations about their sister. "I'm trying to get used to the language," Judith Rosen said. "It's hard. My way is to create Donna as a separate person. When I talk about David, that's 'he'. Donna is 'she'. "

But what that big brother persona? Don't you miss it?

"No," answered Jacob Rosen. "I don't have a big brother anymore, but I still have the person. That's the important part of it."

Epilogue

Back at the high school reunion, comments are flying faster than the wrestling opponents David Rosen once swung to the mat: "You had a good doctor!" "When was your surgery?" "Hey! Didn't I used to shower with you?"

The friendly chatter marks the general understanding that has defined much of Donna Rose's incredible journey. Holding fast to her class book, she is flanked by fellow transsexual Christine McGinn, who made the drive from Philadelphia in a show of support. They met during sex reassignment surgery, and tonight their dresses sparkle as they tower over many of the Blue Devil graduates of Kenmore West High School.

"I'm impressed to be quite honest," said Lenny Anzalone, a member of the reunion organizing committee. "As long as Donna's happy, that's all that matters. I think she looks great."

Donna misses the intimacy - not the sex - of her former life and vows to find happiness again.

For now, Donna's goal - besides attending as many Buffalo Bills games as possible - is to "live in a body that finally matches who I have been."

"You either continue to lie to everybody and yourself," she said, "or you say it once and your life changes."

e-mail: jkwiatkowski@buffnews.com