KarenSerenity.com-OFFICIAL WEBSITE-Karen Serenity Positive Thinking Successful Transsexual Women Role Models for Post-Operative, Male-To-Female Transsexual Women! Gallery Page 8.

"The best way to make yourself happy...is to make another person happy." ~ Mark Twain

Dr. Dana Beyer has always been immersed in politics and social change. Growing up in New York City with her social conscience formed by traditional Jewish ethics, most of her strongest childhood memories and emotional milestones were formed by our nation's most courageous leaders. As a child, Dana was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 1960's. She remembers President Kennedy's ringing words during his Inaugural Address, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." It was Robert Kennedy's candidacy for President, during Dana's sophomore year in high school, that spurred her to take action and to become part of the campaigning process. And the first time she ever set foot in a church, and cried in public, was while viewing Senator Kennedy's casket lying in state in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. It was the strength and bravery of these slain leaders that forged Dana's dedication to continue the missions that these men were prevented from completing.

As a longtime resident of Chevy Chase, Dana has stood up for its residents by her activities with Equality Maryland and Equality Montgomery County. She has been an active member of her synagogue, Tiferet Israel Congregation, as well as a board member with teachthefacts.org, a Montgomery County parents' coalition dedicated to comprehensive sex education in our public schools. She has been actively involved in the upbringing of her sons, including her involvement with their athletic and musical extracurricular activities, and has supported quality education at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School. She has served on the Board of Advisors of the National Center for Transgender Equality, as well as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Legislative Council, the Human Rights Campaign's Federal Club, and the Democratic National Committee's Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council. These activities have been successful and rewarding, and it is now time to take Dr. Dana's experience, achievements and determination to Annapolis where she can continue to fight for Maryland's future.

She attended Orthodox Jewish day school and then commuted for four hours daily to attend the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. She is a 1974 Phi Beta Kappa graduate with distinction of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences, and a 1978 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She finished school in less than four years to travel abroad and worked in Africa as a physician and surgeon in the northwestern Kenyan town of Kaimosi. She delivered babies, treated burn victims and Kenyans with many diseases no longer seen in the United States. She also saw first-hand the carnage wrought in neighboring Uganda by the tyrant Idi Amin, as refugees escaped across the border into Kenya.

Following her internship in internal medicine at the George Washington University Hospital, she completed her residency in eye surgery at the prestigious Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida, rated annually as one of the top two eye institutes in the world.

Upon completing her residency, Dana once again traveled abroad. This time she used her new skills as an eye surgeon for the treatment of the Nepalese people in the foothills of the Himalayas, while working for the World Health Organization's Prevention of Blindness Program. The experience of performing cataract surgery with the equivalent of a can opener and other crude tools made her appreciate the blessings of having been trained in the United States.

Once back home, she took a job in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, serving the residents of South Mississippi as a glaucoma and retina specialist and drawing patients from as far away as El Salvador. She was one of the few surgeons in the area willing to see Medicaid patients, and provided quality care to a large population of underserved African-American and Cajun patients, performing nearly 10,000 surgical procedures during her career. She has also published in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Ophthalmology. In late 1990, Dr. Beyer retired from clinical practice, and after divorce she worked assiduously to rebuild her life, being the best parent she could to her two young children.

During the 1990's she learned to manage family investments with a team of like-minded investors. She returned to college at the University of Maryland to complete course work which could lead to a Master's degree in Organic Chemistry, a love of hers since college which she had never pursued. Married again in 1997, she soon had primary custody of her two growing boys.

Dr. Beyer has been active with a number of LGBT advocacy groups serving the gay and transgender communities, including Equality Maryland on whose board she sits, the National Center for Transgender Equality as a board advisor, the DES Sons International Network for which she serves as medical advisor, the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. She has worked on behalf of all students in the community with teachthefacts.org, a parents group organized in 2004 to support comprehensive sex education in the public schools and to vigorously oppose the imposition of a religiously-based abstinence-only curriculum which would isolate and demonize gay and transgender students. She helps collect and publicize research on the effects of endocrine disrupting compounds such as DES and DDT on human sexuality and reproduction, as well as providing personal support and mentoring. Last summer she presented a paper with her colleagues Dr. Scott Kerlin and Dr. Milton Diamond to the International Behavioral Development Symposium, delineating the impact DES has had in causing intersex and transgender variations in human beings. She runs regularly to stay healthy, having completed six marathons during the past four years, with plans to again participate in the Marine Corps Marathon this fall.

Her older son, David, is currently a junior at Brown University majoring in history, while his younger brother, Jonathan, is a certified EMT and will graduate from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School this spring. Jonathan will enter the University of Maryland at College Park this June as a neurobiology major, working towards becoming a trauma surgeon. David's interests are in law and finance. He's worked on the Kerry campaign and raises money for Environmental Action. Jonathan is also a very accomplished musician. Dana's brother, Larry, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.

"Risk" certainly has to be Dr. Dana Beyer's middle name. Throughout her adventurous lifetime she's overcome prodigious odds to successfully achieve her many meritorious personal goals. To the thousands of women like myself who've continued to remain in deepest stealth for decades (for our own safety), Dr. Dana Beyer's completely off the scale, way-out-of-stealth openness is nothing short of an astonishing phenomenon. - Mrs. KAREN SERENITY

I was born in Newport Gwent, South Wales (England) in 1960. I came into this world weighing just four pounds. A very small baby boy. I'm told I was in the ICU (intensive care unit) for about three months after my birth. I spent most of my childhood living with my grandmother and grandfather. I remember when I was about five or six years of age, playing with my dolls under the dinning table with my brother. Even back then, I just knew I should have been born a girl.

No one told me I should only play with boy toys, so to me it was the norm to play dress up and play with dolls. As I grew older I stopped playing with dolls. As a teenager I started taking an interest in fashion. I was not like other boys. Soon I was to find out that I had the sprit of a girl.

At the age of 15, I told my grandmother about a person I read about in the newspaper called Renee Richards. I shared with her my interest in desiring to have a sex-change operation. My grandmother laughed but I think she knew how I truly felt even at that age. In 1976 at the age of sixteen, I "came out" to the rest of the Family. It wasn't easy.

My mother took me to see a Dr. Bassey. He told her that I was in fact was a transsexual and not gay. After a big fight with the education board, I returned to the same high school after the summer, as Sandra and on estrogen hormones. I was bullied at first but as the term came to an end I was everybody's friend.

My first job after high school was working for Lipton's supermarket as a check out girl. In 1979 at age 19, I moved to London. I found work in a well known department store as an assistant. I also did a little modeling for their news advertisements.

Seeing Dr. Randell at the Charing Cross Hospital in London, I was on my way to becoming the woman I am today. On the day I was due to go in for my SRS, Dr Randell told me to get out of the hospital, because I was wearing a pair of jeans. I was 23 at the time and so very upset but all was not lost.

My boyfriend at the time was from Zaandam in Holland so we packed up and moved there. My mother helped me find a good surgeon and after saving the money and with the help of my family I underwent SRS(sex reassignment surgery) on May 10th 1986 at the age of 26. I felt so free and very happy but sadly my boyfriend and I split up four years after.

I moved back to the United Kingdom (Brighton East Sussex) and stayed with my best friend Debbie. We are still the best of friends.

Not long after I met a wonderful man, Richard. I was working doing runway modeling and at the time Richard was a well known night club owner. Not long afterwards we were married. It was illegal back then but no one asked for my ID or birth certificate. We were married on July 8th, 1991. What should have been my happiest day turned out to be a total nightmare.

We were featured in the press and on one of the talk shows talking about our life and why we didn't think it was so wrong to be married. Also why it wasn't wrong for me to enter a beauty contest. I was banded from the contest but still the press wanted more from us.

Other talk shows I was featured on were: Kilroy, Time & the place with John Stapleton, Good Morning with Anne & Nick, The Vanessa Show with Vanessa Feltz and Friday night live with Nicky Campbell. My stage name back in the 90's was Nanda Saint-claire - Collins. It was also the name I used when modeling.

In September of 1998, I came to South Florida with Richard and started looking for a place we could call home. We found a lovely two bedroom apartment and Richard and I moved in. He went back to the UK to sort out business there and traveled back and forth to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to check on me. Sadly in 2000, after ten years of marriage, Richard called me and told me we were getting a divorce because he had met someone who could give him a family.

Richard hurt me so badly. I didn't think I could ever forgive him. That night I went out with friends and met Maurice and we started seeing each other regularly. One year later we started living together.

Today, Richard and I remain friends. He currently resides in the Philippines with his new wife and their young son Julian.

Maurice and I have now been together for seven years. We just celebrated our seventh anniversary together and are still very much in love.

Currently, I still do a little modeling on and off. In 1995-96, I was in a movie called "Alive and Kicking." I also appeared in another movie that was released in 2006.

I've been in the entertainment business on and off for over 30 years. I started at the age of eleven when I was chosen to appear in a pro-production of Oliver Twist (the Musical). I was with the New Venture players just over five years and also worked in the Sound Of Music, Call me Madam, Oklahoma, Brigadoom and Christmas Crackers.

From 2002 through 2007, I entertained and performed at "Trixie's on Dixie Show Bar" in Hollywood, Florida. A very nice, clean, upscale show bar. We had a great mixed crowd of people. With gay, straight, post and pre-op transsexual women. It was like one big family where everyone knew your name. (Cheers!) I occasionally performed illusions of Cher, Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli and Anne Lenox. Over the years I've also performed at benefit shows to help raise money for many HIV and AIDS charities in South Florida.

To all my pre-op MTF sisters who might be reading this...there is definitely a "peaceful light at the end of the rainbow."

Today, I have such a wonderful life along with my dear husband Maurice. I deeply believe if you want something bad enough, please go for it. You really can have it. If you only Believe!

Mrs. Sandra Collins is a resourceful pathfinder, survivor and thriver. Her extraordinary life story contains prodigious amounts of poignancy as well as jubilation. Her self-actualizing efforts in following her unique "road less traveled" to become the beautiful woman she always knew she was inside, provides significant illumination and insight. We earnestly thank dear Sandy Collins for fearlessly sharing her often difficult, arduous journey to benefit others who may be searching for their own distinctive direction, guidance and inner truth. - Mrs. KAREN SERENITY

Cincinnati, Ohio woman seeking "Her Special Man" to share her enlightened lifetime.

Hello, my name is Susan. I have been asked to tell a little about myself for this web site. Another version of my life story used to appear here. It was more of a day-to-day journal of what brought me to the point of transition and ultimately to the surgeries. This latest version relates more to my post-operative life experience.

I still start from the beginning. I was born in a small town in southern Indiana. When I was 5 or 6 the people next door had a baby, a little girl. She was out playing in the yard and lost her diaper, I thought she must be a boy since she did not have a penis. Someone corrected me. That was the first time I can remember being aware of thinking I was a girl.

Several years ago Jack Douglas, a writer who often appeared on the old NBC Tonight Show with Jack Parr (1957-62), wrote a book called, "My Brother Was An Only Child." From my vantage point of here and now, when I look back on my childhood, I realize that I had a brother and since my parents only had one child, he was an only child. Maybe I will write a book with that title someday. I’m sure it will be a very different book.

Other than thinking I was a girl, I had a fairly ordinary childhood. I played baseball and read a lot of comic books and science fiction. Stories of body changing were favorites. I especially liked the ones where the guy somehow became a woman. That idea stuck. I started thinking it was possible to wake up the next morning and be in a different body or for my body to be radically changed. The change I fixated on was my sex; I wanted to be a girl.

I was a fat kid with low self-esteem. Unsurprisingly, I tended to be self centered and had few friends. Dating was completely out of the question, not because I was not interested in girls. I was very interested in what they wore and how they looked but dating just didn’t feel right. I was usually alone. I did not learn the usual social skills. College was more of the same only worse, by then I knew that I was supposed to grow up and become a man, get married and find a job.

I finished college so I was usually able to get a decent job. It was never what I really wanted to do and always seemed to require long hours. It was a way of staying busy and avoiding dealing with the sources of my internal conflicts. One lesson I learned from this, avoidance is not the way to make a bad situation better.

In spite of the lack of social skills and a tendency to avoid social interaction, I somehow met a woman and married her. I used to dream that I was the one who wore the wedding dress and that she was the man and I was the woman. We have two grown children, now in their thirties. We fought over almost everything. We didn’t even have to disagree on something to fight about it.

My marriage lasted 22 years before the inevitable divorce. My children pretend they don’t know me. Their mother told them what I was going to do. I don’t know the words she used but I do know the affect it had on them. I do know that she did not tell them in a loving way. She told them in the way that only a woman who has been hurt and wants to return the hurt could tell them. They do not speak to me. They have made it abundantly clear that they want nothing to do with me. I have not seen or spoken with my children for more than five years. I wish I could have brought myself to tell them before I started transition.

I have no old friends, I was never able to get close enough to the people I was near for either of us to care enough when the situation that brought us together ended to try to find some other commonality.

The inevitable divorce left me alone with my thoughts for the first time in many years. I knew when I was alone that I had to address my gender issues. It was during this period of time that I first went out of the house dressed as a woman. That was probably in 1996 or 1997. In my old pre-operative physical state, I was always preoccupied and had trouble concentrating because there was a constant noise in my head. I could not stop my obsessing on becoming female.

I started 24/7 life transition in 2000 after a long-term job abruptly ended. I had not started transition at that time, so I don’t think my gender issues had anything to do with being selected as one of those to be displaced. Actually, I had started transition, I just didn’t know it at that time since I had not made any announcements or done anything out of the ordinary except the occasional outing to a support group meeting.

My job loss brought a number of challenges. All the while I was trying to become passable. As an adult I had to learn all those things little girls learn as they are growing up and learn it in as short a time as possible and trying to find a job at the same time. I probably lost a couple of potential jobs during the first couple of years because the HR person could see that there was something different about me.

Maybe it was my voice, maybe the way I moved, and maybe they couldn’t check prior employment or education. Maybe I just wasn’t right for the job. It could have been anything. I will never know. There was so much going on inside of my head. Maybe they could see I would not have been able to give the job all of my attention.

There were additional, unforeseen issues with my life transition. Changing my name should have gotten me off to a smooth start. It didn’t. Even that little thing took 2 ½ years and a split decision by the Ohio State Supreme Court.

I was underemployed for several years. Even though that caused serious monetary issues, during that period of time, I learned voice control when I worked in a telephone customer service center. During the time I worked in a department store, I learned how women actually dress. When the people in my local Cincinnati support group would ask about my job, I told them, “I’m in women’s clothes.” I thought it was a clever thing to say. Nobody else did.

Six years after I was downsized out of a good long term career – I found a good job, not exactly my dream job but close enough that I am quite pleased with myself for being where I am. And even though it is a good job, and one that I enjoy doing, I am still making significantly less than I did in 1999.

I remain in stealth mode within my career. I am not ashamed of who I am or what I have been through. However, I find that people treat me differently when they know my life history. Not a good different. On my first post transition job, they found out about my history. As a result of that knowledge, they created a unisex bathroom, just for me. It was a large two story building.

I worked on the second floor and the bathroom was on the first floor. It was the only bathroom I was allowed to use, of course any one else could use it too. It was about as far from my work area as you could get and still be in the same building. I was there for about six months before I finally quit. Who needs that kind of treatment?

Dr. Yvon Menard performed my SRS/GRS in Montreal in September, 2003. Since then, some of the variety in my life is gone. I used to have the choice of whether I wanted to be appear to be a man or a woman. I now appear same day after day. Now I am like most other people. How mundane. But I am happier than I have ever been. I am content with being who I am and am working to make my life better.

The noises in my head are quiet now. When I look back over the last few years, I can see that I had been planning the changes that have occurred in my life. I finally understand that I am in control of my life. It has taken years for this simple fact to finally sink in. So, eight years after the outward transition started, I am at peace with myself. I still have challenges, but they are the usual day to day stuff everyone has. Transition was the right thing for me to do and I am glad I went down that road less traveled.

There is still one last piece that stubbornly refuses to work into place. I am lonely. Strangely, the guys who used to call, you know, the ones who are looking for a “girl with something extra” aren’t interested in a post-operative trans-woman. To them, I’ve gone from being a “special woman” to just another woman (and you can hear the sneer in their voice when they say it).

The other guys, the ones that are reasonably sane, looking for a woman and employed, are gone once they find out about my past. Apparently, they are unwilling to, “Turn and face the strange.” as David Bowie urged us all to do so many years ago. A mainstreamed trans-woman is way too strange to bring home. There was one gentleman who talked of marriage. We had dated for a year and a half. In fairness to him, and to be true to myself, I felt he needed to know the whole story.

Sadly, I haven’t seen or heard from him since my disclosure. In spite of all the drawbacks, I am still optimistically dating, still seeking "My Special Man" to love, to cherish, and share our experiences for a lifetime together. My local Midwestern friends, Karen Serenity and her husband, provide me daily hope and optimism what I seek is indeed possible.

The longer my search takes the more I realize what I am truly looking for is a unique individual who will accept me as "Just Susan." I know in my heart-of-hearts he is out there, right now. I also confidently know we will someday lovingly touch and nourish each others souls. Is it you?

Susan is a real sweetie. She's a easy to like, caring, smart, sweet, sensitive, and sincere woman. Many lives have been enriched by Susan's relaxed presence, accepting nature and warm welcoming friendship. She is now enthusiastically seeking "Her Special Man" to honestly and lovingly share her new, enlightened lifetime. We wish her every success and happiness in her soul quest. - Mrs. KAREN SERENITY

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Deciding what to do about gender issues is extremely difficult. Prior to my transition, I was completely obsessed with the thought of being a female and developed a number of fantasies to keep the thought alive. One friend said her IQ went up 10 points after transition when the fantasy became real. It was very difficult for me during that time when it seemed like everything triggered a trip to Fantasy Island and the opportunity to be female.

Someday, there may be a world where people can have their minds and bodies aligned, quickly, easily and cheaply, maybe even with an option of which gender to be. Unfortunately, that day is not here today. Today transition has many costs. It is expensive in terms of money. But more importantly, it is expensive in terms of the effects it has on our lives as an aftermath. It is not a panacea. If you think you have problems now, after transition you will still have all of the same problems and you will almost certainly lose some of your best friends. You may lose your job and your family may not be supportive.

Changing your sex should be viewed only as a last resort. Something to consider after everything else has failed and the only other option seems too be something as desperate as suicide. Are you seeing a counselor yet? Keep in mind, any man who wants to have his balls cut off needs to have his head examined!" If you want to change your sex, you have issues that need to be explored.

I think most would agree that as a general rule, the true goal is to live a productive and fulfilling life. If you can have a life that you feel is worth living without going to the extreme of changing your sex, then so much the better. If that doesn't work out, surgery can still be an option. And what if you have The Surgery? You will still be essentially the same person you were before. You will not suddenly be endowed with any of the qualities you think all women possess. You will still have all of your personal issues plus, you will have other issues to deal with. If you don't think you pass well now, consider that you are eliminating options, not adding to them.

The option of whether to appear as a woman or not is gone - that is the only option you have. Still have facial hair? Unless you are prepared to shave every few hours and still have a beard shadow. It can be eliminated but Electrolysis takes time - hundreds of hours at $60 to $90 per hour. Don't have a $35 - $45,000 for someone like Dr. O and liposuction? Guess what? You will look pretty much the same as you do now!

Are you 6'6"? Do you wear a size 13 shoe? That isn't going to change. EVER! (Yes there are genetic females out there who are 6'6"? and wear a size 13 shoe and they can come across as very feminine!) You will have to learn very quickly what it took our biological sisters years to learn - how to make the best of what you have to work with.

Did I mention voice? Passing on the phone is another hurtle. No one wants to be, Sired? on the phone. Passing without visual clues is another of those little things many don't think about until after the fact.

Clothes? Just have a couple of outfits now? You will need a complete wardrobe. More money to spend. You have to look the part when you go to a job interview. It is especially important for us to have clothes that fit properly. Your clothes don't have to be expensive but poorly fitting clothing is a distraction that will focus attention on things better left unseen.

How is your confidence when you are out? If you are in a store and looking over your shoulder all of the time to see if anyone is looking, you will attract attention. Store security will be watching because they will think you are a shop lifter trying to avoid detection. How long do you think it will take to stop thinking that every little thing gives you away or prevents you from getting hired or promoted?

A husband and wife have "remarried" under new civil partnership laws - 14 years after the groom stopped living as a man to become a woman. Bernard and Joyce Rogers married in 1967, but have lived "like sisters" since 1991, when Bernadette - as she is now known - underwent gender reassignment surgery. Bernadette, who was born and brought up in south London, said she had always known she was really a woman.

The couple live in Woodford Halse, near Daventry, Northamptonshire. Now retired, Bernadette was once the director of research for the Rank Organization and helped develop color television and teletext services. Physicist Bernadette, also acted as chief scientific adviser to Margaret Thatcher's government on broadcast technology.

Bernadette married Joyce, the widow of her best friend, almost 38 years ago and became a stepfather to her two children. 76-year-old Bernadette finally got her two wishes in December, 2005 - to be officially recognized as a woman and to be married to Joyce.

The couple were granted an early release from divorce proceedings by a judge at Northampton County Court in early December, 2005 - allowing Bernadette a new birth certificate showing her as a woman - and then took part in the civil union ceremony.

The Gender Recognition Bill, which became law in 2004, brought formal rights to a person with a diagnosed gender identity condition once they had been medically treated. The Bill gave legal acknowledgement of the change in their gender status. But it refused such acknowledgement if the transsexual remained married, meaning that Bernadette and Joyce had to divorce in order for the law to recognize Bernadette's status as a woman.

Bernadette says, "We have exactly the same affection for each other we have always had. "We have an absolutely ideal relationship. We complement each other in every way."

Bernadette Rogers is a most courageous and beautiful soul. We celebrate and honor her new marriage and loving union with her dear Joyce. They make a simply darling couple. We wish them every success and happiness. - Mrs. KAREN SERENITY

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THE tall, graying, straight-backed figure sitting at the organ console of St Mary the Virgin, Woodford Halse, does not remotely look like a woman with a past. Bernadette Rogers fits comfortably into the Northamptonshire village scene like a capable character in a Joanna Trollope novel: organist, choirmistress, musical director of the local dramatic society, member of the parochial church council. A woman of energy and intellect living with her quiet, elderly companion, Joyce, in an old farmhouse on the main street.

Nothing pleases them more than to be taken for sisters. Bernadette, aged 67, is the more robust of the two, traveling about tuning and restoring church organs or immersed at her computer translating an obscure 18th-century German manuscript. Joyce, 72, is a cardiganed, motherly type, attentive but less talkative. A newcomer to the district would assume they are retired schoolteachers, brought together by the companionship of widowhood and the urge to carry on being of use.

Bernadette and Joyce Rogers do indeed share a surname; not because they are sisters but because they are married. After more than 20 years as a husband, in 1993 Bernard Rogers, a director of the Rank Organisation, scientific adviser to the Government on broadcasting and a pioneer of color television, became a woman and started to lead the sort of life which she believed an accident of birth had denied her.

Outwardly, it was a startling enough transformation: Bernard had always had a beard and worn a regulation business suit. In what must have seemed to neighbors like a matter of weeks, his place was taken by a handsome, well-rounded woman with a light perm and a touching pride in her wardrobe and make-up. She was called Bernadette. Over the ensuing months of feminization, even her bone structure changed. To her astonishment, she lost both height and muscle and eventually needed shoes two sizes smaller. She used to be able to span an octave and four on the piano keyboard; now she can only manage a tenth.

A mechanic who arrived at Folly Farm one day to do some office maintenance remarked that he had visited their house before. 'I know your husband,' he said. 'He was a Rank Organization director, wasn't he?' Bright with mischief, Bernadette replied, 'Yes, and so was I.' The visitor barely looked up as he commented, 'Now there's a coincidence.'

Three weeks after coming home from hospital after her operation, Bernadette braved the community, gingerly lowering herself into her seat at the church organ and later taking the reins at music rehearsals for the Eydon Players' annual pantomime. 'No one turned a hair. They seemed to know instinctively the right things to say.' She still sounds disbelieving. 'Some men had problems about how to deal with me at first and some women felt they had lost someone important to them and didn't know what had arrived instead. But there was not a single adverse reaction.' A triumph of good manners over prejudice? Or an unexpected outbreak of understanding? 'I was grateful, anyway.'

In a state of even greater trepidation at her next hurdle, she traveled to London to chair an industry meeting. Personal letters had already gone out to every committee member warning them of her altered persona and asking for their support but she could not be sure how they would take the news. There on the blotter in front of her chair was an envelope: it contained the key to the ladies' lavatory. In minutes of the meeting, the Bernard Rogers they had known for years was faultlessly recorded as 'she'.

Like most transsexuals, Bernard Rogers had felt a misfit all his life. Several times in his life, from adolescence onwards, he had tried to kill himself. In his 50s, when his sense of dislocation was at its worst, he became severely epileptic - but the fits ceased with the psychological calm that prevailed after he 'came out' as a woman. Even as a toddler, he says he knew, without being able to articulate it properly, that he was really a girl. His bookish, gentle interests - including knitting and embroidery - alarmed his parents who had desperately wanted their only child to be a boy.

'My father went to ludicrous lengths to impress the need for manliness. I was banned from using anything but red carbolic soap, in dead square cakes. I was given every conceivable kind of masculine accoutrements - boxing gloves, football boots - but none of them meant anything to me. I wanted music. I wanted literature.' By the age of nine, he had learned every note of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues and was teaching himself German.

When he was 11, he was sent from London to a tough boarding school in Lancashire in the hope that it would make a man of him. Most of the boys seemed to accept him as an agreeable oddity but some of the masters in whom he tried to confide were aghast. 'Their mouths fell open. There was a discussion about whether I should be made to sleep separately. I was virtually accused of inventing a problem to evade certain activities. The concept of a boy who was in no way homosexual but seemed to think he was a girl had never occurred to them. It was at this time that I first began to feel suicidal.'

He panicked at the threat of puberty. 'I watched other boys reaching puberty. Their voices broke, hair grew in all sorts of strange places, masturbation was a form of collective pastime. I was terrified of these developments.' He was 17 and the subject of enormous curiosity by the time the awful characteristics developed. 'I began to hate my body and came close to mutilating myself. When I started to grow hair on my face, I didn't know which was the most upsetting, having to shave or having a beard. I decided on a beard.' But the general turmoil became so severe that he was sent home suffering from a nervous breakdown.

Partly to prove he could succeed in a man's profession, Rogers chose a career in electronics rather than music and became fascinated by television. 'Activity and commitment seemed to be my only means of survival. Involvement in work enabled me to keep my gender problems at bay for weeks at a time. But when they surfaced, they were worse than ever.' By the end of the Sixties, he had played a leading part in the development of color television, teletext and satellite broadcasting.

In 1966, he went to visit an old friend, Joyce, who had recently been widowed and was living only six miles away in outer London. Joyce's husband had been Bernard's best friend and they had known one another for more than 20 years. 'Bernie came back to see how I was coping with my two children,' says Joyce. 'We were both a bit vulnerable and just seemed to be drawn to one another. We were married about three months later.'

Joyce's family had always realized there was something 'a little odd' about Bernard and felt protective towards him. Bernard admits he saw in Joyce a way out of his gender confusion. 'She was the person nearest to me. I felt if I had a chance of being helped by anybody it was her. In total desperation I proposed to her.'

Both claim they had a successful marriage - although Bernadette remembers how, as a man, she would feel detached from their sexual relations 'like an observer rather than a participant'. The main problem seems to have been Bernard's increasingly frequent depressions. 'I got to the stage seven or eight years ago where I couldn't face a mirror. I could only take a shower if I closed my eyes. I seemed to live in a picture by Hieronymous Bosch. Life was indescribable.'

Joyce remembers how they would set an alarm clock to break the dreams. 'I just used to think: he'll get over it. I had no idea what the real problem was.'

An old family friend, Dr Andrew Mellhuish, 61, describes the man he thought he knew. 'He was always slightly effeminate, a lovely, interesting, fascinating person. I suppose there were clues - there was this impression of femininity - but I was unaware of the turmoil inside. Then he started to develop severe headaches, which may have been related to his unhappiness.'

Bernard first admitted his transsexualism when being treated for epilepsy. After several consultations, his psychiatrist announced, 'You are going to tell me what your problem has always been and then we shall know why you became epileptic.' Rogers replied simply, 'I have been convinced all my life I'm a woman.'

Joyce remembers the day he told her. 'We had met in Sainsbury's to do a shop and Bernie told me in the coffee shop. He knew I couldn't throw a wobbly there. I went home not really knowing what it was all about. Gobsmacked, I think, is the word. I never had any idea.' As so often in the three-way conversation, Joyce broke off to address Bernadette directly. 'You weren't even difficult,' she said, puzzled. 'You were just terribly emotional over the most stupid things.'

Although they say there were huge difficulties in adjusting, the diagnosis was in a way a relief because 'an awful lot of things suddenly fell into place'. Separately, Joyce had psychiatric counseling.

Bernard was put on a large dose of the female hormone oestrogen for a year, developed breasts and started facial epilation. 'It took 18 months and a total of 400 hours to clean my face up. The discomfort was unbelievable.' But by the time Bernard had been recommended by three psychiatrists for full 'gender reassignment surgery' his mental and physical state had greatly deteriorated and the operation was brought forward.

Surgery to remove his male genitalia and create a vagina took seven and a half hours. The list of procedures read: 'genital ablation, orchidectomy, penile amputation, construction of female external genitalia and vaginoplasty.' Reading and agreeing to such a list, she reflected, would certainly sort out the true transsexual from the patient who was in it for kicks.'

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