Trapped in the wrong body

Yasimi says until she has a sex change she’s not living, just existing

Marie has had the operation but found it hasn’t solved all her problems.

We talk to two transsexuals about the struggles they’ve faced because they were born the wrong gender...

When Yasimi Quaife was about seven years old, her mum Tyra sat her down for a serious talk.

"She told me the difference between boys and girls and explained they had different parts" recalls Yasimi (21).

Then she told me "You're a boy". I was shocked, I'd always felt like a girl.
I shut myself off. I was depressed; I knew something was very wrong”
Yasimi. who was christened Kane has since changed her name is transsexual. Technically she is male, although she has always felt female.
‘Mum always knew I was different and just accepted me. She has been fantastic. My two sisters are tomboys who spent hours playing in the dirt white I played with their Barbie dolls. They were fine about it but my dad couldn’t handle it. He used to try to get me in do manly things like pig hunting which I hated”
Yasimi. whose parents are no longer together was taunted at school and by the time she was 16 she was almost suicidal
“I was so miserable - I thought there wasn’t ant point in living like this.

Then one day I came home from school feeling like I'd had enough, when I saw a TV show about Carolyn Cossey, the famous Brittish transsexual
“I didn't realise until then that you could have an operation to change your sex.. I knew that was what I wanted.’
When Yasimi left school she started dressing as a woman and taking hormones. She began seeing a psychiatrist - she has to be assessed long-term to make sure she is stable enough mentally to undergo a sex change. Now she's saving for the operation, putting aside most of the money she earns as a nurse’s aide in a Whangarei rest home.
"It's going to cost me $20,000 for the sex change and $10,000 for breast augmentation. I think it should be paid for under the health care system. I don't want it done for cosmetic reasons: it's more psychological. It's not because I want to have sex as a woman, although that's part of it. It’s because I need to be me.
“I am meant to be a woman but I’m trapped in the wrong body”
As well as has having to come to terms with her own confusion Yasimi has also had to deal with people who have trouble accepting transsexuals. I've been called a fagot, I’ve been attacked in a nightclub. I’ve had people come up to me in the street and say. "My mate says you're a man".

I turn it into a joke and laugh about it.. You learn to he able to answer back quickly and to be tough if you have to.
Yasimi is no stranger to discrimination. "I did a business course and one of the girls didn’t like me. She complained about a man using the women’s toilets so I used the unisex ones for a while Then I thought "this is ridiculous" and used women's. ones again. She wasn't very happy about it.
I know that not everyone is going to understand. They're entitled to their opinions but if they don’t like it then that’s their problem not mine.
“I'm proud of who I am and I think it’s a shame it has to come down to a question of genitals".
Many people who meet Yasimi realise she’s a transsexual but there are those who just assume she's a woman. That pleases Yasimi, although there times when she has to make them aware of her gender crisis.
“I’ve had guys fall in love with me and I’ve had to say to Mum. ‘Please tell them what I am’ One guy burst into tears and I thought. ‘Oh no, I've led him on. I should have told him sooner’”
Yasimi is stiIl a virgin and says sex will have to wait until she’s undergone surgery. She’s met one man who said he liked her for who she was and didn’t care whether she’d had the operation or not. “But I was too insecure I couldn’t handle being in a relationship, not night now”
One day she would like a partner, and perhaps even a child. ‘I have a friend who says she will be a surrogate and have a baby for me. I have maternal instincts and get depressed at the thought that I can never have children.”
She feels like she won’t be able to have a normal life until she’s had the sex change
‘As long as I’m stuck an this body I’m not living, I’m just existing”
9 June 1997

Below Yasimi's mum Tyra says she's a neat kid ‘I'm very proud of her'
Below right: Yasimi when she was a boy called Kane