Sex change and sex reassignment - Katrina Legarda

KATS EYE | KATRINA LEGARDA

In the space of one year, the Supreme Court promulgated two decisions on
similar issues:
whether a man can become a woman. In one case, the man lost; in another,
the man is now a woman. Both cases were brought to the Supreme Court
when the Office of the Solicitor General appealed lower court decisions
granting the changes requested by both men in their birth certificates.
Mr. Rommel Silverio, the 2007 case decided by the Supreme Court, won in
the lower court. He filed a petition to change his name and his gender in his
birth certificate. He alleged in his petition that he was born in the City of
Manila on April 4, 1962. His name was registered as "Rommel Jacinto Dantes
Silverio" in his birth certificate. His sex was registered as male." He further
alleged that he is a male transsexual, that is, "anatomically male but feels,
thinks and acts as a female" and that he had always identified himself with
girls since childhood. Feeling trapped in a mans body, he consulted several
doctors in the United States. He underwent psychological examination,
hormone treatment and breast augmentation. His attempts to transform
himself to a "woman" culminated on January 27, 2001 when he underwent
sex reassignment surgery in Bangkok, Thailand. From then on, Rommel lived
as a female and was in fact engaged to be married. He then sought to have
his name in his birth certificate changed from "Rommel Jacinto" to "Mely,"
and his sex from "male" to "female." While he won in the lower court, the
Supreme Court reversed. The Court said that only certain information could
be changed in the Civil Register, and that gender, or the sex of the person,
was not one of these things. Moreover, there is no such special law in the
Philippines governing sex reassignment and its effects. The Court went on to
rue the lack of law, but then expounded that the changes sought by Rommel
would have serious and wide-ranging legal and public policy
consequences. Rommel wanted to marry, and was in fact engaged to be
married. Marriage, the Court said, one of the most sacred social institutions,
is a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman. One
of its essential requisites is the legal capacity of the contracting parties who
must be a male and a female. To grant the changes sought by Rommel will
greatly alter the laws on marriage and family relations. It will allow the union
of a man with another man who has undergone sex reassignment (a male-to-
female post-operative transsexual). And as we all know, even in the United
States, very few states allow same-sex marriage.
I wonder if Rommel had just tried to change his name, by way of correcting
his first name, would he have ever been in the law books. You can correct
your first name, you see, just by going to the Office of the Civil registrar,
paying a fee, and pointing out that his new first name or nickname has been
habitually and continuously used [by him] and that he has been publicly
know by that first name or nickname in the community. I will not wonder
about the other way that most transsexuals resort to in this country, as that
way is, well, illegal.
In the 2008 case of Jennifer Cagandahan, on the other hand, the Supreme
Court allowed the correction of Jennifers birth certificate so that her sex or
gender was changed from female to male, and her name from Jennifer to
Jeff. This was because Jennifer had the very rare condition known as
Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia or CAH.
When she was born, it was highly likely that what the nurse or midwife could
see was her female genital organs. As she grew older, however, her disorder
caused the early or inappropriate appearance of male characteristics such
as deepening of the voice, facial hair, and failure to menstruate at puberty.
About 1 in 10,000 to 18,000 children are born with CAH. The Supreme Court
found that during the twentieth century, medicine adopted the term
intersexuality to apply to human beings who cannot be classified as either
male or female.Intersex individuals are treated in different ways by different
cultures. In most societies, intersex individuals have been expected to
conform to either a male or female gender role. Since the rise of modern
medical science in Western societies, some intersex people with ambiguous
external genitalia have had their genitalia surgically modified to resemble
either male or female genitals. More commonly, an intersex individual is
considered as suffering from a disorder which is almost always
recommended to be treated, whether by surgery and/or by taking lifetime
medication in order to mold the individual as neatly as possible into the
category of either male or female.
In this case, Jennifer underwent psychiatric therapy and treatment and had
decided that she is a man and he thinks of himself as a male.
Jeff had let nature take its course and had not taken unnatural steps to
arrest or interfere with what he was born with. And accordingly, he has
already ordered his life to that of a male. Jeff could have undergone
treatment and taken steps, like taking lifelong medication, to force his body
into the categorical mold of a female but he did not. He chose not to do so.
Nature has instead taken its due course in Jeffs development to reveal more
fully his male characteristics.