Transcript
Headline: Emma’s Mummy Is Really Her Daddy
Subline: Tomboy and the Kung-Fu Fighter
Byline: By Maureen Lawless
Image Description: The picture shows Chris, a man with short dark hair wearing a patterned button up shirt. He is with his wife, Cathy, who smiles with her short dark hair blowing out of her face. Between them is their daughter Emma, who smiles with a furry hood framing her shoulders. She has short dark hair and bangs. The caption reads: “Anne (left), Eugene and daughter Emma: ‘Our story is too much for a little girl to grasp.’”
Block Quote: ‘One day we will tell her’
Bullet Points:
- She always felt she was a man. He always felt he was a woman.
- Today, Eugene Brown, an expert in Chinese martial arts, and Anne Johnson have swapped their sexual roles. He dresses like a woman, she dresses like a man and together they have produced a beautiful daughter.
- They still think of themselves as being trapped in the wrong bodies and they tell of their desperation in the concluding part of their moving story.
Article Text:
Happiness for Eugene Brown and Anne Johnson is their mischievous three-year-old daughter Emma. She plays contentedly, unaware of the problems her parents conquered to have her — problems which almost led to their break-up.
For when Anne became pregnant, Eugene desperately wanted to give birth to the child himself. “If there was any way I could have had a baby I would have done it,” he says.
“Even if it meant ten operations and being reconstructed like a robot, I would have gone through with it gladly.
“It was so frustrating that Anne was the one who was carrying Emma— and she loathed it. While I would have given anything for the experience.
Longed
“I was resentful. No matter how much I knew I was female, I’d never experience the physical joys of birth.”
Anne, who longed to be a man, hated every moment of her pregnancy.
She had agreed to conceive on the condition that once the baby was born, Eugene, 33, would take over the role of mother.
Says Anne: “Lots of women look lovelier when they’re pregnant. I just looked and felt terrible.
“There was I, large and uncomfortable, while Eugene longed to feel what I was experiencing.
“The thought of having a child and looking after one was totally repulsive to me.
“And I felt out of place at work where all the women talked about nothing but knitting patterns and babies.
“I felt really alone. I used to turn to Eugene for comfort, but after I conceived we were often at loggerheads. I didn’t love being pregnant and he was either revelling in it or resenting it.”
Emma was born after a Caesarian operation and Eugene easily slipped into his chosen role of mother.
He took over the feeds and nappy changing and taking out Emma in the pram.
“I loved looking after her,” says Eugene. “The responsibility of motherhood was perfectly natural to me.
“I washed and changed her and, when she was able to say ‘Mummy,’ it was to me that she said it.
“That was the greatest moment of my life.”
Anne, a 33-year-old social worker, cropped her hair, wore jeans and sweaters and was often mistaken for a man.
But there was heartbreak to come for the couple who were caught in a gender trap.
They went to a clinic which specialized in sex-change operation and hormone treatment.
Eugene says: “The doctor looked at us and said, ‘Which of you is which? And who wants to become what?’
“He gave us the cold, clinical details and instead of putting us off we were exhilarated. We knew that it was really possible for us to be as we should be.”
The couple were put on a hormone course and Anne had a successful mastectomy.
They changed their names to Cathy and Chris and each learned to speak with the voice of the opposite sex.
But their world collapsed when a social worker revealed their poignant love story and how they were having a sex-change on the National Health.
“The repercussions were awful,” says Eugene. “We couldn’t go out in the street without being recognized.
“We lived like hermits for a time. We were frightened to go out. Even worse than the notoriety was the reaction that came from our doctors.
“There was such an outcry that our surgery has been deferred indefinitely. Through no fault of our own, we’re still trapped in our wrong bodies.
Urgent
“Each day our daughter gets older and it’s even more urgent that we have our sex changes completed before she realizes something is odd.
“We love her very much and it’s for her sake now that we’re so desperate. We don’t want pity, just understanding.
“Of course, we’ll tell her when she is old enough to understand. But it’s too much for a child to grasp and to put up with the ignorant people who will point their fingers at us and call us freaks.
“We’re not mutilating our bodies, we’re simply trying to make them into what they should have been in the first place.
“People who have said we were irresponsible in having Emma should take a look around. Every family has problems.
“No child could have been wanted or conceived with any more love than ours.
“We’ve faced all the possibilities. We’ve even faced the consequences of the treatment, the physical damage it can cause.
“My chances of having a heart attack have increased considerably if I over-exert myself.
“And Anne can easily damage her liver if she drinks. But at least when we die it will be the right way round.
“It’s worth all we’ve gone through to know that the names on our gravestone will be Catherine and Chris.”
[End Article Clipping]
Lawless, Maureen. “Emma’s Mummy is Really Her Daddy.” Clipping. 1981. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/d217qp60t.
To learn more about the lives of Chris and Cathy Brown, find their memoir on our Books page.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. These images have been made publicly available for educational purposes and may be taken down at the request of the copyright holder. All clippings are physically stored in The University of Ulster Trans-Gender Archives at University of Victoria, located in the unceded traditional territory of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, also referred to as Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.