Transcript
[Page 1]
Headline: His Mother Is Now His Dad
Subhead: The most amazing sex-change of all
Byline: By Harry Warschauer
Image Descriptions:
In the top left picture, Carl stands with dark hair pulled into an updo, holding the arm of a suited figure. Carl wears a long dress reaching his ankles, with a collar and short sleeves. The caption reads: “Fifteen years ago… still a woman, still called Catherine…”
In the top right picture, Carl is depicted, but now with short hair. He is wearing a short sleeved collared shirt with two pockets at the chest, as well as a pair of trousers. His hand is in his pocket and he leans against a tree. To the left is his son, who has dark hair that sweeps across his forehead. His hands rest on the tree. The caption reads: “Today… “Catherine” (right), a man, Carl Macmicha— [Unintelligible] to the boy to whom he gave birth. H— [Unintelligible] village home.”
In the bottom right picture, Carl sits in the grass looking down at his son who is a baby, sitting right in front of him. Carl has shaggier hair and wears a button up that is cuffed at his elbows. His son looks at the camera and smiles. The caption reads: “Mother and baby… the same two people as those in the top picture!”
Article Text:
In a little Wiltshire village last week I learned the incredible facts about the most amazing mother in Britain— the mother who now tells her teenage son: “Call me dad.”
It is the most extraordinary sex-change case of them all… the case of a person who was born and raised as a female, who married, gave birth to a baby— and is now legally, factually and physically a man.
So now Mr. Carl Macmichael, aged 37 (born Catherine Mildred), is both mother and father to the child.
Once he was so much a woman that he breast-fed the baby to which he/she had given birth.
Now he is so much a man that he plans to get married again as such— and have an active sex life.
The child, 15-year-old public school boy Carl Richard Macmichael, has taken his parent’s transition from mother to father with calmness and dignity.
“I think he’s very brave,” he told me, and added with a grin: “It’s quite handy to have mum and dad the same person— I could get two lots of pocket money, couldn’t I!”
His father told me: “The boy’s attitude has been great encouragement to me in all this. He regards me as a normal father. He boxes and wrestles with me, and I’ve taught him cricket.
“He’s always looked on me as a parent rather than a mother or a father
“There’s been nothing abrupt about it. Even before I officially ‘changed’ I used to wear slacks and sweaters, except when going out.
“And the change hasn’t had any adverse emotional effect on him. Look at his latest school report.”
It reads: “A first class record. We are glad to have people like him in the community.”
Ill-health
Carl Macmichael’s mixed-up life began 37 years ago in Wales. The birth certificate bears the names Catherine Mildred and the sex is given as “girl”.
It was a premature birth, and from infancy the child was dogged by ill-health.
“I think it was due to the sex factor, to the imbalance of hormones,” said Carl.
“I suffered mental agony by being forced to wear girl’s clothes. I tried to wear shirts and jeans most of the time. But physically I was a girl, and when the [Unintelligible]
[Page 2]
Headline: The Mother Who Turned Into a Father
Image Description:
In the top right picture, Carl looks over his shoulder in a close-up headshot. He has short hair and wears a jumper. The caption reads: “This is how Carl Macmichael looked when he was a married woman 15 years ago.”
Article Text: Continued from Page 1
my periods, though they were always troublesome.”
After more bouts of illness during the teenage years, Catherine, as she still was, became a student nurse at hospitals in Ealing and Barkingside.
“But I was still very mixed up. I tried to act like a girl, but found it more and more difficult. I was a real madcap, tomboy type.
“The other girls teased me because I was so boyish.”
Then a strange accident occurred— a “love affair” with one of the other nurses.
“A sudden volcano of feeling swept over me one day and I found myself kissing her passionately.
“But the whole thing frightened me. Life became a mixed-up hell, but I decided I must fight my feelings. I must [Unintelligible]
I was a female and live accordingly.”
It was largely as a sort of self-imposed “cure” Carl, at the age of 22, married a middle-aged widower.
“The wedding night was a disaster and the marriage was never properly consummated.
“I tried to force myself to have a proper sex life. I felt it was my duty to my husband, and to God. But it was not possible.”
The marriage quickly broke up. The couple parted, later to be divorced.
But even though sex relations had been so un-satisfactory and incomplete, Carl found that she was pregnant.
“Suddenly I felt quite different. For the first time in my life I felt like a woman— warm and protective. But that only lasted a week.
“Now I felt more mixed up than ever. In my heart I knew I was a man, yet I was doing the most feminine thing anyone can do— having a baby.
‘Relief’
“Against doctors’ advice, I refused to have an abortion and the baby was born in February, 1957.
“I brought him up myself. For a time I worked in a factory at Devizes as a welfare officer.
“I lived as a woman, dressed like one and wore make-up. But changes started. My breasts disappeared gradually. I became physically more masculine, and my voice deepened.
“Once half a dozen of the women workers tried to strip me in the toilet to see if I was really a man.”
Finally Carl went to a doctor who suggested a course of male hormone injections and a sex-change operation.
“He told me: ‘Genetically you are male.’ I burst out laughing with hysterical relief. This was what I’d believed all my life.
“Within a week of starting the injections I felt as though I had been born again.
“In January, 1969, I changed my name to my present one. And over two years I had nine operations to complete the sex change.
“The first was a hysterectomy, to remove the internal female sex organs. Another operation removed all traces of my breasts.
“Then there were various stages of plastic surgery to remove all traces of external female sex organs, and to provide a proper blood supply for the male parts, so that I could enjoy a sex life.
“I was told that because the operations had been so long delayed, I would never be able to father any children. But everything else is normal.”
Carl Macmichael is now on reduced doses of male hormones, by tablets. He lives with his son in a large cottage in three acres of grounds, and does decorating and building for a living.
In a caravan in the grounds lives Mrs. Thelma O’Sullivan, a nurse, aged about 40, who has nursed Carl through his operations. She is divorced.
Carl told me he hoped to marry her in a year or so. I asked him if he expected to have a normal sex life when he married, and he told me: “I know I will…”
[End Article Clipping]
Warschauer, Harry. “His Mother is Now His Dad.” Clipping. 1971. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/qv33rw73v.
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.