December 5, 2007

"I am scared to death right now. I am not going to see my wife. She is the only thing that means anything to me. I am a nobody right now."

Said Stephan Thomas Calewarts - also known as Stephanie Tia Calewarts. A court has refused to change his birth certificate to designate him as "male," as it had originally read. Calewarts was born with what is called “ambiguous genitalia,” and, after surgery, had his birth certificate changed to read "female." After marrying a woman, he sought to have it changed back to male, and lost, and because the woman is not an American citizen, the invalidity of his marriage means that his relationship to her is insufficient to earn her permission to stay in the country.

Unfortunately, he lost in Wisconsin state court because he's challenging an earlier court order from which he did not appeal.
He had surgery in July 1999 to remove his testicles and after gender reassignment surgery in Montreal in 2000, asked for his birth certificate to be changed to female, court records said.

“I thought I was going to have two birth certificates. One of each. Big deal. I was born with two genders,” Mr Calewarts said today.

“I can’t have sexual intercourse because nothing works.”

14 comments:

ricpic said...

Ambiguous genitalia,
A tortuous path
'Twixt hemale and femalia,
A lad and a lath.

Unknown said...

Poor guy.

AllenS said...

Poor girl.

Telecomedian said...

Poor everybody involved.

MadisonMan said...

What does his (her?) DNA say. Does he have an X chromosome, or does she have 2 Ys?

Paddy O said...

So what is his status according to New Zealand? Can he move there? Do they recognize the marriage?

George M. Spencer said...

Sgt. Ted--

Not poor thing, poor lack of things....

Trooper York said...

Jason: You wanna know who I want to get pregnant? Felicity Huffman. Ever since I saw Transamerica, I can't get her out of my head.
(Knocked Up, 2007)

Unknown said...

This is another apt illustration of how the law cannot solve every human conundrum.

(Nice poem again, ricpic.)

Revenant said...

What does his (her?) DNA say. Does he have an X chromosome, or does she have 2 Ys?

Minor quibble: women are XX, men are XY. Aside from a few unlucky souls with chromosomal abnormalities, everyone has an X and nobody has two Ys.

I do agree that the courts should decide sex on the basis of genetics, but that would throw out a lot of law relating to transsexuals and such.

Geoff Matthews said...

Paddy,

Men have an X chromosome, in addition to the (normally 1) Y chromosome.

Women have 2 X chromosomes (again, normally).

If I remember correctly, one of the women's X chromosomes becomes what's known as a Barr Body, which is detectable under a microscope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-inactivation#Barr_bodies

Paddy O said...

Oh.

So does that mean he can or can not move to New Zealand?

Ann Althose said...

No vortex. For shame.

blake said...

Why would this be vortex-y?