OR.CULL.
HO
75
. J96
V.
U U.
Portland, Oregon
13
INSIDE:
23
Ou t u b é i
1996
v o l u m e
n u m b e r
23
E E
All that remains for
the Hawaii same-sex
marriage trial is
a decision
page 9
9 9 6
PHOTO BY LINDA KLIEWER
4,
IRR0R5
Dealt a difficult
hand by
,
excluded by mainstream
society and many queer
activists , transsexuals
reflect their own truths
by Teri Ventura
ormones saved my life. Without them I
would be dead.”
Asked to say more about what he
means by this, Ken Morris’ one-word response is,
“Suicide.”
After a few moments of silence Morris contin
ues, “I lived for so long with an internal image of
myself as a man—a male voice, coming out of a
male body—only to speak and hear a female
voice, or to look in the mirror at the female body
others saw, and it drove me crazy. Early on, I
would try to do everything I could to make myself
look and sound externally like the man I experi
enced myself to be internally. Nothing worked. So
I avoided using the voice that wasn’t mine, and I
didn’t let others touch the body that didn’t belong
H
(Left to right) Ken Morris, Rachel Koteles, Margaret Deirdre O 'Hartigan
to me. It was too painful. My life was in a down
ward spiral. I was so worn out from years of liv
ing with a discordant body image, and I couldn’t
see a way to continue. Then I got a diagnosis,
which allowed me to get hormones. I started tak
ing the hormones, and the internal and external
images began to match. That’s when things start
ed to turn around for me.”
Continued on page 19