Season 2 Episode 4 Transcript

Rough Transcript

Season 2: Episode 4

Canary

Hosts: Gillian Frank & Lauren Gutterman

Guests and Additional Audio: Helen Way, Canary Conn, Narrator

Helen Way: Before we talk about your childhood and the events leading up to what you are today, lets define the word transsexual. Because I think a lot of people really don’t have a clear idea about what it really is, and tell me how does it feel to be a transsexual, how do you feel about it today?

Canary Conn: Well it’s an unusual thing, I think being a transsexual is neat. A transsexual is a male, or it can be a female also, who feels that they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex. Transsexuals are people that are trying very hard to be their sex physically, and don’t make it because they are born the opposite sex. In my case, that was a very difficult thing, because I tried very diligently to be a male and I was in fact a female. So I would say in response to your question that being transsexual is unique and it’s beautiful, and it’s a constant reaction and adjustment to society.

Gillian Frank: That was Canary Conn. For a short time in the 1970s, Canary Conn was everywhere. She was on television. On the radio. And on bookshelves.

Her story, that of a Texas-born recording artist, husband and father who transitioned into someone that the media described as a beautiful, “lithe” “young woman” “with flowing blonde hair,” captured national attention. Growing trans activism in the 1970s made Canary’s fame possible. This activism included organizing by networks of middle-class white suburbanites, and by black and brown people resisting police harassment and community violence in the streets.

But Canary’s prior fame also focused national attention on her. Canary first gained fame before her transition when she performed on ABC’s television special “Super Teen: The Sounds of ’68.” “Super Teen” was a national singing competition for teenagers co-hosted by singers Ed Ames and Aretha Franklin. Canary performed under her birth name, Danny O’Conner, and was one of nine teenage performers who qualified for the show by winning regional talent competitions. Millions tuned in as she won the competition with her original composition, “Imaginary Worlds.”

Canary Conn: Cotton candy for the clouds. Angels dance in golden shrouds.

Lauren Gutterman: The prize for winning “Super Teen” was a recording contract with Capitol Records and a brand-new car, a silver 1968 Superteen Pontiac Firebird customized with a television set and a phonograph in the rear seat. The following year, Canary recorded four songs for Capitol Records under her birth name. The label released the singles "Can You Imagine" and "If I Am Not Free."

Canary seemed on track for stardom and success. But shortly after she recorded her first songs, she left her family and career behind, dropped out of public view, and sought out what was then called “sex reassignment surgery.”

When we first learned about Canary Conn, we were eager to know more. So we did what we usually do when researching an episode for this podcast: we scoured libraries and archives for source material that might help us uncover the past. This time, however, our research quickly reached a dead end. We found Canary’s 1974 memoir, a smattering of newspaper articles and interviews, and a few of her songs. We encountered her in the footnotes of literature on trans history and trans lives. And she lives on in the memories of trans folks who sometimes cite her as a touchstone figure. But we couldn’t find recordings of Canary’s many public performances, or her radio and television interviews. What’s more, the trail of evidence disappears after 1980, when she inexplicably left the public spotlight and returned to private life.

Gillian Frank: We tried to interview Canary Conn but we were unsuccessful in reaching her. What we did find, and what we are delighted to share with you, is an extended audio interview with Canary that she recorded with the magazine Psychology Today in 1977. Only a handful of libraries had a copy of this recording and only one was willing to share its cassette with us. The tape you’re about to hear offered a fascinating conversation between Canary Conn and Helen Way, who was then Psychology Today’s Associate Editor. They talk about Canary’s childhood, her transition, her sexuality, and her gender identity.

Lauren Gutterman: A great deal has changed since 1977 when Canary recorded this interview. Many terms that Canary uses to describe herself and her life are no longer current. Trans activists and their allies have replaced the term “transsexual” with the more inclusive umbrella word “trans.” And what Canary calls “sex change surgery” is now known as sex or gender “confirmation surgery.” In what follows, our linguistic choices reflect our desire to show respect for contemporary trans communities, while also remaining true to the concepts and terminology that were available to Canary in the 1970s.

I’m Lauren Gutterman.

Gillian Frank: I’m Gillian Frank. Welcome to Sexing History.

When we listened to the interview with Canary Conn, we knew that we needed to understand her story as one that emerged out of the culture of the 1960s and 1970s. During those years, there was an intense public interest in sensational stories about sex change. Often, these stories fetishized trans peoples’ genitals, gender performance, and sexual activities. Both the questions the Psychology Today interviewer asked Canary and the ways in which she responded were powerfully affected by medical and psychiatric frameworks.

During the 1970s, when Canary came out, many Americans were wrestling with the how anatomical sex, gender roles, and sexual desire related to one another. The feminist and gay rights movements of the 1970s, as well as the backlashes against them raised urgent questions: Were sex, gender and sexuality biologically predetermined? Were they culturally imprinted during childhood and reinforced in countless ways? Could and should sex, gender and sexuality be changed? Canary Conn, like many trans people in the public eye in the 1970s, was caught up in these broader cultural and political discussions of bodies and identities.

Lauren Gutterman: Since at least the 1930s, magazines and newspapers featured stories about people changing their physical sex through surgery. Many of these stories presented their subjects as perverted and freakish outsiders. However, as historian Joanne Meyerowitz has argued, this same media coverage also inspired the hopes of Americans who longed to change their bodies. The media, in other words, created awareness and identification among some readers by crystallizing the idea that physical sex could be changed through medical intervention. What’s more, the media provided an imperfect space for trans people to speak for themselves about their desires for transformation.

Media coverage also made some trans people famous by giving them a platform to talk about their lives. As historian Emily Skidmore has shown, the popular press focused on white, conventionally attractive trans women who fulfilled middle-class standards of dress and comportment. Canary, with her pale-skin, blue eyes, delicate features and flowing blonde locks, fulfilled this cultural ideal of transfemininity. In this way, Canary followed the path created by renowned trans celebrity Christine Jorgensen who transitioned in the early 1950s to international acclaim. Jorgensen’s famous story--that of an ex-GI going to Denmark for surgery and returning home as a “blonde bombshell” -- familiarized Americans with the idea that sex could be changed.

The media’s coverage of trans lives, even when the stories were salacious, also mattered to trans people for another reason: it offered visible role models and moral affirmation to individual trans people who often felt isolated because of their desires.

Gillian Frank: In the 1950s and 1960s, medical researchers at several universities began to study trans people. Although doctors affiliated with these medical clinics did not yet offer sex change surgeries, they began to make judgements about who “counted” as truly trans and who did not. In the late 1960s, in response to trans people’s demands, doctors at medical schools and in specialized centers in the United States became increasingly willing to perform sex change surgeries. They developed the Standards of Care that required patients to undergo extensive psychological evaluations and to fit specific criteria to qualify for treatment. Because of this medical gate-keeping, only a small fraction of those who sought sex change surgery in this period were able to secure it in U.S. clinics.

Canary was among those who were unable to secure surgery in the United States. In her 1974 memoir Canary: The Story of a Transsexual, she recounts her experience applying for surgical treatment in the US and being interviewed by a board of medical experts who asked about her gender identity and her sexual experiences. The disrespectful and degrading response she received from these experts, and their disinterest in fulfilling her request for surgery, convinced her to seek medical treatment outside of the U.S. Like many other trans people who were denied surgery by American doctors, Canary turned to medical practitioners in Mexico.

Canary’s Psychology Today interview spotlights how trans people calibrated their personal arguments for sex change in response to the shifting medical criteria of doctors and psychiatrists. But trans people were not simply the victims of an oppressive medical gaze they also helped to shape medical opinion. What’s more, economically and racially privileged trans people, like Canary, were in the best position to do so.

Lauren Gutterman Doctors were divided on the causes of transsexuality and debated whether the condition was psychological, physiological or a mixture of both. This medical ambivalence shaped how trans folks told their stories. In Canary’s interview, she suggested that she deserved surgery because she identified internally as a woman and also because she possessed female biological traits.

Canary also reinforced the medical definition of transsexuality when she defined herself as a “true” transsexual. Notably, Canary asserted her worthiness for sex change by comparing herself with others whom she perceived as less authentically trans and therefore undeserving of medical treatment.

The personal narrative Canary provides in this interview, echoes other trans women’s coming out stories of this period. She emphasizes a troubled relationship with her assigned gender identity, a longing for transition and medical intervention, and a happy outcome. In this period, doctors measured the success of an individual’s transition based on their ability to conform to conventional gender norms and aesthetic standards. Doctors were also very concerned that their patients embrace a happy heterosexual lifestyle. In other words, in the eyes of medical practitioners, the trans version of “happily ever after” included both successfully transitioning gender and also successfully forging heterosexual relationships. At this time and in these contexts, the messier realities of trans peoples’ lives, including queer desires or gender queer identities, needed to be smoothed out for them to be accepted by physicians and a wider public.

Gillian Frank: Canary joined many other trans folks who strategically down-played the parts of their lives that would disqualify them from getting surgery, acceptance and support. Because so many of Canary’s television and radio interviews have been lost, we don’t have a full picture of what Canary chose to disclose about her life to different audiences. But the evidence we do have suggests a careful narrative strategy in response to the questions Psychology Today’s Associate Editor. In Canary’s interview with Helen Way she did not discuss some aspects of her life that she revealed in her 1974 memoir. She did not mention her lesbian experiences or her connections with the gay community. She did not mention that she funded her surgery by working at a sex toy manufacturing facility and through her sex work. These details would have convinced certain audiences that Canary was not deserving of respect or support. Instead, she emphasized the heartbreaks of being different, her hopes for parental acceptance, and her desire for heterosexual romance. Canary likely understood that this kind of story would play well with the general audience.

But even with these careful omissions, Canary found ways to highlight trans oppression and offer a political analysis of trans lives. In this interview with Psychology Today, she made clear that her, and by implication other trans folks’ survival and well-being, hinged upon access to sex reassignment surgery. She recounted the self-hatred and discrimination that nearly drove her to end her life. Canary underlined the devastating implications of being shamed by doctors in the United States and being denied access to medical treatment. And she pulled no punches in sharing the details of her brutal and costly surgery in Mexico that nearly killed her. Canary also challenged anti-trans attitudes, calling trans identity “unique” “beautiful” and “neat.” Elsewhere, Canary even challenged the prevailing medical idea that sex change surgery was a cure-all. “I’m happier than I was before,” she stated publicly, “but I won’t be really happy till social pressures stop, until people start to realize transsexuals are human beings.”

Lauren Gutterman: Canary became famous in large part because she was young, white, conventionally attractive and incredibly talented. Yet even with all of these benefits, Canary’s life in the 1970s was precarious. Though much has changed about trans lives and politics since the 1970s, Canary’s interview highlights issues that remain relevant today: trans people’s need for respectful, affordable and comprehensive health care, their friction with health care providers who continue to act as gatekeepers by standing between them and the medical treatment they want, and their ongoing struggles for visibility, recognition, and basic human rights.

More, Canary’s testimony in this interview about the physical violence and terror she experienced speaks to the ongoing epidemic of violence against trans people, particularly trans women of color who are being killed at astonishing rates around the world. But while Canary’s transition attracted a tremendous degree of largely positive public attention, the stories of those trans women who lack her privileges and her ability to pass more often go untold.

Gillian Frank: In the end, interviews are acts of co-creation between the interviewer, the interviewee and the cultural contexts that give meaning to the questions, answers and identities at play. We hope that in making this small moment in trans history visible and accessible, we can contribute to marking the importance of trans voices to the history of sexuality and deepening our understanding of gender and sexual diversity in the past and present. Without further ado, here is Psychology Today’s 1977 interview with Canary Conn.

Narrator: This is a Psychology Today cassette. One of a series of interviews and special presentations featuring contemporary clinicians and researchers discussing their work in the behavioral and social sciences. Today Miss. Canary Conn, a young woman who has contributed to the study of the transsexual phenomena, courageously shares her story in an effort to focus attention on the large number of suffering individuals who question their gender identity, often for a lifetime. We join Canary now in her Los Angeles studio as you sit in on her conversation with Associate Editor Helen Way.

Helen Way: Canary, you’re a very lovely young woman: you’re a talented musician, a successful writer, and you’re beginning to harvest some of the fruits of your labor. But life hasn’t always been so good to you and judging from your book it must have been very painful to write it and to re-experience some of the things that you would probably like to forget.

Canary Conn: Well I think it probably one of the most healthy things I’ve done in years. To write a book about an experience, like I’ve gone through, an experience of undergoing a transsexual change, of living both as a male and a female, of analyzing both roles was tremendously helpful to me. I think I really gained a lot of insight that I never would have had if I hadn’t have written. When I was writing the book, I learned a lot about me that I had somehow or another suppressed. I brought back experiences that I really didn’t want to relive at all, but I realized afterwards that it’s very important to face the past as well as the future. I think it’s been very helpful for me.

Helen Way: In dealing with it.

Canary Conn: I think it’s very important.

Helen Way: Now you used to be Danny O’Connor, but now you’re Canary Conn. So you’ve actually had the surgery. Now what does that entail?

Canary Conn: Well as Danny I was physically considered a male in terms of my genitalia, I had surgery which converted that genitalia into a vagina. Basically what it consisted of was two stages. The first stage was the amputation of the testes and the utilization of that tissue to form the outer lips of the vagina. Now after the first stage my penis was still intact now the second stage was the amputation of the penis, dissection of same, and inversion and utilization of that tissue to form the inside or the lining of the vagina.

Helen Way: Let’s jump ahead a little bit. After you’ve had this surgery how did you relate to society and how did society relate to you?

Canary Conn: That’s a good question. I think probably, I have a lot on the ball than society does in terms of dealing with a situation. I’ve realized first of all what I am to society, I think that was one of the biggest problems I had. Probably one of the biggest problems all transsexuals have is dealing with the reality that to society they are in fact transsexuals first and a male or a female second. To me I’ve always been a female. That’s the first thing, and it was a very difficult thing to come to grasp with the reality that my friends and my relatives all think of me as a transsexual first. Obviously, there are many varied opinions, and society’s opinion of a transsexual by and large now, I’d have to say is marked questioning. They don’t know exactly what a transsexual is and of course tapes like this help and programs help. As a matter of fact, I’ve written a book about my life that seems to have helped also. People are responsive to the truth.

Helen Way: What about your family and friends. How did they respond?

Canary Conn: Well it’s been difficult for my family. I think my father has had the most difficult time dealing with my being a transsexual. On the part of my two sisters and my mother individually I think they relate to me, collectively I think when they’re all together they talk about me a lot – not all necessarily positive things. My mother I’m sure, she has really come to a point where she has adjusted to me being a transsexual. My older sister refused to talk to me for the last seven years and she has not met me yet, although she proclaims to accept me, she refuses to meet me. This is a very difficult thing for them to adjust to, so on the part of my family I think it’s an ongoing adjustment. After undergoing the change, I was in fact held responsible for the death of Danny, the person I used to be, and in fact lived to face the consequences as a murderess. I think my relatives and many of my former friends hold me responsible for his death, because he was a pretty well like person, as a matter of fact, he’s the same person I am now inside, same person, there’s no difference. So, I think possibly over the years although there has been some change in terms of their feelings, it’s a difficult adjustment, it really is.

Helen Way: Well undoubtedly, well Canary, there is some prejudice that you’ve had to deal with as a transsexual and there’s some amount of prejudice against women in certain areas, now how do you deal with both?

Canary Conn: It’s not very easy, what I’ve had to do is I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m not going to change the world overnight. In working in several jobs as I have over the last few years, over seven in fact, as a female, I’ve learned that a male is treated a great deal different than a female is, and even being a young male and working in various places I really realize a very stark difference in the treatment and salary level et cetera.

And I find that also, in being a transsexual, there is a lot of discrimination in hiring people. Most people who don’t want a transsexual around, whether you’re a teacher or whatever you’ve done before, because it’s a very different phenomenon. There aren’t that many transsexuals around and how does someone describe to one of their clients or one of their customers that, “Well Joe is now Betty, and you’ll have to treat him as her.” Well, most people don’t want to do it, so this brings a real interesting dilemma on the part of the transsexual trying to adjust.

Also, because most transsexuals go out into society and I think probably in the initial stages, want to keep it quiet, don’t want to talk about it. Psychologically, they fell they have to keep it quiet in order to make their new lives, in order to make themselves totally female. What happens is, society puts so many pressures on the average person in terms of red tape anyway, well in a transsexuals case, there are things like birth certificates, inability to marry if you fall in love. A lot of states don’t permit birth certificate changes, then you have a tremendous problem in trying to bring about a successful marriage contractually.

Obviously, there are also peer pressure problems on the part of the spouse to be also. In my particular case, dealing with love affairs, of which I’ve had many that have all fallen apart unfortunately. It wasn’t so much a tremendous difficulty on the part of the person I’m in love with to adjust to me, but more a difficulty on his part to adjust to his peer pressure, to his environmental pressure.

His mother saying, for example in one case, one person I was going with was a policeman. And his mother was very proud of him, and justifiably, he had won a silver star in Vietnam and was quite a person, I loved him very deeply. And she found out about me one night, he told her, and the pressure then began as a result of that pressure the relationship was dissolved within a few weeks afterwards. And probably single handedly she destroyed all the best chances at that time that I had for happiness. That was difficult for to adjust to it at the time.

And I think it’s not an uncommon thing either, I feel a lot of transsexuals have this same kind of problem because you can fall in love with one person and one person can understand you, but people don’t realize the environmental pressure that anyone is subject to.

Helen Way: I can believe it, have you ever dated and not revealed the fact that you were transsexual.

Canary Conn: Many times, many times.

Helen Way: And how, what’s happened, what’s been the result of those relationships?

Canary Conn: A casual date is just that, you know. I think you can be real to a point; you don’t get totally involved, you go out to dinner, whatever, your emotions are pretty much your own and you’re not giving them away. So, there’s no need to tell. However, in a love relationship, you cannot predicate love on a lie, and the fact that I was a male twenty years of my life and now am a female, and actually very proud of it. I feel obligated to whatever love partner I have now to tell him, of course, then you’ve got problems.

So, the idea is if I don’t tell him, then they’ll eventually find out and it will be destroyed anyway. It just doesn’t work.

Helen Way: No, no. Well, usually what is the reaction?

Canary Conn: On the part of the boyfriend?

Helen Way: Yeah.

Canary Conn: In my particular case it’s really been pretty good, really, not bad at all. I think a lot of the guys I’ve gone with have really kind of dug me for it and respected me for it.

Helen Way: It took courage.

Canary Conn: Yeah, I think probably the most important thing is that the relatives can’t handle it, the people at the job can’t handle it, you know. Friends, “What are you doing with that? Why are you going with a trans- what is it again?” You know, it’s an “it”. “There’s a lot of beautiful women around but, but don’t bother with that, that’s only problems.” But you know transsexuals are human too and people have to realize that.

Helen Way: Of course. You know, I feel uncomfortable asking you this next question, I don’t like to ask it, but you know, everybody wants to know, after you had this anatomical change, what is your sex life like?

Canary Conn: Well it’s limited and I, I understand how you can feel a little unusual.

Helen Way: Oh yeah.

Canary Conn: I, it is an unusual thing. But after all, being a transsexual is being changed sexually and people are obviously interested in the function ability of the transsexual change. It’s limited, I don’t have that many sexual relationships, I think in terms of my vaginal function, my operation is working fine. I mean I don’t have any problems, I don’t anticipate any problems, because I take care of myself. I’m not a loose person, I don’t go out and have many many relationships, I try and deal realistically with the ones I do have.

It is also a bit of a problem for me to adjust to the fact that it’s a man-made vagina, and I can’t have children, and if I think realistically about my situation, I could get depressed. And I do somewhat, but I also choose to just, “Well right it’s a man-made vagina, but it’s something that’s part of me now and at least I’m normal cosmetically in that area.” And I feel very normal emotionally, I think that’s, in my particular case, I can’t say for everyone, you know, and if you’re asking just Canary about her relationships, probably 90% of my relationships have been emotional, and the sexual part from what I’ve been able to ascertain from those I experience sex with is it’s quite normal.

Even in terms of orgasm, speaking very objectively and clinically, my orgasm is, from what I’ve been able to ascertain from those who have one from the females I’ve spoken to, very similar. But once again that’s relative, that’s an abstract, and it’s very difficult to, you know how do you describe an orgasm or how do you describe love and hate and all the rest of them.

Helen Way: Yes, well you’ve experienced as a male, and can you make a comparison, is it possible?

Canary Conn: Oh yes, yes. There is a similarity, my orgasm as a male was very painful.

Helen Way: Physically painful?

Canary Conn: Physically painful. And now I did father a child and that’s a fact, that will remain for the rest of my life, I did father a child. So, it was functioning, that was something I didn’t quite understand, but just the same it happened. And as I look in retrospect, as I look at my past and my sexual experience, it was very limited. I only had sex with one person as a male and that was the girl that I married, and that was on a limited basis. So, my sex life, if we can coin the old overused phrase now on the commercials, “How’s your sex life?” I would say, eh, it’s alright, you know. It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, probably that means I’m normal.

Helen Way: Yeah really, well do you ever think about marriage?

Canary Conn: Many times, but I’ve decided now not to get married.

Helen Way: Why?

Canary Conn: Because I want to be a career person.

Helen Way: You think that would conflict?

Canary Conn: And I don’t feel being a woman and being involved in as many things as I’m involved in is very conducive to a successful marriage relationship. And I have tried various live in relationships, and I don’t, I don’t really want that kind of problem, I really don’t. I’m very happy with being alone and dating. I like dating, I like living alone.

Helen Way: Let’s talk a little more about the surgery. The experience you had in the Tijuana hospital and how did you finally find a doctor who would perform the surgery.

Canary Conn: Enough money accumulated for half a surgery and the two-state surgery. So, I went down to this doctor and I went through the surgery there, in Tijuana. And he was quite a skilled physician in actuality, he really was.

Helen Way: Was he a Mexican doctor?

Canary Conn: Yes, a Mexican doctor, educated in Heidelberg Germany, and a very good doctor in terms of his technical ability. But the hospital care there was atrocious and the people there were very hostile towards me. And the first surgery was bad enough, there were a lot of incidents that occurred – not changing the catheter bag and…

Helen Way: You mean they simply refused to do it?

Canary Conn: They just refused to change my sheets and everything and I got infected. They refused to and they wouldn’t let me call out.

Helen Way: And the doctor couldn’t do anything to-

Canary Conn: Well he didn’t want to, he didn’t understand English that well I don’t think, and when I told him, he just said, “Well Americans are always complaining about Mexican hospitals.”

So, the second time I went down I didn’t want to go down, back down there, because I felt that I almost died the first time. And I remember lying in bed crying the first time, fearing what I had to go through again the second surgery.

Now after the first surgery my penis was still intact, so I had no more money for the second surgery. I had to go out and get money in some way or another. Well I went out in the community to get jobs, I got three jobs. I did earn the money and I tried to get the surgery back in the United States. I didn’t want to have to go back down to Tijuana because I was frightened for my life.

After going to several institutions, universities, and getting horrible treatment, humiliation and all they wanted to do was study me, they didn’t want to help me they promised me the operation. I was given several dates by several different doctors only so they could study me. And then you know of course somehow or another the date would just pass by and, “Oh we’ll have to do it some other time” and that kind of thing.

So, I had to go back down to Tijuana. The second trip I almost died. The second trip I almost bled to death in the hospital.

Helen Way: This was the second phase of the surgery?

Canary Conn: Second surgery, and this was, as I describe, the amputation of the penis and the inversion of that tissue to form the inside of the vagina. Well I had a mold in me for nine days I couldn’t get out. I had a catheter in me, I couldn’t get out of bed, the nursing staff were even more hostile than the first trip down there. They wouldn’t let me call out, they wouldn’t come when I was bleeding, and I remember one night, lying in bed, watching the blood roll down the sheets onto the floor. Something had ruptured inside me and there was no one I could contact. I was buzzing the nurses buzzer. I was trying to call, they wouldn’t answer my call. I couldn’t call anyone, I couldn’t get out because there was a mold inside me, I was too weak to pull myself out of bed and I knew it was the end somehow. I knew that it was all over with. So, I said a prayer and I laid back and I grabbed for some scissors because I wanted to take my own life. I didn’t want them to take it, you know. And there I was in Tijuana, in fact I had killed myself by following through with what I really felt, what I really believed, and there I was bleeding to death. I fainted, luckily before I could take my own life.

And the doctor came in around two o’clock in the morning. He came in from a party quite by accident, I had been complaining for several days, and he came in from a party and discovered the situation. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t be alive today.

Canary Conn: He just happened to come at the right time?

Canary Conn: Yeah, I had complained enough that it made him a little suspicious and then he came in.

Helen Way: So, what did he do?

Canary Conn: Well he immediately got me out of there, and I came home, I had to make a couple extra trips to Tijuana, of course, I live in Los Angeles, you know.

Helen Way: You came home to Los Angeles?

Canary Conn: Yeah, yeah. So that’s of course one of the difficult times that I had, and I really didn’t have to have. I think it’s important also that people realize that education is the strongest tool that any minority has. To bring about acceptance.

Helen Way: What is the cost of this kind of surgery?

Canary Conn: Well it runs about five to ten thousand dollars, as high as fifteen thousand dollars. In the male to female cases, it can run even higher because the complications in the surgery. Of course, then you’re talking about the creation of the penis from skin graphs taken usually from the insides of the legs, from the thighs, and it’s not as successful. So, therefore you have a lot more problems, some people have a lot of problems with urethral strictures, some have problems with urinary tracks infections.

Helen Way: When you returned to Los Angeles did you have any problems?

Canary Conn: Many, I had a lot of infections, no urethral strictures but a lot of infections because of a dirty catheter.

Helen Way: Oh my head, did you have to back down to Tijuana and see the doctor then and have them taken care of?

Canary Conn: No, no, as a matter of fact I was so frightened, as a result of the experience that I’ve had that I haven’t seen a doctor or four and a half years.

Helen Way: Now you wrote a very poignant letter to your parents when you made this decision to follow through on the treatment. You want to talk about that, tell me what the reaction was and how did you happen to write it.

Canary Conn: Well that’s a very difficult thing to write a letter to parents who didn’t really know that it was all happening. When I was in California and I had already made the decision to go on my own way and my wife agreed to it and I had to sit down at the typewriter and somehow put in a couple of pages this story to my parents and my relatives. Obviously, it was very difficult. It was a very stress-filled time for me. I told them then as simply as I could about me, and even then, even with my – I was crying when I was writing the letter – even then they couldn’t understand. And it wasn’t for months afterward until my mother finally came to an understanding of who I was and stuff. My father to this day I don’t think really truly understands me, and most of my relatives don’t either.

Helen Way: Have they accepted it?

Canary Conn: I would say no.

Helen Way: Not, not, not accepted it.

Canary Conn: I feel it’s a lot easier for people to accept a success than someone who is kind of down and out. And for many years I was down and out because I was pursing my career and my life and doing it in a very difficult way because I was doing it all alone with no friends. And I think that, oh I think recently I’ve had a lot of mail from relatives and friends and stuff. And it’s a lot easier for them to accept me now, because you know, this 90 minute Merv Griffin special and various things, television and newspaper interviews. And suddenly people are saying, “Oh yes, you know, well I knew her and she’s my relative.”

But when I was really down and out, and although I don’t hold hostility toward them. I just can’t seem to forget all that. That when I was down and out and I was in a hospital bed in Tijuana twice in two separate occasions no one came to visit me. And you know, these are weeks on end that I had suffered alone and when I needed the money, for years, several years in the in between stage, when I only had the first stage of the surgery, I didn’t have the money to complete the surgery. One uncle and one aunt in particular, who were millionaires, and who could have at any time given me the money to help me out of the situation, refused to.

Helen Way: And they knew about this trouble you were having?

Canary Conn: Yes as a matter of fact, I had an aunt, interesting story, that I lived not more a half a mile from during the entire course of my struggle. And she was worth seven million dollars and refused to help me. And I was her only living relative within 2,000 miles.

Helen Way: Probably because she felt really stony by what you were doing.

Canary Conn: Well, but after the first stage of the surgery she refused to even talk to me, I mean she slammed the door in my face as a matter of fact. You know I was totally alone; she slammed the door in my face.

Helen Way: I guess it’s pretty hard for most people to understand, isn’t it?

Canary Conn: I think so.

Helen Way: Let’s go back to the beginning and talk about your life as a child. How old were you when you realized that you felt different and maybe were different from other little guys.

Canary Conn: Well when I was two years old, I used to dress quite frequently in my big sister’s clothes, and she was just a year older than I was. So, she was pretty much just the same size and of course, this persisted all through my childhood and adolescence. So, I can really remember being different from the very beginning. I didn’t know I was a transsexual, I didn’t even know the word existed until I was eighteen. You know, as a child how can you know anything? All I knew I knew was that I was different. When I was around that were my own age, I felt I was somehow estranged, you know, that I didn’t feel that I belonged there.

Helen Way: Well how did you relate to other boys, kids your own age?

Canary Conn: Well I really didn’t relate to either one, because I felt, as I mentioned, feeling alienated. So, I turned inward, and I spent a lot of my life, a lot of childhood alone. I sought that empty room in my grandparents’ house, or the backyard where there were no children playing, you know. Wherever there weren’t people, that’s where I seemed to like the best.

And of course, that helped too. As I look in retrospect, I feel that all the pain that I’ve gone through really made me a better person.

Helen Way: You mentioned your grandmother’s house. I remember one story you told me about your Christmas dress, that really moved me, you feel like telling it?

Canary Conn: It’s a story about Christmas when I was six years old. I was given a dress by accident in a package. The dress was for my sister, and I wanted a dress at that time, I wanted a dress really bad. And I dashed early in the morning and opened this package and somehow or another they had gotten the labels switched, and I pulled out a dress, and I was so excited. That was what I wanted, and I put it on, and of course the problem was my grandparents woke up and caught me in it and it was a very big problem. So, I of course took it off. You know, a young boy was not exactly acceptable, and needless to say I wasn’t exactly the most popular child in the house, but I’ll never forget that story. It was a very beautiful story to me.

Helen Way: I remember you mentioned the fact that, that was about the time you had some doubts about Santa Claus too because you had your hopes built so high and you thought, “Gee, I finally got the dress” and then it wasn’t for you after all.

Canary Conn: And as a child, see, being a very lonely child too, as a child I, I dealt with things in a rather unusual manner too because since I was so isolated, I dealt with them in a sort of pseudo reality, because I tried to imagine things as I wanted them rather than as they were. And it took me years to get over it, like I felt then that the whole world was against me. Now I realize it’s not that way at all. It’s me against the world. [Laughs]

And when I was a child and I was alone and people used to pick on me a lot, I felt, and it carried over to my adolescence, that there was something wrong with me. Now I’ve learned over the years that, this something that was wrong with me wasn’t anything that I could’ve helped. I mean there was something wrong with me, but it wasn’t something inferior, that is what I felt as a child, I felt, “Oh god, I’m not as good as them.” But now I realize that it was a problem that needed to be corrected and it was corrected. I had the surgery.

Helen Way: Did any physician ever suggest the possibility of an ambiguity in the sexual development when you were born as an infant? Did that ever present itself at all?

Canary Conn: Well, what happened is, my doctor told me, the doctor that performed the surgery, that I did have in fact partially developed ovaries. So I was in a pseudo-hermaphroditic condition and he removed them. He felt that they may be problematic in my future. And of course, they were never grown, they were just very small. But I also had a very poignant and prominent hormonal imbalance, it meant that I didn’t have beard growth until I started on female hormones and it causes, sort of a real quick reaction in my body, even then I had very, very little beard growth. And I had no voice change at all, the other way, it was lower, but it wasn’t the same thing.

Helen Way: It had not occurred to me that there was a hormonal imbalance of some kind and wondered if they had checked it out and if they could have corrected it. Do you suppose?

Canary Conn: Well you know that question has been brought up a lot, but the correction was in the right way obviously. The correction was successful, I was a female and because I was a female, I’ve been able to live a successful life as a female.

Helen Way: One of the things that interests me particularly is, in those early years when you were going through all this conflict, did you have anyone at all that you could confide in? Is there anyone who understood, someone you could talk to? Did you tell your mom about it?

Canary Conn: Well I didn’t tell my mom during my childhood, when I turned thirteen, I told her.

Helen Way: When you first told your mom about this, what was her reaction?

Canary Conn: She was frightened, I think she was very much frightened at the fact that her boy was not exactly a boy in her eyes. At that time I felt I was queer, that was the word I knew, that was the only word I knew at all, and I didn’t know anything else about myself except for the fact that then I knew that I wanted to be the woman I had heard of in operation.

And if you can imagine a thirteen-year-old boy going to his mother and saying, “Mom I would like to have an operation to become a woman.” Well obviously, she was very frightened and upset. She went on to threaten to commit me to an institution, and of course I didn’t want that, I didn’t know that much about them either but I certainly didn’t want to go away in prison somewhere, and that’s what I thought it was.

Helen Way: She was just probably just so terrified of the whole thing, of this unknown to her.

Canary Conn: Of course, and I was dressing a whole lot then, I was dressing a tremendous amount of the time. And I felt a real need, to try and you know, get some sort of recognition and possibly an understanding that I hadn’t gotten from anyone else from my mother. I didn’t succeed however because she, she really wasn’t willing or possibly even able to comprehend the intensity of my feelings at that time.

Helen Way: Probably just not able, I’m sure she wanted to and probably tried, and she just couldn’t cope with it. What about your dad, did you tell him?

Canary Conn: I never told my dad in my childhood, never. I made my mom swear to secrecy never to tell him, probably because I realized his response. I knew the way he would act and I was right, because years later when I was nineteen and I decided to go through the change, I told him and he cut me off entirely, totally.

Helen Way: He did?

Canary Conn: Oh yes, neither one of my parents wanted to talk to me. Or, as a matter of fact, when I made the decision, it was very difficult, because after I said to everyone that I was going to become a female, no one wanted to be with me. So, I was completely cut off from all contact in the whole world.

Helen Way: What kind of a relationship did you have with your dad when you were growing up? Were you buddies, you know, did you go fishing together?

Canary Conn: My dad was a CPA when I was young, so he was working all the time and I didn’t have much time to really be with him. In terms of you know that father son kind of relationship, except for on the weekends. Sometimes he would take me camping and would insist on me being one of the little guys and trailing along, at the time we were living in Idaho, trailing along behind him, feeling frozen from the cold weather, you know, twenty below zero there hunting pheasants and I didn’t want to! I used to cry, I wanted to sit in his truck where it was warm where there was a unit. They didn’t like that, needless to say when I say “they”, all my dads friends and of course as a result he didn’t like it either, you know, “My son’s a sissy” and all that stuff?

Helen Way: How old were you then?

Canary Conn: Oh, I guess it was, he started doing this when I was around six years old. From six to ten, well then as I grew older, he got out of his CPA business and got involved with the car business, wholesaling cars. So, I used to go with him on Saturdays, you know, kind of working with him, just seeing how things worked and I learned to drive at a very young age and he like that. So, I would drive his cars around with him.

So, we had sort of a camaraderie there, and of course he would always try and make me out to be a tough kid to all his friends, you know, “This is my son Danny.” That was my name then, Danny, “This is my son Danny and he’s a tough kid, he can handle himself and this and that.” While in reality I was frightened when I would go with him because the guys, the kids of the people that were there around me in his business, usually were usually also pretty tough kids and they could see through my façade pretty easily.

So, I would get in a lot of fights or problems with them, but I always tried to cover up my dad’s image and I tried to maintain it for him. I never wanted him to find out about it. Although I used to fantasize and really dream of the time when my father could see me in a dress. See me as a woman.

As a child I used to imagine coming to see my father in a dress and him accepting me that way. Well, to this day it still hasn’t come about.

Helen Way: Well, at this time when you were growing up, were you involved in things like Scouts and little league baseball, and things like this?

Canary Conn: I was a Tenderfoot Scout, I want you to know, Tenderfoot Scout and I got to be a second-class scout before, and I was a bugler before our troop was disbanded because the Scout Master was caught stealing all the money [Laughter]. Terribly disillusioned of Scouts after that!

I didn’t know exactly which way to go, so I turned in my Bugle and decided that I was going to be a good student in school. Well that didn’t work either, because I was twelve then.

Then I started getting into all my fights. A lot of kids would push me around and I just don’t like this so much and I started fighting back. So, I got the reputation as a fighter, a troublemaker in school. Well, I became a lover, not necessarily in the technical sense but in the outward physical sense maybe, you know, the image sense. Because all the girls seemed to be attracted to me, in junior high school as a matter of fact, there was an occasion when I left. Well I decided I was going to go for football, and I went out in junior high school and didn’t make it. I went out again and didn’t make it.

Finally, in the first year of high school I made it as fourth string guard and I really struggled to make the team. I caught a lot of hell from the coaches, because they saw, that you know, “What is this person going out in football for if they weren’t exactly athletically inclined?” So, what I did was I tried to deal with that as best I could by coming home with my dad and saying, “Oh I’m doing this dad I’m doing that, I’m great, they’re giving me first string and they’re giving me all the prime…” Until the first scrimmage. The first scrimmage my dad saw that his son wasn’t getting out to play. He was sitting on the bench. In fact, I was in charge of ice, I gave the other guys ice, that was my job. So, it was humiliating.

Helen Way: What was his reaction to that, did he say anything about it? Did he ever talk to you about it?

Canary Conn: Well he was upset about it, and you know, once again the truth of the situation was driven home. Of course, I started dating rather heavily. Once again to try and prove that I was a guy, and also that I related to women. I related to them in a most peculiar sense for a male and that is as another female and they liked that. Women kind of liked that. I was an unusual guy, I was good looking, but I had a certain something that

Helen Way: Sensitivity to people.

Canary Conn: That no other men had, that they knew. So, once again I became very popular and women were calling me all the time. I dated frequently, but I never had a sexual experience, that is not until I was in my senior year of high school. At that time I met a girl who seemed to be rather unique, seemed to be the kind of person that would really, totally understand me.

Helen Way: Was it Joanna?

Canary Conn: Joanna, that was her name, and we went on to fall in love as young people do and I had my first sexual experience. I probably, looking in retrospect, would’ve never have had it, if I had not met her, but she encouraged me to try. Well, it was repulsive to me, at first it was shocking and kind of liked it, but it ended up happening very soon after the first experiences that I would close my eyes and imagine secretly that I was in the love act, in the sex act with a man. And that I was her instead of me. Well, this went on for a while, and then I finally told her about my secret, she was the second person in my life that I told.

Helen Way: Your mom first and then Joanne.

Canary Conn: Right, and then I was eighteen when I told her. Well it just so happened that prior to my telling her, she had encouraged me to enter in a songwriters and singers contest.

Helen Way: And you were quite a guitarist at that time too weren’t you and a budding singer.

Canary Conn: Right, so I submitted a little application from a teen magazine, out of 10,000 kids, I won the right to compete for the title of the best teenage male vocalist in America. So in the midst of my problems, I finally told her about my situation, I flew off to Hollywood as part of this competition prize to appear on ABC network. An hour special in which I sang a song I wrote and won the title of the best teenage male vocalist.

And of course, you can imagine then I had decided for the most part, I mean obviously I had told her, to go ahead with the change. I wanted to find out where the sex change was going on, I wanted to get it, and I won a lot of prizes at this show. One of which was a contract with Capital Records. Well I came back home and there she was waiting for me with some news I was quite surprised to find out, and that was that she was pregnant.

Helen Way: Wow.

Canary Conn: So, therefore after making the decision to go through the sex change, suddenly I was confronted with the most unexpected surprise, and that was that I was to be a father. I felt immeasurable guilt, as anyone can imagine. I was a young person, only eighteen years old. I just won a contest, was an up and coming star suddenly, and the press around the country was all excited. They were carrying articles on me, this network special provided a lot of open doors for me, and even in the midst of that I wanted to go through the change. Even with everything going for me I wanted to go through the change. Well I decided to stick it out with her because I felt so guilty.

What happened as a result of that was the baby was born a very healthy little boy. I’m sitting in the hospital waiting room, the father’s waiting room, looking around and wondering what I was doing there. Here I was a woman, who was a father. And now here I am a woman talking to you and I’m still a father and will be something that I will be forever and it’s a very confusing situation. What happened was that I went on to go on to college, I got out of the draft because of my situation, thank god.

Helen Way: You told them the story?

Canary Conn: I told them the story and so what I had to do was I had to deal with a Texas environment in the best way I could and that was to get the hell out. And it hurt. So, once I had gone through that I went to California and decided that I was going to try and get the change. Even in the midst of all the problems I was having.

Helen Way: And did you and Joanna separate at that time?

Canary Conn: Well I also had a record out just about the same time, very hectic year, with Capital Records. So, I was touring the country, promoting my record, and Joanna was in Indiana with her mother, and we decided she would come out to California with the baby. What happened was, there were a lot of problems in California, because I had come out here and realized that I did not want to be a male singer and I had the guilt of having a baby and a wife, and I eighteen years old. And I made the decision, I told her, “Joanna there was no way, I was going to have to go through the change and she was going to have to make her own life.” And because of our mutual depression, I was eventually driven to step off a curb at Sunset Strip in front of ongoing traffic in a suicide attempt. Luckily I wasn’t killed, I wasn’t even injured at all, and a car just stopped in time.

Helen Way: You actually were thinking about suicide.

Canary Conn: Oh yeah I wanted to end it. I felt, best, as a matter of fact there was a preacher, a pastor of a church that I was going to at the time that old me, under the circumstances, I was very selfish to want to go through this change. Under the circumstances he felt it would be better if I killed myself. Yes, he felt that god would not hold it against me, and I went to him for help.

So, at the time when I lived, I was shocked back into the reality of the situation. Shocked back into the truth once again of who I was and my responsibility to me to live on. So, what happened was I encouraged Joanna and the baby to go on and live their life, which she was very happy to do. She is now remarried and my little boy has a little brother and he knows nothing about me which is what I wanted.

Helen Way: It’s best, have you seen him at all since then?

Canary Conn: No, I haven’t seen him for seven years. It’s difficult, it’s very difficult to deal with something like that. It’s very difficult to understand it, even on my part after all these years. How I can suddenly be devoid of the feelings that I once held for my baby and my wife, but I am. And I think the way I’ve found this kind of understanding is through accepting the fact that I’m a new person, that’s probably everything.

Helen Way: Brand new ideology.

Canary Conn: Yeah, I am another person.

Helen Way: Well then when you came to Los Angeles and you had determined that you wanted to go ahead with this treatment and surgery, how did you go about finding the surgeon or the physician who would help you?

Canary Conn: Well there was one doctor I heard through, there was some gay kids in a brand-new church at the time called Metropolitan Community Church which is now worldwide homosexual church. And there were some gay kids that were down the street who I was talking to and I even went to the church a couple times hoping that maybe I was homosexual, maybe I could just blend in and just live on with, you know, my wife and my baby or break away and maybe just live with a guy and maybe that was what the whole thing was. But the thought of homosexual relationships, just really destroyed me, I couldn’t handle it- there was nothing there. And I couldn’t be a guy anymore, I was just totally distressed about the possibility of being a male, of having male genitalia any longer. As a matter of fact, I had feelings of self-mutilation, self-destruction in a lot of different areas cause I wanted to just destroy who I was and who I was outwardly was Danny at the time. My male counterpart.

Well what happened was these people told me about a doctor, about a gay doctor, who was prescribing hormones to those who claimed to be transsexuals. I went there and, in an hour, visit I got the hormones. The same doctor later on turned out to be a horrible doctor because he prescribed hormones to people who shouldn’t have had it.

Helen Way: He did no evaluation at all, nothing?

Canary Conn: No, he just opened it up. I mean, at the time and even now I thank god that he happened to have been there, you know, because if he wouldn’t have there’s no telling what I would have done. But I got on the hormones and seemed to straighten me out.

Helen Way: Well then did he refer you on to any institution? A university or the surgery, what about the surgery? Did you try contacting people at universities in which they were doing this type of research?

Canary Conn: Well of course the first step a transsexual always wants to undergo in terms of the change process is the surgery. And I tried in every way I could, I had no money, so I tried to earn any money I could to get an operation. Of course, it was a very desperate situation because suddenly I was dressing as a female, and I should also mention this, that my singing career was brought to a halt because all the producers, everyone around me, said, “You’ll never sing again, you’ll never have a chance.”

Helen Way: They knew about this?

Canary Conn: Right I told them so they didn’t want to be around me.

Helen Way: They didn’t?

Canary Conn: So, I had no way of making money.

Helen Way: And at this time you were dressing as a female, and you had had the hormones so you were beginning to see changes in your body because of the hormones. So, really you were sort of in between and in betwixt.

Canary Conn: Yes, and when I stepped off the curb in Sunset Strip, that was the day I decided I was going to live full time as a female and started dressing as a female. Suddenly I had to make myself sing as a female and that was not easy, not at all. For what happened, was I had to learn to sing as a female on my own. No one taught me and my voice changed quite drastically from a lower register to a higher register.

Helen Way: You just worked at it?

Canary Conn: Yeah, yeah, because my voice is more normal in a higher register.

Helen Way: Well Canary it’s been a long difficult path for you, and I guess you’ve just about experienced every problem conceivable. So, what would you suggest to another person faced with the same gender identity problem? How would you guide them, besides the obvious of course, necessity of seeing competent medical help and rigid psychiatric and psychological evaluation?

Canary Conn: Well probably the best advice that I could ever give a person who was mildly considering a major step like this, would be to first examine their priorities. Examine their success factor as whatever success they’re living under. For example, if a male is in fact a very successful male, who is a professional in whatever profession, and is succeeding, has a wife or children, has tremendous peer respect. Is he willing to forgo all that to live as a female and start over again? It’s one thing to fantasize having an operation and going through and becoming a beautiful woman. It’s another thing, a tremendous step, for someone to do it, to pull it off.

A lot of times, and I’ll give you an example, I know of someone who was a brilliant scientist. Very successful financially who decided one day, at forty-nine years old, that he was a woman. This was after four children and three wives. It’s my opinion that if it takes someone forty-nine years to find out that they’re female, then there is certainly a factor of doubt that should be taken into consideration on the part of the doctor who is going to authorize a surgery, you know.

Anyway, this person went on to get the surgery and continued working as a male after the surgery, as a result today has ruined his life because he lives part of the time as a woman, part of the time as a man, has lost all peer respect, cannot handle a job. So, I think probably the top priority is for them to sit down and really think about what the change is going to do for them. Are they going to end their life as they live it? Are they willing to stop their job? Very few transsexuals can continue their jobs. Very few.

Helen Way: Something like a drastic change in their lifestyle?

Canary Conn: Oh sure, sure, I’ve known corporate executives who suddenly had to sell their car and leave their home and their wife and their friends and family and their past and start over as a counter girl at a dry cleaners or a restaurant waitress. And prognosis for the future, unfortunately very gloomy, very dismal, because what kind of profit can a waitress make, especially a waitress who has suddenly gone through the change and still looks like a male.

Helen Way: Yeah, there are a lot of decisions to make.

Canary Conn: That’s right, a lot more decisions than most people realize.

Helen Way: Canary, thank you for sharing so much of yourself with us. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you and getting to know you and I hope we meet again.

Canary Conn: Well thank you very much and I’m sure we will.

Helen Way: Good luck.

Canary Conn: Thank you.

Narrator: This concludes the interview with Ms. Canary Conn. You have heard one of a series of Psychology Today cassettes.

Gillian Frank: Sexing History is written and produced by Lauren Gutterman and me, Gillian Frank. Our senior producer is Saniya Lee Ghanoui. Rebecca Davis is our story editor and producer. Our assistant producers are Chris Babits, Isabel Machado and Mallory Szymanski. Our intern is Julian Harbaugh.

Thank you to Psychology Today for permission to re-publish this interview with Canary Conn.

Lauren Gutterman: Sexing History is made possible with generous funding from Allen Zwickler of the Phil Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Foundation. Created in honor of the journalist, filmmaker, poet and gay activist Phil Zwickler, the Foundation "seeks to promote human rights, education, health and the arts, specifically with respect to the gay and lesbian community, and generally with regard to those individuals and groups who need assistance to survive and be heard." Visit them at pzfoundation.org

We are grateful for the support of the University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences program for undergraduate summer research.

Gillian Frank: Sexing History is also supported by funding from the Humanities Media Project in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, Austin. The Humanities Media Project aims “to tell human stories and invite critical conversations that educate, inspire, and connect communities. They believe that the humanities play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy, democratic society.”

Lauren Gutterman: Sexing History is grateful for a grant from the Program in American Studies and the Americas Center/Centro de las Americas at University of Virginia. The Americas Center promotes the interdisciplinary study of the arts, cultures, histories, and societies of the Americas.

Gillian Frank: If you’re enjoying our show, please help new listeners find us. Review us on Apple Music and share us on social media.

To stay up to date on all things Sexing History or to send us a note, visit us on our website, www.sexinghistory.com

From all of us at Sexing History, thanks for listening.

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Transcription by Ian McCabe, University of Delaware