文档介绍：
12/15/06
Final Paper
The Search for the Truth of Sex
Christie Lee Littleton was born Lee Cavazos, Jr., a male. Throughout her
childhood, she had difficulty developing a male identity, and she considered herself a
female since she was three or four years old. She had been seeking sex reassignment
surgery from the time she was seventeen, and eight years later, after two years of
receiving female hormones, Christie finally got her wish. Her penis and scrotum were
removed, a vagina and breasts were constructed, she changed her name, and she was
“diagnosed psychologically and psychiatrically as a genuine male to female transsexual”
(Littleton 3). Eventually, Christie married a man named Jonathon Mark Littleton, in
Kentucky, but they moved to Texas later on. When Jonathon died, Christie tried to file a
medical malpractice suit. The doctor she tried to sue challenged Christie’s right to sue
for wrongful death because he believed that she was really a man and therefore, could not
be the surviving spouse of another man.
Of course to resolve this issue, the question that needs to be answered is “is a
transsexual still the same sex after a sex-reassignment operation as before the operation”
(4). The Texas Appeals Court decided that transsexuals are, in fact, considered the same
sex that they were before they had sex-reassignment surgery. The concluded that Christie
was born anatomically and ically a male, as it is clearly stated on her birth
certificate, and therefore she is still a male. The rest follows that as a male, Christie
cannot legally be married to another male, so she “cannot bring a cause of action as
Jonathon’s surviving spouse”(9).
This court case and others like it bring the idea of “true sex” to one’s attention.
This is the idea that hidden underneath everybody’s emotions, clothing, and sometimes
ambiguous genitalia, there lies a secret truth, the truth of sex, the truth of male or fe