W was born 1947, in the North of England. Because she had indeterminate genitals, the parents were asked did they want to raise a boy or a girl. The father chose ‘boy’. A year later the child was adopted by a cousin of the mother and her husband. The child was raised male but opted for girl toys and female clothing whenever she could.
At secondary school she refused to shower with the boys and to wear the boys’ uniform. The school compromised and allowed her to wear a female top. By age 15 she had noticeable breasts and a female body shape. The adoptive father convinced the family doctor to administer testosterone injections. W resisted and had to be held down by the adoptive father. There was no effect and when the adoptive father proposed increased dosage and frequency, and surgery to remove the breasts, W ran away and lived as a girl. However she was found and returned home.
At age 17 W ran away for good. She lived with a man in Manchester, apparently alternating genders, but he complained that she was too feminine, and the relationship ended.
W was scheduled for correction surgery at age 23, but this was postponed indefinitely because of a cerebrovascular accident. It was not until 1980 that she started on oral oestrogen. She finally had correction surgery in 1987 with a ‘Dr D’.
She married in 1990, and shortly afterwards had a Trachea Shave to reduce her Adams Apple. However the marriage did not last, and ended after two years. It was annulled on the basis that she was not female -- this was on the persuasion of her then solicitor that that was the cheapest way to end the marriage.
A second marriage in 1993, which gave the husband the right to remain in the UK, lasted three years and they were divorced in 1997. She had had a breast augmentation in 1996.
The husband further applied in 1998 for an annulment so that he could re-marry in church – although he remarried before his case came to court in October 2000. This time Mrs W defended against such an annulment, which would declare her legally male, and thus would interfere with her application for a revised birth certificate, and her future freedom to marry. Both parties jointly instructed Dr Conway, a consultant endocrinologist. Information was sought and obtained from ‘Dr D’ as to W’s anatomical details prior to surgery. Justice Charles found that she easily fell into the intersex exception as per the Corbett test: emphasis was placed on the natural lack of congruence of the chromosomes, gonads and genitals. Conway also gave in evidence the opinion that if Mrs W had been born in a later decade, she would have been raised as a female. Justice Charles copied much of Justice Roger Ormrod had written in 1971 in the Corbett v Corbett case.
Thus the Respondent was declared to be legally female, and her ex-husband’s application to have the marriage declared void was thus refused.
Dr Conway stated that “It is extremely difficult to be conclusive about an original diagnosis of an intersex state after surgery has been completed", but suggested that W had partial androgen insensitivity which is why the enforced testosterone injections failed to have any effect.
Whether you regard W as intersex or a transkid, she was badly failed by the medical system in the 1970s. There was a Manchester gender clinic at Witherington Hospital from 1972 and a TV/TS group in the city from 1973. W should have been offered an early transition, and not have had to wait until almost middle-age.
As W had not had her birth certificate revised before either of her two marriages, she was at risk of being charged that in violation of the Perjury Act, 1911, she had “knowingly and wilfully caused a false statement to be entered in a register of marriage”, as Victor Barker had been so convicted in 1929. The authorities sensibly did not so charge her.
There was a W. v W. divorce case in South Africa 1976 that involved a trans woman.
