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What's the Fuss? Asks Italian Who Changed From Girl to Boy(The world was startled recently when word came out of a small Italian village about a peasant family whose “daughters” were being changed into sons in almost wholesale numbers. United Press International uent b reporter to visit the family for the firsthand story which follows.)BY ERNEST SAKLER GIFFONE. Italy (UP1) — The young man. was black-haired, very small, belligerent, and didn’t look at all as. though he’d ever been a girl; ■ ' •Standing there in the field, a hoe on his shoulder and his pretty, 35-year-old wife, Serafina, by his side, Vittorio Alvaro didn’t want to answer questions.Yes, he was 23 years old, Vittorio conceded, and it was just three years ago that he went to a clinic and became a girl-into-boy. But it wasn’t much of a story. Why so much interest?To Vittorio's fellow-villagers, as to Vittorio himself, it was nothing to get excited about. He had never behaved like a girl anyway—“Al-ways running after girls,” he admitted with a grin. The village didn't find it too exciting that a person's sex should be set straight. That’s what those hospitals in the cities were for.To doctors, however, Vittorio and his family were wonderful specimens. There were no less than five cases in the family of women who had or could have turned man. One of Vittorio’s sisters had done so, at the same time he was “corrected.” Another was going to be. And then there were Vittorio’s two aunts, his mother’s sisters, who could have used sex-change surgery if it had been advanced enough in their time, Vittorio finally told his story reluctantly, letting it be known that as a hard-working peasant high up in the hills of Calabria (It is a poor land”) he didn’t have time to stand there gabbing.As Vittorio told it, it didn’t sound like much of a story.When he was born he was a girl and they called him Rosa Marina and they combed his hair into tresses. But he never quite felt like a girl and would rove the fields climbing trees and walls and fighting with boys and doing other ungirlish things. He would play cards in the inns and go around at night strumming serenades on his mandolin.Oh, yes, there was his younger sister, Maria Antonia, who was also like that, only shyer. And there were the two aunts, Pasqua-lina Sorbara who is now dead and Michelina who is alive, in her 50*s, wears men’s shoes and carries a whip.For a few summers, Vittorio— at that time still Rosa Marina— worked as a housemaid in nearby Cinquefronde. Then Rosa Marina heard of a girl who became a manin the town of Cittanova and was called Edoardo Simonetta. She derided she wanted a sex change, too.It took some time to get a doctor interested, Vittorio said. But Dr. Salvatore Musumed, a surgeon in Catania, Sicily, heard of the case, In 1955, Rosa MJarina and Maria Antonia went to his clinic and on July 23 that year became Vittorio and Antonio.Antonio is now 19 and helps out in the fields. He was away from home, looking for seasonal work in northern Italy. He hasn’t found a girl friend yet because he is shy and also because he wants to marry a rich girl now that his name has been in the papers,It took three years, until this summer, to get the sex changes recognized by a court order, and the bureaucratic machinery hasn’t quite caught up with it yet. In the general elections in May this year, Vittorio had to vote with a woman's certificate.He is not eligible for military service because he is a family head now, but Antonio may be drafted next year.That was about all Vittorio had to tell, except for the fact that he has a three-year-old sister, Francesca Giuseppina. who also needs a sex change and will get it in the. next few months.In Catania, Dr. Musumed said it had taken him considerable time and biological and psychological tests to decide if Vittorio had better be a boy or a girl.“Vittorio Alvaro was a typical instance of a genuine hermaphrodite,” the Sicilian surgeon said. He had both inward and outward characteristics of both sexes. Biological tests failed to prove decisive, but psychological tests showed the male side was predominant In his character and I made my decision on the basis of that.”The case of Antonio was simpler, Dr. Musumeei said. He was a false hermaphrodite of the female type,” meaning that his inner organs were male and only outward characteristics were female, ’ *Both were prepared psychologically before being operated on, Dr. Musumeei said. They were placed in the male section of the clinic so they would become accustomed to being among men. Their long hair was first combed and then cut.The surgeon said such sex change operations “are not exceptional hut require considerable skill and knowledge He said the most interesting .side of the Gif-fone cases was their dear hereditary nature.The heredity, Dr, Museumeci said, came from the family of Vittorio’s mother, Caterina Sorbara. She herself is normal, but the two masculine-looking aunts were her sisters.
Newspaper Details
San Mateo Times
San Mateo, California, US
Wed, Aug 20, 1958
Page 56
Full Page
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USA 11 Feb 2024
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