I came across this book and its review through a fantastic website dedicated to the Dutch LGBT community.
"Aaïcha Bergamin was born Leonhard Bergamin in 1932. As a seventeen-year-old, she danced in Amsterdam in her sister's clothes. When her mother caught her with a Jamaican dancer at that time, she was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric institution in Heiloo. According to the doctors, she was a gay man with a trauma. "They just laughed at me when I told them I felt like a woman." Nevertheless, the doctors believed that a years-long trajectory of therapies and electroshocks could cure her."
Bergamin then decided to flee to Paris. She ended up in a vibrant nightlife full of transvestites and transsexuals. It was an important turning point in her life, finally she could be herself. In the early 70s, she underwent gender reassignment surgery in Amsterdam, but that operation was only partially successful. Later she was operated on again in England. The surgery gave her the opportunity to marry. She was the first trans woman in the Netherlands to get married. For her a special moment, but the public saw it as pure sensation. From a legal and social point of view, there was still a lot to be done. In 1973, Aaïcha Bergamin was registered officially as a 'child of the female sex' by changing her birth certificate. For a long time, Bergamin would be one of the few who managed to do this
In 1985, there was a special law for gender reassignment on identity documents. A condition was that a sex change and irreversible sterilization had actually taken place.
Since 2014, a new law has been in force that no longer makes this a condition. In November 2020, the government apologized and promised financial compensation to the victims of the old Transgender Act.
Unfortunately, Aaïcha Bergamin was no longer able to experience all this, she died on 31 May 2014 just before the new law came into force.
Available via withpride.ihlia.nl
Post a Comment