Preface - a podcast by Cameron Eby

Dear Annie, the love of my life and former wife of 21 years.  i was born female and later, before I met you was surgically altered and technically became a hermaphrodite but I have always loved you and respected you and wish to always do right by you.  I never meant you or our family any disrespect as I wrote what I hope you will read in the pages of this book.  

Since our divorce I have been wrought with a feeling of void and darkness  in the absence of your always kind and loving words; your light and the hope you always filled me with is gone.  As you continue reading this please remember your faith in God and all that he has blessed us with and know that these events described herein shaped me as I grew into the person that you fell in love with.  Sometimes it’s best not to look under the hood. Don’t look a gift husband in the vagina. So the saying goes. You always wondered how I could wipe 10 times and still end up with skid marks on laundry day; the answer is simple and summed up with a simple medical term: rectovaginal fistula.  Caused by a fencepost being shoved into my vagina. During the restoration and repair I was forced by my parents that were influenced by a surgeion to get a transgender surgery that i resisted, rejected, and fought in court. My parents argued that I should have been born male since I was so strong, tall and athletic.  They also felt like my genitalia was ambiguous. I had a vagina but they thought that my clitoris was oversized and I recall my ovaries falling down to where the lumps could be seen in my lower abdomen, upper pelvis and eventually to the lowest point that gravity would let them fall, my labia by the time I was 11. My parents who by the way coined the phrase "when your balls drop", together with counselors  also argued that all of the bad things that were happening to me, having my ovum harvested and being raped by relatives for example would not have occurred if I had been born male. I laughed because they were half correct.

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