A soldier's fight to free his inner woman

Published on Wednesday 19 March 2008 09:25

Pain of going under the surgeon's knife was worth it to become what I really am, says Jan.

THE last time I saw Ian Hamilton he was throwing a chair at the slightly rotund and, unsurprisingly, extremely nervous engineer of the now defunct cable television station Edinburgh Live.

It was a typical outburst of rage and frustration from the 33-year-old who was feeling the pressure of running a TV station staffed by a bunch of rookies, had his boss breathing down his neck, and was in the middle of a disintegrating marriage.

Raised voices, doors kicked, chairs thrown ... not a week went by without some kind of fury from the man in charge.

But that was ten years ago. Last week I met him again. Except I didn't. I met her. Ian Hamilton no longer exists.

Instead he has metamorphosed, with the help of a talented surgeon in Thailand, numerous therapists, and a lot of time and money, into Jan. And it turns out, a lot of the old rage, was down to his frustration at being a woman in a man's body.

"I used to disappear some afternoons when it all got too much, leave Easter Road (where the station was based) and go home and put on a dress. Now you never knew that," smiles Jan as she sips from a deep bowl of cafe latt. "Then I'd have to come back in and feel like I had to be a real man and kick some butt."

Meeting a person you once knew as a man but who is now a woman, is, to put it mildly, a strange experience. It's like a kind of weird deja vu. You've met them before, yet you haven't. You know them, but you don't. You can see the old person still there in the line of the jaw and nose, the directness of the gaze – but then there's the new hair, the make-up, the breasts.

You want to touch, to prod, to see how things feel, for without a doubt this isn't a bloke dressed in woman's clothing. But this is a real woman, and that would be, well impolite. "Although a lot of my girlfriends have wanted to see everything that's been done," she grins conspiratorially. "They are amazed."

Jan, 43, has become notorious in the last year as the 5ft 11in 16-stone Parachute Regiment Captain, decorated for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, who became a woman and lost her job with the Army. As a result, a documentary on her change from Ian to Jan, and her continuing fight with her former employer, will be broadcast tomorrow on Channel 4.

But hers is a story which goes all the way back to growing up in Stonehaven, the oldest of three sons, to very traditional parents. Parents whom, she says, have since written to tell her their son is dead to them.

Confusion about his sexuality as a boy gave way, Jan says, to an understanding that she suffers from gender dysphoria – a condition of birth, which left her with the mind of a girl but the body of a boy.

"I'm not wearing women's clothes for sexual kicks," she says. "I'm not a drag queen, or a pantomime dame. This is something I was born with."

As a teenager Ian tried to join the Army, but changed his mind. Instead he went into television, eventually working for STV as a cameraman, and winning a BAFTA Scotland award for his work. Then came Live TV, and the super-macho world of Kelvin McKenzie and topless darts.

But it was a pressurised existence and Ian found his marriage disintegrating.

When Live – and his marriage – collapsed, Ian headed for the Appalachian Hills where he spent six months walking and trying to sort out his life. He decided to join the Paras.

"It was my father's proudest moment," Jan smiles without any trace of bitterness. "But I would volunteer for every dangerous mission. I would do tour after tour, I didn't want to come home and face what I was. Eventually though it got to the stage where I would be standing up and almost asking the enemy to shoot me. I was suicidal."

After being injured and picking up a secondary infection, Ian was sent home. It was then that he decided to change his life. "The Army asked me what I wanted to do for rehabilitation and I said 'to study beauty therapy'. You think that might have given them a clue," she laughs.

"I started to dress as a woman, and of course, with that decision came a lot of abuse when I went out. I've been attacked and spat at in the street.

"I've got small feet (size 8] and hands for a man and no Adam's apple so that was okay, but of course I was 16 stone with 14-inch biceps, so there was no way I could pass as a woman."

After spending hours searching the internet, she found Dr Suporn Watanyusakul in Thailand, the world's leading expert in feminisation procedures.

"On the NHS you can't get facial feminisation surgery and I wanted to look as best I could as a woman so I went to Thailand last October for my operation. Dr Suporn is an artist. He asked me what I wanted to look like and I had the arrogance – that came courtesy of Ian – to say Sophia Loren."

It was also Ian's drive and bravery, she says, which saw her through.

"I was on the operating theatre for 14 hours. It was a bit like the film Face/Off. He basically took off my skin, sawed off my forehead, reshaped it and screwed it back on with titanium bolts. The bones around my eyes were ground down, my nose was broken and reformed.

"The skin was then reattached and lifted so that my original jawline is now basically on top of my forehead. My eyelids were cut in half and sewn back together in a more female, almond shape. My lips were also cut and squeezed into a pout. Hair weaves were transplanted and, of course, I was given breasts. I'm a 36D.

"When I woke up I had never felt pain like it. I was all on my own ... I did a lot of crying. I spent five days in hospital, too weak to move and rather delirious. I spent a further three weeks in a hotel room, letting my body and my spirit heal. I also said goodbye to Ian. He was gone then."

Since then, thanks to female hormones, diet and exercise, Jan has become a curvy size ten. "I've got the same proportions as Claudia Schiffer," she smiles.

But that was only half the job. Last month she was back in Thailand having genital reconstruction, this time spending eight hours under Dr Suporn's knife. "Unlike here, he performs a scrotum inversion, so once I am healed, I will be just like any post-hysterectomy woman. I'll be able to have a normal sex life," says Jan. "I was very scared though before the operation. I had run out of Ian's courage but I prayed like mad – I have become a Christian through all of this."

And the pain was even worse. "I have never, ever experienced anything like it," she says. "I had 500 stitches, mostly internal, and as I was off the oestrogen, with the removal of my testes my body went into hormonal freefall. I just fell into a terrible depression. In fact I tried to kill myself, taking all the pills I was on all at once. I ended up back in hospital having my stomach pumped.

"Once I was allowed to go back on my hormones, things seemed so much better and I knew I'd done the right thing.

"I have given up everything – my job, my family, because I couldn't exist in the body I was born with. Now I am medically, legally and ethically a woman. I am content in myself for the first time ever."

As for the Army, an external hearing to finally thrash out a settlement will be held next month. Right now, though, Jan intends on trying to get back into television in some capacity as it's "the only thing I know".

She adds: "Now, I no longer desire to become an MD or be the top guy, I just want to be happy. I hope I can find a man who will love and respect me, and perhaps we could adopt a child. That's what I want in life."

&#149 Cutting Edge: Sex Change Soldier, is on at 9pm, C4, tomorrow.