Sunday May 24, 1998

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In Ancient Greece, she’d have been a god. In Wales, they spit on her

By Barry Hugill

LINDA ROBERTS was born during the blitz.  The delivery took place under the kitchen table. On her deathbed her mother revealed to her daughter, who was then her son, what the midwife had said: ’Mrs Roberts, you have a perfectly healthy baby.  Would you like me to register it as a boy or a girl?’

Linda Roberts was born with a penis and a vagina. Half a century later a doctor told her she was a hermaphrodite. She looked it up in the encyclopaedia: ’An organism combining qualities of both sexes: producing both eggs and sperm and possessing both sex organs.’

In 1942 little was known about the phenomenon and, not surprisingly, nothing has changed. The odds against being born with dual genitalia are six million to one. Linda is believed to be one of, at most, 12 hermaphrodites in the UK.

The name comes from Hermaphrodite, the mythical son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who became joined in body with the nymph Salmacis. ’In ancient Grece, I would have been regarded as a god,’ she says wryly, reflecting on the antagonism her condition has provoked.

Last year she moved to a tiny cottage in the remote village of Penrhyndeudraeth in Snowdonia. But there was no welcome in the hills.

Her presence has infuriated a gang, about 30-strong, of mainly young people intent on driving her out. They see what they believe to be a man dressed as a woman and conclude she is a ’pervert’.

She has been spat at and stoned; her windows smashed. Earlier this year she was forced to the ground, kicked and stamped on, her bones broken.

’What do you expect, a person like you moving to a vilage like this?’ said the investigating police officers.

She is used to hostility. Her father insisted she was registered as a boy because he had always wanted a son. ’When I was eight I told him I felt like a girl and he beat me black and blue. He warned me that if I raised the subject again he would kill me.’

Two years ago the surgeon who was to save her life tried to explain what a hermaphrodite was. ’You were a siamese twin joined not externally but internally. Your brother was on the outside, you were on the inside.’

In 1996 she was close to death. Over the years clots had been forming in her legs and lungs. The surgeon explained she was 80 percent female although she looked masculine. She had no need to shave and, although she had a penis, she also had a womb, vagina and clitoris. She had been menstruating since her mid-teens but had no obvious periods because she lacked a cervix. The discharged blood was causing the clots.

She was psychologically damaged, baffled as to her gender and sexuality. She had known she was ’different’ but no doctor had discussed it with her and as long as her father was alive it was a taboo subject with her parents.

Not knowing whether she was man or woman, she adopted the ’macho’ approach, apllying to join the police, army and fire brigade. Each demanded a medical, ordered her to drop her trousers, took one one look and rejected her.

’I decided I must be gay. I had tried with girls but I could only just get an erection. I was attracted to women, but not as a man, if that makes any sense. I fancied women as a woman. Lesbianism I supposed, so I tried that. All that felt normal was going with a man with me as a woman. You have to understand that I had the equipment to do almost anything, any way.’

In fact, she has been celibate for 30 years.

THE BULLYING and name-calling began in her late teens. People noticed her mannerisms and decided she was ’queer’. This was the fifties when homosexuality was outlawed and the word ’gay’ had a different meaning. She sought out homosexual bars where she felt ’safe’ and for the first time received sympathy and understanding — and some lucrative offers.

’Word got around and men offered me thousands to appear in porn films. They told me I would enjoy it.’

She declined and decided to go straight. She married but it was never consummated.  ’She knew I was a cross-dresser and could accept that but when she fully realised … well the full truth was too much for her.’  They divorced.

For 18 years she worked as a gardener for a north London council.  In the evening she socialised with gay friends.  She thought of herself as an ’ordinary transsexual’ — a woman trapped in a man’s body.  It was a sad existence punctuated with failed suicide attempts.

By the time she was 50 the medical problems were multiplying and the blood-clotting had become life-threatening.  By chance she was admitted to London’s Middlesex hospital and found doctors who understood her condition.  Initially they suspected her of overdosing on hormone pills to make her breasts grow.

’They discovered my oestrogen level was five times higher than that of a normal woman.  They ordered a full body scan and realised what the problem was — I had no cervix.  That was the fiorst time a doctor had used the word "hermaphrodite" with me.

’They told me I had three options. I could do nothing and die. I could have my womb removed and become a "proper" man. Or I could have the penis removed and a cervix constructed.’

She chose the third option, but three surgeons refused to perform the operation because they thought it would kill her.  And her NHS trust ruled that, even if a surgeon could be found, it would not fund a ’sex-change’ operation.

At the end of her tether she consulted a specialist in Brighton.  He would do it, but advised against. He thought death on the operating table a near certainty.

’I had to take the risk. I would have been dead in a few months if I didn’t.  But it would cost £7,000.  I went to a builder and got an estimate for an extension to my house.  I took it to Barclays and got the loan.’

On 28 September 1996 she was wheeled into the operating theatre.  One last time the surgeon asked her to reconsider.  Many hours later she came round wearing ’the largest nappy I’ve ever seen’.  The surgeon was a ’genius’ — she was a full woman.

But the £7,000 loan had drifted upwards and the bank wanted its money back.  She was forced to sell her house and moved to North Wales because property was cheap and she had spent many happy holidays there.

For nearly two hours she has been talking in her tiny cottage, cuddled up to her two dogs.  When she drinks coffee they sip from her cup.

’I only let them use my cup,’ she explains. The dogs are her life.

The interview had been pushed back an hour so she could ’look her best’.  Neatly dressed in blue skirt and cream blouse, she wears white stilettos and in her ears has large, jangling rings.

The voice is deep and facial features masculine despite lipstick and mascara.  The mannerisms are female and this coupled with the voice and large hands makes her sem rather camp.  It is not artifice; it is the way she is.

The name-calling she could live with but the stone attacks on the house scared her.  For months she drew the curtains day and night and sat alone, bar her dogs, in the dark.  Only the need to buy food forced her out.

Once a week social services provide a ’carer’ to escort her to the shops. She lives on a small disability pension, a legacy of a spinal injury from her gardening days.  Sketches of the Snowdonia mountains decorate her walls.  Most of her time is spent making models of boats.  It appears a desperately lonely existence.

MOST VILLAGERS I spoke to denied any knowledge of her. Many refused to speak to a reporter.  Three young men told me to get back ’where I belonged’.  She was a ’filthy queer’ and I was probably no better.

A young woman, child in tow, said she felt very sorry for her but thought she had brought it upon herself by coming to such an isolated place.

But the mini-cab driver from Bangor, nearly 40 miles away, insisted on meeting her and declared her the bravest woman he had ever met.  He made a point of shaking her hand in the street and loudly wishing her well.

A small group of neigbours, no more than four or five, have apologised for the behaviour of the yobs and encouraged her to stay.  The cottage is up for sale and she may return to London.  Yet she is reluctant to give in to hooliganism.

And the medical profession has suddenly discovered an interest in her.  She is 56 and still menstruating.  There are no case-studies of hermaphrodites to predict what is ’normal’.  Medical researchers would love to study her.

She is having none of it: ’When they repay me all the money I had to borrow just to stay alive then I might let them examine me again.  But after all I have been through why should I be a guinea-pig?’