Reporter: Tara Brown
Producers: Lincoln Howes, Candice Talberg
Tony Briffa is the sort of bloke you like to call a mate. He loves a laugh, tinkering with his car and mucking about with the kids. On the face of it he's a pretty ordinary bloke, but he has a story to tell that's absolutely extraordinary.
What doctors did to Tony seems cruel and unforgivable, more so when you learn that this crime against nature is still happening to Australian kids today.
You see, Tony was born a boy with a rare genital condition. But instead of letting nature take its course, his doctors decided to castrate him and turn him into a girl. Raised as Antoinette, Tony was never told this devastating secret. What followed was a nightmare; a heartbreaking battle to become the man he knew he was.
Transcript
ANTOINETTE BRIFFA: I never felt comfortable as a girl. I always wanted to be a boy. For the most part, I was pretty scared to voice the way that I felt. I did, at one stage, say to them that I wished that I was a boy. Not that it got any response from them.
TARA BROWN: We first met Antoinette Briffa five years ago. Today, it's Tony Briffa. Not just a change of name but a return to his true identity as a man. It all began when Antoinette was born with ambiguous genitalia, biologically a boy but physically, it was impossible to tell if she was male or female. Doctors decided it was easier to make her a girl. But Antoinette was never to be told in the hope she'd never know the difference.
ANTOINETTE BRIFFA: I was in the waiting room and I borrowed my medical records from the counter and had a look. And I saw the carrier type and it said, "46 XY". I just started crying. I thought, Wow, you know, I've just been lied to all my life.
TONY BRIFFA: My main drive is to be the person that I was supposed to be from birth. I don't believe that I was some disgusting, hideous, defective person. I just wanted to be the person that God made me.
ANTOINETTE BRIFFA: I did at one stage say to them that, you know, I wish that I was a boy.
TONY BRIFFA: Obviously the voice is very different, the hair is very different.
TARA BROWN: You're a woman there.
TONY BRIFFA: That's right. That's the other thing, you know. Being referred to as "Antoinette" and "she", all that sort of thing is quite strange, really.
TARA BROWN: The transition from Antoinette to Tony started shortly after her appearance five years ago on
60 Minutes. With testosterone treatment and surgery, Tony has become the man he always knew he was. In physical terms, do you still look like a woman?
TONY BRIFFA: Oh, look, in places. I'm ambiguous. I mean, after those surgeries that they performed on me. I can't help but be otherwise, unfortunately. That's why I'm so against these surgeries. They are irreversible and at the same time, they are not done for any medical need.
TARA BROWN: Tony's journey began 35 years ago when he was born with a condition known as partial AIS — Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. It meant that physically his gender was unclear. Even though he had some male genitalia, doctors believed he could never function as a man and so they decided he should be a girl.
TONY BRIFFA: They castrated me when I was seven, performed cosmetic — so-called cosmetic genital surgeries on me until the age of 15, starting when basically from the time I was born. Yeah, that's about it.
TARA BROWN: So the aim was to make you look like a female?
TONY BRIFFA: That's right. A facsimile of a female.
TARA BROWN: And so that's how he was raised. With twin sister Katherine, Tony looked every inch a girl — the long hair, frilly dresses, even attending an all-girls school.
ANNE BRIFFA: He said to me, "Can't you see that Tony is a normal girl and we can make her into a beautiful girl and Tony wouldn't know a thing what happened." And I thought, "Oh, that will be good".
TARA BROWN: Tony's mother Anne was convinced by doctors that, because of her child's physical shortcomings, there was no option.
ANNE BRIFFA: Because the penis wasn't formed properly, they said to me, "Well, have a look at her. Can we really make her into a boy?"
TARA BROWN: This was Tony's room?
ANNE BRIFFA: Yes.
TARA BROWN: Anne did her best to raise a daughter and finds it hard to accept she now has a son.
ANNE BRIFFA: That's one of her suits. Look how skinny she was, size 10.
TARA BROWN: But without knowing the truth, even as a small child, Tony was rejecting the lie.
ANNE BRIFFA: You can see how old it is. She never even opened it up. Wasn't interested in it at all.
TARA BROWN: Couldn't get Tony to play with dolls?
ANNE BRIFFA: No. No way. No way.
TONY BRIFFA: All I wanted to be is normal. If there was somehow that I could have just been normal that would have been fine. But the reality was I was just a guy. And they did all this stuff to me and tried to make me look like a girl, but that wasn't me.
TARA BROWN: What would have happened to you if you had continued to live the lie?
TONY BRIFFA: I don't know. But it's too difficult to keep up that facade for too long. And I kept it up for a bloody long time.
DAVID REIMER: How can they think for one minute they can make a boy into a girl? How can they? You can't change anybody into anything. You are what you are.
TARA BROWN: It all began 40 years ago in Canada. David Reimer became the world's test case for gender assignment, an experiment doctors said would prove nurture could overcome nature.
DAVID REIMER: He was trying to brainwash me to be something I'm not, which was to be a girl, at the same time to observe, to study, like you would a buck.
MAN: Are you having good results with the people upon whom you've operated?
JOHN MONEY: Yes, I think we can say that that is true.
TARA BROWN: Psychologist John Money treated David Reimer as a toddler after his penis was badly burnt during circumcision. He was convinced with surgery, hormones and psychotherapy David could be turned into a girl. But the experiment failed. As a teenager, David refused further treatment.
DAVID REIMER: I figured it's no longer my life any more. So I said I'm not making any decisions for myself. I can't go back. If I go back, I'm going to kill myself. That's it. We never went back.
TARA BROWN: Last year, David Reimer did kill himself. In Australia, about 60 so-called intersex babies are born a year and, despite the lesson of David Reimer, the practice of assigning gender continues both here and in America.
TONY BRIFFA: Absolutely disgraceful. But obviously the whole treatment of people with intersex conditions is predicated on a lie. We know that this theory was false, was baseless.
TARA BROWN: For anyone, gender assignment is an overwhelming concept. You're talking about the very essence of our identity, being male or female. But try to get an explanation from the doctors. None we contacted would be interviewed. None would defend the treatment.
GARY WARNE: It used to be almost the standard approach to a child of uncertain sex 20 or 30 years ago.
TARA BROWN: For many years, Gary Warne was Tony's doctor. He wouldn't be interviewed for this story, but five years ago on
60 Minutes, told Jeff McMullen the treatment that turned Tony into Antoinette was standard practice.
GARY WARNE: The reasoning was that a good surgical result making a baby appear female would result in the baby feeling female.
JEFF McMULLEN: And yet you yourself didn't volunteer to Antoinette to tell her, a bright woman, an educated woman, really the truth?
GARY WARNE: Uh, uh, Antoinette is a very intelligent woman and she's going through a journey. I have certainly explained her condition to her fully. But it simply wasn't part of the culture at that time to do so.
BILL REINER: Yes, I mean in retrospect it was something that we made a great error and we need to rectify that error.
TARA BROWN: American child psychiatrist and surgeon Bill Reiner used to decide the sex of his infant patients. But after seeing the emotional damage in some, he no longer believes in surgical intervention.
BILL REINER: So I think that the sex assignment issue, had we followed blindly, I'd say we've followed it without thinking it through. It is not our area. The ideology of somebody's identity is not something that surgeons learn, that endocrinologists learn, that paediatricians learn. It's way out of our fields. We place too much faith in people who we thought knew what they were telling us.
TARA BROWN: Tony is now fighting to see gender assignment taken out of doctor's hands and the decision made by the Family Court.
TONY BRIFFA: The issue of consent really is the paramount issue here. People — children — have the right to determine for themselves you know, their own body, their own physical integrity.
TARA BROWN: But if you're waiting for that child to reach the age of 12 with ambiguous genitalia, does that not make for a very messed up kid?
TONY BRIFFA: No, because you tell them gradually as they're growing up about differences in children — that some children are fat, some are skinny, some can have children, some can't have children, that some are boys and some are girls and some people aren't sure, you know. Yes, you raise them as a male or female, but not perform anything irreversible until they can decide.
TARA BROWN: Bit of a show-off-mobile.
TONY BRIFFA: Yeah, a bit of a chick magnet.
TARA BROWN: Does it work?
TONY BRIFFA: Um, no, it doesn't work unfortunately.
TARA BROWN: Tony never had any doubt about his identity. He's always had an interest in classic cars. He is a mechanic and an aviation engineer. He's always felt like a man but now, because of early surgery, he needs hormones to help him look like one.
TONY BRIFFA: I've gone through two puberties, a female one and a male one.
TARA BROWN: Which was the easier one to bear?
TONY BRIFFA: I suppose the masculising puberty was the most interesting and the most enjoyable because it was really about self-discovery and finally the real person coming out of what doctors had previously created. So, yeah, I enjoyed that. Everything was a surprise.
TARA BROWN: Have you ever doubted whether you're a man or not?
LEE REILLY: Not for a second.
TARA BROWN: Twenty-one-year-old Lee Reilly is the man Tony could have been if doctors hadn't intervened. He too was born genetically male but had ambiguous genitalia. His mother stood up to doctors who said he should undergo surgery and be brought up a girl.
LEE REILLY: They said that I wouldn't sort of grow properly, I wouldn't ever fit in with other boys or men and, yeah, just that I wouldn't be able to function in everyday life as a male.
TARA BROWN: Lee grew up playing football and never had a problem attracting girls. He recently proposed to his girlfriend, Jenny.
LEE REILLY: The biggest difficulty I've ever faced wasn't a physical one. It was more of a psychological one — when do I tell them and, when I do, what and how much.
TARA BROWN: So what do you say?
LEE REILLY: I haven't had a complaint yet.
ANNE BRIFFA: I think they should wait until the child is old enough to make its own decision. Because I made a mistake and I wouldn't advise any other mother to make the mistake I did. Because it's like someone stepping in my heart. Nobody knows how I feel. There is a lot of times when I go in a corner and I think, 'Oh, my God. What have I done'?
TARA BROWN: For Tony, life as a man is just beginning. He's recovering from a recent mastectomy and will need testosterone for the rest of his life. So at this stage do you feel fully male?
TONY BRIFFA: Oh, yes, I'm, you know, I'm ... I'm male. Fully male? What does that mean? Well, I'm no Adonis. But, yeah, I'm male, yeah.
TARA BROWN: Tony will never be able to have children of his own. But for the past six years, he's been parent to Chris and Monique, who came to him from a broken home. In that time, they've seen their mum turn into their dad. So as Antoinette, did you feel like their mum and as Tony do you feel like their dad?
TONY BRIFFA: Um, that's a good question. I guess I didn't feel like their mum. But I certainly felt like a parent and someone who loves them very much and would do anything I can for them, someone that wants the best for them and their future, yeah.
TARA BROWN: It was the same for Tony's parents and doctors. By raising him as a girl, they must have thought they were giving him the best chance of a normal and happy life. It's taken 35 years for that mistake to be put right through honesty and incredible courage.
ANTOINETTE BRIFFA: I would have rather that they would have left me the heck alone and that's it. There was nothing wrong with me. It's a birth variation, not a defect. I'm proud of being the way that I am. And if I could go back to the way I was born, I would do it in a split second.
TONY BRIFFA: I'm Tony and that's what I wanted to affirm myself as being so that's what I became. Don't get me wrong — I'm very proud of everything that I did as Antoinette and very proud of Antoinette, but, you know, it wasn't really me.
