| | | You are here: Home >> Press Section >> Lydia Foy began legal fight for recognition in 1997 | | | | Lydia Foy began legal fight for recognition in 1997 | | | The Irish Times, 22nd June 2010
by JAMIE SMYTH | | | “I WAS treated very, very badly . . . I feel let down by the system. There should have been a learning curve from way back,” says Lydia Foy, the former dentist who has fought a tough 13-year battle to win legal recognition as a woman.
Dr Foy was born Donal Mark Foy in 1947 and registered at birth as male. But from an early age, she felt different.
“I was small and fair and my younger brother was tall and dark and you’d know he was a man . . . I was, I suppose, androgenous,” she says.
However, Dr Foy married and fathered two children before she was diagnosed with gender identity disorder in 1990.
This proved an extremely difficult time for Dr Foy, who lost her job and underwent a judicial separation. In a subsequent family court case she received barring orders preventing her from going within a mile of the home of her partner and children.
She underwent gender reassignment surgery in Britain in 1992 and a year later applied for a new birth certificate in her female gender. She was refused by the Registrar General’s office and issued a legal challenge in 1997, which has ultimately led to the Government’s decision to propose legislation giving legal recognition to transsexuals under Irish law.
“My first reaction when I heard [the Government had dropped the appeal] was to ask are you sure? Have you got something in writing?” says Dr Foy.
“It is an adversarial system and a tough way of going about business,” says Dr Foy, who has had to open her private life to intense public scrutiny by taking successive legal challenges in the courts.
Her fight for recognition following her sex change has not been easy. Her first passport following the operation left the sex criteria blank. “It was as if I was a sexless robot,” she remembers.
She says she feels “battered” by the experience and several times felt like giving up. But the prize of legal recognition and the responsibility of fighting for rights of the transgender community kept her focused. Changing the law will hopefully change how society views transsexuals, says Dr Foy.
“Its very easy to condemn something if it hasn’t been recognised by the State or the church or whatever. [People will say] why hasn’t it been, there must be something wrong, evil or bad. So legal recognition is the basic start for explaining. Hopefully there will be an emphasis on learning now,” says Dr Foy, who will be grand marshall of the Dublin gay pride march this weekend. | | | | | | |  For further information, please contact Marion Campbell Solicitors by calling (01) 475 9345, or by filling out an on-line enquiry form. |
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