Alan Finch

Alan Finch was born in Lancaster, England. He was bullied for his delicate appearance. His mother divorced his distant and violent father when Alan was 15. At 17, when Alan was working in a gay-run hairdressing salon, he read Tula’s first autobiography, and his mother took him to a psychiatrist, who found that Alan has a missing male chromosome. He started female hormones at age 18. On migration to Australia at age 19 with his mother and sister, he changed to female with hormones and surgery at the Monash Medical Centre’s gender clinic. He failed the psychiatric evaluation the first time, but had learned the proper answers for a second evaluation. He transitioned to being Helen Finch. She worked in tele-sales. Helen married (illegally by Australian law) an Israeli who was looking for residence in Australia, and was later in a relationship with a man which fell apart because the husband could not cope with her having been born a boy. She took up transcendental meditation. She had an affair with a woman who encouraged her to revert to being a man, which he did in 1997. His current psychiatrist is also a transcendental meditationer who ran for Parliament for the Natural Law Party. As Alan, he is now suing the Monash Medical Centre’s gender clinic.  This went to the Supreme Court in 2009.  This case caused a temporary moratorium on approving persons for surgery at the Monash. He was featured on Australian Story. He has set up an advocacy group: Gender Identity Awareness Association from which he voices his support for the Australian ban on same-sex marriage and the like.