1979. Dick Clark on his news magazine program ‘This Afternoon’ introduces us to Sheila (formerly Harry) and Jean Reynolds, from a town in Arizona. Both Sheila and Jean, a married couple with children, are changing their sex.
“..I wanted to try to, adapt, to what I appeared. I didn’t want to go through the loss of friends, the ridicule, the harassment and everything…”
Sheila mentions visiting a counselor every week to discover more of ‘my true self’ — both adults are committed to undergoing surgeries, which is the next step. While these surgeries are legal in 1979 it is a difficult path and Sheila seems unsure that they will undergo surgeries in the U.S.A.
Mr. Clark brings on the couples’ oldest daughter, Barbie Reynolds, to talk about how she feels about her parents undergoing these changes. Which person does she call mom?
Later in the segment we bring on Dr. Norman Fisk, a Psychiatrist at Stanford University whose job it is to counsel transsexuals before they undergo the surgery. He mentions patients whom in the wake of misapplied sexual reorientation procedures, have suffered severe depression and even taken their own lives.
Transsexual surgeries are far more popular and easier to get in 2025, than they were in 1979.