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For decades, Trinidad, Colorado, a small town near the New Mexico border, was home to a clinic well-known by many as a place to get gender confirmation surgery.
Starting in 1969, Trinidad, Colorado, a small city near the New Mexico border, was one of the few places in the world with a clinic providing gender confirmation surgery.
Trinidad became so well known for the procedure that “going to Trinidad” became a euphemism for gender confirmation surgery within parts of the trans community. Historian Martin Smith, who resides in Granby, borrowed that euphemism for the title of his latest book that delves into that particular pocket of Colorado history.
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Andy Smith
When Claudine Griggs, who ran the Writing Center at Rhode Island College from 2009 to 2019, went to Trinidad in 1991, it wasn’t to party on an island off the coast of Venezeula. She went to Trinidad, Colorado, a small former mining town that was the unlikely home of Dr. Stanley H. Biber, a pioneering sex reassignment surgeon.
Griggs, born Claude Griggs, had already been living as a woman since 1974 and had been receiving hormone treatments. In Trinidad, Biber performed what is now called gender confirmation surgery to continue Griggs’ transition.
“Going to Trinidad” by Granby author Martin Smith is now on sale. The new nonfiction book focuses on a doctor and his protégé, who both performed gender-confirming surgeries in an unlikely southern Colorado town for over four decades, along with two of those patients.
After moving to Granby five years ago, Martin Smith began hearing stories about Trinidad, the unlikely home to what the New York Times once called “the sex-change capital of the world.”
A veteran journalist and former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Smith had already written five novels and four nonfiction books. His writing process tends to focus on the news of the time, and his newest book, “Going to Trinidad,” was no different.
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Lessons learned while writing “Going to Trinidad.” By Getty Images
When word got out three years ago that I was researching the remote former mining town of Trinidad, Colorado, and its unlikely role as what The New York Times once indelicately called “the sex-change capital of the world,” I was quickly declared unfit for the role.
A transgender blogger wondered why a cisgender male was proposing to write about this forgotten chapter in gender history. “Nobody I know in the trans world appears to know this person,” she tweeted to her followers. “Why should we trust [him]?” She later suggested I partner with a trans writer for my book project, advice later echoed by the LGBTQ editor at a progressive website. The editor criticized everything about my proposed project, including my vocabulary choices in describing it.
Anisse Gross April 12, 2021Updated: April 12, 2021, 6:43 pm
The town of Trinidad played such a key role that the phrase “going to Trinidad” became a euphemism for gender-reaffirming surgery. Photo: Bower House
Between 1969 and 2010, the small town of Trinidad, Colo., saw nearly 6,000 medical pilgrims pass through, seeking gender-affirming surgery from Dr. Stanley Biber and then successor Marci Bowers. This tiny spot played such a pivotal role, the phrase “going to Trinidad” became a euphemism for the surgery itself.
Martin J. Smith, an award-winning journalist and former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine who also has penned five crime novels and four nonfiction books, brings this overlooked chapter to life, structuring the book around the lives of two of Biber’s patients: Claudine Griggs and Walt Heyer.