By Lanz Christian Bañes/Times-Herald staff writer
Shortly after their new child was born, Sam and Marie Bryant made a fateful decision.
They cut off his penis.
They gave him a feminine name -- Rosland Marie -- put him in dresses and sowed the seeds for his lifelong search for identity.
The boy in the mirror
Rosland Marie Bryant, now legally Rocky Michael Bryant, was born with ambiguous genitalia. In a word, she was intersex, a term now used in lieu of the outdated "hermaphrodite."
"When I was a kid, I felt different," Bryant, 45, recalled.
He rebelled against the femininity his mother demanded of him, hating the dresses and hating the stares of the other children.
"I felt out of place, like I do now," he said.
His mother also made him take estrogen pills to encourage his body to become female.
Bryant spent much of his time in front of the mirror, examining his face and envying the bodies of her male relatives.
Then, at the age of 10, the revelation came as her reflection stared back at her.
"I'm a boy," he said.
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