Robert Eads was a transsexual male who transitioned later in life, in his 40’s, after bearing two children and being in a heterosexual marriage with his husband. He went to Miami where a doctor there agreed to preform the procedure to change him into a man and Robert would be given testosterone shots and have a double mastectomy. Because Robert had already gone through menopause the doctor left Roberts uterus and ovaries in tact and still inside of Robert. Robert retained his female external genitalia as well. When Robert was 51 he was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1996.
After his diagnosis Robert went to multiple doctors to get treated but none would preform the surgery on him, either because of his lack of insurance or because he was transsexual. Doctors thought that having a transsexual male in the office would drive patients away. Robert was finally accepted for treatment by a doctor in ’97 but it was too late and the cancer spread and was inoperable.
Robert lived in rural Georgia and from what it looked like in the movie was south of Atlanta, which is extremely backwoods Georgia. This is an area with a whole bunch of backward thinking and prejudices and would probably look exactly the same today as when the film was shot, floppy disks and all. I can say this, i’m from south Georgia. Even with these prejudices around him, I don’t think it was much of a problem for him being transsexual except for those people who knew him well because i don’t think anyone would be able to tell. His family in the movie seemed that they didnt disown Robert or anything, just that they didnt really understand him. His father referred to him as something other than his daughter when Robert would visit in order to keep the neighbors from knowing, which is pretty good because like Rockbridge its a small town so everybody would also know and it would probably lead to Robert getting hurt or just being treated differently. His son still refers to him as mother and seemed awkward around him but that was probably because of the film crew because it still seemed like he loved Robert still.
Robert did however have a close group of friends for support that he referred to as his chosen family. They were a bunch of people that he met from southern comfort, a kind of transsexual group that met in Atlanta and they get to be around similar people as them. His chosen family was with him until he died in ’99 and helped him until the end and also helped him go to his last SoCo event and give a speech and lead a panel. While it seemed that Robert still had the support of his family, the ones mentioned anyways, Robert’s chosen family didn’t all have the same support and SoCo and the support Robert gave them was very important.