ABC newsman who switched genders wants to switch back
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He thought he was a woman trapped in a man’s body — but it turns out he’s “just another boring straight guy.”
ABC News editor Don Ennis strolled into the newsroom in May wearing a little black dress and an auburn wig and announced he was transgender and splitting from his wife. He wanted to be called Dawn.
But now he says he suffered from a two-day bout of amnesia that has made him realize he wants to live his life again as Don.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“I accused my wife of playing some kind of cruel joke, dressing me up in a wig and bra and making fake ID’s with the name ‘Dawn’ on it. Seriously,” Ennis wrote in an e-mail to friends and colleagues Friday, explaining his shock after he woke up from what he called a “transient global amnesia” last month.
“It became obvious this was not the case once I took off the bra — and discovered two reasons I was wearing one,” he said, referring to his hormone-induced breasts.
“I thought it was 1999 . . . and I was sure as hell that I was a man,” Ennis said in the e-mail titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Fortunately, my memories of the last 14 years have since returned. But what did not return was my identity as Dawn,” said Ennis, who had been wearing lipstick, skirts and heels.
“I am writing to let you know I’m changing my name . . . to Don Ennis. That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.
“I have retained the much different mind-set I had in 1999: I am now totally, completely, unabashedly male in my mind, despite my physical attributes,” he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“I’m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was misdiagnosed.
“I am already using the men’s room and dressing accordingly,” he noted.