Intersex Woman in MA Charges Town With Bias

[Betsy]

<http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=46035>

Subject: US - Hermaphrodite horsewoman Patricia Renee Pina charges town with bias... [The Boston Herald - Sep 26/04]

Trouble rears up on ranch: Hermaphrodite horsewoman charges town with bias

By J.M. Lawrence

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Gossips in a small, bucolic town are ruining a black female horsebreeder's business by falsely claiming she's a transsexual ever since she launched a plan to house migrant workers in mobile homes on her farm, she says in a lawsuit.

"They really don't want me here. They're trying to drum me out and I'm not going to let it happen," said Patricia Renee Pina, 45, who opened the Aces Wild Farm and Ranch in Plympton seven years ago.

She's suing town officials and countered the gossip with a very personal declaration filed in federal court in Boston. Pina revealed she is a hermaphrodite.

"I was born on Aug. 15, 1959, with a physical condition characterized as, and commonly referred to as 'genital ambiguity,' " she wrote. "This problem was resolved in my early childhood. I am a woman of Cape Verdean extraction, African-American, who is perceived not to be a woman by persons in positions of power in the Town of Plympton."

She included a copy of her North Carolina birth certificate noting her sex as female. In an interview, she also noted she was married for 11 years.

Pina is 6 feet tall and her deep voice echoes across a clearing as she calls her sheep on an autumn afternoon. The herd runs to meet her.

"I've always been better with animals than with people," she says.

Pina once had 60 riding students and a dream to turn Aces Wild into a premiere facility with an indoor arena. She now has one student, has gone bankrupt and her former business partner withdrew his $600,000 investment.
The local feed store refuses to sell to her, she said, and vandals have shot out the windows of the trailers.

Town leaders deny discrimination is behind decisions about Pina's property. She was ordered to remove the trailers under a bylaw prohibiting mobile homes, said town counsel Leonard H. Keston.

"The town has every hope she succeeds in her dreams and aspirations which will be good for her and the town of Plympton. But she has to follow the rules like anyone else does," said Keston. He contends Pina's business woes began long before she was denied permits for the trailers and said she has never offered proof of the need for migrant workers to run her business.

Pina, however, argues the trailers are allowed under an agricultural exemption to local laws and two other Plympton farms have them.

Paul McDermott, a longtime Plympton resident, did some jobs on Pina's farm after other tradesman refused to work for her.

"That thing spread through Plympton about her being a he-she. That's what they called her," McDermott said. "Most of the other horse people have taken away her clients. It's almost like they're trying to wait her out til she just goes broke and they throw her off the land."

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