A few months ago, ABC News producer Don Ennis received very public support from his co-workers and the wife he was leaving to live as Dawn Stacey Ennis, a woman. Now he’s decided to switch back. In an e-mail to friends and colleagues titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed,” Ennis insisted, “No, I’m not fucking with you. No this is not a joke. No, this is not an episode of ‘Would You Fall For That?’” But after a bout of “transient global amnesia,” he’s going back to Don Ennis. “That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.”
After the memory-loss scare, Ennis explained, he thought it was 1999, the New York Post reports. “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,” he wrote. “It’s so odd to be experiencing this from the other side; as recently as last Friday, I felt I was indeed a woman, in my mind, body and soul.”
As for the identity-politics implications, he’s sorry. “I’m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was misdiagnosed,” wrote Ennis. “Even though I will not wear the wig or the makeup or the skirts again, I promise to remain a strong straight ally, a supporter of diversity and an advocate for equal rights and other LGBT issues including same-sex marriage.”
