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Angry. OK?!

  • Posted on August 2, 2013 at 11:01 pm

transgender flagHave I done anger yet? Maybe a bit, for example: We have had enough, but it feels like time to talk anger, to feel anger, see anger and to speak it. Not in fury or resentment, but from the heart.

This week, weekend to weekend, has been Pride in Brighton. Being the centre of the world, of course it’s a non-local event, and has become a carnival, a big party, a celebration. Look, world, we can be gay, we can be lesbian, and our sexuality has nothing to do with you and everything to do with how we were born. Stuff you, we’re proud! And by now Pride everywhere attracts our friends and relations in joyful support.

We’ve arrived! YeeHaaa!

Haven’t we? I could walk out of Pride Park and be abused on my way to the station. Not for being gay or lesbian, but for being trans*. But in fact the worst street abuse I have had, and in Brighton, in daylight, was for being a woman. Vile stuff that went on and on, from men in a small truck.

Pride has become carnival for the huge strides in acceptance of sexual diversity in this country. It began in anger, in protest for equal human rights, against hate and bigotry embodied in the law, expressed in the media, ingrained in culture and perpetuated by blind beliefs. In no small part, religious dogma and doctrines have been responsible for the roots of this culture.

I want anger again. I want real anger for media hounding and othering. I want anger for women being expected to protect themselves rather than men being expected to drop their societal privilege. I want anger because of events like 50 rape threats an hour online when Caroline Criado-Perez succeeded in her campaign for a woman to feature on a UK banknote. Sexual threat against any woman who has an opinion, success without acting masculine or adopting male dominating attitudes is a deep sickness that has been accepted in our society. It’s just men being men. Carry a rape alarm and avoid dark places. It’s up to you to be safe.

I want anger that Pride has had to exist at all. I want anger that countries where Pride is a feature still allow trans* people to be demeaned and diminished, working below their skill levels or unemployed, and subject to violence and hatred. I want anger, that at one end of the year the carnival streets are alive with Pride, while at the other there are quiet, dignified events marking the Transgender Day of Remembrance. That one is in the media with colour pictures, whilst the other hardly features for its sobriety.

I want anger that a large proportion of people attending pride still have no idea what trans* really means. That ‘T’ is an honorary add-on member smiled upon and thought of as being something sexual.

Trans Pride – a first

This year in Brighton saw the first Trans Pride event in Europe. It was a gathering in celebration of trans* people finding each other, being free and happy together, enjoying a degree of quiet acceptance, good entertainment, and rain. But among the 1,500 who went, probably every single one will have suffered some abuse, and every one will at least know another who has attempted suicide, if not having done so themselves. Many, if not most, will have experienced some rejection by one or more family members.

I wish I could have gone, but I had previous commitments. And to be fair, I do have some reservations about anything that requires me to ‘belong to a community’, when I just feel normal and ordinary. And yet standing out is an important statement too. Or at least standing up. Because there is much still to be said, and a lot to be angry about.

The need to speak righteous anger

Injustice should shout to everyone who believes in humanity. Instead we have become a society of individuals afraid of being noticed, and afraid of reaching out to protect others lest we too be attacked. Pride is easy, because it’s a carnival. It wasn’t when it began. And there is nothing carnival about being trans* on a daily basis. If we survive, we are strong. As I often say, we are not brave, but we need a hell of a lot of courage.

Tomorrow I shall stand up in the largely LGB tent at Pride to read. I’ve wrestled with what to write, read or say. A nice bit of stirring, fun performance poetry? Would something gentle and thoughtful be more settling instead? (cue polite applause) But in reality I want to challenge, I want to be angry for my two minutes, for all the injustice and unfairness that happens on a daily basis to trans* people everywhere, including Brighton. And for where it comes from.

Our society as it is didn’t come from nowhere. We are not male dominated by default, not by some divine proclamation, and not because humans evolved fighting bears for survival. Comparative physical strength rather than inner strength is not by default the determinant of rights. And yet our heritage is stamped with ‘male is default’ (unless stated otherwise with ten good reasons listed beneath). Men are listened to more, expected to be the leaders (sorry, darling, didn’t notice you). Women are still expected to be the respondents and givers of pleasure through food, home-making or sex, still expected to accept what to do, still expected to listen before they speak, to concur before they disagree. All old feminist stuff? All still so terribly true.

And so I want to be angry that Pride has ever needed to exist, and that the carnival hides what is still a bigoted, wilful, male-dominated, unequal and unjust world right outside Pride Park. So if you are L or G or B, or just content to support and welcome others who are, spare more than a thought for what trans* people still encounter every day, with fewer protections and less support. Share a bit of anger for the overt and covert discrimination, for the hatred, for the media sensationalising, for the parents denied access, for the loneliness of being ‘different’ whilst being exactly the same as you on the inside. Because it all stems from not challenging societal norms, in origin flavoured powerfully by masculine religious culture and past doctrinal teachings.

I don’t mean deliberately to run up against people with faith – I will respect you if you respect me. But we do need an honesty about where societal norms originate about right and wrong, good and evil, and about how those norms have been given authority and by whom. Is your god male? Does your god have a history mostly of working through men, where women are the exceptions? Does your god have a history of male law-makers and priests, disciples, bishops, cardinals, and popes? Does your religion reflect ancient cultures where men ruled and women were usefully subservient? All of these things have helped give us a binary, clear-cut world where even gender and sexuality can be right or wrong. Why do so many feel suspicion about trans* people? Why is there that thought, that ‘something isn’t right here’, or indeed is ‘wrong’? Why is something that can be clinically diagnosed regarded as a moral issue, or distasteful? I reserve a bit of my anger for this, because in no small part I lived 40 years in fear and self-anger because of this cultural belief.

And now? I’m proud alright. And I’m angry. OK?!

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Dis-appearances: stealth or skin?

  • Posted on July 27, 2013 at 9:05 am

We have evolved and survived – we being every living creature on this planet – through expert pattern recognition of things that matter most. For a bacterium, perhaps a chemical signature, for a bat an auditory echo, for an antelope, stripes moving the wrong way in tall grass, for a human, maybe a facial expression or the face itself. In fact our senses are all designed for pattern recognition, to know food from poison, welcome from warning, friend from foe, mate from challenger.

But for us as humans it has become incredibly complex. An actor is not really threatening you; their terrifying violence will become beans on toast as soon as the camera stops or the curtains close. And we thrive on novelty and invention, so the challenge of the unfamiliar is always with us. Sometimes we lose and a real danger is not spotted: insecticide toxins, environmental disaster, over-confidence is a dangerous place, early experiments with radioactive substances. Sometimes we win, and a new invention raises our game, an unexpected relationship becomes love, a crowded room of strangers becomes a welcome.

Stealth

Military technology that deflects radar enquiry (stealth) removes pattern from the response. Signals are absorbed, scattered and confused. You don’t get back a clear picture, or any meaningful picture or signature at all. It’s better than being ‘under the radar’. Its purpose is to confuse, to be invisible, so that an infiltrating mission, aggressive or surveillance, can go undetected.

As a borrowed term, I am very uncomfortable with adopting it for living as a transsexual woman. I am not intending to deceive anyone, but neither do I want to stand out. I want to adopt normality, not invisibility, and as trans* people do gain more acceptability in society, the fear factor will reduce. Being ‘found out’ is not something I want to happen. I want the conversation always to be:

‘You’re trans, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Oh. OK.’

In other words, my pattern has been noticed but it means I am friend not foe.

But this is a very difficult one indeed, because being trans* is not like being gay or lesbian or bi. I do not need another trans* person in order to have a relationship that is normal to me, whereas being gay or lesbian does. So I may need to be openly lesbian whilst not openly trans*. Being trans* is a diagnosis that has treatment to make you as un-trans* as possible. I used to think I had to live as if I was a man, because of my physiology and social expectation, but that is history. It is over; done; finished.

My male features, some of which I can do nothing about, like hand size, large big toes, a broader ribcage, will always make me noticeable. So I really do understand the grief a younger person feels, that correcting their genitals and torso, even their face, may still not be enough to assert without explanation, their own gender. If it didn’t matter to anyone else, it wouldn’t matter at all. But can I really ever be the object of desire to another? A frightening thought.

We present patterns to those around us, and they recognise and respond. I cannot make my big toes slender, but you can let it be completely OK. I don’t need stealth, you need to adjust your pattern recognition response. Being trans* is normal, not disconcerting or repulsive. The trouble is, I am in charge of myself, but I cannot change society around me except by slow, if vocal, influence. I am living now, today; tomorrow will not do for social acceptance.

Under the radar?

We do live with pattern recognition, and society assuredly has not adjusted. Most of the time I am just flying under the radar. I get on with life, I make myself look as normal as possible, whilst expressing my personality and individuality. I do a good job at work, I meet lots of people in many different settings. Being transsexual is not an issue. Until …

‘There’s that man in drag!’

As I left my flat a few evenings ago, a young man (isn’t it always?) in a car, announced this loudly to his friend. He was announcing his insecurity. His pattern recognition (maybe he has been around since I moved in, and remembers the earlier days) still says: ‘I know what to do with man, and I know what to do with a woman. This person confuses me. They are only in my book of shapes as a man in drag, and I have no better understanding. I feel safer by alerting my friends to something I don’t understand, rather than saying nothing because it doesn’t matter.’

As always, this young man spoke about himself, not me, but yes, I did find it offensive. And disappointing. Why was I being mis-identified at all?

I have no need to avoid this person in future, because the problem on one level isn’t mine at all. But if I could wave a magic wand, and become an attractive woman, would I? Well, maybe I would, just to avoid the hassle. But being stealth-configured to avoid hassle, risks the accusation of deceit, and frankly, I should not need to hide anything.

Skins

A lot of popular software applications, from this blog to games, offer alternative ‘skins’. The same thing underneath, no change in functionality or rules, just pink instead of green, flowers instead of camouflage. As an alternative to stealth, adopting a different skin, is perhaps feasible. I am what you see, and I want you to recognise that this is only a skin, and that yes, we have all chosen these presentations: I, as a transsexual woman with my style, and you, as a cis-person with your style. Or as a lesbian with your dyke style, another with a femme style, and so on.

So instead of stealth, in place of acting, and renouncing fear, throwing away the pattern-recognition manual for gender, I want you to know that inside I am exactly what I say I am. And that my skin is my familiar garb, not for you to question, but to understand why I wear it.

My ribcage does not make me a man. My dress is not drag. Ask me and I will be straight with you, and explain as best I can. But I will not hide just to assuage your prejudices. I did not choose this, just as you did not choose your gender – or your shoe size.

Well, this is what I would like. I am horribly aware that even for me, there are those I counted even as friends who ‘don’t know how to relate to me’. Even my wife and daughter don’t know, so have distanced themselves to a safe place for them. Yes, me, a threat to their normality: you can’t be my dad so you can’t be my parent. You can’t be my man, so you can’t be my partner or lover. Pattern recognition has destroyed my family, and there is no stealth imaginable there. If anything, living before realisation was stealth, and I have renounced it.

All around the world, every month, trans* people are murdered for being unfamiliar to the pattern-recognition handbook. Stealth would present a constant fear of being discovered, the radar points too low, the unwillingness of society to learn new patterns is not there. They are hated for being different. I am lucky. Very lucky.

Out in my skin

I can’t get out of my skin, I own it. But this is the bit I also choose. I choose for taste, but also for acceptability, not to hide, but to present. Some have a problem with it, but I don’t. Stealth? No. Discretion? Maybe. I am confident in my skin. But see me beyond it, because that’s where recognition really lies.

Related poem for reflection and fun: Patterns

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Divorce and the transsexual

  • Posted on June 29, 2013 at 8:18 am

It is bad enough to face divorce at any time, unless it really is a relief and an escape for you. It must be awful under the existing regime, to be a transsexual marriage survivor and have to choose between your legal gender identity (Gender Recognition Certificate, or GRC) and your marriage. Identity is your most essential right, and to require another’s permission or conditions, to be registered for who you are, is plain wrong. Under the proposed Equal Marriage legislation, a transsexual partner will still require permission from their partner to request their GRC. This too is entirely wrong, simply on principle. For a working marriage, of course it is not a barrier, but it is in no-one’s rights to even have the capacity to grant or withhold another’s identity.

Write or wrong?

Should I write about my divorce? I cast no blame and I accept none. It is personal, but also it is not private. This is a public declaration of the dissolution of a marriage. That is the whole point. Marriage is specifically public, and divorce is too.

I want to relate the experience as I go through it, because I think it raises issues of equality, fairness and justice. Let me say that what I write is not against my wife in any way, but against the system in which I feel trapped.

At this first stage, I asked to be petitioned (rather than be separated for two years) for two reasons. One is financial, and there is no need to discuss that. The other is that my GRC really matters to me, and that I can claim it long before an uncontested two-year separation, which would allow the marriage simply to dissolve. I believe it is wrong that my identity depends on my marital status, however that has been damaged.

More than this, I was brought up sharp by the realisation that legally I am still male. I cannot divorce as a female, or stay married as a female, and therefore cannot be identified as a female in the petition. And so, Ms Andie Davidson is ‘he’ throughout. There is no alternative; Catch 22. My old name and title cannot be used (I have the legal document), nor can my true gender (I cannot obtain that legal document). I have to be mismatched, and I find that objectionable.

Is it unreasonable?

And then there are the available grounds here in English law. It would have been a lot more fun to have had an adulterous affair, then at least I could have enjoyed what would lead to a very easy petition! But because I still love my wife, and because I will not call anything she has done unreasonable, there is, for people like us, only one option: to say that being transsexual is both a behaviour, and unreasonable.

I do not believe that you can call the traumatic coming out as transsexual, and the long trail up to a formal diagnosis, unreasonable behaviour. But I have to. I recognise that it was not a process of reasoned and calm discussion: ‘Darling, I think I’m trans. Can we talk about it and find a way to understand this together?’ No it was years of not understanding, longing to be discovered, and pleading to be accepted. We become not so much unreasonable as irrational in believing that clues about ourselves will make sense and derive sympathy rather than revulsion. And along the way I could have done some things better. But the outcome would have been the same. People like me live in utter fear. And the more they love, the more scared they are. I used to say: ‘I can’t walk away from this. You can. Please don’t.’

Honestly?

Was it unreasonable to buy heels for going out in? Or only to keep them discreet? I guess the old battered brown loafers would have looked just as unreasonable with a skirt. Is it unreasonable to wear a skirt when you know you are really a woman? Or was it unreasonable to live in fear and hide things away rather than leaping home with: ‘Look at these lovely shoes I found today!’?

Well, you tell me. The bottom line for me is that, contrary to the solicitor’s expression (I will not blame my wife for any of the actual words), I am, and was not, a transvestite, indulging unfairly in cross-dressing for perhaps fetishistic reasons in expectation that she would accept or enjoy it. Anything I did that was unreasonable was due to being undiagnosed, and therefore not knowing what was going on, or how I should live with that knowledge.

So, for me to claim my identity as soon as I wish, I must ask for divorce, and to obtain a divorce I must be named as male, indulging in ‘unreasonable behaviour’, which in the end was only congruent with my identity, which should not be in anyone’s gift to withhold from me.

In legal terms, I do think that we need at least to provide for an unwilling partner in a marriage to say that, their partner having been diagnosed as misgendered, the agreed contract of marriage has been simply broken. No blame, no bad words, no necessary legal accusations, just that formal diagnosis changes the basis of the original contract.

I have to say that being written about in this way in the petition, and at such length, has been like a victim having to relive their experience, be taken through court and cross-examined, accused and threatened, when the fault is none of their own. I don’t see myself as a victim of anything, only that the scenario of being named male, and my identity spoken of as behaviour and unreasonable, puts me back through a lifetime of self-hate that I have left behind.

So please, understand that this piece is not a personal statement of what I have to do, in order to slight anyone else. This is rather a protest about the confusion of law and its incapacity to deal with people like me fairly. If marriage were a conditional contract rather than a pretence of unconditional love, then the grounds for annulment would be much more straightforward. But of course it isn’t. Some marriages put up with adultery and are ‘open’. A few embrace an altered gender recognition (it isn’t gender change). The former, however, is grounds for divorce, the latter is not. Or maybe we should just have ‘I shall marry you and stay faithful for as long as it suits me’. That, at least would be honest.

And the rest

What I haven’t discussed here, is those not diagnosed as transsexual, but who are not in the regular, ‘legal gender binary’, and who similarly feel that being honestly who they are in gender terms is no more a choice than mine. Why should their status be regarded as unreasonable or behavioural? If you married someone who turns out to be gender queer, or who was born intersex and mis-corrected at birth, or indeed whose sexuality was not clear, they should not need to be blamed in legal terms just because you dislike it to the degree that you prefer to end the marriage.

Clarification

I have to say this again, because it is near the bone. The only real reason I need a divorce on grounds, rather than after two years irreconcilable differences, is to secure my identity. The decision to end my marriage was not mine, but since it has been made, comfort in its execution should not be reason to delay obtaining my legal identity. If the marriage were not ending, I would wait for the Equal Marriage legislation to catch up, however wrong I feel that to be.

If my self-understanding is correct; if my clinical diagnosis is correct, then my wife married, loved and lived with a woman in a man’s body for 30 years, and enjoyed what we were. She doesn’t have to like that fact, now we both know it, but this scenario does not have a legal reference in order to deal with it fairly and properly.

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Authenticity and the empty bed

  • Posted on June 21, 2013 at 11:29 pm

Sometimes I just ache for loving contact and touch. I knew it every day for over thirty years, and gave the same freely and with real affection and love. This has been a real cliff edge, and as much as I accept that my marriage is over, I am haunted.

This week my black dog has been prowling, asking for walkies, claws clicking on the floor, and looking at me with doleful eyes. My black dog arrived the first night I descended into the awful realisation that I had shed my pretence of being male where I was loved and desired, into a place where I was sufficiently female to be unlovable but insufficiently female to be desired. That place, where I might never know love and intimacy ever again was my greatest nightmare. It was then my black dog chased me to the brink and I seriously considered that all meaningful life had come to an end.

Dramatic, isn’t it? Of course not. It isn’t any different from a million other lonely women who either don’t want a man or can’t find anyone attracted, or can’t communicate their feelings lest it break a friendship. So I don’t count myself exceptional, and among fellow transsexual women, this is de rigeur.

‘Count your blessings!’, I am told. I even tell myself. And yes, my life is richer now than ever in many ways. But I don’t need to be told this, as I have explained in previous blogs, and tell over and over, the explosion of reality for me that transcends everything else, is my sense of authenticity.

Yes. I am real. I feel whole and normal and complete (well, almost – give me another year!)

And ready. Ready to love and be loved and feel wonderful, and share life and wholeness with another. Wow! It’s amazing! But I am standing alone on an empty stage and the play is elsewhere, the lights are out, and I am not in it. I have a feeling that if only I can find the right stage I may just be mistaken for an extra, so long as my lines are convincing. But I have the feeling that my script just isn’t the right one any more.

You see, this is my script and I don’t want someone else’s.

Probably the worst underlying thing about being born transsexual is that only another transsexual really gets it. I am reminded by the way accepting friends act and speak, that their acceptance is simply that – and they still don’t fully get it. It’s in the handshake you get when the woman next to you gets an air-kiss. It’s the explanation of how you never had to grow up with the vulnerability of being a girl. It’s the male banter as if you aren’t present as a woman, that you will ‘understand’ because you ‘used to be a man’. It’s the comment: ‘I shall always think of you how you used to be’.

My history will haunt me for ever. I am neither ashamed nor embarrassed by it, but it just isn’t normal is it? I was reminded robustly by a friend that I don’t exactly present as your average lesbian. Real lesbians grew up as women facing male presumptions and female vulnerabilities and judgements. I, on the other hand, was fully socialised as a man and took all the privileges – so don’t expect any sympathy there (mate). You can never be a real lesbian with that kind of background. It seems even wearing a skirt and being feminine is in itself surrender to male dominance and betrayal of some lesbian fundamental. And yet I really don’t (at least as yet) feel that I could let the average man into my personal space. I think it’s partly because I’ve seen male attitudes, the male psyche (which I don’t feel I ever truly shared), and behaviours from the inside, being expected to do the same, and experiencing men in the absence of women.

‘Why don’t you find another trans person? They will understand you much better!’ As if being trans defines your personality, your philosophy, your tastes and abilities, and makes you all of a kind. Ginger hair? Go join the gingers! Does that sound any more or less reasonable? It’s as if people feel safer if I don’t get too close. My authenticity is, in this way, questioned or denied. Real people, this way; less real people: over there please.

So despite my complete sense of authenticity, the world is full of well-meaning people who insist on labels that simply are inadequate. *Sigh*. It seems we’re back with the ‘what’ being more important than the ‘who’. Nothing pronounces this more than dating sites. Blokes browse my profile (no money exchanged yet so there are no exchanges) despite ‘F seeking F’ – and women either explain their lesbian past or ‘only seek friendship, nothing more’.

I’m a person! I’m screaming inside. Where can I find another person for whom our pasts and our unlearned selves are far less important than who we are now? I only want to love and be loved!

OK, you’ve had enough of the apparent angst. So have I. But what is so wrong with yearning for love? Having the capacity to love, care and commit, and finding that your labels don’t qualify you for being wanted and trusted is truly awful.

Because authenticity seems to count for less.
Because what you are makes people defensive, lest you change them by being too close.
Because in the end I had to choose between authenticity and the love of my life.

And that, dear readers, is the case of authenticity and the empty bed.

It all leaves me wondering if I would have really got to grips with and faced authenticity (and how many people do) were it not for this. Most of us have an idea by the time we are adult, of how life goes. We adjust expectations to reality all the time, but we lose bits of ourselves all along the way. Life is like that, this is how it is, never a bed of roses, you have to compromise, count your blessings, please others, keep your head down, it isn’t the end of the world, there are many people worse off than you.

And yet this real-I-sation for me, this truly knowing with awe and wonder, that I am meant to be like this, is a wholly different awareness than I have ever had. And it isn’t just about my gender, it’s about my sense of self. And it means that I will never allow my authenticity to be compromised ever again. Is that why I don’t know the script any more?

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Is there a ‘me’ in ‘chimera’?

  • Posted on May 26, 2013 at 10:27 am

One of the more fascinating debates to have in the pub is when people start to ‘enquire beyond’. What is beyond the universe? What is beyond the end of time? What is beyond this life? It’s reassuring to know that there isn’t some monster at the end of the universe, or that time is not simply recycled in some Groundhog Day nightmare, or that hell isn’t just a coercive historical invention of a ruling priesthood. Whenever a conversation starts to ‘go beyond’, even if it is just an inability to understand a different human culture, or to think scientifically about something where there is insufficient knowledge, I recall Descartes’ Discourse on Method.

It was tough going, on my philosophy course at university, to plough through, especially since God had to be an integral part of all Descartes’ functions of reason, but I do recall some important features. One is that everything lesser comes from something greater, and that we can’t always infer the rock from the chipped-off stone. Also, that you can’t invent and describe a chimera (a made-up creature) that isn’t made of bits with which you are already familiar.

We had a rather old inherited children’s book with split pages, where you could mix half a lion with half a giraffe, for example, to make a liraffe. And pictures of dragons and monsters, or even aliens, are always recognisable in their parts. There is a head, or sometimes the body contains the head parts (Monsters Inc). An eye or eyes, a mouth and teeth (usually, not many monsters simply suck, and we tend to think of them as frightening and aggressive, so they need teeth), limbs to get about, with joints, gripping-parts with fingers, suckers or claws, and maybe a tail for balance or as a weapon. But however hard you try, it will be slimy, furry, leathery, scaly, or something derived from an experience of a living creature, or manufactured robot you know. You can only describe and imagine from what you already know – and for sure, we don’t know everything. (Anyone who knows me well, knows that I can be very adamantly wrong!) If you were to meet a quite different being, manifesting in an entirely novel way, you would have no words to convey the experience. Everything would be analogy or simile – in other words, solely in terms of your current available shared experience. In fact, you would have difficulty having the experience if it really was beyond the universe we know so partially.

Belonging and experience

Now think of your own life, its changes, roles, relations, and the creature that you are. Here is short chain of what I am so far:

unborn kick; baby; Andrew; son; brother; minor; pubescent child; Andy; adolescent; boyfriend; student; lover; man; husband; father; companion; woman; sister; daughter

I said ‘I am’ because either I am momentary (i.e. only actually exist in this moment) or I am everything from all moments because that is known and recalled. I could add the decorations, of writer, artist, musician, etc., but you get the point. These aspects are all me. Yes, I include the male stuff, because the body part of me was identifiably that, but because I am woman, that is as real and as true as anything else. I lived and performed as a man mistakenly for far too long, but nevertheless I did, just as surely as I kicked before I was born. You can’t infer the whole from the part, and you can also recognise everything that has ever described me.

Is there a ‘me’ in ‘chimera’? We can all see that, and we are all part of someone else’s construct..

Is there a chimera in me? No. Because I am not all things at once. Only a few things are retained together, but it isn’t monstrous to be daughter, sister, woman, father, even lover, all at once.

This is my philosophy of self, that I own it all, understand it better than I once did, and will again more in the future. But it is also my philosophy of person: that for everyone who knew me before I took possession of my womanhood, all of it was me, and that the person you know now is the same as the person then. Those who sit next to me in bands where I play, or in the office (does anyone there read this?!) know that my sense of humour is fast and innate and of a particular kind. Those who have told me I have lovely eyes have not done so because of my gender presentation. My voice has changed a bit, the way I speak and walk certainly have, I let my hair grow, but my memories are contiguous and detailed. My DNA runs in my children. My feet are the same size, even if women call a size 9 a size 8, but I dance on them now. So if anyone thinks I am a different person is simply saying that their mental chimera of me doesn’t look like this anymore.

A different person?

We do say, colloquially, ‘they’re a different person’ when someone is traumatised, or reacts to drugs, and in some way their personality changes. Sometimes a person becomes ‘lost’ through dementia, or grief, or by withdrawing, and we know that inside, this person is just unexpressed. Sometimes we mean someone has become released, or content or happy in a way they never were. But they aren’t really ‘a different person’, only expressing themselves differently. Sometimes we like it and relate to it, sometimes it is less easy to do so. But all of these changes belong to the person, and the difficulties belong to the observer, friend, or family member.

Me? Yes, I’ve changed. I’m happier, freer, I am reconciled with my real gender, I feel a lot younger and I wear eye shadow and a skirt. I don’t think that I have become less of a friend (though some have been tested during my transition) or unlikeable. I am as annoying in some ways as I always was, and I shall have to continue working on that. But the same person gets up in the morning and sleeps at night, and feels lonely and hungry.

When you say you love someone, what do you mean? What do you love? When a person changes in the way I have, what did or do you love? I hope I may find someone who loves me like this (but that is me ‘thinking beyond’) who may not have loved me when I was living as a man. But that is about attraction, not about loving the person. It’s about feeling safe to open up and be vulnerable with me, in accordance with what is ‘right’ or that fits expectations. Maybe someone will be intimate with me again, only because I am a woman. But just as those who have left me because of this could not accept that whole chain above as ‘me’, so another will have to face the fact that ‘I’ am that whole chain too. This is me, the one person. Be careful what you love.

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