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Lessons from a journey

  • Posted on December 7, 2014 at 12:33 pm

As ever, my week gathers things in the plug hole as it drains away ready for another. Friends who are getting their Gender Recognition Certificates with some awe, others getting dates for appointments or surgery with relief. A youngster riding mountainous waves of gender dysphoria, facing a long journey and the knowledge that some things will never be completely right.

Four Christmases ago I learned for the first time that I was not alone, and now everywhere I look there are people learning they are not alone, but together. It isn’t any easier for all that, because the real journeys are not to and from gender clinics, psychiatrists, facing misunderstanding, rejection, or even love that tries but cannot understand. The real journeys are within ourselves, undoing teachings, received wisdom, self-perceptions, recognising colours in a world given to us as black and white.

Waypoint 1

No-one can do this for you, your journey is uniquely yours

There is is no carrying, no little scooter, no comfortable paladin, no shoulders to ride on. This journey is entirely under your own steam. Get used to it, because this is how life actually is. As a sheep in a dense flock, you can rest your feet and be carried along, chased by a dog to the same field or pen as last time. On this trip you may find help, support, even love. But you are, in the end, on your own. You began at your conception, you were born uniquely you, your mind is only yours, and your self-understanding entirely within yourself. You will die. Between now and then you can only live your own life, and discriminate between how much advice you receive is sensible and appropriate, and how much isn’t, and when there isn’t any, choose what to do by yourself. That simply means accepting complete responsibility for the way your life goes. Did I say simply? Most of us don’t do this terribly well. It is the greatest lesson you can learn, treasure it.

Waypoint 2

You cannot set the conditions

Much as you would like to customise this journey on your own terms, you cannot. This is not a journey through jungle with a machete, this is a journey where you weave your way through and may leave no path behind. Sometimes bent stems will help others see where you’ve been, and parts may become beaten tracks, but there are parts of your journey that are almost secret, because they are yours alone. You cannot ask for a journey of a particular kind, or a scenic route, or avoiding things you don’t like, and you can’t choose what you can take with you. Most trans people will be very firm that this journey itself is not a choice, it is a given, an imperative. Tough, that you can’t choose from a series of options like a package tour. Get used to the excitement.

Waypoint 3

You cannot choose the length of your journey

When you start a journey of transition, you might want it to be a manageable length, but the fingerboard saying ‘this way’ says just that. No miles or kilometres or years, just ‘this way’. If you want to see the end you must commit. Just that. You can turn back, or start again, whatever and whenever you choose, but only go forward with commitment and trust. If you do turn around, there isn’t a gate right behind you, only jungle, but you can get back where you started, more or less, if that’s what you decide. This is your journey, however many people are doing something similar, and it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Ask only: ‘What if I don’t?’ and get your boots on. Life is an extreme sport, if you really want to live it.

Waypoint 4

This journey is not really about getting somewhere, it’s about finding yourself

In a way we are seeking approval too much. Approval by psychiatrists, a diagnosis, clinical support, family, friends, society. The truth is, we are finding ways to be more acceptable, to speak, walk, talk, dress, gesture, even think, in ways that others will find easier. We work hard for them. But it is equally true, that what emerges is a deeper understanding of what we naturally are. Some trans women start off by going ultra-feminine as a counterbalance, and then gradually settle into jeans and sneakers, going largely without make-up – like most other women. And even being confident about the male aspects of their identities (we are all of us a balance of both). Our femininity is found inside, not in what we present to others through externals. The feminine comes out naturally in the end, released rather than imposed. We may think that clinical remedy in hormones and/or surgery is our destination, but it isn’t. It is important, even vital to our inner sense of authenticity, but it isn’t what gives us our gender. Gender is what we find when freed to live it. By making this journey your own, by understanding that, you can be freed into your authenticity. When you don’t need acceptance any more you will find it, because you found yourself behind what others told you you were, and then found people who like it.

Waypoint 5

The map we have been given was wrong

In Hereford Cathedral (UK) hangs Mappa Mundi, a unique 13th century map of the known world. It is really curious to us, and has very quaint ideas of the relative sizes and distances, with whole parts missing and some made up to fill the gaps: the draughtsperson (or committee!) must have thought ‘It must be like this’. Brilliant for its day, and ambitious, but it is not properly representative, and wholly inadequate for finding your way around the real world. We have social maps representing the way things are too, and some are way out of date, however many people are still using them. There are no automatic updates like with in-car sat-navs, and we who journey struggle with people who say the jungle is not just impenetrable, but should not be penetrated. Perhaps ‘there be dragons’. Within moments, minutes, or hours of our birth, we are given tags that place us on a social map. We are designated an outer identity and told that this is our inner identity because the two must be the same. This social Mappa Mundi has a part on gender that was filled in with inadequate understanding, and this waypoint is a big one. It takes a foundation away from you, and from almost everyone you know. But it is the map, not you, that held a wrong interpretation.

Waypoint 6

You will never see your world the same way again

Say goodbye to your ideas about the world. Whether it is your spiritual development and direction, your emotional response to things, your psychological understanding, your social interactions, your prejudices, beliefs, and even your abilities. Everything must become mobile. Those of you with smart phones, tablets and touch screens of all kinds, may be familiar with the method: if you want to move an icon, hold your finger on it until it wobbles, then drag it to where it belongs, reordering your tools to better represent your life. Unlike the smart phone technology, you will actually see life differently. Some wobbly things will disappear altogether, others will be things you never thought before. You will see other people completely differently, some with more colours, some with rather less than before. Ideas of acceptability, normality, creativity and stuckness will be transformed. You will be like an astronaut seeing the world from outside for the first time, its preciousness and its vulnerabilities, its size and its wholeness, its context and its loneliness. You will compare it with your own Mappa Mundi and begin to understand.

And if you grasp these waypoints, and doubtless many more, you will be filled with gratitude for a life of learning, however tough the jungle, and however much people call you back. And above all, you will find yourself. It may be very different from when you started.

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TDOR 2014, and more

  • Posted on November 22, 2014 at 3:21 pm

I hesitate.

There is an article about transgender murders that I feel like sharing on Facebook, and since I read a fair few articles others have shared, and feel I learn from, I like to pass things along. But I hesitate. The article is informative, well-written, and speaks for me and many others.

And I hesitate, and start thinking about caveats, explanations, warnings. I write something to encourage the next reader and explain, and then share.

With doubts.

It is an otherwise ordinary day, halfway between 20 November and tomorrow, when I shall go down into Brighton for the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). Worldwide, this is the 16th year of remembrance, and around the world the names of transgender people whose murders have been recorded as being transgender identity-related are read out. It’s a list of between about 220 and 250 each year, which seems like a drop in humanity’s ocean. Trans women of colour are disproportionately represented, as is Brazil as a country, though not as a percentage of population. There are a number of sources for names, lists, numbers and charts online under the TDOR or ITDOR name, and you can even read the means of murder, which can be horrific.

So that’s about 5 people in the world per week. Pretty small isn’t it? So why the fuss? There are other minority groups with worse statistics, equally demonstrating how vile human beings can be to each other, and they may have their protests and remembrances too. You could even pick out those whose gender identity placed them in danger, such as in sex work, not because they were fetishists or immoral, but because it was a means of survival. For some clients, being trans* is the reason for the transaction. For others there is self-disgust, deceit and violence. Or you could pick out those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like anyone can be, when alcoholic bravado creates antagonists in a situation where hate can be enacted. And hey, you don’t get many actual murders in the UK, do you, so why should we join in on such a minority, and perhaps predictable, state of affairs?

I hesitated, not because it seems like such minority interest, but because of the comments posted under the article in the 24 hours since it went online. This too is a predictable state of affairs, and the tone, content and quantity is never a surprise. Yes, there are also always trans* people on there either lamenting an incident, or praising some brave soul, perhaps relating their own experience. They are back on later with facts and explanations, because sooner or later, we are being discussed:

  • how many transgenders [sic] are there? (that’s not many, is it?)
  • yes, but it isn’t true, is it?
  • nobody is transgender, God made men and women
  • these transsexuals are just deluded, they can never make their bodies different
  • they need curing / putting away / executing
  • if you’re born XY that makes you a man, forever
  • comment removed by moderator as not abiding by the rules
  • and so on.

Some of us are sensitive and tetchy, which doesn’t help. The replies are rude and direct. Another comment is deleted by a moderator.

So I hesitate; do I share, so that the comments are seen by those who will be sympathetic? Or not share, because they are hurtful? Probably no-one in my Facebook extended network is in danger of their lives, but for all I know there are some who are gender-questioning and fearful, not of being physically murdered, but socially murdered. That might sound like I’m diminishing TDOR; I am not lessening it one bit. I am saying that whilst I don’t know anyone who has been murdered, I do know people who have attempted suicide, and I have contemplated it myself.

I wonder what the statistics really are, worldwide, among people who have come out as transgender, if we counted everyone for whose death their gender identity was a material factor?

And I wonder, how many more gender diverse people we would actually see, if gender expression was not a social problem? It is a social problem in many ways, because very few trans* people completely escape discrimination, whether this is loss of job, loss of family, loss of property, loss of status or respect, or the freedom to live and move without harassment, or exclusion from the means of regaining these.

TDOR is about society’s commentary, not just murder

In the news this week have also been articles on suicide rates among young trans* people, and a particularly nasty event on 4Chan (source of the ‘gamer gate’ furore), where incitement to hatred and violence, driving transgender people to suicide is discussed heroically and enthusiastically. Just lonely teenagers in their bedrooms?

Do I feel personally threatened? No, not right here right now, but many are. The freedom to write anonymously online creates an environment that is not just online, but in the hearts and minds of the participants. If you are even ridiculing online, surely ridiculing a trans* fellow-employee is a bit easier and more natural – I mean, you have support for your attitudes out there, don’t you? Verbal abuse, tripping people up, denying their presence or credibility, or simply neglecting to uphold anti-discrimination laws, are all part of attitudes sustained by popular comment. This is the way minority groups are kept under and fearful, denied their rightful share of society, and it isn’t exclusive to transgender people. You can read it and believe it, whether that perpetuates your own fixed views, or whether you receive it and are fearful.

My hesitation to share the article was not because my non-trans friends would be upset, or because some comments are plain ugly. No, because few people actually think they are part of the problem at all. They don’t have to take part in the argument. Indeed, one friend had said this week, that she found herself talking with someone about transgender things, not because of anything, but just as something normal to talk about. My being out matters, because I am an example, in some sense, of success. But believe me, if I opened this blog up again to comments, and started getting rude or nasty comments that I had to start reading and moderating, I might feel less inclined to be open. And one defence of the nasty-commenters is always ‘what did she expect, if she’s going to be online / in the media?’

And so I hesitated, because keeping going through and beyond gender transition is a fragile thing, and just because you were born trans does not make you strong or resilient. So if you protest at this blog and say I am over-egging things ‘because I made it’ and you’re accepting of me, think again. I made it because I am strong, not because society has been completely kind. In another place, my strength would not have been enough. In another place I may be homeless. In another place I may be abused daily, outed and insulted. In another place, I may be dead, by my own hand or another’s. Whoa! Dramatic, eh, Andie? No. In another place things could be very different, for exactly the same reasons that 266 murders have been registered as transphobic hate crime. For exactly the same reasons that almost half of all trans* people have attempted suicide at least once.

Murdered trans* people. Suicidal trans* people. Unemployed trans* people. Trans* people excluded from their own families. Trans* people discriminated against, ridiculed, even simply excluded from using the right toilets, or legislated against. Or simply unable to access clinical treatments to end their gender dysphoria in a timely manner. Dead, or socially reduced, for being transgender, is a very good reason to go along to my nearest TDOR service tomorrow, and to say that I took part, and to share this blog.

I shall not hesitate.

And remember, when you hear jokes or read comments, or see discrimination and prejudice, your response is nudging society one way or the other. Even if you know me only through this blog, you know me, and if I have earned any respect, you can turn the conversation away from suspicion, misunderstanding and even hate, where you are.

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Dressing up, dressing down

  • Posted on November 1, 2014 at 12:56 pm

Last night was Halloween: all hallows (saints) eve, originally for remembering the saintly dead. It has gone from a remembering or an honouring, to a commercial amalgam of all kinds of festival elements and large-scale imports of US activities, that currently is dishonouring of the dead and, increasingly, dishonouring of the living. The misuse of cultural identities in fancy dress has now extended to parody of disability and mental illness.

I would rather go with Samhain as it was (elements came into Halloween in order to Christianise it, including moving the date of All Saints Day). It is still useful to recognise that the old dies so that the new can come, revitalised. And even that the dead stays away. We may not doubt it, and ensure it with ritual, but being actively reminded of the cyclical nature of things in my opinion is good. This year in the UK the autumn season is blurring summer long past its expected end; the year is refusing to die in some ways. Shopping in shirtsleeves in November doesn’t seem quite right, and bees and butterflies are still around. The interwoven cycles that depend on the seasons and their timing will be distorted, and some dependencies of one species on another will break down as expected food sources aren’t there later.

A few weeks ago it did get chilly, and I swapped around my wardrobe and seasonal suitcase, pulling out the warmer clothes. There’s something of old friends about this: clothes you haven’t seen for a good six months. But outside my window, just as I feel uncertain about what to wear, the trees are still very green, some only just starting to turn yellow. They are just going with the flow: if the sunshine and rain are both there, it’s leaf time. Dressing down for winter will come, and I will dress up.

What is it with dressing up, though

I have rarely been to fancy dress parties, including Halloween. Quite apart from the gore and horror, I actually don’t like doing it! Ironic, surely? One of the big not-so-secret things about Halloween in the USA, is the occasion it has long provided for people to wear clothes of the ‘opposite’ gender. For some it may be opposite, but for people with unanswered gender identity questions, or who are closeted transgender, it is a chance to be hidden in plain sight, especially if they do it rather well. A friend showed me a photograph of his great grandfather, and friend who is dressed as a woman in a European national costume. The friend looks so completely natural that we have our doubts as to whether this is indeed just fancy dress. I included a poem Found Images in my first collection Realisations, on this theme some time ago.

And then so many trans* people can remember their earliest days of shucking around in their mother’s high heels, wearing girls’ things from the dressing up box. I did, a bit. And yet for some reason I always found dressing up (when other people were around) hugely embarrassing. Even the thought of it made me feel awkward. My wife might speak about dressing up as meaning dolled up, glad rags and all that. Of course, if you aren’t about to get your best dress out, there isn’t a lot you can do. Suit? Loud tie? Least-worn shirt that isn’t just a stripe? The jumper you would never wear for work?

The first time you fully dress to go out (or even share time with someone else) in clothes not of your assigned/presumed gender you can feel a mess of mixed feelings. Are you doing it inconspicuously; are you prepared to be noticed; are you comfortable? Because for sure you are making a statement and opening yourself up to anything from surprise to ridicule. If dressing up is already a hugely embarrassing thing anyway, allowing yourself to feel natural can be very hard. But what are you doing?

I can’t remember how many times I trotted out: ‘They aren’t women’s clothes, they’re my clothes!’ I was not dressing up at all, I was just wearing what felt right. My very first description to my wife, the day she returned after a weekend away, during which I had bought and worn women’s (outer) clothes for the first time, was simply: ‘it just felt perfect’. Fateful words.

Over the following two years, I felt too painfully close to the world of cross-dressing (transvestism), which I came to see clearly was not the right description for me. It was a curiosity for me that some would go to events dressed in male clothes, where ‘dressing facilities’ were available. They would socialise in clothes of their preference, then change and return home. Being dressed ‘as a woman’ was not dressing up (maybe sounding too child-like) but simply ‘dressing’. For me, that all seemed very sad, and I could never be comfortable with ‘dressing’ any more than I could with ‘dressing up’. Surely, all my clothes were simply my clothes.

What is it with dressing down?

More verbal ambiguity in English! Dress-down Friday is a workplace idiom (again from the US and Canada) meaning to go to work casual, instead of in business attire. It’s a relaxation to make people feel more comfortable and less formal. A dressing-down, on the other hand, is a reprimand of military origin, where insignia of rank are stripped off as punishment and demotion.

Being myself was never a matter of dressing up, fancy dress, or feminising. It was just a matter of getting used to clothes with more variety, more shape and style, more colour and pattern, and that felt right. But I wrote here long ago about how female to male transition increases the honours, whereas male to female transition is a removal of status, privilege and rank. So if anything my ‘dressing up’ was ‘dressing down’, even though it increased my own comfort enormously. My style at work was not executive (a woman dressing ‘up’ to look as important as a man) nor dressing down (jeans and tees), because I had no inclination to look like a man in either direction. I wanted actively to look different to how I was before, and so for three years I almost never wore trousers or jeans. And to be honest, female-cut jeans can be awkward!

Dressed up? Dressed down? Oh, the Grand Old Duke of York … and when he was only halfway … he was neither.

There are huge quandaries for people in transitioning. Your sense of identity is changing on the inside, and may not settle for some time. You may be gender queer, or androgynous – or anything. Are clothes too certain a statement, or not certain enough? Don’t go buying an expensive dress if you soon decide you are trans-butch! But people do worry about presenting at a gender identity clinic saying they are female, but dressed in jeans and jumper. Are you really full-time? Full-time what?

The bottom line is that for other people seeing you around, your clothes signify something, like feathers on a bird: brown=female, colourful=male (yes, birds are largely the other way round!). This should not mean, however, that you have to dress to impress. ‘Today I am dressed as a woman dressed as a man!’ should be OK, and in fact you might feel perfectly female in a suit, or in jeans and tee. But it seems that even ordinary clothes are a form of dressing up to communicate. I’m in this party.

Finding a balance

This morning there will be people around here who are exhilarated by cross-dressing on Halloween. This morning there will be wives, partners and friends breathing a sigh of relief that the clothes have gone away, and that the clear pleasure shown last night need not be seen again for some time. Grayson Perry is OK because Grayson/Claire is a flamboyant artist. Drag is OK because it’s mainly part of flamboyant gay culture. It’s dressing up. But please, please don’t tell me that what you did last night was not really dressing up at all.

Clothes define no-one, and they don’t classify anyone. They don’t give you an identity and they don’t change you. You change them. Some of us need to work with clothes freely, in order to find what really fits. Not to add insignia or status, but to dress down to what is really comfortable. This changes, and sometimes we need to be assertive (all the times I was the only woman in the room wearing a skirt) and sometimes we need to be clear. But it is for no-one else to use your clothes to define or categorise you either. Maybe you need to be smart and presentable for work, maybe you want to do fancy dress (but please think about why you are choosing what may be a parody of someone else’s life), maybe you want to be safe and practical. Be prepared to change as well, and to allow clothes to express you, not define you, because who and what you are is your business.

I objected a year ago to wearing a sexist brass band uniform, stood by my principles, and left. At the time, a compromise would have damaged my sense of identity. The first thing I did after surgery? I bought trousers; and now I wear trousers and jeans quite a lot. They fit, not just physically, but mentally too, and I am never mistaken for wearing them.

Dressing up? Dressing down? I just get up in the morning and get dressed. And I do have a posh frock or two, ready for those still-hoped-for special occasions with someone special. Ah well!

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Found images

  • Posted on November 1, 2014 at 12:49 pm

The sepia girl stares expressionless,
shuffled from the pack of brown mottled paper
in crisp white lace dress and Sunday shoes.
She’s young, innocent and a long time ago –
it’s the camera that says she cannot smile.
I imagine her jumping up and running free.

Next a military man, too young to fight,
a smaller square, a formal pose –
maybe the one before leaving on campaign.
He’s innocent too, unsmiling but proud
in uniform undisturbed by war.
I imagine him standing up and marching away.

Now a grey-tone picture of an older man,
and he is grey too, gravity of age, no smile
in suit and tie, tall starched collar, cane.
Nothing in his stiff upper lip betrays his life –
his wars and wages pushed it deep inside.
I imagine him staying there when all have left.

‘That’s your great grandfather’, she called.
‘All of them. Yes, I know – the dress.
They all did. Such pretty boys that
went to war, to colonies, to banks –
trading British manliness for all their lives.
I imagine they forgot their growing days.’

‘I wouldn’t look at those’, she called.
‘Erotica is as old as the camera – or paint!’
The tiny prints scatter on the table,
ivory nudes, draped in studios –
nature for the discerning gentleman.
I notice one is different, lift it up.

There’s a coy sepia smile in this one,
unblemished by time, rarely seen by light.
In elegant gown, jewels, upright, proud –
and innocent too. On this rare occasion
inside out, this one true picture of him.
I imagine he remembered the lacy dress.

 

2012 © Andie Davidson

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Watch words: self hate, self harm, self destruct

  • Posted on September 6, 2014 at 3:32 pm

Now that the gender dysphoria bit is over, I am walking over some old ground, just picking up stones, those things that hurt the feet of people following after me. You see, I remember walking down Fulham Palace Road to the gender identity clinic the first time, knowing every step of the way had been trodden by so many like me, and quite a few with familiar names …

Well, in recent months, maybe this past year, there have been more and more sensible and informative media events about trans people. Some more competent than others, some quite personal and individual, others more documentary style and explanatory. But overall, quite a lot is being said that reveals us as pretty ordinary folk, living ordinary lives. The trans celebs who are noticed more are just saying the same as us as well, which brings us all down to a level, a commonality.

Suddenly if feels just OK to be trans, and here am I fussing over my privacy being broken at work! I transitioned before I got my current job, and it still felt like I was the peculiar one, so much so that I welcomed my work colleagues being warned in advance that a transsexual employee was on her way – so behave! And now I don’t want anyone to be told, whilst at the same time posting my photo on Twitter under #WhatTransLooksLike, which turns out to be terribly (confusingly) ordinary.

And yet.

And yet all of this ordinariness and growing acceptance (at least in general, and from a very poor start) underlines something extremely sad and tragic. And it is that for the majority of us it has been a mixture of terrifying struggle, self harm, self hatred, self doubt, despair, loss, depression and suicidal intent.

I want you to think: how much do you talk (or hear) about how society ‘tolerates’ trans people? Or about an increasing ‘acceptance’? At work, it seems people have been ‘accommodating’ of my being trans among them. Are these feelings you have, as a way of saying things are getting better? How do you think it would make you feel, if something about you meant that you as a person needed tolerance, acceptance or accommodation? Or knowing this, would you willingly place yourself in a position where this would even need to be so?

Imagine

In a world that really accepted that some people are born trans, things would be completely different. Imagine, if you will, for a moment, that every child growing up was free to express their male-female-both-neither selves freely and without criticism. Imagine every adult simply knew this was the way things are. Imagine no penis-adult minded a penis-child wearing vagina-child clothes, and no vagina-adult minded a vagina-child avoiding vagina-child toys. How comfortable those children would be that the other children knew this from their parents too. Each could find their sexuality as they developed, and learn the differences between love for reproduction and love for friendship and love for life. It isn’t that families would cease to exist, or that adults settled in their gender would not pair up to have children. But just maybe, everyone would be a bit more comfortable doing what comes naturally. Fewer spouses would turn away from their beloved partners because it was all a mistake, had they known before. Maybe it would help break the sexism that pervades society, if it were not odd to find a woman with oily hands, power tools and an executive job, paired with a man in feminine clothes working as a childminder and organising dance events.

People on the trans spectrum may be one in a hundred, but that doesn’t make us rare, it just means most are invisible because they are suppressed.

I do wonder what proportion of trans people would be happy to be the woman with a penis or a man with a vagina, if nobody else minded either. Not all of us, because gender dysphoria runs much more deeply than this, and there is a level of inateness that predates any social expectation. But for some whose gender identity sits uncomfortably in the gender binary based on genital expectation, maybe, just maybe, there would be peace in growing up and living a normal life freely as they feel themselves to be.

Contrast

Where are we with acceptance now? This is how it has largely been for people like me: if you feel you don’t belong with other penis-children-called-boys, you belong nowhere. You do not fit and you cannot explain it. Somehow people, especially parents and teachers, don’t want to know, because you screw up the way things are, and you make things awkward. You add something that has to be catered for and coped with. You are a nuisance to them and to yourself. If you are a vagina-child who doesn’t belong with other vagina-children-called-girls, people don’t notice quite so much at first. But underneath the tomboy is a place grown-ups don’t want to go.

Somehow there is an undercurrent to this view of you that is linked with a moral or ethical dimension. These are the rules that seem to come from nowhere, and just ‘are’ because they get repeated. What you feel is not quite right about you, in terms of likeness with others, becomes something wrong. People don’t like it because they think you are being deliberately different, that you have a choice. Some will say that it (the way you feel about yourself) isn’t natural. Others will say that their god says it’s bad, and bad that you should dare to even think it might be OK. That you must therefore change, and put all these feelings about yourself away forever. Hence the prevalent self hate, self harm and self destruct, mental and physical that trans people experience.

Worst of all, gender and sex have long been so confused a distinction that being trans has been viewed a sexual perversion, a bizarre psychological pathology. And if sex is naughty or dirty or bad (my upbringing taught me this), then being trans is doubly so.

Because the adults think this, their children, your friends and classmates think this too. You get bullied, or at best left out and seen by some as not to be included. This combines with your sense of not belonging. There is no way out, because no-one is talking about it, leastways not so as to allow that it’s natural or normal or permissible.

This, as I grew up (and is widely still the case), was an inescapable truth about myself: there was something bad and wrong about me, deep inside. Trans people simply knew there was nothing they could do to get rid of the disconnect between being a penis-child and a vagina-brain. Cis people, generally speaking, thought they could and should. And now this is changing, bit by bit.

What will it take?

If you are not sure whether this move or drift towards trans-as-normal is comfortable for you, think what it does to trans people growing up, and the legacy it has left to those of us rather older. I’m not seeking pity – far from it, only saying please understand, when you think you are being kind for letting us live and look differently, that your attitudes and reactions, if anything short of full acceptance as equal and normal, are creating inner traumas still.

I fully recognise that I did not grow up recognising diversity, that I too felt uncomfortable with everything LGBT because it is what I was taught to think and feel. What this means is that the denial I lived with, and above all the guilt, must have been there as I brought up my own children. My son thankfully was trans-aware probably before I was. And my daughter’s current inability to be associated with me in any way must in part be down to what I brought her up to think. I wonder what she will teach her children one day when they ask about their missing grandfather …

The words you choose shape the way we all think

  • Society is very tolerant these days of people with red hair.
  • I think we are becoming much more accepting of left-handed people.
  • I’m glad to say that nowadays we accommodate lesbians in the workplace a lot better.

Does anything strike you about these statements? If this is how we bring up our children, and how we speak to each other about red-haired people, left-handed people and lesbian people, they will intuitively understand that these three ‘conditions’ are suspect and not quite right, that these are people to be wary of, who are not quite what they seem (Wait until she takes her hat off! Did you see when he started writing? I went to her mum’s house once and she lives with a woman!).

This is exactly the inference we exchange amongst ourselves about transgender people. This is why it took me 55 years to realise that my self-hatred, my sense of guilt and shame, my constant self-destruction inside was completely unfounded and unnecessary.

Can you begin to understand this stone in the grass that I’ve picked up? Don’t leave it for someone else, above all someone else’s child, to cripple themselves on.

I can at last love myself, and indeed, I love my ‘new’ body for the first time. Shame about the five decades.

Never tolerate me. Never accept me. Never accommodate me.

I am. We are.

Just like you.

Continue reading Watch words: self hate, self harm, self destruct »

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