When the bearing down begins,
is this courage for the passing through—
or bravery for the inheritance of blood?
Or is it the terror of tearing,
expulsion of not belonging—
the urging to be freed?
And this presence in my belly,
this yearning to contain and hold—
does it not consider pain or wound?
Do not admire the episiotomy
any more than some placental pleasure—
birth is not courage. It’s guts.
2012 © Andie Davidson
I started this blog one year ago. I wanted to tell my story as it was writing itself, I wanted to share my poetry, and I wanted to offer a concept of normality about the gender spectrum.
What a year it has been. In an early blog I did write ‘I don’t need to be a woman. I never really can be.’ The subtitle of my blog was ‘reinterpreting gender for a better fit’, and I was at pains to place myself in the centre, with a healthy balance between living one gender or the other depending on who needed that of me.
Meanwhile some people were taking one look at me and saying: ‘No way! She’s a classic transitioning one!’
That story is well told in the poetry collection I published in March: Realisations. I still read it and perform it and share it, as a closed book, but also a very emotional and poignant reminder of the traumatic thing it is to come to terms with being transgender.
So it was, that I applied in March 2012 by Deed Poll to change my name and gender marker for good, and as far as I am concerned, I transitioned then. The story of how it went is on here.
There is very little support though, for what ultimately is a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and even that term has been heartily discussed among psychiatrists and trans* people alike for its appropriateness, this year. Basically it is down to self-help. Somehow we meet each other, and if we are lucky, it’s a useful meeting. YouTube, feminisation secrets websites, borderline suppliers of herbal remedies and hormones, places you don’t normally associate yourself with because it’s easier to visit a ‘drag supplier’ than find genuine mastectomy prostheses. And it is expensive and painful, even before surgery. Despite 1 in 4,500 men and 1 in 8,000 women having diagnosable gender dysphoria.
So a year ago I had been toughing it out, convinced I could tread a middle ground, be dual gender, and keep my family. Yes, that is a pretty big reason to delay facing the truth. And the price of failure? Well, two things, I guess.
First (and mercifully we were going to therapy as a couple at the time) I reached the brink and looked over. It was a place devoid of everything, including light. It wasn’t inviting, but it seemed the only answer. If those who loved me and whom I loved the most could not live with me as a woman, and if I couldn’t live as a man, then by removing the common denominator (life) it would all be resolved. The frightening thing was that I knew how I was going to do it, and it was easy. So easy. I looked over the edge a few times. Now, I feel my record is blemished forever. ‘Have you ever felt suicidal?’ appears on forms sometimes, on your medical record, elsewhere. And if you answer ‘yes’, there may be a penalty, an impression, or just a knowing look and a Note. I have a Note. But at least I didn’t pay that price. The wind blew back just strongly enough to overcome the vertigo.
Second, I knew quite early in the year that I had already written the biggest cheque of my life. I had signed it. I had delivered it, and I was just waiting for it to be cashed. Very soon my account would be emptied. I wasn’t going to kill myself, but I was going to bankrupt myself. It isn’t often you have to write ‘Please pay from my personal account: my family; my marriage; the person I love most in all the world, all my life; and my home’ – in exchange for simply being true to how you were born.
I wrote on my blog about authenticity, about being seen as selfish or as deceiving, and I protested (as I still do) that I am looking through the same eyes I was born with and as when I fell in love, that I am still feeling and loving with the same heart, and giving from the same soul.
And I know now that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it matters not one jot. Being the bio-male really does trump personality, companionship, commitment. And love. If you aren’t sexually attractive any more, you have become inappropriate. ‘You might “be the same person”, but I am not having any woman make love to me (even if the outcome is pretty identical)’. The only resolution to living behind this thick glass wall, looking at the one I loved and could no longer touch, was either back to the first price tag above, or starting again on my own.
So this blog subtitle changed to simply being ‘observations of gender dysphoria’. There was no better fit. I was a woman, and I really could be. The observation bit is important to me, and I do try to see from others’ point of view, though of course I can only do it as myself. You can judge whether my empathy and intuition are sound or not. Along the way I wrote about fairness, truth, justice, fear, self-knowledge, continuity, being a trans* father, being ordinary – and quite a lot about love.
I digressed into the awful realisation that ignorance is no defense under law, and that if my gender had been known, every wonderful act of love (that I always felt was in my heart a feminine space) would not have been consented to: was it all rape? Is that too blunt? That my own wife had only ever had sex with a transsexual woman? And that she would never knowingly have given consent for that? Because now it was known, doing exactly what had been invited before, was more than inappropriate.
Sadness, exile, yet becoming accepted universally as a woman socially and at work, and in public performance, featured on this blog, and finally put paid to any efforts of rational persuasion that I am still me, not trying to love differently, and still deserving of the same love and intimacy – but came through in the end to an intensely happy realisation that I have arrived at a place where the final administration can proceed smoothly, and over time. I even ditched the prostheses, and am getting my hair coloured so as it grows and appears a bit, it will blend. Then in a few months, the miraculous ‘shorter trim’ can appear and another prop, hopefully, be left behind.
And so I arrived at Christmas with all the reminders, redrafted scripts of grief, opening my space to others who needed it for similar reasons, and ultimately when they had left for home, feeling terribly lonely.
But I did cook a full and quite perfect Christmas dinner for the first time ever. And yes, I did set out a Gantt chart so I would get it right: (do not genderise that! The multi-tasking was fine).
Soooo … deep breath, and let’s begin 2013, and see if we can avoid the trauma somewhat, let go completely, negotiate sale of my old home, navigate divorce, and keep myself together throughout again. Because contrary to everything I protested last year, and rejection for being different, there is only one me, there only ever has been, and this is what I am.
Sadly, in terms of finding those essential, safe, daily, dependable hugs or kisses (*sigh*), one ounce of truth seems to linger from one past blog, ‘We cry, we dance’:
In the land where all is pink and blue
the purple has no face.
We cry, we dance, we love like you—
but cannot find our place.
Radio carols familiar, smooth
words I cannot sing
a child safe song long lost
still played round and round
my wordless trumpet silent
since the final concert.
Another phlap on the mat
card-hope disappointed
by a Christmas Eve bill
an endless account, year around
filling the void of wordless friends
the list-recipients of my robin.
Tomorrow my son will annoy
his sister with rock and metal
compilations of his Christmas
his mother tolerant, the boyfriend
caught in a new family, the new
Christmas male, a word I cannot think.
Crackers will snap their jest
with an absent author and
a missing humour, an uncrowned
head of table, ambiguous not vacant
filled by silence, the last concert
forgotten as smooth carols.
Robin lost his red breast,
the unfamiliar call to friends
recognised by a few far away
as the fleeting, through-the-window
not-for-Christmas companion
the open bill, the silent carol.
2012 © Andie Davidson
I was slightly chastised this week by an old friend who has greater grief and hurt than I, in her life, and about whom I care very much. I can’t remember when we last met, but I’m glad we can still be straight and not just get miffed. It was a chastisement I have given myself too, when with other people.
The trouble is, people are curious and I am very open. I know that I have had it very easy indeed on this gender journey, and that for many it really isn’t that straightforward. So if I can be confident and normal and direct about it, then others will also find it normal, and if they then meet someone else like me, they will pass on that understanding and be supportive instead of bemused or worse. So I talk about myself. And rather too much sometimes. Am I listening as much as I want them to? Probably not, and I have to learn that. So my New Year resolution, if I am to have one (apart from getting fitter – again) is to shut up. And listen.
This Christmas required giving some explanation to The Christmas Card List. That longer list of people stretching back to where I/we studied, lived, worked. Yes, those people you largely forget about except for Christmas because you hardly ever see them anymore. But it felt important because one was my best man (definitely the better now!), and others used to be good friends when kids were all the same small age. So despite Lynn Truss’ deprecation of the ‘round robin’ newsletter, I told the story my way, of why cards were coming from me separately, and of the big change. And the breakup, and no recriminations. Maybe this was my last big shout, because that’s everyone in the know now. Except the tax man (yes, I do still think of him as a man, so I’m sorry if you work at HMRC and are a woman, especially if you are trans in the HMRC, no offence intended. HMRC alone will insist that I am male to the bitter end (my GRC) and I really do resent that.) So by now there is no-one left to inform, and just one to correct.
That should mean I can shut up, and listen more.
This week was also the Christmas meals week, and the opportunity to wear my best ever Monsoon chiffon dress. In spite of awful weather on Wednesday night I braved it, and felt amazing. Wet at first, but chiffon dries quite quickly. I had a lovely night, and yes, people were, shall we say, free to ask. I didn’t mind, I rarely do, because again I want people to know that I feel as normal as they do, if a bit more self-aware (not self-conscious) than some. It has been a huge change, and the first experience for most, of a trans* person. But we talked about a lot else besides, and I had a truly lovely night.
You know how it is at these occasions. Well you do if you’re driving, because as you stay sober, others dissolve into a happy or sad or uber-loving haze. There was quite a bit of happy-drunk, and as I came away, I realised I too was a bit drunk. But I was actually feeling drunk with happiness. I was finally ending a year in which I had started not knowing quite what lay ahead, with a great deal of unhappiness and terrible fears of consequences. In that year I had finally had to face myself, and grasped that the final choice, and the only real choice I ever had, was to be between being true to myself and keeping the love of my lifelong companion, lover and friend. It was the year, too, where I came to understand just how easy suicide can be. I looked over the edge and the wind blew back just hard enough to overcome the vertigo. It was a year in which all my fears came to meet me, and all but one were resolved. All but one.
So why should I not be drunk with happiness?
A second Christmas dinner, and I was moving around freely with 60 other people with whom I work, just being me. Being normal. And with this wonderful realisation that I have made it, that I am safe, that I am well on the way to resolving the deep need to correct my defects. And in arriving here, I can now shut up about it and get on with life. I will always have the same his-story, and I can’t escape that. I hope I will always be an advocate for trans* people of all kinds, and a help to some. But the truth about who I am is finally, and completely, out, and those who are happy with that are happy, and those who aren’t will have to catch up as best they can or be left out.
Happiness and sadness aren’t like matter and antimatter; they don’t annihilate each other, and it isn’t really a balance. It’s a cohabitation of aspects of reality. My sadness would never be there if there hadn’t been happiness, so you could argue that in sum, there must be more happiness than sadness in my life. And pain? Every week I lie under the needle of electrolysis for an hour, focussing on ‘this is just a single hair’ so the pain is made tiny. Friends passing through surgery remind me that a fair amount of pain lies ahead there too, but not for a while. And there is painful relationship surgery right up ahead as well. So I have one surgery I can’t wait for, another I simply hate to have to do. And that one will be a lot more private because it’s only half about me and must remain as amicable as possible, even though I know I will feel somewhat clinically disposed of.
So this year you can chastise me if you like. Tell me to shut up. I’m probably just drunk – on happiness.
For trans people living in the south (no, I said trans not trains!) the name Charing Cross carries a lot of emotion and feeling. I also remember it from the book 84 Charing Cross Road, but of course the place in question is in Hammersmith. And today, in the rain. A lot. You first learn of it as a place many (and some very well known) people have traipsed their years away to, and found resolution for their gender identity. Then you realise that it is part of West London Mental Health Trust, responding to gender dysphoria (or rather the physiological state of having a brain in one gender and a body in another) as a mental disorder. OK, since DSM V dropped the disorder bit, it isn’t that, but it is still in the mental health diagnostic manual, not in the physiological/hormonal disorders manual.
And so you are placed in the hands of psychiatrists. I saw my second psychiatrist today. When I see my third, for a Charing Cross second opinion, they will finally draw the conclusion that I am of perfectly sound (female) mind – and that the reason I have spent so much money, time and emotion (and pain), come to the edge of suicide (and backed away), lost pretty much all I hold dear, and live alone happier than I could have imagined, supporting myself in a full-time job where I have only ever presented as a woman – is because my body developed with male attributes while my brain didn’t.
Frustrating. People aren’t always as clear as I am, and some transition partially, retreat, reconsider, transition again, have doubts, cling onto things they feel more important, and maybe never decide to physically transition. But they do this after many years, not just after a short while. And so the conversation online today has gone over the value of what is called the ‘real life test’ or more accurately now, ‘real life experience’ (RLE). Basically it means you prove, through witnesses like employment, and people who can vouch for you, that you have lived exclusively in a gender not assigned at your birth, for two whole years.
And it is a dangerous frustration. For a mental health approach, insisting on persisting with the cause of all the distress, indeed placing it all under some unreasonable pressure and risk, hardly seems conducive to good mental health. Why? Because people like me seek out medications before they are available on prescription. Losing hair matters when you are older, and entering puberty matters when you are young. These things are irreversible. Nowadays, young people can have their puberty arrested. But no-one is going to give me anti-androgens while my hair recedes. But also because we have to go many months without seeing anyone at all, during which time we are given the task of unsupported RLE. I was asked today if I would like help with my voice. Of course I bloody would! ‘Sir’ on the phone is immensely hurtful, especially when you have to explain. And yet you can’t even get voice therapy until the third psychiatrist has approved your status as genuinely being the gender you are already living in, for one year.
OK; so you pay for your own laser, electrolysis, prosthetics, wigs, voice therapy, counselling, hormones (this is not a personal endorsement of the practice, just that so many feel compelled to) etc. and do your best, while your world is collapsing around you – and call it real life experience. I suppose if you get through that, you get through anything. But not everyone is as strong or resilient as I am, and I wonder how many ‘fail’, suffer or perhaps die along they way because it becomes too much. I am not alone in finding that I may well be able to obtain my Gender Recognition Certificate and change my birth certificate gender, before I can complete surgery to correct things.
I do understand that for some, being given time and space is important for self-understanding. Let’s not rush anything; maybe you aren’t completely sure, or able to be. But some of us really are. Waiting for treatment is wasted treatment time.
Is this the best way for the health professionals to make sure they aren’t sued for passing anyone for surgery who isn’t prepared to sign an indemnity instead? Yes, I would sign in blood that I would rather die as a woman within a year, than have to live ever again, and for however long, as a healthy man.
Why?
Real?
Could it be anything other than Life?
Is life ever either not real or not experienced?
Do we ever experience anything other than real life?
I have been tested. For around 40 years I did not know what was wrong, why I was an outsider among men, why I wanted what I hated myself for. That was real. Very real, and very uncomfortably real. At times it tore me apart inside, it was that real. And it was life, and it was my experience. Ultimately, I failed at ‘living as a man’.
For around 18 months I tried to live a dual gendered life. To hang onto the person I loved most in all the world, to a partnership I valued above anything else, to a shared life that was safe and mutually supportive. I tried. It was life, and it was my experience, and again, ultimately, I failed. That’s two tests, thoroughly lived and experienced that could have destroyed me. What else can I try? Supposing as a woman I fail again. What else could I be, without losing reality, losing life and therefore ending experience?
This is not Real Life Experience for me. This is what happens when all the tests are already done and over. I failed at all the other options, whereas this one has given me a sense of reality, of living, that I never knew I was allowed to experience. I know what I need to complete this picture, and that knowledge gets harder to live with, without resolution, each day. And yet, without any support, I must continue, waiting for appointments for opinions, for treatment, whilst doing my best to convince the world that I am not forever in a transition, but really what I say I am.
There is nothing else. That’s what makes me so … Charing Cross!