I am sick and tired of people making it sound like life as a trans person is a massive thrill ride of male privilege sunshine lollipops and rainbows. Most of the people who do so wouldn’t know the truth of transsexuality if it bit them on the ass. So I figured I’d try to tell my story so people can see what trans life is really like.

Right lets try this another way, for now I will use the term self integrity in the place of gender as in self identity, and use gender as a term to describe gender roles place in society etc. I chose the term self integrity for a reason, it is something constant and unwavering inside myself that has never changed, even as my perceptions of gender and the world around it have shifted.

Even before I knew the biological differences between boys and girls I knew who I was, I knew that parts of my body shouldn’t be there as long as I can remember. I physically had to concentrate to pee, my body responded in ways that physically repulsed me it wasn’t just feeling like a woman as you put it, that is a gross oversimplification. It is more like something felt fundementally wrong with me, like if you woke up with an extra head one morning level of dissonance, forcing me to ask questions no child of any age should ever have to ask themselves, why is my body so freakish.What the hell is wrong with me? About this point in my life gender started to be something rigidly enforced, like the entire world was trying to fix me as something was claimed to be wrong with me , but I knew who I was, and fought my little 5 year old heart out to be myself. Against such odds who could win?I was forced into a male gender , and even a toe out of line was penalised harshly, childhood toys destroyed in front of me, as I got older assaults were commonplace as people felt something off About me and were more than willing to use fists weapons spit on you sexually assault you , and any means were considered my own fault for something I didn’t even understand.

Through all this I stifled my self integrity, retreating into myself. At 10 years old I made my first suicide attempt. Tied a dressing gown cord around my neck , and the bunk beds, and jumped off. I passed out just as the cord snapped. My second attempt I was 11 years old I attempted to electrocute myself, even that had to be better than living stuck in a body that in no way belonged to me, that would never reflect who I was.

By the age of 18 I was alcoholic, suicidally depressed, and had buried myself so deeply my self integrity long since smothered by 2 sets of gender  conditioning, 1 set normal for a male of non trans origins the other set comparing myself to all those women in my life, mothers friends, family, the models on the catwalk, until something inside me broke, Seeing the perfect little stepford wives types on tv repulsed me as much as the macho men , All gender roles are complete and utter bullshit, a failing system propped up by years of misoginy. That was when I figured that out, but that didn’t make me any less a freak. My entire body was still like an ever changing monstrosity, the enemy, Eventually at 23 I learned of gender transition, and tracked down my doctor to ask for a referral. Until that point the only exposure I’d ever had to transsexual realities was sadly the jerrry springer show,was I supposed to like men? Because they did nothing for me but terrify me, then again I was scared of a lot of women too, all people hurt.

I eventually got to the gender clinic and was pleasantly surprised with the pre screening counsellor, he respected that we did not want to live our lives as eternal stereotypes, encouraged activities outside the binary gender , and reminded me of my self integrity , so deeply buried for so long. Encouraged me to be myself, above anything else. That made it extra jarring what came next, I was literally LOST for a year they lost my file and didn’t even bother contacting me. Then I got to the psychiatrist, she was obsessed with gender and forcing the roles, they wanted a satire of humanity, I had a choice, do or die. I jumped through their hoops then they decided to try to get me classed as mentally unable to decide for myself. They used my autism to try to cancel treatment and take away my physical and financial autonomy, and push me into supported accomodation.

They failed . I am still in transition, not for gender roles, those labels are bullshit but for my self integrity. For a body that physically matches and doesn’t make me miserable,

I know I’ll never have kids, and I’m OK with that even if it hurts like hell , I know that I could never ever ever have been the father of a child, the fact I will never be a mother either is something I learned to live with. Like everything else in my screwed up life,

I now dedicate my life to making sure some other kid doesn’t have to suffer through this shit. To trying to remind the gender clinics they are supposed to help the patient, forcing these roles upon them and refusing treatments until you act according to gender does NOT do that, in the end what matters is our integrity, our inner selves, if the bodies don’t match why should we be denied help? We know who we are, I am a woman of trans history and proud of it.