For my bully.

I was wasting time on Facebook and thought I might look up people from my past. I clicked on my ex's profile and read some stuff. I found a comment from a woman I remember from high school, who was nice. I chuckled that she's a grandmother, and then realised that could so easily be me. I clicked on her profile, and then had a look at her friends list (there were so many!) to see if there was anyone else I once hung out with, so I could reminisce.

Then I saw you. Right there. What the fuck are you doing being the friend of someone I once cared about? You're looking back at me from the screen of my tablet. Middle aged. Balding. I see you don't share much, except your profession: Accountant. That seems... Appropriate.

While looking at your picture I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. My stomach knots. My pulse races. My body reacts viscerally, fearfully. I feel shame for feeling this way. Why can't I control my emotions?

I hate you. I hate you for singling me out for your ceaseless torment. I hate you for hitting me. I hate you for your swearing and abuse. I hate you for your scorn piled on anyone who showed friendship or kindness for me. I hate you for making my school life a misery and for making me want to die.

I fucking hate you. I especially hate you for the power you still hold over me, even 30 years later.

It's the subtle invalidations that shatter

Rachel got me thinking of the down-side of support. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but in my experience the very environments that are the most supportive and accepting can often be the most limiting and toxic for some transsexual women.

Before I go further, I've got to put up the standard disclaimer. The only life I can speak with any authority about is my own. The only thoughts that I can claim ownership for are mine. I can't talk for other people and really try hard not to. I have a very specific identity that shapes my thoughts and actions, and lots of other people have very different identities and thoughts, all of which are just as valid as mine. Just because I feel a certain way about things doesn't mean that anyone else feelings are in any way lessened, at least when those feelings are of self identity. If you're forcing an identity on someone else, well then you're fair game. This is where I get nasty, and really that's the purpose of this post.

I've made it pretty clear that I identify as female. I've been as feminine as I could without being beaten for it for my whole life (actually I've suffered more than my share of beatings), and my gender identity has been and is female. This is the core of my rejection of transgender. I don't identify as transgender because I don't feel my gender identity has changed. My sex characteristics (breasts, body hair, fat distribution, external genitalia) have certainly changed, hence my usage of the term transsexual. My gender, not so much.

Now as I acknowledged straight up, lots and lots of people don't see things the same way as I do. Lots of people are rejecting of the whole trans anything position, and will, once they find out a trans person is trans, utterly invalidate their gender identity, through abuse, aggressive mis-gendering, using deadnames, etc. These people aren't at all accepting, and they're the ones that trans people run a million miles to avoid.

More recently, coincident with the rise of transgender, there's been a rapid upswing in support and acceptance of transgender people. Lots of communities are actually quite nice to us, as long as we don't ever go to the bathroom or want a relationship, at any rate. There's been a latching on to the very concept transgender that's liberating for a whole bunch of people.

Trouble is, much of this support and acceptance is phrased along these lines:

You make an awesome woman, for a man. I would never have known.

In my somewhat limited experience, this quote summarises the length, depth, and breadth of queer thought on trans women. Accepting communities, be they transgender, gay, lesbian, BDSM, all feel pretty-much the same way about trans women. This is liberating and wonderful for trans women who identify as male, or as trans, but if you identify as female it's a poison chalice. It's a wonderfully supportive environment that is at the same utterly invalidating, and will limit your growth, forcing you to spend all your time at an awful half-way point, feeling like an imposter.

One of the really neat things about living way out in the bush in a small country town, as I do, is exactly due to it's problems. The nearest scene is many hundreds of kilometres away, and there's just no concept of trans here. Women in my town are butch, femme, dirty, clean, tall, short, fat, skinny, but unquestionably women. No subtle invalidations, ever.

She's leaving home

I've had my mind blown just a little bit this week, and been forced to revisit a whole pile of my preconceptions as a result. It started with comments appearing on my blog from the author of "parenting the transgendersexual teen", a blog focussing on issues surrounding DJs (a transsexual teenager) experiences, as viewed through the eyes of her incredibly supportive mum. Her comments were cool. She herself had had something of an education regarding language around trans people's experiences, and had changed the title of her blog as a result. All cool. I felt like perhaps the stuff I write here is perhaps doing some good.

Then last night I was browsing transsexual case law in Australia. It's something I occasionally do, as it keeps me up to date on what's going on. Years ago it was fighting around getting identifying documentation (driver's licences, passports, birth certificates) updated. These days, it's.. Parents petitioning the family court so their transsexual kids can go on hormones.

WTF. Where did this come from? Parents. Facilitating their kid's transitions. Going in to bat against an incredibly opaque and cruel bureaucracy so their kids can have a decent life.

I'm not so young. When I was a teen the accepted method of transitioning was running away, working for a while as a prostitute, pretending you weren't for your psych, saving the huge pile of money that transitioning, surgery, etc. etc. entails, living in abject poverty, and hopefully emerging from the other end of that with your sanity intact, without HIV, and without a drug addiction.

I ran away twice. Figuratively, anyway. I left school earlier than I should have so I could get a job and get away from my abusive parents. Then I had to do it all again. My girlfriend fell pregnant a few months later and I swallowed the "I'm going to buckle down and be a father" pill for a couple of years. I managed to avoid prostitution. I managed to avoid HIV. I managed to avoid drug addiction. That's not to say I didn't take drugs or have risky sex. I did, and I was incredibly lucky. I have my husband to thank for quite a lot.

Anyway, we lived in abject poverty for my twenties and thirties. While my workmates and straight friends were saving their house deposits, I was paying for psychiatrist, endocrinologist and electrologist bills. I was saving every spare penny so I could afford breast augmentation and genital surgery. I was (rather ironically) paying child support for kids that I wasn't allowed to see, at least until they were teenagers with their own agency discovering themselves. I managed to work my way through a degree part time, despite everything. My workmates see me as irresponsible, because I'm in my forties and still renting. If only they knew.

So, now I'm reading of transsexual kids who's parents are determined and tough and fucking incredible, going up against a bureaucracy that's intent on causing as much harm to kids as it can, and paying legal and medical bills in the tens of thousands, so their kids can live normal lives and not go through the years of hurt and pain that my generation did, and it makes me want to laugh and cry and punch the air with the joy of it all.

Anyway, I just wanted you guys to know that what you're doing is just. fucking. amazing. Power to you.

The standard narrative

The issues I've been having with my GP of late has me critiquing my relationship with the gender industry over the years. And then it's had me critiquing my own actions, and wondering how I've shaped my own recollections and thus myself now due to the need to conform to the standard narrative.

The standard narrative is a stereotypical storyline that transsexual people (transsexual women in particular) often report. You'll see and hear elements of the narrative on supportive news reports. Conversely less supportive news reports about a transsexual women will highlight the areas where her experience clashes with the narrative. Think before picture in army uniform.

The narrative isn't something that transsexual women own. It's imposed on us by the psycho-medical establishment, primarily as a filter to limit the number of transsexual women who were able to access treatment. It was created primarily to protect society from an onslaught of, in the sexologists and psychiatrists minds, men in dresses.

Some of the elements of the standard narrative:

• Rejecting your assigned sex at as early an age as possible - preferably as a toddler. Presenting at a gender clinic as early as possible, with extra points awarded for showing up before adulthood.
• Stereotypical feminine play and mannerisms as a kid. Making a bee-line for the dress ups, playing tea party with your dolls, make believe, barbie, pink.
• Rejecting "boys" activities such as football and rough play. Being bullied as a result.
• Being into boys, but in a very measured way. Importantly not being attracted to women, and not bisexual or asexual or slutty. Demure, feminine, liking cock but being shy about it.
• Physical femininity and attractiveness. Bonus points if your shrink can't believe you're in possession of a penis.

So the narrative is essentially a slavish adherence to a nineteen fifties view of femininity, viewed through a misogynist lens. Stepford wives. Old white cis men like Harry Benjamin, who studied us transsexual freaks in the 1960s and wrote all the seminal papers and books on the topic, essentially decided who was legitimate and who wasn't based on whether or not we gave them a boner.

Of course transsexual women aren't generally stupid, or at least any more stupid than cis people. We are reasonably quick to cotton on to the rules of the game, and we "adjust" our stories accordingly. Everyone has all sorts of life experiences, so by being a little selective, fudging bits here and there, you can make your history fit what the listener wants to hear, and as a result get exactly what you want.

There's even an on-line test, called the COGIATI, that you can use to help hone your answers to the sort of bullshit stereotyping questions you're likely to hear. "Oh, I'm hopeless with navigating. I can never figure out which way up to hold the map!", and "I love stories!". Yeah, you get the gist.

By the time I had dealings with the industry in the nineties, things were getting rather nuanced. The shrinks had cottoned on to the idea that people were gaming their system, so you had to be really careful that you didn't overdo it. I found, for example, that deliberately wearing jeans to counselling sessions would get my shrink to go on about "modern women" quite nicely, and tell me I "looked like his daughter". Because that mattered. Of course I made sure to still occasionally wear a skirt, as I didn't want to push the boundaries too far.

In my experience, my level of femininity has varied a lot. It's the primary tool that I employ to ensure that I'm correctly gendered. Early on, as a young adult who was eminently springable, I wound up the gender cues to help people along. After a while on the gear, I found I could relax quite a bit without people misgendering me, and developed my own style and presentation. Getting past the gatekeepers was a huge help, as I no longer had anyone to satisfy but myself.

From everything I've read of late, it's not as bad as it used to be. Young transsexuals don't have quite as much reading and learning to do as we did in my time. Still, knowing what you're likely in for doesn't hurt.

Raising a glass to Kevin

Today's my wedding anniversary. I've been married to my wonderful man now for right on nine years. Prior to that we were engaged for nearly ten years. That's a long time to be engaged, I know.

The reasons were all legal. Kids these days don't really understand how much society just refused to acknowledge or accommodate trans people even just a few years ago. I feel like so much of my early life was spent arguing, writing letters, pushing, to get the most basic rights. Its easy to forget these days, but a whole lot of stuff that we can take for granted was fought for, by a whole lot of people.

When I initially transitioned, finally finding a sympathetic GP to refer me to a decent shrink etc., and officially getting on the hormones, the next step was to change my name and update my ID. Changing my name was straightforward. Here in Australia you can do so via deed poll. Changing everything else... Not so much.

So like a lot of trans people then, I got good at harassing bureaucracies. When an initial request to change details was refused, I'd try another tack. I'd write letters, engage allies, push, write more letters...

Anyway, I wasn't the only one. Kevin (not his real name) was also doing his bit, and in a big way. Kevin was pissed off that the law wouldn't allow him to marry his girlfriend, so he took the government to court, and won. In a ground breaking judgement of the family court, justice Chisholm found that Kevin was male, and could therefore marry. The government of the time didn't like it, so appealed to the full bench of the family court, where the original decision was upheld, creating incredibly powerful precedent that's been used worldwide ever since.

It took another couple of years (more letter writing) before Victoria changed their laws to allow transsexual people to get amended birth certificates, but when the did, I did so and married my man soon after. So every year since, on July 22, we raise a glass to Kevin, who made it all possible.

Here's hoping that everyone can soon marry their partners, regardless of sex.

Craving community

So this is where I admit to the limits of my assimilation. As I've mentioned previously I don't disclose my transsexual past to my neighbours, my workmates, my friends, or anyone in my town or even in this whole state, with the exception of my husband, and my GP, who is in Perth, a full day's drive from where I live.

Much as I hate to admit it, that can be a problem. I often have trans thoughts and ideas rattling around my head, and no sensible way to get them out. I can have a go at talking with my hubby, but he's a much more straightforward person than I am, so generally I'll not really get much past "that's nice, dear".

It used to be easier. When I was younger I lived in Sydney. When I wanted to connect with other trans people I'd ring one of the few trans friends I had that had made it through the vetting process (young like me, assimilationist, not clingy), and organise stuff. It could be a night on the town, or just lunch, or whatever. It worked well. I'd work some stuff out of my system, so would they, and we'd go home happy. A really good arrangement.

I also read. Voraciously. If you've written a book on teh trans, I've probably read it. Like all of us, I'm trying to figure myself out, and reading other people's words helps. I don't just confine myself to trans authors though (truth be told the retelling of the standard narrative often makes my skin crawl), I also like to read more critical works, by partners of trans people, both supportive and horrified, by radical feminists, by anyone.

So now that I'm living in the sticks, community is a little harder to come by. The Internet is an obvious place to find people to bounce stuff off, but because things are so open on the net there's a very real risk of losing cis privilege in real life.

You may not have come across the term cis privilege before. All dominant groups have privilege, with white males being the obvious example. Cis (non-trans) people also have privilege, being able to go about their lives without their gender ever coming into question.

It's reasonable to ask then how I, as a transsexual woman, have cis privilege. It's simple. Although I'm transsexual, I'm cisgendered. I don't display any particular gender variance. I fit most of the established norms of accepted femininity pretty well, and don't scare the horses. So as long as I never disclose, I get to enjoy all the yummy and delicious benefits of cis privilege.

That's conditional, of course. If people find out I'm transsexual, I'm fucked. So hence the quandary with the whole seeking community on the net thing. People on the net can be really nasty. Or just really clueless. So you've got to take precautions. It's fairly straightforward to do, and I'm sure plenty of people employ many of the same techniques as I do to maintain anonymity. It just involves a level of compartmentalisation. Keeping a separate account for teh trans stuff, using a pseudonym, never looking at any trans websites on the work computer or even via the work network, etc. Sometimes I've got to hold back on sharing details that could identify me in real life, but that's a relatively small price to pay.

It doesn't mean you can't get close to people. There are a good dozen people around the world that I've met on forums (my husband Betty) who I've met in real life while travelling. Like the transsexual friends I have back in Sydney, I trust them. It works well for me.

That to me would be success.

I've been spending a fair bit of time of late putting my CD collection on the computer, as one does. It's prompted me to revisit many of my eighties favourites. As a child of the seventies, I was a teenager during the eighties, when some of the best music ever was made. INXS, Dire Straits, Foreigner, The Bangles, Cyndi Lauper. All awesomely wonderfully good stuff.

Two artists particularly stand out for me, because they released incredibly good albums that really resonated with my mood and my angst right when I was particularly moody and angst-ridden. The Pretenders and Suzanne Vega. As a fifteen year old, I bought an LP of The Pretenders "Get Close". Two tracks on there blew my mind. My Baby, and Hymn to Her. From My Baby:

I want you to love me, That's all I want from you
I want you to love me, One day

I know I'm a peasant, dressed as a princess
But that doesn't mean you have to take my clothes away

If I could show you some happiness
Then I would feel like a real princess

That to me would be success

Now Hymn to Her felt like Chrissy Hynde saw straight through my charade and wrote a song just for the real me:

Let me inside you, into your room
I've heard it's lined with the things you don't show

Lay me beside you, down on the floor
I've been your lover, from the womb to the tomb

I dress as your daughter when the moon becomes round
You be my mother when everything's gone

Yeah, there was plenty of shit inside of me that I was never showing anyone, then. This song was like an anthem for my hidden feelings, and I played it over and over.

At much the same time Suzanne Vega comes along and releases her self titled album. From "Small Blue Thing":

Today I am a small blue thing
Like a marble, or an eye

With my knees against my mouth I am perfectly round
I am watching you

And from "The Queen and the Soldier":

The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more"
The queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before
And slowly she let him inside.

He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill
And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill
But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will
Only first I am asking you why."

...

And she said, "I've swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside, and often I've bled"
He laid his hand then on top of her head
And he bowed her down to the ground.

"Tell me how hungry are you? How weak you must feel
As you are living here alone, and you are never revealed
But I won't march again on your battlefield"
And he took her to the window to see.

...

But the crown, it had fallen, and she thought she would break
And she stood there, ashamed of the way her heart ached
She took him to the doorstep and she asked him to wait
She would only be a moment inside.

Out in the distance her order was heard
And the soldier was killed, still waiting for her word
And while the queen went on strangeling in the solitude she preferred
The battle continued on

I rather liked that she had him killed at the end. It was somehow proper.

Back to My Baby. The last couple of verses go something like this:

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon baby, take my hand
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon show me to the love land

Can this really happen in this day and age
Suddenly to just turn the page, like walking on stage
My baby

There's a slowly rising audience cheering just after "Like walking on stage" that still gives me goosebumps. They just don't make music like this any more.

Anyway, buy these two CDs, listen to them over and over for the next six months, and then you'll understand just a tiny bit of where I'm from.

And that to me would be success.

Developing identities

Did you keep a journal or diary as a child? Have you ever read what you wrote years down the track and been surprised or even shocked by your own naivety and cluelessness? I know I certainly have. Back when I was a teen and young adult, when my life was topsy turvy and ever changing, I occasionally wrote my thoughts down, much like I am right now. No blogs of course, because there were no blogs back then, but there were still plenty of ways to jot your thoughts down.

People grow through a process of negotiation. Even straight teenagers spend years pushing boundaries, finding out where they can and can't go. Exploring.

Same for transsexual teens. But different. Because trans teens get to hear the word "no" so much more often than cissexual teens. If you don't know WTF I'm talking about when I say cissexual, then I recommend you go read "Whipping Girl", by Julia Serano, possibly the smartest transsexual person I've ever come across. But I digress. Looking back now at the stuff I wrote all those years ago, I'm more than a little dismayed. Where now I feel my identity is and always has been rock solid, back then it wasn't always so. More than that, the language has changed as well.

So in one entry I might write that I wish I was a girl. In another I wonder if I'm gay. The word "tranny" comes up, too, a word that these days has really offensive connotations, but clearly didn't for me in the eighties, as is obvious from the context. Declarations of a female identity are much more sparse than I remember.

These days I've had many, many years of socialisation as an adult woman reinforcing my female gender identity. Then it wasn't the case, so my language, even in private, is a whole lot less sure. More pleading. Desperate even.

The internet is a boon for trans people. It gives us a place where we can interact with other like minded people, where we can forge weird dysfunctional communities which we can draw support from. But I fear that the permanence of what we write here is not good. I wonder where my own identity would be these days if I was constantly reminded of the things I'd written at a point where I just had no idea. Where's the encouragement for evolution of thought, for growth.

I remember being disgusted by Trudy Kennedy, the psychologist who ran the Monash gender clinic back in the nineties, when she told me that I should do my best to avoid other trans people. These days I look back at that statement and see a different side. A side that allows for growth beyond a trans identity.

Anyway, another celebrity has announced that they're transitioning. The media coverage is comprehensive and makes me want to throw things, because they're trotting out the same gumph that they always have, and the discourse, which I felt had been making a little progress, has taken a whole lot of steps backwards.

The media will pay attention for as long as there's drama. Then they'll lose interest. So the world will get another dose of the pathetic clueless trans person, and have their prejudices reinforced. Again.

My Seventh Birthday

There's been a lot of talk of late about reparative therapy, in the wake of Leelah Alhorn's suicide.

I thought it might be good to add my own voice to the chorus of people speaking out against reparative therapy.

So for me the whole thing starts when I was six years old. That wasn't when my gender identity formed - it was simply when it got the point where my parents sought professional "help" about it.

As a pre-schooler I was unashamedly feminine. I played with dolls whenever I could get my hands on them. My world was one of make believe and stories. When we did dress-ups in kindergarten I made a beeline for the fairy princess outfit. I was often in trouble with my parents (mum mainly - dad coped by staying at work), but it was generally reasonably benign.

By six year's age though, things were getting a touch more serious. My femininity, which until then could be written off as cute, was now starting to get embarrassing for my parents. I was doing it in public and that just wasn't on.

Interestingly enough, I don't think the concept of me being transsexual crossed my parent's minds. They were scared I might turn out gay. So they got me a referral to a pediatric psychologist, and along we went.

The psychologist was nice enough. I had no idea at all why we were there and wasn't at all phased. I remember playing while he watched and asked questions about what I was doing. Then I got to sit in the waiting room for ages while he talked to mum. It was mum's manner when she came out that makes me remember the day. She was clearly angry and determined, with a real set to her features, and she wasn't in a mood to talk.

My relationship with my mum until then, despite being yelled at with some regularity about different things, was pretty good. I'm the youngest of four, and had mum all to myself for a couple of years when my next eldest brother went off to school. During that time we did lots of things together. Shopping, housework, playing. All good stuff. I remember we'd go to a big department store in the city every couple of weeks and I'd get a bucket of chips and a multi-coloured jelly in a cup for lunch. Good times.

The good times pretty-much ended on that day. As an adult, having read widely, I can fairly accurately surmise exactly what was said to mum in the psychologist's office that made her so angry. Gender identity was a sexy, new, exciting branch of psychology back in the seventies. One of the pioneers in the field was John Money, who quite literally wrote the book on trans and gay kids.

Money's thesis was that "gender role" (what these days we'd call gender identity) is primarily influenced by nurture, and that gender role may be shaped accordingly. Much of his research was done on David Reimer, a cisgendered boy who suffered severe burning to his penis as an infant during a botched circumcision. When approached by David's parents, Money told them to raise David as a girl. That David utterly rejected this was glossed over in Money's research.

In any case, the "cause" for trans and gay kids was over-attachment to their mother. My mum had been lectured by the psych, telling her that everything was essentially her fault, and that the only way she could "save" me from being gay was to consistently and systematically come down hard on any "effeminate" behaviour.

Starting that day, my relationship with my mum changed dramatically. Where previously we'd gotten along well, now she was deliberately cold and distant. The idea was that feminine behaviour would be punished by withholding affection, and masculine behaviour would be rewarded by providing affection. I never really got past the withholding affection bit though. My dad was as distant as ever, so I was basically alone. My siblings cottoned on to the new way of things, so like some perverse experiment I was rejected by the whole family.

My reaction to this is much what any six year old would do. I hid my femininity and tried desperately to get affection, by being a right brat, which really only made things worse. The new relationship (or lack of) was spelled out pretty well for me on my seventh birthday. My parents had gotten so good at ignoring me that they forgot my birthday all together. Oh well.

The results of this are stark. My gender identity hasn't changed one whit. What has changed though are my attitudes. I have no respect for authority. I have no love for my parents and siblings. I am very stubborn and self-dependant. I do not ask for nor expect help, ever. I'm very cynical.

What have my parents gotten from this? Nothing.

So if you're a parent of a potentially trans or gay kid and you're reading this, ask yourself this: What are you trying to achieve? Do you really want a broken family and to be told by your child to go fuck yourself at the very first opportunity? Or do you want to be a part of a family that's nurturing and accepting and loving?

Your choice.

The incredible irony of the successful trans woman - how age of transition affects your perspective.

Today I read a piece about Catherine McGregor in the Guardian. Cate is, by all accounts, a stupendously successful trans woman. She's a recipient of the Order of Australia, Group Captain in the Royal Australian Air-Force. While working for the Australian Army she was director of the Land Warfare Studies Centre, and since then has been strategic advisor and speech writer for the chief of the Australian Defence Services.

Cate rubs shoulders with politicians, industry heads and other assorted bigwigs. She's done numerous television and radio interviews, written a book on cricket, and she's responsible for the famous "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" speech by Chief of the Australian Army David Morrison on sexism within the forces.

Wow. such great stuff. She's clearly an amazing woman and a role model for trans people everywhere.

One could be forgiven for reading this stuff and concluding that life is indeed roses for trans people. I mean if a trans woman can make it to the upper echelons of the ADF, things can't be that bad...

Except. Cate transitioned in 2013, at the age of 55. Cate made it to director of the Land Warfare Studies Centre pre-transition. She was awarded the Order of Australia pre-transition. She did, well, most everything, pre-transition. Since transition she's mainly been notable as being Australia's highest ranking trans person. Her role has changed dramatically to a PR one.

So yes, she's successful, indeed incredibly successful. But only because she hid her transsexuality. She's successful in spite of her transsexuality.

Many years ago, I read a throw-away line from someone on an internet forum: "Early transitioners face discrimination before transition, and assimilate afterwards. It's the opposite for late transitioners." This rang really true for me. As a child, and most especially as a teen, I really copped it from all angles because of my complete inability to hide my gender identity. My parents, classmates, teachers... It reached something of a crescendo around transition, where I spent a year or so being visibly trans, then faded away as I assimilated. I think the converse happens for people who are able to cope as teens. They get by, are even stratospherically successful like Cate. But the consequences of this success are that they'll have much more difficulty assimilating post-transition. They'll often be visibly trans the rest of their lives, or simply have so much baggage from before transition that they can't get past.

These days, it's the late transitioners that get all the attention. You could be forgiven for thinking that trans people were one big awkward monolithic group. Of course that's not my experience. From where I sit we all come at this from very different directions, with different goals, different assets, different liabilities, and different outcomes. It's just that this one group, through a combination of weight of numbers, visibility, continuing angst, money, and relative privilege, get all the airplay and dominate the discourse.

I subscribed to a new internet TV streaming service recently, because they had a series that I'd been hearing about all over the place, Transparent. It's the story of a 64 year old transitioner, and the struggles both she and her family face as she goes into the world as a woman. Heartwarming stuff, I'm sure, but where I was looking for kinship I found nothing.

Of course my perspective comes not just from transitioning in my twenties. I carry an enormous chip on my shoulder as a member of generation X as well. I don't have a lot of respect for the boomers, a generation that I feel has had everything handed to them on a plate. Cheap housing, free university education, medicare, you name it. I'm from a generation that's had to fight (and pay) for the scraps. Doubly so when you're young and trans.

The perspective from the other side of the fence though appears to be very different. Where I see two very different groups, late transitioners speak of "spectrums". They see us as all the same, with the same needs and the same challenges.

The modern language bears this out, most specifically the rise of the word "transgender" over the last twenty years or so. When I was young, there were fairly distinct groups of people, and the divisions between who was what were based almost entirely on self identification. Transsexuals had a specific grouping, with our unhealthy dependence on the medical industry. Cross dressers had very different needs, and only occasionally crossed the fence and realised they were transsexual. Drag queens were a whole other animal. Likeable but very much gay guys. Nobody had ever heard of transgender.

Then along comes this new word, which the bureaucrats and doctors love, because it makes it possible to lump all the freaks into one easy subset, and suddenly my GP is calling me "transgendered". This is not a word I've ever used to describe myself. Late transitioners though appear to have latched on hard to this new word. I guess it gives them a means to reconcile their crossdressing past with their transsexual future. It breaks the rigidity of transsexual and allows for quite a lot of slipperiness.

I wouldn't be so annoyed except that there's now a concerted effort to erase the word transsexual from the vocabulary. Again, the late transitioners are sucking all the air from the room. We're told, somewhat ironically, that transsexual is pathologising, that it's vocabulary that's been pushed onto transsexual people by the medical community. From where I sit, that's exactly the case for transgender.

I guess for me, the key distinction is on how you identify. If your core gender identity is female (for someone assigned male at birth), well then you're transsexual. If it isn't, you're not. It doesn't matter what surgeries you have or haven't had, what shape your genitals are, or what sex those you love are. What matters is simply how you identify, honestly, deep down inside.

As for Cate, I admit I'm a little jealous of her success. But then I'm sad for her, too, for her missed opportunities. I'm sad she had to lie to everyone for so very long.

Things that Really Matter - Hair

I'm like Samson. I derive all my power from my hair. I'm really blessed in having quite an awesome, unmanageable, thick mane. Rich and dark and just wavy enough to occasionally drive me nuts.

But it's mine. It's my most treasured thing. I don't joke.

When I was a small child in the seventies, hair was the strongest gender marker I knew of. Little kids are essentially sexless until puberty hits, so the instant marker of boy or girl was length of hair. Girls had long hair, boys short.

Many of my early battles with my parents were over my hair. We disagreed vocally over how long it was, and how long it should be. The battle would invariably end with me at the barber, sitting silently crying while the poor hairdresser inflicted the damage, my mum standing over them scowling to make sure they did as they were told. Short back and sides. Ouch.

As a little kid when I played with the girl next door, I'd often nick a tea-towel and tie it around my head. When challenged by my mum, I learned quickly to tell her I was pretending to be an Arab, or else to pull it off when she came in the room. But of course in the make believe that we were weaving, playing tea parties with her dolls and my bears (I wasn't allowed dolls) we were mums, or princesses, or movie stars, and my tea towel was my wonderful Farrah Fawcett long hair.

Later on my hair (I guess in conjunction with my general femininity) would get me in trouble at school, too. Not straight away. Kids aren't inherently cruel. They take time to learn bigotry from their parents. But by age 12 or so, my hair was weaponised. In the Australian suburban schoolyard, it marked me as a "poof". I stopped, for a few years, complaining so much when I was told to get my hair cut.

So fast forward another couple of years and hair started becoming my nightmare. Not the hair on my head, but everywhere else. I started getting hair on my legs, my arms, my face. I despaired. Puberty can be a tough time for many kids. When you're trans though, it's like your whole body is out to get you.

If I ever meet the person who invented laser epilation, I'm going to kiss them. They are my greatest hero. I was incredibly lucky transitioning in a time when laser hair removal was just getting started. I went to town. My face, underarms, bikini line and legs all got a thorough zapping. It was an amazingly painful process that kept me in abject poverty for a good few years, but so amazingly worth it.

As for the hair on my head, pretty-much as soon as I got out of my parent's house I started to grow it out. I spent most of my twenties with a Betty Page do. Severe fringe, thick and black. Or red, when I had money for dye.

Now I'm in my forties, I'm seeing my peers, one after another, cutting their hair. I'm going grey, but I fully intend on rocking that and being the crazy old lady with the stupidly long hair. After all, it's where I derive all my power.

On disclosure

I recently read a surprisingly hateful opinion piece on "stealth" transsexuals, written by someone who I'd have thought should know better, Dallas Denny.

The intended audience for the piece is clear from the surrounding advertisements for breast forms. I'm not thinking transsexual women are her audience, let alone transsexual women who choose not to disclose their past.

Following links, I see there's a whole collection of articles at the Transadvocate site:

• Stealth Doesn't Help the Trans Community
• The Many Shades of Stealth
• A Rant About MtF Stealth

And I go on. For the uninitiated, stealth is a trans community term to refer to moving on after transition and deliberately distancing yourself from your past, of refusing to disclose the intimate details of your history with colleagues and friends, and even occasionally lovers. It's somewhat analogous to being in the closet for a gay or lesbian person, but comes after being out through transition, and has its own unique set of challenges and benefits depending on the individual.

Dallas' thesis, along with the other attacks, appears to be broken down into several (well worn) parts:

• That stealth is inauthentic.
• That living a stealth life is inherently selfish.
• That stealth destroys trust.
• That all stealthy trans women must be "hyper vigilant" lest their "secret" be revealed.

I'm calling bullshit.

I mean really guys, picking on stealth trans women? You go! It's the one demographic that probably won't read your piece, and even if they do won't be in a position to reply, let alone organise.

Much like kicking a puppy. It's easy, the puppy is unlikely to bite back, but is it a good thing to do?

Let's work through each of the four arguments:

Stealth is inauthentic.

As always, each of us is able to speak only to his or her own experiences. We filter those experiences through our own sense of identity. My identity (and the reason that I strongly prefer the term transsexual - meaning someone who identifies as the sex opposite that which they were assigned at birth - to transgender - someone who transgresses social gender norms) is strongly female. At the same time, I'm not delusional. I know that I was born with male genitalia and was assigned male, and that I most likely (though I haven't checked, have you?) have XY chromosomes.

But I'm talking identity. My gender identity is female. It's not trans.

Just roll that sentence around a little. Go back over it, read it again. I identify as female. That's why I'm transsexual, because I was assigned male at birth but identify as female.

So, given that, according to my little head, I'm female, where's the authenticity in telling people I'm not? How exactly does that work? How does that help my sense of worth, of authenticity?

I suspect that Dallas is making the same mistake that we all make, of gendering others based on our preconceived notions of gender. She sees trans woman and fixates on the trans part. For her that's the important stuff. After all, it appears to be a really big part of her life. Just a teeny, tiny pity that it completely invalidates so many other people's identities and lived experiences.

Onto the selfish part.

I make contributions to society. I have a pretty rewarding professional career. I pay my taxes. I mentor young professional women in my organisation and am active in my workplace diversity committee. I'm active in my local small town community, and get along quite well, thank you very much. I'm socially progressive and see myself as a strong ally for LGBT people.

Now for some speculation. If I disclosed my transsexual history to my colleagues I very-much doubt I'd be in the position I'm in. I transitioned in my early twenties, before starting my career. I don't have the decades of male privilege that so many of the holier-than-thou late transitioners carry to get them to their successful places.

I know how my workmates and friends view LGBT people. They're not actively nasty, but their idea of trans people isn't that far past Priscilla. I'm absolutely certain that if I'd been open to all and sundry and confessed my transsexuality throughout my career, I, well, wouldn't have a career. I'd never have gotten the job in the first place. I'd be living in a trans ghetto somewhere on the dole, or working a menial job and fearing the sack.

Ironically, one of the things that would make it hard for me to maintain a decent job is my own dysphoria. Back when I was a child and teen, being continually misgendered really did my head in. It made it incredibly difficult to function. Think drug and alcohol abuse. Suicide attempts. Ungood stuff. Living authentically (by not disclosing) has allowed me to really blossom.

Frankly, I'm successful because I don't disclose.

Destroying trust

The trust one is an interesting thought. I confess to not really understanding what Dallas is getting at. I suppose if one comes at the whole thing from the position that transsexual women aren't "really" women, then claiming oneself is female does indeed destroy trust. Gets us back to the authenticity argument. I feel I'm living authentically by not disclosing. My perception of gender might be different to yours. I'm afraid you're going to have to deal with it.

There's really only one person in my life who deserves to know my past, and that's my husband. For our relationship it's important. He knows why I can't have (more) kids, and he's okay with that. For everyone else, what has or hasn't been between my legs is none of their business.

Hyper Vigilance

So the last bit of Dallas' thesis is the hyper vigilance one. The "they're going to find out eventually, might as well out myself straight away" bit.

A lot of people view the sexes almost as different species. The whole "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" thing. I see these attitudes professionally. "Such and such can't be good at math, she's a girl!" It's the foundation upon which a whole lot of misogyny is based.

In truth, there's not a hell of a lot of physical difference between men and women. Men on average are taller. Men on average are heavier built, and often have bigger feet and hands. Women are in general less hairy, shorter. Men most always have penises. Women most always have vaginas and breasts.

Everybody has nipples, though.

Sex differentiation in humans happens both in the womb, where the genitals and reproductive system form, and from puberty, where secondary sex characteristics (breasts, voice, body hair, musculature, height) develop. The puberty process isn't a sudden switch though. It happens gradually, over more than a decade.

I transitioned in the stone ages. The very early nineties. I went through the rather infamous Monash Gender Clinic, in Melbourne. At the time many transsexual people (myself included) got going in their transitions fairly promptly, or else were shown the door by the clinics. I personally got onto a program at about 22 years of age. I'd been doing illicit hormones of one form or another for about 18 months before I got the courage up to talk to a doctor.

In any case, when you transition in your teens or early twenties, unless you're really unlucky, you're not going to be strongly sexed one way or another. So it's easier.

In my own case transition was tumultuous. They usually were back then. I lost my job not long after and decided to go back to uni. The university was in another state, so I packed my bags and made a fresh start. By that point I was happily out of the clockable phase. No one asked. I never told. I got my birth certificate changed as soon as I was legally able and the old one is sealed. The way the program worked at Monash you never really met other transsexual people. I had a few friends, but aside from the trans thing we didn't really have anything in common and went our separate ways.

Fifteen years ago, when I was in my late twenties, I was riding a bicycle and was hit by a car. I was knocked out and woke up in hospital. I guess you could say I wasn't exactly at my best in terms of presentation. No dramas though. Not a hint of anything untoward.

Like many young transitioners I have no past to google. I'm not unusually tall, or unusually muscular. I have no Adams apple and don't have a particularly prominent brow ridge or jaw. I'm not particularly attractive, but I'm also not unattractive. I am exactly what you see. No more, no less.

But then, I'm not Dallas' readership. I have no use for breast forms.

I guess in conclusion we all have to remember that we come from different perspectives. Each of us has their own unique identity and set of circumstances, and it's really nasty to dismiss people as inauthentic because they don't fit your ideas of what an activist should be. I'm all for activism, but frankly I draw the line at martyrdom.

Oh Hai!

So here I am. I've created a vanity blog.

I guess if it's all about me, I should talk about myself then. I'm a forty-something professional, mother of two wonderful children (now adults) from my previous marriage. I'm onto my second go now, and have been happily married this time for getting on to ten years. My hubby is wonderful and patient and we have a really strong healthy relationship. We live in a wonderful house in a small town with our seriously spoilt cat.

I'm Australian, and am a fan of Australian Rules football, having been born in Melbourne, the home of footy. Fair warning. I'm a proud Collingwood supporter, so I have very biased views on the game.

I love the outdoors, I love music, and have an enormous collection of sad eighties pop and rock. I'm an unashamedly great cook, and subscribe to the Maggie Beer philosophy on food, with a deep appreciation of traditional provincial recipes and slow food. I have rather more well-used Le Creuset enamelled cast iron pots than is perhaps healthy, and as a result we're all (including the cat) a little overweight and should look after ourselves better.

Oh, and I'm a transsexual woman.

Which gets me onto my reason for this blog. The moment you read that you formed an opinion, didn't you? I dare say an opinion that's influenced by some pretty sensationalist media. By the Daily Telegraph, perhaps? A little bit of "Orange is the New Black", maybe some of that Jenner person from the Kardashians? Perhaps some "Transparent"? Oprah? All so, utterly wrong.

When you wander around the internet, in my experience you encounter three broad groupings of trans people. Our "public face", if you will:

• Professional trans people. Jennifer Boylan is the example that springs straight to mind. She's an established academic who transitioned in her forties as a professor of English Literature, did a couple of spots on Oprah and Larry King, wrote a memoir and cashed in on her notoriety.
• Celebrities. When I was young it was Boy George and Tula. Now it's more likely Laverne Cox or Andreja Pejic. Oh so representative.
• The publicly transitioning and genderqueer. This is two groups, I know, but from the outside they can be hard to separate. They fill forums and blogs with drama and agony. Relationships going south, unemployment, discrimination, bad things.

Anyway, there's a fourth group, and I'm a member of that group. We live next door to you in suburbia. You don't know we're transsexual and you never will. We live our lives and go to work and get on with it just like you do. We're just as boring as you are.

So more on me. I had a pretty rough childhood due to gender stuff. As a result I'm estranged from my parents and most of my siblings. I haven't seen or talked to my parents in more than twenty years. My mum passed away a couple of years ago (I didn't go to the funeral) and I was relieved more than sad. Relieved that the one sibling who I do maintain vague contact will give up on his periodic attempts to reconcile the family.

Anyway, like a surprisingly large number of queer kids I got in trouble as a teen, had a couple of babies, and did the shotgun wedding thing. Like most queer kids in that situation it didn't stick. Getting married only postponed the inevitable, and then only by a couple of years. I divorced and transitioned at 23, went back to uni, got my shit in a pile and made a decent life for myself.

So now the only person who I have any regular contact with in real life that knows I'm transsexual is my husband. My kids have moved on and live a long way away, and I've got a ruthless knack for cutting ties.

So yeah, that, in a nutshell, is me. Anything that could identify me in real life carefully omitted. Names changed to protect the innocent and all that.

I'm often frustrated by what I read regarding trans subjects, and occasionally wish I had a place to air my views. I hope this is it.