A Boy Named Sue

Why is it that, if you announce you're changing your sex, so many people automatically presume you will want to change your name to the opposite-gender equivalent of your birth name? For example, if your birth name is 'Sue', that you would automatically want to be 'Stu' instead because it's close enough to what you're already called?

I know some people do do this. Some people don't have any major dysphoria about their birth name and they seem to associate with it in some way, even if it is the wrong gender. So it would be simpler to just change to a correct-gender equivalent of their birth name, or to leave it alone if their name is androgynous enough.

But my name doesn't have a male version (although there are similar-sounding male names, similar to the 'Sue'/'Stu' example above) and more importantly, I've never felt that my name is actually a part of me. It's always been a convenient label that other people have used when they want to get my attention but it's never felt like it belongs to me - seriously, they might as well call me 'hey you' for the amount my name means to me. It's a name that belongs to other people so they have something to call me.

If I'm changing my life to honour my true identity, why would I want to retain some part of the erroneous identity my parents conferred upon me when I was born?

The fact is: I don't want anything to do with that horrible name. It's unmistakably female and it can't be lengthened or shortened to anything masculine, so I'm happy to just kick it to the kerb. But that leaves me with a bigger problem: which, of the thousands of male names available, should I select for myself?

I think I've come up with a very easy answer.

You see, when my mother was pregnant with me (back in the early 1970s) there was no way of determining the sex or gender of your unborn child. There was some folklore in my family that there had been no female children born for four generations and indeed, my father was one of four brothers, so nobody was surprised when my mother's first-born child had been a son.

So when my mother miscarried her second pregnancy a couple of years later, she presumed that that had been a daughter and that there was something wrong with my father's line which would mean she couldn't have any daughters with him. So when her third pregnancy (with me) was a healthy one, she resigned herself to the thought that she must be expecting another son… and my parents picked out a boy's name for him. They decided to name him in honour of his two grandfathers.

How right they actually were about expecting a son - only they wouldn't realise this until many years later.

Unfortunately for me, their second son was born female-bodied and so that original grandfathery name had to be abandoned. Instead they named me after my paternal grandmother (who had desperately wanted a daughter but instead produced four sons). I've always hated that old-fashioned, female name they gave me. But my grandfathers' names are perfectly acceptable even today, almost 100 years after they were named.

So when I decided to transition, the thought occurred to me that I could simply go back to the name my parents had originally intended to give me had I been born male-bodied. It seemed to fit; almost like it would help to heal part of what went wrong when I was assigned the wrong gender at birth.

So that's what I've decided to do. And I'm eternally grateful that my grandfathers weren't named 'Horace' or 'Cuthbert' or something. ;-)

Verbal Tasers

I'm looking forward to the day when people start automatically using the correct pronouns, titles and name for me rather than guessing and getting it wrong.

I've been kinda lucky recently. Living in the UK, which is generally a live-and-let-live society, I don't tend to get addressed with pronouns very often in public. I try my damndest to present as male but I don't pass well (due to my shrimpiness and my cute girly face, damnit) so people that I meet in everyday life can tell that there's something going on, even if they can't tell exactly what it is. So they just tend to serve me without addressing me directly with pronouns or as 'Madam', which is the perfect thing to do under the circumstances.

But that's not always the case. People do sometimes insist on using gender-specific titles and pronouns and every single time they do it 'zings' me like I've been shocked with a mini-taser.

• The other day I was in Boots (a British pharmacy chain) buying make-up for my very feminine elder daughter. I've been out of that particular market for so long that entire brands have been born & died since I last bought make-up for myself. So I asked one of the staff members to help me find the things on my daughter's list. She was brilliant and walked me round the shop like she was a personal shopper, but she then said "Your daughter is very lucky to have such a loving mother". Zing!
  Huh. Mother. Well, in all fairness I did fall pregnant with my babies, I gave birth to them naturally, I breastfed each of them for two years so I am definitely their parent, but do I feel like a 'mother'? No. 'Mother' is a word applied to women who have had (and/or are raising) children, and since I've never felt like a woman I don't feel that the term really fits. I'm not their 'father' either because they already have one of those, so I prefer the more neutral 'parent'.  
• Today at lunchtime I got 'madamed' by a chugger collecting on behalf of the British Red Cross. Zing! I corrected him and he apologised & wished me a good day, so that kinda defused the pain right there.
• This morning one of my colleagues greeted me by saying 'Hello Miss (Name)!'. Zing! She also tends to call me 'lovely lady'. Zing! She means well and it's just a term of endearment between colleagues who are fond of each other, but being addressed with feminine titles stings every single time.
• My kids still call me 'Mum' (which I have no plans to change) and refer to me as 'she'. Their 'she's are perfectly ok at the moment as I'm pre-everything and the habit is ingrained, but I do hope the 'she's will shrivel up naturally in time. Along with my ovaries, har har.  

Hanging with the Chinese tourists

OK, so I understand completely that it's difficult for many people to understand what it's like to be transgender. For most people, our physical sex (i.e. our set of genitals) matches our gender (the way our brains perceive ourselves to be) so it wouldn't occur to many people that some of us have a different experience. So as a public service (you're welcome!) I thought I might try to give you an analogy that could help you along.

Imagine, if you would, that you're a person of Oriental extraction living in a Western country. Say, your grandparents came over from China but your parents were both born in the USA and so were you. Your grandparents wanted their kids to be 'real Americans' (whatever that means) and so they didn't teach them any Mandarin and they encouraged them to immerse themselves in American culture. Likewise you have been raised without any real reference to your Chinese heritage since your parents didn't learn anything about it themselves. You're American through & through and although you're proud of your Chinese heritage, it is in reality rather alien to you.

With me so far? Good.

Now, imagine that you then decide to go on a foreign holiday/vacation to a country where English isn't spoken but that by sheer coincidence is also frequented by Chinese tourists.You go to visit some tourist attraction (say, a museum) because you hear there's a good guided tour and you'd really like to see the exhibits. It's a former Communist country, and of course China is still broadly Communist so the cultural relevance of this place would probably be very different to a Chinese person than it would be to an American. And more importantly, the tour would be presented very differently to a Chinese audience (so as to not cause offence by criticising Communism) than it would to an American audience (who might enjoy seeing how Communism has failed).

So you turn up a little late (the American tour group has already gone ahead), and as soon as you get there the museum officials usher you into the Chinese tour group rather than the American one. You try to protest but nobody speaks English so they can't understand that you're really an American; they see your Chinese features and perceive you as being one of the Chinese tourists. The door is locked behind you and the tour starts.

So there you are, stuck in a place that is not culturally relevant to you. The language spoken is unintelligible to your ears; you can't read any of the material; and you have no way of making people understand that you're really in the wrong group and that you're uncomfortable at being treated as something you're not. Because just look at you; you are Chinese, right? Get a grip! Get used to it! Learn to deal with it! Start acting like it already!

So people will react with shock and discomfort if you try to get them to understand that you're not what they perceive you to be. They might even feel threatened, because this particular tour group is a 'safe place' for people who are Chinese, and you're an outsider. A foreigner. One of them masquerading as one of us.

Humans love to take short-cuts in classifying people. It's part of our tribal instinct and in ancient times it helped us identify friend from foe. So people make summary judgements about you based on what you look like, so that they can pigeon-hole you into a slot that is familiar and comfortable to them. At best, this helped us keep our families safe during ancient times. At worst, it has led to Apartheid and the Holocaust.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you really are an American of Chinese ancestry who needs to be treated like the person you know you are inside (American) rather than what you look like on the outside (Chinese). And it can be uncomfortable and even dangerous when people treat you as the wrong type of person.

This is what it feels like to be transgender.

People see you as being one gender because of your physical appearance and they expect (and need, for their own comfort) you to behave like a typical person of that gender is expected to behave. However, you really are something else, and other people can react with shock, discomfort or even aggression when you challenge their suppositions.

People also tend to believe that their own perceptions are more valid than someone else's assertions, which leads them to think that they must be right about you and you must be wrong. This is especially damaging to transgender children, as we're often told that we're 'wrong'; 'weird' or 'deluded' for thinking we're not what other people perceive us to be. This leads to feelings of isolation as we start to believe what other people are telling us - especially since it's very rare for anyone to meet another transgender person whilst growing up. So it's not unusual for a transgender to child to think we're the the only person in the world who feels this way so we start to internalise what other people are saying about us being 'weird' or 'wrong'.

But I have to ask: who is the expert on 'me'? Is it you, the person who gets to meet & interact with me occasionally, or me who is forced to live in this skin every second of my life?

My lived experience of myself is far more valid than anyone else's fleeting perception. So no, I'm not Chinese. Nor am I American.

The Emperor's No Clothes

For many years - sporadically from age 5 but solidly from age 7 onwards - my mother didn't buy me any new clothes at all, apart from my school uniforms. I know I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, but I think I've just figured out the reason why she neglected me in that way.

Mum used to buy my brothers new clothes on a fairly regular basis considering the tight constraints of her budget. My elder brother was even treated to t-shirts with his favourite bands on them as a teenager (these were very expensive as they had to be imported from overseas) and my younger brother owned everything that had anything to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But she was loathe to buy anything for me.

I've just realised that she probably didn't like to buy me clothes because she didn't like my taste in clothing: specifically, my preference for wearing male clothing.

I've recently been looking through some old family photos from the 1970s and one thing struck me: every single photo of me before the age of 5 has me in a pretty, frilly dress, looking like a stereotypical pretty little girl. When my parents had sole control over what I would wear, my mother would choose to dress me solely in pretty girly things. So she made sure she chose hairstyles & clothing that showed off her 'pretty little girl'.

But after the age of 5, the photos tell a very different story: I'm wearing t-shirts & shorts or my favourite corduroy trousers (hey, it was the '70s!) in every one. That's because I'd started to notice gender differences and I insisted on being treated like a boy. And there are far fewer photos of me after the age of 5 than before.

Many of the clothes I'm wearing in those later shots were my elder brother's old things that he'd outgrown. This is because my mother would refuse to buy me boys' (or androgynous) clothes and would pressurise me to choose dresses when we'd go out clothes shopping. I'd invariably kick up a stink & refuse the dresses, so the end result was that I would wind up getting nothing at all. For years.

This went on for my entire childhood, from age 5 until I started working and could afford to purchase my own clothes at age 17. I have wondered over the years why my mother would buy clothes for my brothers but not for me (did she love them more?): but now I think the answer is simply that she wasn't comfortable that her pretty little girl wanted to look like a boy so she couldn't bring herself to buy me anything. She wanted me to be her pretty little daughter, dammit - not the masculine tomboy I insisted on being.

She did have one way of trying to force me to wear dresses: if I was invited to a friend's birthday party, my mother would insist that the only way I would be allowed to attend would be if I wore a dress. This would lead to a lot of frustrated crying and begging on my part because I really wanted to go the the party but I really didn't want to wear a dress. She wouldn't budge, so if the party was important enough I would eventually give in & wear the damn dress. She would curl my hair and try to 'prettify' me as much as she could - but if you were to see the photos from that period you'd see a pissed-off kid looking very uncomfortable. I guess she wanted her daughter back any way she could, and she thought that if only I could see how pretty I am, I would start acting like a girl. She was very wrong about that, though.

I remember having nothing but my brother's old rags to wear for years and around age 15 I was invited to perform in a school play, and my mother's pride would not allow her to let me perform on-stage in my brother's tatty old clothes. So she gave me R20 to spend on clothing and sent me into town on my own to pick out some clothes. I came back with a pair of trousers, a t-shirt and a pair of boots. All in white, for some random reason. No, actually the reason wasn't that random - it was because I hadn't been allowed to buy clothes for the past 10 years so I didn't really know what to get. I was hugely uncomfortable and anxious on that trip; almost as uncomfortable as I had been a couple of years previously when she took me out to buy my first bra (what a heartbreaking experience that was!). That was the one & only time she gave me money to buy clothes; after that I couldn't buy anything until I started working part-time at 17 and could pay for my own things.

So, yeah. My stubborn mother was so uncomfortable with me wearing even androgynous clothing that she preferred to buy me nothing whatsoever to wear. :-(