My mother's daughter

According to family lore, my father's family had not had any girls born into it for five generations. My father was one of four sons, and when he and one of his brothers each produced a son within a year of each other it was simply assumed that the trend would continue for yet another generation.

My mother fell pregnant again when my brother was about a year and a half old, but she miscarried at 12 weeks. She assumed that the foetus must have been female, and that there's some genetic fault in my father's family that prevents them from having daughters. She'd always wanted a son followed by a daughter but she resigned herself to the fact that her husband could only give her sons.

She fell pregnant again a few months later - with me this time - and she assumed that since her pregnancy was going well, she would be expecting another son. Little did she know how right she actually was! They decided to name me after my grandfathers… so it came as something of of a shock when I was born apparently female. So they decided to name me after one of my grandmothers instead - the one who had four sons but no daughters - and my mother was absolutely over the moon to have a daughter, and a pretty one with blonde hair and blue eyes, no less.

I've been going through some old photo negatives from the 1970s and I can see that my mother delighted in dressing me in pretty dresses when I was little. I had shoulder-length wavy blonde hair which my mother would pin back with pretty hairclips. And I remember my mother would brag about having a pretty blonde daughter (she was brunette; my father had black hair). So from the way she would dress me when I was little, and the way she would brag about me, I can tell she was very enamoured of the idea of having a pretty little girl. Not because of my value as a person, of course, but because of the increased status she perceived herself as having due to successfully producing such a gorgeous little specimen.

(No I don't mean to sound big-headed there; I'm not at all - it's just that she seemed to see me as a physical manifestation of HER prowess as a woman because SHE'D made a beautiful child. So she took all the credit; it was nothing to do with me at all, or with my father for that matter).

Anyway, as soon as I could form my own opinion on my appearance, I pushed to have my hair cut short and I started naturally gravitating towards wearing shorts & t-shirts rather than dresses. She wouldn't let me cut my hair until I was 8, but by that time I was vehemently against wearing dresses or looking 'girly'. My best friend was a boy and I'd try to convince other kids in the neighbourhood that I was a boy.

Even though I'd managed to get my hair cut relatively short and could get away with wearing what I wanted most of the time, my mother would insist on 'beautifying' me if I was invited to a party. She told me that it was simply not allowed for me to attend a party in anything other than a dress, and that I could choose to wear the dress and go to the party, or not wear the dress and stay at home. So I'd wear the damn dress, and my mother would curl my hair with her curlers, and I'd be all 'beautified' up for the damn party. I have photos of me standing in our front garden before leaving for a party, looking rather miserable and defeated because I'd just had another blazing row with my mother over being forced to wear a dress yet again.

My parents figured that I was a tomboy because I liked to dress in boys' clothes and I tended to play with boys. They didn't realise that I would tell those boys that I actually was a boy, and that I'd give them a boy's name to call me by. I had some great times with the boys in the neighbourhood when I would be free to be myself. At least, until I'd generally get outed by my brother who had a terrible knack for saying "you do realise that she's my sister" when they'd come calling for me. ;-)

(Quick interjection here: I've long suspected that childhood can be easier for FtMs than for MtFs. I suspect it would be much more difficult for a boy to play with girls and dress in girls' clothing than it was for me to do the opposite.) Moving on...

As I headed towards my teens and the trauma of puberty, I became increasingly uncomfortable with my body and the direction in which it was moving. I would hide my figure behind oversized t-shirts and I would walk with my shoulders slumped forwards to try to minimise the size of my chest. I became a Goth, wearing black all the time because the colour went with my mood. Then at 14 I said to my mother that I wanted to dye my hair black to go with my Goth image... and she said "No, you have such pretty blonde hair, it would be a shame to ruin it by dyeing it black".

Uh, ruin it?

I know from experience that you can easily dye blond hair black and then dye it back again. OK, the dyeing it back again part takes several hours, but even so, even permanent hair colours are not actually permanent; you will eventually grow them out.

So my mother didn't want me to dye my hair black, because she was enamoured of the idea of her pretty blonde daughter, and she wasn't comfortable with me changing my appearance because it would no longer fit with the way she wanted me to look.

Is it any wonder then that I never came out to her about being transgender, even though I knew four years before she died exactly what I was? Imagine how she would've responded if I told her what I intend to do to her pretty blonde daughter?