Why I couldn't transition in South Africa

I've mentioned previously that I figured out that I'm transgender back when I was age 19, around 1990. I'd felt very uncomfortable in my own skin since puberty started around the age of 7 but I've known since I was about 5 that I feel male inside.

The difference that made me start to feel uncomfortable around age 7 was down to other kids' socialisation with me. I had this wonderful year or two around that age, between when I was able to start influencing my appearance and when the hormones hit. You see, when I was little my mother was hugely enamoured of the idea that she'd given birth to a pretty blonde daughter, so she always dressed me in pretty dresses and kept my hair long.

I didn't really know anything about anything at first but as soon as I became aware of my appearance, of gender norms, and of the differences between the way my brother was dressed and the way I was dressed, I vociferously demanded that I be allowed to cut my hair short (she wouldn't let me cut it too short though) and that I be allowed to wear t-shirts and shorts instead of dresses. My mother kind-of allowed this, but she had a lifelong pride in her achievement of giving birth to a pretty blonde girl and she assumed I would simply fit into that role. Until I told her otherwise and became a 'tomboy'.

For that bittersweet brief period I was able to pass as a boy - provided my brother didn't out me - but from 7 onwards I started to go through puberty and my body started to become obviously female, which meant that boys simply didn't want to hang out with me any more. Boys who used to quite happily play with me suddenly started to shun me because it was becoming obvious that I was physically a girl, which meant that I was left with very few friends as I don't socialise easily with most girls.

When puberty started to make major changes to my body I was devastated. Puberty is supposed to be an awkward time, but for most people it is the time when you start changing from a girl to a woman or a boy to a man, and whilst the changes might be somewhat daunting they don't feel 'wrong' to most people. However, many trans* people are desperately unhappy during puberty, anxiously crying out inside that we DON'T want to arrive at the destination our hormones are taking us as it doesn't fit at all with who we are. That was certainly my experience and it's not at all uncommon if you're trans*.

However, I had the added complication of living in South Africa. For those of you who haven't lived there, white South African culture is very paternalistic. Or at least, it was when I was going through my teens in the 1980s and 1990s. Adding to that, many white South African men have Dutch ancestry, and the Dutch are the tallest race on Earth… which means that South African men tend to be pretty tall on average. I'm 1.55m, or 5"1', which means I'm very short by female standards let alone male standards.

South African men are cruel to their shorter brethren. They cannot take seriously anyone of either gender below a certain height (in my experience, about 5"4) and they mercilessly bully short men. I was shocked by my discovery during a business management course I completed when I was 19, in which our lecturer asked all of us to write down 5 characteristics of a good leader. Most of the men (predominantly white and in their 40s) in the class wrote "he must be tall"… which means that in their eyes, a leader must be both male and tall. I presented as neither, and I knew that this meant I would never be taken seriously in South Africa due to my lack of height.

Then a couple of years later I worked for a company in Johannesburg where one of my colleagues was a man of 5"2'. He had been mercilessly bullied his entire life about his height, to the extent that he bought himself a monster truck so that he could at least feel adequate on his daily commute. Bear in mind, he was slightly taller than I am... and he'd suffered daily mockery due to being short. He was actually a nice guy, but he had no significant other in his life because nobody wanted to date a short man.

So I knew I couldn't possibly transition in South Africa under those circumstances. In fact, my height has been one of the main reasons why I have held off for so long. However, when I finally reached crisis point several months ago and decided I just couldn't carry on living as a female any longer, I really looked around me for the first time in a long time and I noticed that many of the men around me (here in the UK) are actually quite short. Some are even shorter than I am; I spotted one just today who was under 5". In fact, it's not at all unusual here in the UK to see men who are around my height.

So I'm letting go of my fear that my height will hold me back from transitioning. And as long as I don't move to South Africa, Holland or even Kenya, I should be just fine. :-)