Age 0:
I am born. Experienced doctors take one look at my genitals and declare 'female'. They slap a pink band around my wrist and an F on my birth certificate as confirmation of their diagnosis.

Age 7:
A group of boys are messing about on the roundabout.
They tell me I can't play 'cos I'm a girl. I floor the guy who says it and am made an honourary boy, the inescapable logic being, 'girls don't know how to punch like that'.

Age 8:
I'm walking the dog and some five-year-old squirt asks 'is you a boy or a girl?'
In the almost farcical minutes that follow, I assume he is talking about the dog and insist that she's a girl dog ('You thick or something? I said she's a...') while he repeats the same question endlessly, putting more and more emphasis on 'No, is YOU...?'
When I finally get his meaning I am struck dumb. My face burns with humiliation and confusion as I walk away.

Age 12:
In my first year in secondary school, all my 'creative writing' stories have been written from the perspective of a boy. A teacher becomes concerned about this and asks me why I seem to want to be a boy.
I express my complete disgust with both her and the question she asks in no uncertain terms. She puts it down to 'poor home life'. I learn that I must be more careful.

Age 13:
The boys who are my mates start taking a new interest in girls. The girls likewise show interest in the boys. By some unspoken arrangement I know cannot be part of either group in this new situation. it is the first time since I punched Danny that I am excluded from my friends' activities. I take it as another sign that i am 'other'.

Age 17:
My body begins to show the first signs of a female puberty. I conclude that I must, after all, be a girl and try to squeeze my 6' broad shouldered frame into the clothes and role I believe is required.

Age 18-19:
After just over a year of drag I realise that I'll never manage to keep it up. I discover lesbians, some of whom appear, like me, to have little or no female characteristics. I relax back into the more comfortable role of androgeny and try to discover a 'lesbian identity'.

Age 19:
Now that I'm that bit oldeer and back to dressing as I always used to I find I am being taken for some kind of pervert and thrown out of ladies toilets all over London. While dyke friends of mine - who are often far more 'classically butch' than me - seem to have far less trouble.
I start using the Gents in public places and have no more problems.

Age 22:
For the first time I discover that 'transgender' is not men wearing wigs and makeup and their wives' clothes. (For the record - that is but a minority of transvestites.) I learn that it is possible to change the physical so it comes into line with the mental. I think that maybe I have found the explanation for my 'otherness'. Hungry for information I find out all I can.

Age 24:
Despite the recognition I feel for the ideas of 'trans-ness', I do not yet take the plunge. I struggle with deep moral questions and worry 'what would I say at work......?'
I make excuse after excuse to not start the process (how would you define the start of such a process anyway?) - basically because I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F*CK I AM!!!!
But I decide it's about time I stopped whinging about the shape of my chest and the price of the surgery and get off my arse and start saving. I'm only 1/50th of the way there yet, but from little acorns and all that......

The above are just the bits of my life that stand out when I try and find evidence with which to explore what gender I am 'supposed' to be.

I have been living as some weird combination of male/female since I can remember, but I'm still searching for that glove that really fits. Maybe I'll find it and maybe I won't. But I get the feeling I'm getting nearer every year.

If you want to know about me as a person (and after all there's far more to me than an unknown gender status), go to my main home page

chest surgery
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