@upandoutcomic 1/ Thanks for asking this, because the answers illustrate wonderfully how there are so many #trans #diversities, often experienced with such intensity.
@upandoutcomic 2/ My answer is like the stereotype few believe. Which is hard. And I remember it well too, which again few believe.
I was 2, & being pressed to "be a boy" for the 1st time, & not liking that. My dad & his mom were criticising me, & my mom for me not being "like a boy". It was…
I was 2, & being pressed to "be a boy" for the 1st time, & not liking that. My dad & his mom were criticising me, & my mom for me not being "like a boy". It was…
@upandoutcomic 3/…1950, so no TV. There were no boys around - no neighbours, all my cousins girls. There was a family wedding, & they'd cut my hair for the first time, literally using a pudding basin, the night before. They'd put me in little tailored shorts, with an uncomfortable waistband,…
@upandoutcomic 4/…& a shirt with a bow tie, which was tight. At the reception, in our garden, the men & the women were all sitting separately for some reason, the women occupied with children, food, chatter. My mom, after a while, sent me to "be with the men", which felt really…
@upandoutcomic 5/…uncomfortable all round. My dad sat me on his lap & I looked around. It struck me, hard, that there wasn't a single man there, of two extended families, that I'd want to be like, whose life I'd want. When I returned amonst the women I looked around them, in comparison, &…
@upandoutcomic 6/…realised there wasn't one of them, of any age, I'd mind being, as I understood their lives. This was a very firm realisation. From then, for weeks, I thought on how I could grow up a woman, wondered quite when bodies started to grow very different, & wondered if doctors had…
@upandoutcomic 7/…a way to switch which way they grew. Eventually I figured a phrase to say how I felt, & to ask my mom, who was a nurse, to ask if doctors did have such a way. It turned out my parents weren't surprised. Unfortunately it was 🇬🇧, & the response from doctors was to instruct…
@upandoutcomic 8/…my mom to discourage it, but if it persisted they'd commit me to an asylum for life. So it was the whole family's protective secret, with me terrified of men in white coats, until I found an affirming psychiatrist with power to protect me from his peers, when I was 21
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