It has been far too long as I have been engrossed in surviving my final year at university. However there have been some major changes in the last month and it’s time to check-in.
In December I had a follow up appointment at the Gender Clinic and finally got the go ahead for hormone blockers - the first of which was administered three weeks ago. In much the same as surgery I think I expected the world to see a huge change in me, I certainly felt different. However the changes from hormone blockers are only things that I will notice - the cessation of menstruation, some hot flushes... But it is a step forward, and little by little I am becoming on the outside the person I feel on the inside.
It is difficult to accept the slow pace of these changes, people make much larger life decisions with less resistance. I recently got a fostering information pack and felt saddened to realise I could have a foster child faster than I could get the right hormones in my body. Surely this still all comes down to the misjudged idea that transgender is a phase, a fad, something cool to pep up your image and make you more “edgy”.
The increased awareness of transgender identities is great, if it wasn’t for transgender story lines in the media I would not have had the vocabulary to begin questioning my gender. However the cisheteronormative media have pedaled only one truth for so long - that is that if you didn’t know you were transgender as a child you can’t be transgender, and that is simply not the lived experienced of a huge amount of LGBTQIA+ people, including trans people.
You would not expect the life stories of an English and a Japanese woman to be the same, you wouldn’t expect the experiences of a single child and a child with eight siblings to be the same... why is it expected that the stories and histories of every trans person is the same? We are all unique, so let’s start sharing some of the diverse stories of transgender people. It’s time that the people with the power and the platforms to share our stories did so with honesty, without making them into a Hollywood blockbuster or a sob story, without trying to glamourise things.
Change is happening, transgender stories are being seen, but not all of them. There is a huge spectrum of transgender to be seen. It is time that transgender people who don’t pass, or who don’t want to pass had their stories shared. It’s time that trans people of colour were seen. That hairy femmes and feminine guys were seen. It’s time to be get out there and be seen.
I am brave, I am bruised I am who I’m meant to be, this is me Look out ’cause here I come And I’m marching on to the beat I drum I’m not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me - This is me, The Greatest Showman