This is what it means to be trans to get up – in the morning, put your clothes on and face the world. This is what it means to be trans to face the world – take the car to work and drive. This is what it means to be trans to drive – and when asked for whatever reason show your licence. This is what it means to be trans to show your licence, know it represents you without questions. This is what it means to be trans to face questions – when being yourself always means different. This ..read more

Today is one of those days, the sort you are reminded of, which you would have been reminded of, but for which there is no need. It’s a mark on the calendar. On our calendar it is one of many births, marriages and deaths. This one is a birthday: my daughter is 30 today. I haven’t seen her for ten years now, so we have never known each other as adults. In those years many people have said ‘you never know, she might one day …’. But I don’t think so. Not now. This isn’t public grieving, or looking for ..read more

I come to you, not with baggage but a rolled-up carpet, a rug of dust, footprints and wear. Sometimes it unrolls – something pulls it back under my feet. I hold its pattern, heavy, marked by soles not just my own. Textures and smells return years, a memory becomes a feeling, a footprint stands out, named. You’re troubled by my silence, unseeing where I stand eyes dimmed, coursing, distant. I’m still here, but so is everything, not visiting but layered – sometimes today is not opaque enough to see; closure not what it seems. You can seal a bag, but ..read more

I’m sitting in front of the big portrait mirror, watching the incremental improvement in my hair under the expert scissors of my lesbian hairdresser. I can talk comfortably about my partner – and hers – and indeed about being trans. I told her early on, half presuming it was already obvious from my thin hair on top, my characteristic hairline, and to signal that I was OK to be identified. I started coming here on recommendation of my partner, so ‘coming out’ as gay had already been done by proxy, though it was into my first cut that I realised ..read more

It came from the supermarket, like every other time. A box of cornflakes. It went into the cupboard to wait for the last packet to be finished. It was one hurried morning on the way to other things that it was opened, bowl and milk at the ready. The flap was opened, the inner pulled apart and wheesh! Into the bowl. My bowl. Breakfast. Something was wrong and only I seemed to notice. Everyone too busy, but it was my bowl, my breakfast. The milk was already in, and I could hear it. Snap, crackle and pop is how it ..read more

I’ve nothing against trans people, but they are not … It’s fun to work out how many ways you can say a trans person is either of no gender or definitely the ‘oppposite’ of what they say they are. Isn’t it? This is a particular form of protectionism that can be very hard to understand. A justified fear of male violence leads to assumptions that all trans people (no, let’s be honest, trans women) are a potential danger. There is no evidence that this is true. Trans women are much more likely to be attacked violently than non-trans women. No ..read more

I think some people try to understand what it is to be transgender by trying to understand the words. If they can construct an argument about the words, their origins and use, they have grasped how real, people like me are. Surely, I would be happy to have made no changes to my body or life if only this social construct of gender did not exist. Yes! I could have lived happily with a male body, dressed as I wished, shaved, gone bald with age and maintained all that cut and thrust of testosterone – because no-one would have minded ..read more

As an avid blogger for over four years, I always felt there was something important to say, something that would help incrementally educate people socialised into transmisunderstanding. I hope that I did, by being a pretty ordinary person, articulate and reflective, from the inside of my own trans experience. Well, I don’t claim to be pretty, but I am still terribly ordinary. Time has passed, and being trans is no longer a significant pert of my daily experience. I have a life to live, and this was mainly something I (belatedly) sorted out. So I don’t talk about it much ..read more

In 2004 I walked into local council offices for a conversation with local officials and advisers. Somehow I had come to speak on behalf of local residents about a concerning issue. It was the first time that I realised that to show concern and act on it turned you from being ‘a concerned person’ into ‘an activist’. ‘Activists’ always sounded like a nuisance, a busy-body, an intrusive person who disturbs the peace. I didn’t like it. But I was an activist nonetheless for five years until the argument (which I still stand by) had been made so many times against ..read more

She doesn’t quite catch my hand it falls—shatters on the ground. You never quite know. Windows down the empty way, nostalgia with suspicion — a Trabi sits on the lot, a tiny sufficient reminder that trust is fragile, still. I look down at my hand the pieces silently explain why I had danced apart last night to rock, metal and stones, a wrong fear of anyone too right. They pointed at us. They looked disgusted. You just didn’t see. At the fruit blossom fest last year, —and I recall. The pieces of my hand reluctantly rearrange themselves, reoccupy my glove ..read more