It’s my fault the Scottish government has collapsed. Me and my trans siblings.
It’s because, being trans, we wanted to be able to control our own identity, and we wanted to stop the people who hate me being free to express their hatred with impunity and because we want young trans people to be able to receive the treatment they need to ease their pain and distress.
All the liberal commentators agree these are all deeply unpopular with the general population and why the Scottish government lost authority and support.
At the same time right wing politicians tell me that school girls are developing UTIs because they’re afraid to find trans girls in their toilets; and trans patients need to be isolated in single rooms because female patients are frightened of us being in single sex wards.
I don’t want to waste my time defending myself against this deeply unpleasant nonsense; but I do want to point out that we are not punchbags to be used in political point scoring but real human beings.
And real human beings who, just like anyone else, are trying to find fulfilment and happiness in a hideously suffering world.
And it’s in that spirit that I’m sharing the story of the Second Time I Heard A Voice In My Head…
The story begins in 2000.
I want to celebrate my 50th birthday by coming out to my wider family and friends.
I still don’t really have a word to describe myself.
(That seems to be a pattern in my life).
So I invent one: I describe myself as “bi-gendered”.
Now I would probably describe myself as “non-binary”.
But that word wasn’t in use back then.
Looking back, I can see that describing myself like this was partly true; but also partly influenced by an exceptionally nasty book that had come out in the 1980’s called “The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male”.
It was hugely influential at the time; and remains so in the thinking of gender critical feminists.
Me and Susie, my partner, both read it and both believed it.
I came to the conclusion that I could never become a woman, and that it was no use trying.
It seemed clear to me that what I had to do was explore and celebrate my female self as a man.
So I wore dresses and skirts in secret and gender neutral women’s clothes in public.
I got my ears pierced, wore dangly earrings and looked around me for kindred spirits.
And found no-one.
And when I was with men I suffered because I was not one of them; and when I was with women I suffered because I was not one of them.
I felt I belonged nowhere. I began to suffer breakdowns.
I had the strongest and strangest feeling I was not alone.
There was a kind of Presence always with me, it seemed, just beyond the corner of my eye.
I called her the Goddess.
Not a hostile presence, not a destructive one, but immensely strong.
And waiting…
Around that time I developed an overwhelming desire to be a woman.
An agonising sense of being in the wrong body.
Such feelings had always been with me, but mostly in the background.
Now they reached unbearable, agonising intensity.
I began to see a gender specialist, who prescribed a pill that partially blocked the production of male hormones in my body.
This brought some relief. And we tried, me and Susie, to find a way through the suffering this was causing both of us.
We had both been brought up to be intensely transphobic; and we both loved each other profoundly.
So confronting this was horribly painful.
Looking back I like to think we would have found a way through this; and I know, today, we could have been so happy together.
But then we never got the chance. Susie was diagnosed with brain cancer in August 2004 and died 6 months later.
It was soon after she was diagnosed, and her illness meant we could no longer sleep together.
I’d put a mattress down on the floor of the next door and one night I couldn’t sleep.
I lay there, bereft and desperate.
And then I heard the Voice.
And the voice in my head said, with utter clear authority:
“The woman inside you is wholly good.
She will help you through the next few months of suffering.
And then, when Susie has gone, She will help you find a new life”.
I was still a bit reluctant to believe this, but that’s how it was.
I simply could not bear to keep living as a man any more. So I approached the gender specialist, began to take hormones, and started to look for a surgeon.
I took it for granted I would need gender confirmation surgery, and discovered the best surgeons were based in Thailand.
So I got in touch with Dr Suporn, whose clinic still exists,
I was so pleased I did; his staff were so caring, and we agreed on a date the following year.
But then the mitral valve in my heart revealed itself to be broken.
I needed open heart surgery; and following that I suffered complications; and Dr. Suporn said he was sorry, but his clinic was not equipped to deal with someone in my fragile state, and said he could not offer me surgery.
This was a bleak and desperate time.
What saved me was that I came to understand that I was on the right path; that in spite of all the insults and difficulties I was experiencing, living as a woman was filling me with joy; and that I did not need a surgeon’s permission to live the life I needed to live.
I resolved to seek gender affirming surgery through the NHS; and work to make myself better in the meantime.
This was not straightforward.
The assumption then, as I suspect now, was that as a trans woman I could not possibly be trusted to know my own identity and desires; but that I needed to be seen by two psychiatrists who would confirm the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and confirm that it needed to be cured by surgery.
The end goal of treatment for this disease was that I become indistinguishable from a cis woman.
And so I needed to be taught how to speak like a woman, and encouraged to learn how to walk like a women… because if anyone was to suspect that I was trans I would be hated and despised.
Increasingly I found I could not accept this. I felt proud to be trans and absolutely unwilling to disguise it.
But I had to be careful. Especially with the psychiatrists.
Because the treatment I was receiving was not about listening to me and giving me the space and support to overcome my fear and my shame, and empower me to know myself better.
Instead it was about checking whether I displayed the symptoms of gender dysphoria to such an extent that I needed gender affirming surgery to correct them.
Seeing each psychiatrist involved a separate trip to London to see them and I took care with the answers I gave to their questions.
And at the end of the second interview, the second psychiatrist told me that they agreed that I could be referred to the surgeon for gender affirming surgery and gave me his name and link to his website so I could inform myself about the operation.
I thought I knew all about the operation, but went to the website anyway.
The surgeon offered 3 options: Gender Affirming Surgery, a “cosmetic” operation which removed the scrotum and testicles and shaved down the penis so that from the outside you’d have the appearance of female genitalia, and bilateral orchiectomy, or the removal of both testicles.
I’d assumed I was going to have Gender Affirming Surgery, and started to rather idly read again what was involved…
And then something happened.
It wasn’t a voice in my head, but it was as sudden, as unexpected, as authoritative…
It’s just that as I was reading how the surgeon would cut off my penis, and remove my testes, and create a vaginal cavity and line it with all the bits and pieces from my private parts, and that then I would need to dilate the area with a plastic device to keep it from closing, and shorten my urethra so I would pee sitting down…
It no longer felt like a positive thing that would help me on my journey towards myself, but more a violent invasion,
A shockingly physical expression of my self hatred and the hatred of society towards me…
And I knew I could not go ahead with it.
It’s important to say that I am not attacking or denigrating the operation in itself. It has saved, and continues to save many lives; and very very few people who have undergone it regret it.
I just knew it was not for me. And was appalled at my rejection of it.
Did it mean I was not really transsexual?
And what was I do now?
I had to think. What did I really really want?
By that stage there was a kind of warfare going on inside my body between the female hormones I was taking and the male hormones that my body was manufacturing.
It was a deeply unpleasant feeling.
I realised I wanted to go on living as a woman: and I wanted the warfare to stop.
And that was the realisation I took to my meeting with the surgeon….
(to be continued)
The surgeon who treated me has since died. If you’re interested in the clinical details of the operation, this might be a place to start
Something I’ve always intensely disliked about trans narratives of the past has been the idea that The Surgery is the most important thing.
And that men come out of the surgery miraculously transformed into women…
Needless to say, it’s all a bit more complicated….
A wee discussion after the paywall. Press the button above if you want to upgrade your subscription.
Here I am after publicly sharing the story that is the basis of this post in “Queer Folks’ Tales” in the Scottish Storytelling Centre last month.
It’s always a bit problematic sharing details of your personal life in a public space.
More so, when it’s about surgery.
But it’s important here, I can’t help thinking, because there is still so little information about what being trans actually involves.
And until people have a human picture of our lives, prejudice will continue to flourish.
And that’s why I’m choosing to share this story…
There’s also a lot of ignorance, I would say, among the trans community.
And that’s because to access the help we currently need we need to navigate a treatment model that is partly genuinely helpful - if people can ever get access to it - but also partly a specialised branch of the gender police.
The job of the gender police is to enforce the notion that there are only two sexes - men and women - and the job of the specialised medical branch of the gender police is to guard the frontier.
My gender specialist was a kind, well intentioned person for whom I had affection and respect; but she made it clear that her job was partly about determining who was “truly” trans and who was not.
And to '“weed out” those who were not.
In other words to guard access to the border crossing: and only allow a selected few to cross.
It wasn’t up to “patients” like myself to make this decision: she was the expert. She was the one to make it.
Gender critical feminists and their allies are ideological gender police, who deny the existence and possibility of the crossing: for them the barrier at the frontier is insurmountable. And they strain every nerve to keep it so.
They’re wrong, of course; and the enemy they are so fiercely fighting against is almost certainly themselves.
They’re wrong because ever since human beings formed societies the existence of people like us has been recognised, and named.
It only takes a minute to explore the names for us in human history:
As Queen Jesus says:
“We are the hijra of India, the kathoey of Thailand, waria of Indonesia, bissu of the Archipelago.
Fa’fa’fine of Samoa, muxe of Mexico, travesti of Brazil, two spirit people of North America,
Shamen of Siberia, yan daudu of West Africa, and many more besides.
For verily verily I say unto you, because it is undoubtedly true,
That every culture in every place and time has known of us, and celebrated us mostly,
Except for this one.
And it is in the minority…”
Perhaps one day one of these beautiful names will pass into common usage:
And then I can rightfully claim it as my own.
PS Substack in their boundless greed are pressuring me to only make my work available to paid subscribers. So if I make even part of this post freely available they will remove the paywall.
So bear with me, dear paying subscribers, while I assimilate this into my practice and figure out how to reward you for your loyalty .
What a wonderful moderate piece written by, not surprisingly, by an actual Trans person. It is written from the heart and not from an ideology. There are far too many trans-activists out there who are just in it for the fight, and not all are actual trans-people.
The problem with the debate is that there are trans-ideologues stirring up hatred and bigotry while anti-trans bigots are using the feminist concerns to stir up their own brand of hatred, while the majority are moderate people on both sides who just want to express themselves and be heard.
But Scotland, and I’m afraid England will also given that Labour will form the next government, has stepped too far in trying to “protect” people from hatred while ignoring the outpouring of hatred, including death threats, against the other sides. Not one racist ever stopped being racist because of legislation; not one homophobe stopped hating gays because a law changed; not one misogynist stopped abusing women because of increased punishments; not one transphobe will stop hating you because the law says they must.
What is truly needed is for everyone, pro-trans and trans-critical, to start listening to each other with an ear to understand not to fight. It is possible to be critical of elements of trans-ideology, even critical of individual trans people (Sarah Jane Baker’s overt display of toxic masculinity springs to mind) and support trans people’s rights to live their authentic selves. The two are not mutually exclusive. Just as it is possible to be critical of some feminist movements without being a misogynist.
I will certainly seek out more of your essays, Jo.
John Mc
Hi Jo
I am sure that there are some people who hate trans folk, but I think there are more people who simply wonder why our government spent so much time and energy on this issue to the detriment of housing policy, NHS, education etc. In my view, the hate crime legislation was unnecessary because such crimes were already covered by Scots 'common law', and I wonder whether, when the dust settles, the police and Prosecution Services will beany more assiduous in pursuing such crimes than they were in the past.
Lest there by any ambiguity, I utterly believe that trans people have absolutely the same rights as every other citizen, and that includes the right to equal dignity.
Good wishes, Jo. I am off to America tomorrow until the end of the month.
Joe Farrell