What the Voice Said

Photo by Sierra Houk on Unsplash

The voice said

“The woman inside you is wholly good.”

We all need to hear it.

Especially now,

And especially me,

especially me that night in september two thousand and four

that night

that week

that month

that year

that hour

me lying sleepless

on a mattress on the floor

the love of my life

dying in the room next door.

Dying we didn’t know how

Dying we didn’t know when.

All we knew it was cancer of the brain

And how did that kill you?

And when?

And no-one could tell us

And nobody knew.

& there was me

lying on the floor

sleepless with grief and terror.

& the voice said:

“the woman inside you is wholly good.”

Not a male voice, not a female voice,

not soft, not loud,

but unmistakably true

unmistakably true in my head

& speaking with irresistible authority.

“She will help you through all the suffering

of the months that are to come

and she will help you build a new life

once Susie has left you.”

The voice was right, of course.

Right in spite of everything I’d been taught

In spite of everything I’d been told in my schooling,

Everything I’d been told in my upbringing.

All the information I had was that to be effeminate was bad and disgusting

And that I was bad and disgusting

For feeling so feminine inside me.

& all I knew to do when I was young

Was try to hide away and hope no-one would ever see.

As I grew older she was there

the goddess inside me

this presence inside me

this source of deepest fear and shame,

this instigator of warfare

between her and the male part of me

trying, endlessly trying, to suppress her

and make her disappear.

But she never did disappear,

For there she was, speaking to me,

In this time of deepest distress.

She guided me through that time,

and the time that followed

when I openly began to live as a woman

and everyone I encountered in the street

felt entitled to laugh at me or threaten or insult me

or talk about me disparagingly as if I wasn’t there.

I guess when I got my Gender Recognition Certificate

She helped me fill out the form

Helped me find the right medical practitioners to testify I was sick

Because that was necessary, and I was not allowed to say so myself,

Helped me find the proofs that I’d been living as a woman

For however long I was supposed to have done that.

Helped me through the grief of having to copy and send Susie’s death certificate

Because if she was still alive I’d have been forced to divorce her.

Helped me through the time of waiting while a committee of strangers who did not know me determined my identity

Determined my identity without reference to me.

All the time I’d been told this process was benevolent,

And I suppose that’s what I believed it to be.

But now I see it as another product of hostility and fear

Because we always seek to silence and disrespect those we are afraid of.

Another product of the misogyny we all must continually try to navigate and despise.

And perhaps it was naive of me to imagine that the process to reform that horrible, cruel and degrading procedure should be simple and straightforward.

Naive of me to be surprised at the atrocious hatred and misinformation it has inspired as it’s been passing through the Scottish parliament.

Because I should have become immured: it is, after all, the same hatred and disgust I was exposed to all through my young life.

Only this time directed not just at me and my trans sisters and brothers, but also and especially at the powerful women in the Scottish parliament who have been working to bring this change into being.

So much transphobia.

So much misogyny.

And how much this new year and for ever

we all still need to remember what the voice said:

“The woman inside us is wholly good”.