Like Topsy

I grew up with a “gender identity” that wasn’t the one expected for my body. I just didn’t know it at the time. In those days gender wasn’t mentioned unless it was obliquely to point out to you that whatever you had just done was not manly or ladylike. It still makes me smile that I wasn’t allowed to whistle (I learned how to anyway) when I was a child. When I said at 14 that I intended to buy a motorcycle when I was old enough the news didn’t go down astoundingly well but it wasn’t all conflict at home, my parents more or less got used to having a Tomboy.

For a very long time I was unaware that the reason nobody talked about “gender variance” was that the majority of people didn’t NEED to talk about it because they weren’t having the same experience as me. I loved life, liked myself and was openly myself within the narrow confines of what I was allowed to be. I couldn’t change who I was, and apart from acting like a woman to fit in, I quite frankly didn’t want to so, of course, that sometimes propelled me into deeply difficult times. For most of my life I have been an invisible man.

My blog is part of making the invisible man visible to more than my partner and hopefully find friends who, like me, want to be recognised as their authentic male or female selves.

Reputedly Adele Anderson, of the cabaret group Fascinating Aida was bluntly asked during a television interview "Were you born a man?" "No", she replied. "I was born a baby." Like Topsy we 'just grewed'.