Transsexual Apostate E-Book

Debbie Hayton

• Herausgeber: Forum
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 310

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'Brave and deeply considered… Her experience, and Transsexual Apostate, shouldn't be dismissed' The Telegraph In a compelling first-hand account of what it means to be a transwoman – and where she feels the impulse comes from – Hayton explains why much of gender identity ideology is, in her view, false and damaging. Once a prominent member of the TUC LGBT+ committee, she charts how her views developed and put her at odds with the majority of trans activists. She issues a compassionate call to move beyond ideological conflicts, and to acknowledge the legitimate concerns that many have with an agenda that asserts that transwomen are women. Hayton's honest, humane and moving book shows that by accepting reality, transwomen can live their best lives based on the truth of who they are – rather than the fantasy of who they are not. 'Brave, unflinching, insightful' - Professor Michael Bailey, author ofThe Man Who Would Be Queen

Leseprobe

Contents

Prologue: Gender Reassignment1 Growing Up 2 Trans Orthodoxy 3 Awakening 4 Autogynephilia 5 Perception and Reality 6 Gender Identity to Gender Apostasy 7 Apostasy and Exclusion 8 TERF Island: Britain against the World 9 Children and Technology 10 The Transsexual Future Epilogue: Another Perspective, by Stephanie HaytonAcknowledgementsNotes

To my family

Prologue

Gender Reassignment

After a flurry of activity there was a pause and a question. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I was already hooked up, and I was about to be plumbed in. White cables connected the sticky dots on my chest to the stack of electronics, while a cannula in the back of my left hand awaited the piping that dangled from a drip. The consent forms had already been signed but the anaesthetist gave me one final chance to get up and walk out of the room, fit and seemingly healthy.

Gender reassignment surgery (GRS) is a major procedure. The genitals are sliced open and repurposed. Skin from the scrotum becomes the labia, while a neoclitoris is constructed from part of the glans. The newly constructed cavity that will become the neovagina is then lined with skin from the penis. The urethra is shortened and repositioned. Finally, the new cavity is packed with cotton wool and everything is then stitched up before a compression dressing is fitted to hold it all together for the next five days.

If everything goes to plan, the surgeon can create an aesthetic and functional facsimile of female genitalia. But much can go wrong. I had been warned about failures in the carpentry, the plumbing and the electrics. Most seriously, that new cavity can lead to a recto-neovaginal fistula that I was told would be ‘difficult to treat’. Complications in the waterworks include renal and urinary infections, while swellings can lead to blockages. Some problems clear up with antibiotics and the passage of time, but incontinence can be permanent. Finally, sexual function relies on nerves reconnecting, something I was told fails in maybe 20 per cent of cases.

The anaesthetist’s question was pertinent, but my mind was made up: ‘Yes, go for it!’ He reassured me that I should not feel any pain afterwards but the compression dressing might be uncomfortable. Trussed up like a chicken, he said. Immobility was likely to be a bigger issue. Four days of enforced bed rest can lead to back pain. Immediately after surgery I would have a morphine line that I could click on demand. He encouraged me to use it.

It was three minutes past three in the afternoon. A syringe of colourless liquid appeared – a ‘strong painkiller’, I was told. In a flash, the contents disappeared into the cannula. Two seconds later peace and calm filled my brain, while a mask appeared in front of my face. Fresh air, they said. I didn’t believe that for a moment, but I was already too far gone to argue. I breathed deeply and left them to it.

Twenty-four hours earlier I was sitting in a coffee shop in west London pondering the future. Sunday afternoon, 14 February 2016. Check-in time at Charing Cross Hospital was four o’clock, so I had time to reflect. I had been thinking about this operation for a long time: 101 weeks had elapsed since my referral for surgery. The delay was frustrating but, as an NHS patient, I took my place in line. Demand had been increasing and the hospital had limited resources.

However, with just one day to go, I struggled to articulate to myself why I needed to go through with the procedure. I was still convinced that I was some kind of woman, and I needed the operation in order to live authentically as a woman – whatever that might mean. But it didn’t make rational sense, it felt more like a matter of faith.

I finished my coffee and walked down the Fulham Palace Road to the hospital. After being buzzed through two locked doors, I was asked to take a seat. Something I still took for granted. I had been warned by those who had gone before that it would be some weeks before I could sit comfortably again.

Check-in was followed by dinner, and outside the sky went dark. There was more time to think. My family was scattered: Stephanie – my wife – was at home in Birmingham, while our daughter was a student in Leeds. Meanwhile, our two sons were on their way to spend the half-term week with my mother-in-law in Middlesbrough. I was not expecting any family visitors in London.

It was a long evening and a longer morning. I was nil-by-mouth from 6 a.m. As the day wore on, I learned that the surgeon was running late and I just had to wait. There were messages from home. Stephanie was brief: ‘Presume you’ll be going down soon. Hope all goes ok. Thanks for phoning earlier. Speak to you later.’ My summons finally came at quarter to three. I was dispatched from the ward on foot, accompanied by a nurse. We go into this surgery fit and healthy, and certainly capable of getting there under our own steam.

I walked in but I was wheeled out. Consciousness returned gradually in recovery. The anaesthetist was right: there was a second cannula in my hand. A saline drip in one and the promised morphine line in the other. I asked the time – it was just after 7 p.m. The surgery had taken four hours. I had been expecting two to three. What did that mean? But I was too tired to worry about it. There was indeed no pain and I drifted in and out of sleep as my bed was pushed through the hospital.

After thirteen long hours I ordered tea with extra sugar. I messaged Stephanie as I sipped my tea: ‘Hiya. I love you.’ As Stephanie relayed the news to the children, I asked for some food. The drip was devoid of calories and I was hungry. I tried the morphine clicker but it was my stomach that demanded attention.

I did not move from that bed for four days. Food came morning, noon and night, while a catheter dealt with the outflow. The liquid part, that was. The other function was a bigger concern for me – I was patched up and stitched together – but the nurse shrugged: ‘You’ve had enough morphine to keep that quiet for a few days.’ I gave it another click for good measure. Remarkably, I could still feel my old anatomy. During GRS, body parts are harvested and replanted elsewhere. My brain had not yet registered that familiar signals were now coming from new locations.

My biggest problem was boredom, but across the ward there were troubles of a different kind. Another GRS patient was bleeding, and the flimsy curtains offered little privacy. I could hear everything. For half an hour, two nurses failed to stem the flow. The surgeon was called urgently; she applied a cement and the bleeding stopped. The patient asked what they would have done if the cement had not worked. The surgeon was brief: ‘The cement will work.’ If there had been a plan B, the surgeon did not share it with her patient. Two days earlier we had both walked in here; we now lay helpless. I checked my own dressing; it was dry.

The following day, the specialist nurse delivered two vaginal dilators. For the time being I was packed up and sealed – quite literally – but on Saturday, five days after surgery, the cotton wool would be removed from the neovagina and dilation would have to begin. A lining of penile skin keeps the open wound from healing, but the cavity needs to be dilated regularly, three times per day in the days and weeks after surgery. Eight years on, that has become a weekly activity. Perhaps as well since a dilation routine takes half an hour at least.

There were two dilators, both about 20 cm long and made from hard transparent plastic. The thinner one – 25 mm in diameter – would go in first. For about five minutes, I was told. The fatter one – 30 mm across – then needed a quarter of an hour. The extra 5 mm didn’t sound much, but the cross-sectional area was half as much again. But that maths lesson was for another day.

By the time Saturday morning came, I was already mobile. A leg bag had been fitted to the catheter on the Friday, and I could empty it myself and measure the contents in the jug provided. But causing me much greater concern were my bowels – they had not been emptied for four days. Laxatives were added to my medication sheet on Friday morning. There was a backlog to clear, and I worried about what was stitched up under the dressing. If the sutures gave way, the neovagina might prolapse and probably be wrecked in the process.

Richter 10 came and went, and my body survived the experience. But I made a mess of the catheter line and sterile dressings. Help came. A week earlier I had been busy at work; now I was lying on my back being cleaned up by nursing staff. That was Friday afternoon. The unpacking was scheduled for the next morning when there would be only one specialist ward nurse on duty. She told me to be ready at 9 a.m.

It tickled – as I had been warned – but it was tickling like nothing I have ever felt before, and coming from a location my brain could not place. The first dilator went in. Five inches, the specialist nurse said, and it took a good five minutes to get it there despite the lashings of lubricant. The second dilator was harder. Ten minutes to insert, but as soon as it was in place, the nurse was called away. Just hold it there, I was told.

But I was not ready for the pain that built up when that 30-mm dilator was inserted into an open wound 5 inches deep. After eighteen minutes I could take no more and pulled it out. There was blood, goo and a piece of hard plastic. I buzzed for help. An agency nurse took one look and backed away. I felt very alone. The specialist nurse returned thirty-five minutes after she had left. She apologised for leaving me but she explained that since it was a Saturday, she was the only regular nurse on the ward. For the staff, this was routine.

The cannulas also came out on the Saturday, and the catheter in the middle of Sunday night. Freed from my external plumbing, I was then ready to be discharged on Monday, eight days after I had walked in. But first I needed to work out how to urinate again. It was not straightforward. My groin was swollen and the muscles seemed to work differently. I was sent into the bathroom with a jug, and I returned triumphant with 275 ml of clear yellow liquid.

The surgeon popped in to ‘check the wound’. He seemed happy enough with it. The specialist nurse checked my dilation technique and told me that I was ready to be discharged. The carpentry was fine; the electrics I knew I needed to wait for. My concern was the plumbing. The call of nature was getting harder to answer. But I was keen to get home and reassured myself that as long as I could get a few drops out, there was probably nothing more to come. That was a big mistake.

Eight days earlier I navigated the Underground, striding through the tunnels to make the connection at Green Park station. The return journey to Euston and my home in Birmingham was far more sedate. I shuffled to the taxi and sat gingerly on a foam cushion. My pelvic floor was in tatters and I felt every bump. On the train, I failed to pass any water. It was warm, though. Maybe I was dehydrated?

It was good to be home. I was pleased to see Stephanie and the boys. Home cooking beat the offerings from the hospital trolley, and, following medical advice, it was washed down with ‘plenty of fluids’. Then it was time for the next dilation routine. For the first time there was no button to summon a nurse, but I had already become adept in the administration of plastic rods. But a rather more basic function eluded me. Despite drinking water by the pint glass, the outflow had fallen to zero.

As discomfort morphed into agony, I feared that my bladder might rupture. With no call button to press, Stephanie drove me to A & E in Birmingham. Traffic was light and we were there in ten minutes. After eight days in one hospital, I was standing in the triage line in another. This place was heaving. After ten minutes I was deemed to be non-urgent and told to wait. The hard chairs were not an option so I stood. After what felt like hours, but was actually thirty minutes, a nurse took a look.

‘Please can you put a catheter in? I’m bursting.’ She said no. I suggested I might call an ambulance: ‘The paramedics will catheterise me if you won’t.’

‘Not a week after GRS they wouldn’t,’ she retorted. ‘You will just need to wait.’ It was well past midnight when I was taken to a treatment cubicle. Stephanie went home to the boys while a nurse set up an ultrasound machine. ‘If there’s more than 150 ml in there, they will probably put a catheter in,’ he advised. From what I could see, the reading was 999+. I enquired what that meant. He grimaced. ‘Over a litre! No wonder you’re suffering.’

Pain relief was increased from paracetamol to gas and air, Entonox – the stuff Stephanie was given in childbirth. That at least took my mind off things. But I was summoned back to reality by a new voice. ‘Hello, I’m the all-night plumber, I hear you have a blockage.’ He was the on-call urologist. He took the gas away – ‘You are going to make yourself sick’ – and swiftly inserted a catheter.

There was brief comedy in the cubicle when they could not find a bag for the other end. But within seconds, a large one was found. Ten minutes later, it contained 1,300 ml. ‘Seriously impressive’, according to the nurse. Less than twenty-four hours after being discharged from one hospital, I was admitted to another. Bloods were taken – to see if the blockage had backed up into my kidneys and damaged them – and a bed was found. It was three in the morning, but the next dilation was due. I went to sleep at four.

There was no lie-in. My bloods were fine, and the hospital needed the bed. After speaking with the specialist nurse at Charing Cross, they told me that blockages were not uncommon and to give it more time with the catheter. But I should watch for infections: ‘It was a bit of a mess down there.’ So after one more dilation routine, I was fitted with another leg bag and discharged into the care of my GP. Stephanie drove me home.

I saw my surgeon one final time, two months after surgery. He was happy with his work, and dismissive of my problems: ‘These things happen,’ he said. Gender reassignment surgery is a major procedure, and positive outcomes rely at least in part on patients being fit and healthy when they walk into the anaesthetic room. But the results are not always as hoped. Cobbling something together from spare parts can never replicate the genuine article.

Even so, patients queue up for it and the National Health Service pays for it. Received wisdom is that it is a necessary treatment for gender dysphoria, but what is gender dysphoria? Eight years on from that surgery, I now wonder. In 2016, I was convinced I had to put myself through life-changing treatment to restore my mental health. Why? Previous generations seemed to manage without it. But to answer that question we need to start at the very beginning, for me at least: April 1968.

1

Growing Up

My childhood was unremarkable. But since it’s the only childhood I can remember, it’s hard to judge. I was introverted – I was quite happy with my own company – but I would hardly have been described as asocial. I grew up in a loving family – with two younger brothers – and I had all the friends I needed. My interest in science blossomed early and, while my parents might not have expected me to join the teaching profession, they would not have been surprised that my speciality was physics. By the age of seven, my shelves were filling up with books about astronomy and space exploration. Perhaps I was a bit odd, but, to the outside world at least, my interests were stereotypically male. I played with construction kits; I even had a set of trucks.

Internally, I struggled. But doesn’t everyone? Life is a new experience for every young child, and the novelty is not limited to the external world. In some ways coping with external matters is easy: they go away when we close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears. But the internal world is always there. Our brains are the result of a billion years of evolution, and instinct is pre-installed within them. Nobody teaches us to breathe, or feel hungry, for example, and by the age of three I knew all about guilt, shame and fear.

I don’t think that three-year-old boy, sitting on the floor in his front room, would have been able to articulate the meaning of those words, but he knew how to feel the emotions they described. I was learning to count beyond twenty. My earliest memories date from the previous year, and those snippets were also seasoned with very strong emotions: guilt when I broke my grandmother’s clock; fear when my parents encouraged me to make friends with a boy I did not know; and a sense of loss when we moved house. But on that day in 1971 I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I have since labelled as shame.

Over fifty years later I cannot only picture the scene – I can still feel it. A family friend introduced me to new and bigger numbers. The pattern was immediately obvious to me – thirty, forty, fifty – the mere repetition made it easy. But when we got to sixty, a chill ran down my spine. Before it happened, I knew that we would soon get to eighty – a word that sounded similar to ‘tights’, clothing that I knew was only for girls. Where this taboo came from, I do not know, but it had already taken up residence in my head. Clearly, I already knew the difference between boys and girls, and the clothes we wore. But – significantly – I knew that girls’ clothes were forbidden to me. Instinct? It was certainly nothing I had been taught.

Clothes were an ongoing issue for me throughout childhood. I wanted to wear girls’ clothes but, at the same time, I was terrified that someone would read my thoughts. But without any sisters – or female friends, for that matter – my opportunities were limited. It was rubbish, sometimes literally. My mother would discard laddered tights, throwing them in the bin, and probably think nothing more about them. But for me they were oases in the desert. If circumstances were right, I could retrieve them before they were covered by potato peelings, soggy tea bags, or worse. But I also needed privacy to try them on, before replacing them exactly as I found them. I became obsessive about that. This was something that nobody else must ever know, including anyone else with a meticulous knowledge of the arrangement of discarded trash.

From the age of five this cycle would repeat, whether I wanted it to or not. First there was anticipation, then excitement. My heartbeat rose, and my body would become aroused. I was euphoric, though the exhilaration I felt was always tempered by the ever-present fear of discovery. Emotionally I was on a trip but, while my brain always craved for more, I had no idea how to respond to my feelings. The spell was almost always broken by worries about being discovered. As I came down from my high, I would replace everything as I found it. I was scrupulous about that. If I was ever dysphoric, it was the grief at the loss of the high.

Only once was I ever caught. Inexplicably, I had failed to lock the bathroom door. I was usually so careful about that, and my grandmother stumbled in on me. I was mortified. She called for my parents: ‘Come and look at this!’ Suddenly there were three faces looking at me. Nothing more was said. What – indeed – could be said? Then the adults went away, leaving me to myself. For what felt like a long time, I sat there in shock. Without knowing what else I could do, I reverted to my usual routine and put everything back as I found it. Then I had to face what I imagined would be an inquisition in the living room. I went in with my head down, looking at the floor. I grabbed a book and engrossed myself in it. As the minutes passed, nothing was said. Had I imagined it all? I remember weighing up that possibility. But it had definitely happened, and nobody said a thing. Not then, not ever. But – like the earlier counting incident – it was seared into my memory. I was eight years old.

If my bedtime wishes had ever been granted I would have been magically turned into a girl when I woke the next morning. For a while, I prayed that when I woke, I would always have been a girl. When that hope was finally extinguished, I pitched for second best – that the magical transformation would be news, and probably a shock, to everyone. I was certainly persistent, but fantasy was not reality. That was clear to me long before puberty. I knew that my dreams were futile and, beyond my anguished musings, there was a bigger world to explore.

Had I been growing up today, I would have certainly come across the concept of ‘transgender children’. Whether that knowledge would have precipitated a disclosure to my parents, I do not know. Back in the 1970s, I had a problem that I never understood. Shame gripped me tightly, and I knew that my inexplicable desire to be the other sex must be kept firmly under wraps. In many ways it was miserable but, at the same time, I was free to grow to adulthood without being socially transitioned. If that had happened, I would have been faced with the possibility of puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones. I’m glad I was never put in that position. I was a bright boy, but I was never competent to consent to such profound treatments. Or able to face the sense of loss if the possibility passed me by.

To understand what it meant to be an adult, I had to become one. As I grew, I yearned for children of my own. There was only one way that was going to happen: nature needed to take its course. Looking back, I’m pleased it did.

Primary school offered just two opportunities for public cross-dressing. I remember them vividly. First, the village fete. I was to be a ladybird. The red papier-mâché shell that my mother spent so long making was incidental: my mind focused on the tight black jumper and the black tights. The adrenaline that ran through my body was palpable, but I was too ashamed to say anything. Also palpable was the subsequent sense of loss when my own fears stopped me from asking to keep the tights, perhaps to wear when it was cold? I was six years old.

By the time I was nine, repression gripped me even more tightly. This second opportunity was the school Christmas play: my teacher had cast me as a carol singer. For some long-forgotten reason, the boys and girls were to be dressed the same – tunics and thick tights. I could not even take that request home without deliberately garbling the message. Alone in that group, I wore my school trousers. There was shame in being different – the odd one out – but it was preferable to the shame of articulating the thoughts that rattled incessantly inside my head.

Externally, my life was unremarkable. Despite my fears that I might sprout a thought bubble, nobody ever read my mind and I grew up without being discovered. Primary school was left behind and I navigated my way through a much larger secondary school. Science and maths came easily to me, and I was a high achiever in class. Still reserved – some aspects of our character are lifelong – I made new friends where necessary and I focused on my studies.

My internal struggles might have been sexual – they clearly related to my sex – but they were not erotic. I wasn’t acting like some miniature adult: I was playing like a child. Never was my focus a relationship with a girl; instead, I wanted to be a girl. Certainly, until I stumbled into puberty, the hormone that drove me was not testosterone, but adrenaline. The mere thought of being a girl gave me the rush; writing it down in a diary focused it. Coupled with the fear of my words being discovered, I rode an emotional rollercoaster alone inside my head.

Puberty brings changes in everyone. Physically, my response to testosterone was textbook. I grew rapidly, sprouted hair and developed spots, and my voice broke. All rather normal and reassuring, starting bang on time around age thirteen. I had mixed feelings about puberty, but relief featured strongly. I had harboured genuine worries that I was so strange, puberty would not happen to me. Perhaps I was totally unique in my cross-sex identification, and if that were true then what else was different about me? The alternative – or so it seemed to me at the time – was that every boy felt as I did, but nobody talked about it, and I could never ask. But, looking back, I think both ideas were wrong. I now believe that I was developing a psychological condition called autogynephilia, which affects maybe 1 to 3 per cent of men. We are unusual, but far from unique.

At the time, however, I was navigating the process of growing up to be a man. One thing didn’t change, though: my internal experience seemed different from that of my male friends. While they began to take an interest in girls, my desire to be a girl intensified from a want to a need and ultimately an insatiable compulsion. The maelstrom of emotions inside my head had to find a focus somewhere, and it was buying clothes. If I couldn’t actually be a girl – and by then I had given up wishing for magic – I could try to clothe my body to at least create an illusion.

At fourteen, I bought my first pair of tights from a newsagent on my way home from school. My cover story was well rehearsed – I was on an errand, of course – but my heart was in my mouth when I handed over my money. This was like the bathroom experiences of my primary-school days, but much more intense – it was now public and other people were involved. Not that the newsagent seemed to care. My money was just as good as anyone else’s. Was the manic thumping of my heart the same as what my male friends experienced when they asked a girl out? I didn’t know because I never asked.

I bought other clothes as well, though I took no more risks in local shops where I might have been recognised. I took trips to other towns but, even then, I shuddered with the fear of discovery. Secret purchases needed to be well hidden, and I became very good at that. But the adrenaline was now supplemented by testosterone, and that drove a need for sexual release. I started the first of many cycles. Ultimately each one was as futile as the one before it. Sexual release brought self-disgust, and regularly that was strong enough to lead to a purge of my secret wardrobe. Had I kept all the girls’ clothes I bought, I would never have been able to find the space to hide them. I was in a mental whirlpool, and I simply had no idea how to control the powerful emotions that held me captive.

Despite my inner turmoil, I did well at school. My family were proud of me when I departed for university, and later secured a degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Suddenly I had the freedom of living away from home, but the inner chains never relaxed and the cycles of purging continued. What if the cleaner found my skirt? Looking back, I guess that the cleaner wouldn’t have cared even if she’d realised that it was mine. The logical conclusion, of course, would have been that a girlfriend had left it in my room.

But even as an undergraduate I had no girlfriends. I didn’t know how to relate to myself; pursuing interests in the other sex was beyond me. But although my immediate physical needs were satisfied with my bag of clothes – always strictly alone – human beings are social animals. We need relationships, and I was no exception. I am heterosexual – I am a male person who is sexually attracted to females – and love is far more than lust. Like other heterosexual males, evolution had put within me a need for a girlfriend to share my life with. But it would take someone very special to break me free from my inner world.

The first time I set eyes on Stephanie, I was blown away. By then I had completed my first degree, and was just about to embark on a PhD. She was starting the second year of a physics degree in the same department. She was nineteen; I was twenty-one. Love at first sight is a cliché, and in my case it was also one-sided. My initial overtures were rebuffed. She was happy to be friends but not looking for a relationship with me. And then she started going out with someone else.

Stephanie was a Christian and, since we had become friends, her friends became my friends. Before too much longer, her faith became my faith. For a time, my intellectual energies were devoted to the reconciliation of my new faith in God with my long-standing faith in science. That, however, was a mere academic exercise compared to a rather greater contradiction in my life. At first glance, at least, the Bible was clear. According to Deuteronomy 22:5: ‘A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.’

However, it was not the Bible that kept me from coming out as a transvestite – or even a transsexual – in the early 1990s. Nor – with hindsight – was it the people around me, or society at large. The person who maintained the lock on those inner chains was me. I told nobody because I did not want to tell anybody. Cross-dressing remained a secret endeavour, and one that I tried to end with every purge. I desperately wanted it all to stop so I could be like everyone else – or, at least, like my perception of others. The possibility that other people had issues of their own passed me by.

Fifteen months after I first met Stephanie, I was convinced that I had achieved normality. We grew closer, and, in December 1990, we became an ‘item’ – in the language of the student world. We introduced each other to our respective families: this was a serious relationship. The internal struggle that I had battled since the age of three had waxed and waned over the years, but suddenly it was gone. I no longer wanted to be a girl – I had a girl. Stephanie was twenty and she was perfect in every way. She was not only beautiful, she was also a physicist. Life could not have been better for me. We talked about the possibility of marriage and a future together. I purged my secret bag of clothes for the last time and finally broke the cycle.

Or so I thought: the relief I enjoyed did not last. Our relationship brought remission rather than cure. Within months, the internal strife returned. But this time, I was determined to focus on Stephanie rather than myself. Something easier said than done – I have likened my desire to become the other sex to holding down a beach ball underwater. Get it in the right position and it can stay down without affecting life on the surface. But there was more to it than that: I needed to keep it hidden as well. My problem may have been mental rather than physical, but it was hard work all the same. And is it fair to keep something so profound secret from someone you are planning to marry? I thought not, so I had to say something.

Up until that time – I was twenty-three – I had told nobody. The thought of sharing something so personal and shameful filled me with terror. The fear of rejection was real, but the biggest hurdle was internal. Before I could explain my secret to others, I needed to admit it to myself, and to do that I needed to find the words to describe it.

The terminology was there: ‘transsexual’ and ‘transvestite’ were used and understood, and they were familiar to me. In the years before the internet, I had spent hours sitting alone in the city library reading about them. Perhaps other people took those books home, but I could never put them on my library card. If the computer system knew what I had been reading, then maybe human beings might know as well. My need for secrecy had been obsessive. No, it was better to stay in the library and put the books back on the shelf when nobody was looking.

I learned that transsexuals were pitied while transvestites were objects of ridicule. That was clear from TV – the television, that is – of my childhood. Comedians such as Dick Emery, Melvyn Hayes and even the Two Ronnies would cross-dress for laughs. Sometimes there were sexual overtones. At the time homosexuality was unspeakable, at least before the 9 p.m. watershed, so effeminate behaviour could be a proxy. John Inman’s character in Are You Being Served? would joke about it: when admiring women’s clothes, he would announce that he was the same size as his mother. I watched these programmes transfixed. But they were a world away from the one I lived in, and, besides, I was neither effeminate nor gay. That I was confident about: the focus of my interest was Stephanie and she was female.

Years later, Stephanie said that she did not remember me telling her, but for me it was massive. I went through palpitations ahead of my planned disclosure. It was new territory for me: I had never shared this secret with anyone. In the end I fumbled out a miserable ‘I’ve something to tell you – I have a thing about women’s clothes.’ My recollection of her reply is hazy and we rapidly changed the subject. However, the revelation was never for Stephanie’s benefit – I had said what I thought I needed to say to clear my conscience before we built our future together, and that was it. There was never any discussion.

This was a burden I felt I could carry. I’d managed for as long as I could remember and, in any case, there was no alternative. By the 1990s, transsexuals may have gone to London rather than Casablanca for the surgeries that turned magic into reality, but it was totally beyond my experience. Meanwhile the activities advertised by transvestite groups – weekends away with other ‘girls’ – left me cold. They looked sordid and distasteful. Besides, it wasn’t women’s clothes that captivated me: I wanted a female body.

But I was no longer a five-year-old boy. I was now grown up and I was a scientist. The rational part of my brain took over – I worked hard to convince myself that since it was not possible to be a woman, there was no point thinking about it. My emotional side grieved all the same, but I had that beach ball under control. It was submerged and out of sight. Meanwhile there was a marriage to plan, a thesis to write and a career to start.

Stephanie and I married in the summer of 1993. We planned it ourselves in the church we attended weekly. Practical to the core, we spent the evening before with our friends in the church hall setting out tables and filling balloons with helium. On the morning of our wedding, I picked up the bread for the buffet while Stephanie got ready. Her brother drove her in the car that we had rented. We were twenty-five and twenty-three and we looked forward to a future together, hopefully with children. That boy who didn’t want a relationship with a girl had grown into a man who now had a wife. I was pleased with how life had turned out; without the internet, it might well have continued that way.

There were occasional crises. Soon after we returned from our honeymoon, news filtered through to me about a friend of a friend. According to reports, he was now a she. Life was different for transitioners in the early 1990s, ten years before the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and almost twenty before the Equality Act. There was no wave of affirmation, not that I could see anyway. Instead, gossip was shared in hushed whispers.