The Saga of Elaine
Sep. 22nd, 2004 01:22 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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transIn April last year, I tried coming out to my parents. They used some fuzzy logic against me, and I ended up believeing them and becoming intensely depressed. 17 months later, and I'm about to try again...
(Dear Mum & Dad)
Firstly, just let me say briefly that although I’d much prefer to write this to you, rather than type it, I’ve so much to say that without it taking forever, I’m having to use this method.
I am afraid, however, you may not like what I’m about to say. You didn’t seem to before. Upon saying that, can you guess what it is yet? Let me refresh your memory:
MYSELF:'Mum, I contacted the Dyspraxia Foundation and they said there is no link between gender identity and dyspraxia'
silence
MUM:'I still think it's because of dyspraxia. You only said gender idenity you didn't mention the rest'
'I had a look at their site, mum, they're a professional organisation. A lot of the problems I have can be explained by dysrpraxia, but others cannot. Like my gender identity'
'I still think a lot of this is due to what you've read. I'm the same, when I read symptoms I think I have those symptoms'
'In that case how would I have found these sites in the first place?'
'You read that article in New Scientist, thats whats caused it'
'Mum, why do you think I took that new scientist in the first place? I saw a magazene on the dentists table, and thought 'hey, that applies to me'
'Your dad is the same though. He's always more girlish friends, enjoyed girlish sports, and doing girlish things. You're just the same. Are you saying he has a gender indentity problem?'
'No, I'm not. It's not like that...'
'So then everyone has a gender identity problem?'
'No, they don't'
'So why are you saying they do? What makes you think you do? Give me proof'
'Well, it's something you know inside, its part of who I am'
'So you're saying you don't ever want to get married to a girl?'
'Well, gender identity and sexuality are different things'
'But you're nothing like a girl! I can't see you playing with dolls, You hate clothes and you hate shopping!'
'You're stereotyping, mum'
'No I'm not! All girls like these things, and you don't, you hate them'
'What makes you think I don't like shopping?'
'You never go the shops with me! And when I want to buy you new shoes you point black refuse! You just expect me to buy them for you'
'(I've no knowlege of ever saying that No, mum, a lot of the time I just don't have the time! And when I go into town I do lots of window shopping, I stay in the CD stores for example, for hours! My friend gets bored because I take so long to shop!'
'(She says this while I'm saying the bit in italics) No, thats not right! You hate clothes too. It's all part of your dyspraxia'
'Exactly! The Dyspraxia Foundation say that clothing prefrences can be affected by dyspraxia'
'There you are then, it's all part of your dyspraxia'
'But I asked the Dyspraxia Foundation about it and they agreed with me! I can be both transgendered and dyspraxic!'
'I'm going to buy you that book you saw in town about dyspraxia and you'll see, you'll see'
'Fine, I will, but won't you read the links I gave you?'
'They're wrong. Look, so you say you're gay, you want to do it with men?'
'No, mum, look, I already told you, gender indenity and sexuality are different'
'I still cannot believe you have a gender identity problem. Your dad is the same you know, a lot of what you are is him'
'Mum, we are not the same person. We think totally differently, genetics is 50/50'
'No, I can't believe it to be true. Dad was the same...'
'So are you saying then that I'm wrong? That I'm utterly wrong?'
'I'm just saying that you're very dyspraxic, and that causes...'
'Please answer the question, mum'
'I think you are wrong yes, you're misguided. You're dyspraxic and thats what causes it'
'Mum, I don't think you understand...'
silence as we pull into the driveway
'Mum?'
'Just go away, I don't want to talk to you now'
'Why?'
'I just feel I've let you down. Just go away...'
Does that sound familiar? Well, since then, the ‘problem’ hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s got worse. In the meantime, I’ve also done a lot more research, and a lot of soul-searching. Believe me, this isn’t something I take lightly. At all.
After that conversation, I didn’t bring up the subject much. Firstly, it had led to too much emotional chaos on both sides, and secondly, I actually began to believe you. That indeed that was all just in my mind, that I really am a boy afterall, and that this is just me being influenced by something I’d read. Yet I couldn’t accept that outcome. I was no longer sure of what I was, being caught between my feelings and your feelings, and I began to mentally tear myself apart. I grew very depressed, although I showed it less at home as the internet provided a painkiller, and especially my online diary, where I was able to extract the poisons inside me.
I questioned every aspect of myself, began to loathe myself, began to wish someone or something would kill me so I didn’t have to deal with it all. I could find no definite evidence of me being transsexual, yet at the same time, I could not discard it, it just led to even more pain. This pattern continued for a few weeks, and as my GCSEs were coming up, I was getting extremely worried. I needed proof of what I thought was true. Then, on one of the last days before study leave began, I tried writing a brief story to illustrate my dilemma metaphorically, as I so often tend to do. I started writing about myself as Lord Llieno, the fantasy lord in robes of emerald green, but I didn’t feel comfortable. After a few paragraphs, I felt seriously unhappy with what I had wrote, and deleted the whole thing. I tried again, this time with me as a girl, and I felt a lot happier. I couldn’t think of myself as male, and I felt so happy at the thought of me being female…that my doubts were cast aside. I took this as proof, and over the next month, while I tackled my GCSEs, I came to find more and more proofs…namely, things that happened long before I even know what transsexuality was. Such as my stories in Year 2, which almost always featured boys becoming girls, or the time I made a magic wand in Year 3 and wished it would make me female.
As the Summer began, I was once again more and more confident with who I am, but I was scared of repeating such to you, after what had happened only a short while before. I was able to spend a lot of time at home, and hence a lot of time online, so I was able to be myself for long periods of time and thus I cheered up quite considerabely. In late July, I travelled with Opa up to Glasgow and met Bethany, my closest online friend since 2001. I was so so jealous of her…I didn’t tell her that, of course, but I kept wishing that I had her life during the journey home. However, I was growing more confident in the girl I am, and by mid-July, was feeling a little regretful that I didn’t have a name. Girls can hardly be called ‘Martin’ afterall. I couldn’t remember the girl’s name you’d have given me had I been born how I should, and I feared asking you again in case it diverted you back to what had happened in April. So I did research of my own. I looked at a webpage of girl’s names. It wasn’t a massive one, having only a few hundred, and hence I was able to create a shortlist of names I really liked within half an hour. Oddly enough, though, the name I chose for myself didn’t make the shortlist. I’d looked at in passing, and thought it nice, but no more than that. That name would not leave my mind, though, even after I’d selected ‘Dawn’ as my favorite from the shortlist. The name haunted me, and I took this as a sign. I went onto another site to check the name’s meaning, and it meant ‘Light’. As I’d been saying only the day before how I felt my element was light, I felt I needed no other evidence, and adopted the name at once. That name was Elaine.
I can imagine how you feel, knowing now that I’ve been thinking of myself with a totally different name to that you chose for me. I did want to tell you at the time, but once again the fear came in. I felt so happy with my name, I wanted the whole world to know, but I could hardly do that, not where I stood then. So I remained Elaine to all my friends online, and Martin to those at the anime club and school.
Shortly after this, you left on your holiday to La Brenne, and I got to spend a lot of time by myself. With no-one around for most of the time to call me ‘Martin’, I felt a lot freer, and truly enjoyed being myself, as much as I could. However, then came my trip with Daniel to Ingoldmells, and the pressure of the sudden change meant that I did break down while I was there, but Daniel managed to comfort me. School started not long after, and the noveties of sixth form managed to fight my depression at being in an environment where my peers all knew me as male. I had become too used to the online freedom of that Summer.
I clashed with my friends, basically over me becoming too obsessed with the online world and expecting reality to follow suit. A large part of this was related to gender, and how I’d been acting too fake at that time. I had. I’d started exaggerating anything feminine about me in order to make more people believe me. The clash with my friends awakened me to this, and I made up with them and repressed myself somewhat. I still thought, ne, knew myself as female, but I was acting a lot more gender-neutral. This carried on for much of the Autumn, as I made sure to be naught but completely true to myself.
I sent postcards to my online friends, and signed them all Elaine, as I did with all letters I wrote in Amnesty International at school. I received Christmas cards and letters to me, Elaine, although they were all disguised by having ‘Llieno’ written on the envelope, and I have long since discarded that name. It was becoming painful to have to write ‘Martin’ on all schoolforms, although not so at home, because here I repressed it all, still fearing a repeat of April, but knowing that it was inevitable.
So, onto this year, 2004. I’ve included lots of my Livejournal Online Diary entries from throughout the year, so you can see things more clearly. I cannot summarise things in this letter alone, and reading these entries will show you just how this isn’t just a whim, or a phase, but something much deeper. It’s who I am.
Nonetheless, I still summarise 2004 for you, and you can read the much more detailed entries later on. I continued to recover from the friends clash in September, and I was acting quite feminine again, which caused one of my online friends to worry I was faking things again. Yet I was sure I wasn’t, as dropping the feminine traits felt like dropping parts of myself. A good American friend of me told me ‘You’re not yourself because you’re feminine. You’re feminine because you’re yourself’ and I realised how true it was…this realisation then lifted any barriers I had to being myself, and even in real life I started being more girly. I even bought a girl’s anime T-shirt from town, but you didn’t seem to notice it was a girl’s top, so I was able to wear it around the house…
Then, almost exactly a year after I tried telling you, I e-mailed the Bishop about the whole thing. He consulted with Apostle Hoffman, and together they sent back e-mails giving me their support and telling me that I wasn’t an abomination, and that gender did not matter in terms of the spirit. With the Bish on my side, I then turned to someone who could physically help me. As I began my AS level exams, I booked an appointment with Dr. Baker at Cripps Health Centre. I was able to see him during a gap in my exam timetable.
The appointment went very well. As a medical professional, Dr. Baker knew all about transsexuality, and asked me about it. I answered his questions honestly, and he finished the appointment by stating that he was so convinced that he would skip the second appointment and send off a referral to the NHS Gender Centre at Stonebridge, which is practically opposite where the McMaths live. I brought up the issue of dyspraxia with him, and he told me there is no link beteen dyspraxia and transsexuality. He told me I obviously had done a lot of research, which I had, and I knew a lot, which I did. I wanted to be sure, needed to be sure, and I was, and still am. He did call me back for a second appointment, but only to discuss how I could tell my parents…he made an offer which still stands and I shall implore you to consider later on.
The NHS moves slowly, however, and it was sometime after my AS exams when a letter confirming my referral to Stonebridge arrived at our house. I wasn’t awake when it did, though, and I noticed that Mum had to got to it first. I wasn’t sure until later that day, on her way to drop me off at the train station, she told me how glad she was I was a guy and how I could never be a girl, etc, etc. I didn’t have the time to argue back, but I in no way agreed. Meanwhile, my online friends sent me gifts, including a ring, and two pendants, which I wore wherever possible.
A crisis then occured at school. Tom came across my livejournal, with me still logged into my account, and didn’t do anything stupid, but his friend and my former friend James Sullivan saw the oppurtunity, and hijacked my account, although I was soon able to regain control. Supported by Chris, however, James read as much of my diary as he could, and with me almost totally unaware, news of my journal spread around the sixth form. Many people found out about me, but nothing was said in public. Clare North, a girl I’d come to really respect in Sixth Form, had found out about me, and had decided to completely support me, and soon the whole thing blew over, and I was no longer who knew and who didn’t. Strangely enough, though, the more people who see me as Elaine, and not Martin, the happier I am, because it’s hell having to be someone you really feel you are not.
The Summer Holidays came, and one day in the early holidays when I was particularly tired, Mum found me lying on her bed and tried telling me how I couldn’t be a girl again. I wanted to tell her that I am, tell her why, but I knew the holiday was imminent, and I had pledged to myself to do nothing before or during the holiday which would make things too uncomfortable. Hence, I said nothing then, and despite me really wishing to tell you now, I could not. Why was I no longer as afraid as I had been the previous year? I was now older, and more sure of myself than ever, and I had both the Bishop and the Doctors backing me…
Then, obviously, comes the holiday. It was the longest period I’d spent for a long time where I didn’t have the chance to be Elaine, and I found it quite painful. Venus Envy was rife throughout the early part of the holiday, Venus Envy being the term I use for my extreme envy of pretty girls. I’ll get onto that soon. However, things got a little better when I realised I had chances to get really cheap girl’s clothes. I didn’t originally intend to do that, but you surely noticed that the only clothes I liked at the Bechyne market stall were all girl’s ones (it’s true, I find guy clothes on the whole rather boring). At the caves, I bought some very girly jewellery, including another pendant, and two rings. In Telc, I bought two girl’s tops and a guy top which I didn’t mind wearing (the gothic one). Later on, in Teplice, I bought a few more girl’s tops, but in Prague, prices were a little high, and the time cut a little short. Venus Envy was strong throughout the holiday, and especially so at Doksy, which is why I really didn’t want to return to the place. Well, that and the many wasps. The beach, with it’s bikinis, was a rather obvious display of masculinity and feminity, and I knew which side I belonged to, and which I didn’t, and it wasn;t what everyone else was percieving. If you’d actually taken a look at my ‘holiday diary’ collection of sheets, you’d have seen these emotions in textual form, and you didn’t even know about my Czech wordlist of all things feminine. Yes, I learnt the Czech for ‘pretty’. I was feeling that desperate.
When we returned from the holiday, time moved too fast for me to regroup my senses and try telling you, and thing such as Amecon and Uppingham got in the way. At Uppingham, I was feeling quite desperate, so I wrote a letter to Bianca, with a similar content to this one, and she totally supported me, which made me feel much better about the whole weekend.
School hit me like an express train. On the first proper day back, I made two Livejournal updates both expressing my distress at this sudden return to Martin, which was deeply upsetting me. I wanted to sign my name on my diary as Elaine, and I fell silent in geography when one of the girl’s whose table I sit at exlaimed ‘Aww, it’s not a girl’s table anymore’. At the same time, however, I was both gaining and losing support. Chris exclaimed at Daniel’s party how he hates all gays and transsexuals, while trying to impress Daniel’s cousin who already knows about me anyway, and he then stared directly at me, knowing I’d heard his comment. He then denied the whole thing, getting quite angry about it, and making claims that he made the comment in a different context, at a different place, and a different time, all claims which Daniel and Matthew were able to falsify within seconds. Chris remained adament, however, and then engaged in a debate with Clare about how alll gays and transsexuals should be banned from public jobs, as well as expressing further homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia. Upon hearing that he’d deliberately made me miss Francis’s party, and that he’d been helping those who were trying to make fun of me and wreck my reputaton, I lost my patience and am now ignoring Chris. Meanwhile, Clare supports me hugely through each day, and has been really wonderful about it, and Ollie, who had found out about me through James last year, was trying to get the rest of the year to hate me and reject me. Ollie met strong oppositon though, and it now seems I have allies in many places.
But pressures at school were still strong, and also at home. I’d been deliberately trying to get as feminine an apperance as possible, which meant every little helps. I was therefore, as always, reluctant for my nails to be cut, as they are the only part of my body that’s really feminine. The same went with my hair, which I got really upset about because I felt I was being re-masculinised, and I never want that to happen to me. I felt I needed to tell you, and driven by the pain of losing some of my hair, I asked Glasgow University to send one of their prospectuses here, but not to Martin, or Llieno. To Miss Elaine O’Neill. This action could not be undone, and hence I knew I had to tell you, and tried keeping to the deadline, although this meant staying up late and getting up early to get the sheets together (I told Dad I was on some forum or other, although Mum caught me writing part of it and threw another ‘you’re not a girl’ at me).
So we’ve now reached the present. As you can tell, this is not some moment of craziness that only affected me iN Spring 2003, but something ongoing that is part of who I am. Removal of it would destroy me, and the thought of having to remain male for the rest of my life terrifies me. I already am gripped by frequent self-hatred because of my body simply not matching up to my mind.
It’s not a want, not a fancy. I don’t ‘want to be a girl’. I am a girl. Sorry, but I am. I’ve done so much soulsearching that I am totally convinced of this now. I’m not a guy wanting to be a girl. This isn’t some extreme level of curiosity, this isn’t like the feelings Mum says everyone goes through when they’re young. I’m a girl with a guy’s body, and I want to fix my body to match who I am. That’s the simple truth, as painful as it may be. This isn’t a fetish, it’s nothing remotely sexual. In actual fact, I currently identify as asexual. Guys don’t interest me, but neither do girls. When I see pretty girls, all I feel is envy. A wish to be like them, a wish to be friends with them, but nothing romantic or sexual. I almost wish there was, as being asexual is no fun, but I have carefully analysed myself, and where I should feel attraction, instead I feel envy. Venus Envy. And this is another proof to myself of who I am, for what sort of guys long to look like pretty girls? Ne, what sort of guys wish to be pretty girls? Answer is, none do. And I don’t want to be a pretty guy, or a handsome guy. I want to be a pretty girl, although being any sort of girl would be highly desirable for me right now, as long as it’s not a transgirl, as that is what I already am.
Ah, but you tell me that God created me this way, hence therefore I should be this way. God doesn’t make mistakes, right? He made me a physical boy, hence I should be a boy? Well, I don’t think that works. What about those people born with physical disablities? How many people claim ‘God made that person with only one arm, so they should never get an aritifical arm’? You may state that that’s totally different, but notso in my eyes. To me, my body is a disablity that prevents me living the live I know I am meant to lead. I can’t see how it is sacrilege to change that. If God never makes mistakes, than this a very strange idea of a perfect world. No, God made me this way, and if he made me this way for a reason, it is not to suffer as someone I’m not until I grow old and die, or take a faster route. It’s hard to fathom why God would have done this to me, but like we’ve heard from the altar, we cannot always understand God’s ways. Maybe this is meant to strengthen my spirit, or to enable to me help save people in the future. I don’t know. But I do know that I in no way meant to remain trapped like this. And if you do think that transsexuality and the church cannot combine, than I think that www.regenbogen-nak.de will interest you. It’s a German page for gay, lesbian and transgendered New Apostolics…
This morning Mum gave an article to me from The Sun about someone who had undergone SRS (a sex change) and then regretted it. I was already long since aware of this, and already know a lot more facts than the sensationalist and oft innaccurate Sun portrays. Firstly, the clinic mentioned, Munroe in Australia, is one that does not strictly follow the Harry Benjamin standards of care. The HBSOC are a measure put in place to prevent this kind of thing happening. A sex change, while almost irreversable, is only the final part in a long process. First, you are carefully assessed by doctors (I’m past that part), and then by specialist psychologists before anything can begin. You then start on hormones, namely estrogen and anti-androgens, and these do more than alter your body (for example, estogen smoothens the skin and accelerates head hair growth). Estrogen also affects how you feel, and there have been many cases where people are are not really transsexual have bailed-out when estrogen made them feel more wrong than before. Often, estrogen makes true transsexuals feel more right, and they often encounter severe depression if the treatment is stopped. Finally comes the RLT, Real Life Test, where the candidate for SRS has to spend a year (or two years, in places) living as their own gender (a girl, in my case). If that feels wrong, they can bail-out. Then, finally, comes SRS, after further psychological analysis. It’s a very throurgh process…your average Joe can’t suddenly decide to become Jane and have a sex-change at once. Of course, no system is perfect, a very small minority can slip through, but this happens with similar systems worldwide. Anyways, as it is, I don’t have anything else I can blame these feelings on (I’ve searched hard enough in the months after I first tried telling you). You claim perhaps dyspraxia, but the National Dyspraxia Foundation and Dr.Baker both disagree with you there.
I remember Mum telling me I couldn’t be a girl because of my lack of interest in shopping and fashion. Yes, because we all know that every single girl on the planet shops her entire life and is always meticulous about what she wears. That sort of comment would not prove popular with femenists. It’s like claiming all men are lazy, beer-drinking, sex-crazed gorillas; it’s stereotyping. Feminity and female are not the same thing, although they are linked. You get very girly girls, and you also get tomboys, who act masculine, but still identify as female. So discrediting me on the basis of clothes and shopping doesn’t work. As it is, they’re both wrong. I actually do enjoy shopping, and I am interested in clothes. Of course, when I’ve been taken clothes shopping before, I don’t get taken to the girl’s section, with all the clothes I find adorable, gorgeous and so on. No, I get taken to the boy’s section, where there are three drab colours to choose from and nothing I really like. It’s little wonder I’d have little passion for that. If you had followed me around Telc or Teplice, however, you’d have seen me flicking through T-shirt racks at every clothes store that wasn;t so small that the owner would stare at me suspciosuly the whole time I was in there (because what guys look at girly clothes?). I admit I have a limited wardrobe at home, but that’s a wardobe limited to girly clothes and a few guy clothes I actually like (such as the UN T-shirt). My final statement on this topic is perhaps best explained by the pictures sheet following this letter, where I’ve printed off a lot of dolls of my(dream)self wearing all kinds of outfits I love. Yes, I spent about 40 hours on a doll site in the weeks presecding Bohemia, and I loved it. Genuinely loved it. But just because I’m feminine doesn’t make me female…even though I am!
I know so much about transsexuality I could sit an A-level exam in it and pass. This whole thing isn’t, like you claimed in 2003, based on a New Scientist article, which, by the way, I only picked up because it related to the way I was feeling. I didn’t read the ‘symtoms’ of transsexuality and decide I have that, like one might with a list of symptons for some strange mental disorder. I wanted to be a girl physically, to have a girl’s body, and that magazene was about that. Anyways, as I was saying, I know a lot about the whole thing. It’s been scientifically proven, for one thing. MTFs (male-to-female transsexuals, like myself) were found to have female brains, wheras male males did not. If one has the brain of the opposite sex to their body, than how is that not meant to be fixed? I believe I have a girl’s brain. And it’s not just one way. There are many guys who are trapped as girls, many more than the media would suggest. I even met one at Amecon, and he was a very nice guy. Even moreso, there are people born who are not definitely one gender or another. Intesexed people who are born with a mixture of genitals, who are assigned to one sex or another at birth, which can often turn out to be wrong. It’s all very scientific and accepted, and nothing like the sexual fetishists that much of media portrays.
On my second appointment with Dr. Baker, he told me that when I tell you, to book a joint double appointment with him as soon as possible. Therefore, if you;ve read this far, I would very much like you to do that. You tell me I’m still young and impressionable, in which case, hearing a second opinion from a medical professional will help. Furthermore, he can explain a lot more of the details to you and will answer any questions. If, as you may well think, I’m not transsexual and this is one huge delusion on my part, than such an appointment would reveal that very quickly, so what have you to lose?
The hardest thing to write on my UCAS forms is not what courses or universities I’m applying for, but filling in the boxes marked ‘title’, ‘name’ and especially ‘gender’. I would like to be a girl at unversity, or at least to transition during university. It’s a new start where people will not draw prejudices based off the male me I portrayed, and I fully intend to use it. I feel so much happier with myself when I see myself as female, and I’m sure that can only benefit me, rather than depression of being trapped sapping my energy for study. In order to be feminine enough in appearance for the first day of university though, I would need to start on hormones within the next few months, as development is quite slow. That’s another reason why I chose to tell you now.
I will not re-enter another period of self-doubt and depression if you reject this once again, because I am entirely sure of myself. Regardless of what you think, I know myself to be female. I understand it’s a hard concept to grasp, and even I would struggle with it, if I was not actually suffering from it myself, but I amfraid it is one you will have to grasp. Either accept me as your daughter, or accept me as someone I’m not and will never be. It’s up to you, but please, do make that appointment.
With much sincere love,
(Elaine Dawn O'Neill, your daughter)
I hope this works. I really do.
(Dear Mum & Dad)
Firstly, just let me say briefly that although I’d much prefer to write this to you, rather than type it, I’ve so much to say that without it taking forever, I’m having to use this method.
I am afraid, however, you may not like what I’m about to say. You didn’t seem to before. Upon saying that, can you guess what it is yet? Let me refresh your memory:
MYSELF:'Mum, I contacted the Dyspraxia Foundation and they said there is no link between gender identity and dyspraxia'
silence
MUM:'I still think it's because of dyspraxia. You only said gender idenity you didn't mention the rest'
'I had a look at their site, mum, they're a professional organisation. A lot of the problems I have can be explained by dysrpraxia, but others cannot. Like my gender identity'
'I still think a lot of this is due to what you've read. I'm the same, when I read symptoms I think I have those symptoms'
'In that case how would I have found these sites in the first place?'
'You read that article in New Scientist, thats whats caused it'
'Mum, why do you think I took that new scientist in the first place? I saw a magazene on the dentists table, and thought 'hey, that applies to me'
'Your dad is the same though. He's always more girlish friends, enjoyed girlish sports, and doing girlish things. You're just the same. Are you saying he has a gender indentity problem?'
'No, I'm not. It's not like that...'
'So then everyone has a gender identity problem?'
'No, they don't'
'So why are you saying they do? What makes you think you do? Give me proof'
'Well, it's something you know inside, its part of who I am'
'So you're saying you don't ever want to get married to a girl?'
'Well, gender identity and sexuality are different things'
'But you're nothing like a girl! I can't see you playing with dolls, You hate clothes and you hate shopping!'
'You're stereotyping, mum'
'No I'm not! All girls like these things, and you don't, you hate them'
'What makes you think I don't like shopping?'
'You never go the shops with me! And when I want to buy you new shoes you point black refuse! You just expect me to buy them for you'
'(I've no knowlege of ever saying that No, mum, a lot of the time I just don't have the time! And when I go into town I do lots of window shopping, I stay in the CD stores for example, for hours! My friend gets bored because I take so long to shop!'
'(She says this while I'm saying the bit in italics) No, thats not right! You hate clothes too. It's all part of your dyspraxia'
'Exactly! The Dyspraxia Foundation say that clothing prefrences can be affected by dyspraxia'
'There you are then, it's all part of your dyspraxia'
'But I asked the Dyspraxia Foundation about it and they agreed with me! I can be both transgendered and dyspraxic!'
'I'm going to buy you that book you saw in town about dyspraxia and you'll see, you'll see'
'Fine, I will, but won't you read the links I gave you?'
'They're wrong. Look, so you say you're gay, you want to do it with men?'
'No, mum, look, I already told you, gender indenity and sexuality are different'
'I still cannot believe you have a gender identity problem. Your dad is the same you know, a lot of what you are is him'
'Mum, we are not the same person. We think totally differently, genetics is 50/50'
'No, I can't believe it to be true. Dad was the same...'
'So are you saying then that I'm wrong? That I'm utterly wrong?'
'I'm just saying that you're very dyspraxic, and that causes...'
'Please answer the question, mum'
'I think you are wrong yes, you're misguided. You're dyspraxic and thats what causes it'
'Mum, I don't think you understand...'
silence as we pull into the driveway
'Mum?'
'Just go away, I don't want to talk to you now'
'Why?'
'I just feel I've let you down. Just go away...'
Does that sound familiar? Well, since then, the ‘problem’ hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s got worse. In the meantime, I’ve also done a lot more research, and a lot of soul-searching. Believe me, this isn’t something I take lightly. At all.
After that conversation, I didn’t bring up the subject much. Firstly, it had led to too much emotional chaos on both sides, and secondly, I actually began to believe you. That indeed that was all just in my mind, that I really am a boy afterall, and that this is just me being influenced by something I’d read. Yet I couldn’t accept that outcome. I was no longer sure of what I was, being caught between my feelings and your feelings, and I began to mentally tear myself apart. I grew very depressed, although I showed it less at home as the internet provided a painkiller, and especially my online diary, where I was able to extract the poisons inside me.
I questioned every aspect of myself, began to loathe myself, began to wish someone or something would kill me so I didn’t have to deal with it all. I could find no definite evidence of me being transsexual, yet at the same time, I could not discard it, it just led to even more pain. This pattern continued for a few weeks, and as my GCSEs were coming up, I was getting extremely worried. I needed proof of what I thought was true. Then, on one of the last days before study leave began, I tried writing a brief story to illustrate my dilemma metaphorically, as I so often tend to do. I started writing about myself as Lord Llieno, the fantasy lord in robes of emerald green, but I didn’t feel comfortable. After a few paragraphs, I felt seriously unhappy with what I had wrote, and deleted the whole thing. I tried again, this time with me as a girl, and I felt a lot happier. I couldn’t think of myself as male, and I felt so happy at the thought of me being female…that my doubts were cast aside. I took this as proof, and over the next month, while I tackled my GCSEs, I came to find more and more proofs…namely, things that happened long before I even know what transsexuality was. Such as my stories in Year 2, which almost always featured boys becoming girls, or the time I made a magic wand in Year 3 and wished it would make me female.
As the Summer began, I was once again more and more confident with who I am, but I was scared of repeating such to you, after what had happened only a short while before. I was able to spend a lot of time at home, and hence a lot of time online, so I was able to be myself for long periods of time and thus I cheered up quite considerabely. In late July, I travelled with Opa up to Glasgow and met Bethany, my closest online friend since 2001. I was so so jealous of her…I didn’t tell her that, of course, but I kept wishing that I had her life during the journey home. However, I was growing more confident in the girl I am, and by mid-July, was feeling a little regretful that I didn’t have a name. Girls can hardly be called ‘Martin’ afterall. I couldn’t remember the girl’s name you’d have given me had I been born how I should, and I feared asking you again in case it diverted you back to what had happened in April. So I did research of my own. I looked at a webpage of girl’s names. It wasn’t a massive one, having only a few hundred, and hence I was able to create a shortlist of names I really liked within half an hour. Oddly enough, though, the name I chose for myself didn’t make the shortlist. I’d looked at in passing, and thought it nice, but no more than that. That name would not leave my mind, though, even after I’d selected ‘Dawn’ as my favorite from the shortlist. The name haunted me, and I took this as a sign. I went onto another site to check the name’s meaning, and it meant ‘Light’. As I’d been saying only the day before how I felt my element was light, I felt I needed no other evidence, and adopted the name at once. That name was Elaine.
I can imagine how you feel, knowing now that I’ve been thinking of myself with a totally different name to that you chose for me. I did want to tell you at the time, but once again the fear came in. I felt so happy with my name, I wanted the whole world to know, but I could hardly do that, not where I stood then. So I remained Elaine to all my friends online, and Martin to those at the anime club and school.
Shortly after this, you left on your holiday to La Brenne, and I got to spend a lot of time by myself. With no-one around for most of the time to call me ‘Martin’, I felt a lot freer, and truly enjoyed being myself, as much as I could. However, then came my trip with Daniel to Ingoldmells, and the pressure of the sudden change meant that I did break down while I was there, but Daniel managed to comfort me. School started not long after, and the noveties of sixth form managed to fight my depression at being in an environment where my peers all knew me as male. I had become too used to the online freedom of that Summer.
I clashed with my friends, basically over me becoming too obsessed with the online world and expecting reality to follow suit. A large part of this was related to gender, and how I’d been acting too fake at that time. I had. I’d started exaggerating anything feminine about me in order to make more people believe me. The clash with my friends awakened me to this, and I made up with them and repressed myself somewhat. I still thought, ne, knew myself as female, but I was acting a lot more gender-neutral. This carried on for much of the Autumn, as I made sure to be naught but completely true to myself.
I sent postcards to my online friends, and signed them all Elaine, as I did with all letters I wrote in Amnesty International at school. I received Christmas cards and letters to me, Elaine, although they were all disguised by having ‘Llieno’ written on the envelope, and I have long since discarded that name. It was becoming painful to have to write ‘Martin’ on all schoolforms, although not so at home, because here I repressed it all, still fearing a repeat of April, but knowing that it was inevitable.
So, onto this year, 2004. I’ve included lots of my Livejournal Online Diary entries from throughout the year, so you can see things more clearly. I cannot summarise things in this letter alone, and reading these entries will show you just how this isn’t just a whim, or a phase, but something much deeper. It’s who I am.
Nonetheless, I still summarise 2004 for you, and you can read the much more detailed entries later on. I continued to recover from the friends clash in September, and I was acting quite feminine again, which caused one of my online friends to worry I was faking things again. Yet I was sure I wasn’t, as dropping the feminine traits felt like dropping parts of myself. A good American friend of me told me ‘You’re not yourself because you’re feminine. You’re feminine because you’re yourself’ and I realised how true it was…this realisation then lifted any barriers I had to being myself, and even in real life I started being more girly. I even bought a girl’s anime T-shirt from town, but you didn’t seem to notice it was a girl’s top, so I was able to wear it around the house…
Then, almost exactly a year after I tried telling you, I e-mailed the Bishop about the whole thing. He consulted with Apostle Hoffman, and together they sent back e-mails giving me their support and telling me that I wasn’t an abomination, and that gender did not matter in terms of the spirit. With the Bish on my side, I then turned to someone who could physically help me. As I began my AS level exams, I booked an appointment with Dr. Baker at Cripps Health Centre. I was able to see him during a gap in my exam timetable.
The appointment went very well. As a medical professional, Dr. Baker knew all about transsexuality, and asked me about it. I answered his questions honestly, and he finished the appointment by stating that he was so convinced that he would skip the second appointment and send off a referral to the NHS Gender Centre at Stonebridge, which is practically opposite where the McMaths live. I brought up the issue of dyspraxia with him, and he told me there is no link beteen dyspraxia and transsexuality. He told me I obviously had done a lot of research, which I had, and I knew a lot, which I did. I wanted to be sure, needed to be sure, and I was, and still am. He did call me back for a second appointment, but only to discuss how I could tell my parents…he made an offer which still stands and I shall implore you to consider later on.
The NHS moves slowly, however, and it was sometime after my AS exams when a letter confirming my referral to Stonebridge arrived at our house. I wasn’t awake when it did, though, and I noticed that Mum had to got to it first. I wasn’t sure until later that day, on her way to drop me off at the train station, she told me how glad she was I was a guy and how I could never be a girl, etc, etc. I didn’t have the time to argue back, but I in no way agreed. Meanwhile, my online friends sent me gifts, including a ring, and two pendants, which I wore wherever possible.
A crisis then occured at school. Tom came across my livejournal, with me still logged into my account, and didn’t do anything stupid, but his friend and my former friend James Sullivan saw the oppurtunity, and hijacked my account, although I was soon able to regain control. Supported by Chris, however, James read as much of my diary as he could, and with me almost totally unaware, news of my journal spread around the sixth form. Many people found out about me, but nothing was said in public. Clare North, a girl I’d come to really respect in Sixth Form, had found out about me, and had decided to completely support me, and soon the whole thing blew over, and I was no longer who knew and who didn’t. Strangely enough, though, the more people who see me as Elaine, and not Martin, the happier I am, because it’s hell having to be someone you really feel you are not.
The Summer Holidays came, and one day in the early holidays when I was particularly tired, Mum found me lying on her bed and tried telling me how I couldn’t be a girl again. I wanted to tell her that I am, tell her why, but I knew the holiday was imminent, and I had pledged to myself to do nothing before or during the holiday which would make things too uncomfortable. Hence, I said nothing then, and despite me really wishing to tell you now, I could not. Why was I no longer as afraid as I had been the previous year? I was now older, and more sure of myself than ever, and I had both the Bishop and the Doctors backing me…
Then, obviously, comes the holiday. It was the longest period I’d spent for a long time where I didn’t have the chance to be Elaine, and I found it quite painful. Venus Envy was rife throughout the early part of the holiday, Venus Envy being the term I use for my extreme envy of pretty girls. I’ll get onto that soon. However, things got a little better when I realised I had chances to get really cheap girl’s clothes. I didn’t originally intend to do that, but you surely noticed that the only clothes I liked at the Bechyne market stall were all girl’s ones (it’s true, I find guy clothes on the whole rather boring). At the caves, I bought some very girly jewellery, including another pendant, and two rings. In Telc, I bought two girl’s tops and a guy top which I didn’t mind wearing (the gothic one). Later on, in Teplice, I bought a few more girl’s tops, but in Prague, prices were a little high, and the time cut a little short. Venus Envy was strong throughout the holiday, and especially so at Doksy, which is why I really didn’t want to return to the place. Well, that and the many wasps. The beach, with it’s bikinis, was a rather obvious display of masculinity and feminity, and I knew which side I belonged to, and which I didn’t, and it wasn;t what everyone else was percieving. If you’d actually taken a look at my ‘holiday diary’ collection of sheets, you’d have seen these emotions in textual form, and you didn’t even know about my Czech wordlist of all things feminine. Yes, I learnt the Czech for ‘pretty’. I was feeling that desperate.
When we returned from the holiday, time moved too fast for me to regroup my senses and try telling you, and thing such as Amecon and Uppingham got in the way. At Uppingham, I was feeling quite desperate, so I wrote a letter to Bianca, with a similar content to this one, and she totally supported me, which made me feel much better about the whole weekend.
School hit me like an express train. On the first proper day back, I made two Livejournal updates both expressing my distress at this sudden return to Martin, which was deeply upsetting me. I wanted to sign my name on my diary as Elaine, and I fell silent in geography when one of the girl’s whose table I sit at exlaimed ‘Aww, it’s not a girl’s table anymore’. At the same time, however, I was both gaining and losing support. Chris exclaimed at Daniel’s party how he hates all gays and transsexuals, while trying to impress Daniel’s cousin who already knows about me anyway, and he then stared directly at me, knowing I’d heard his comment. He then denied the whole thing, getting quite angry about it, and making claims that he made the comment in a different context, at a different place, and a different time, all claims which Daniel and Matthew were able to falsify within seconds. Chris remained adament, however, and then engaged in a debate with Clare about how alll gays and transsexuals should be banned from public jobs, as well as expressing further homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia. Upon hearing that he’d deliberately made me miss Francis’s party, and that he’d been helping those who were trying to make fun of me and wreck my reputaton, I lost my patience and am now ignoring Chris. Meanwhile, Clare supports me hugely through each day, and has been really wonderful about it, and Ollie, who had found out about me through James last year, was trying to get the rest of the year to hate me and reject me. Ollie met strong oppositon though, and it now seems I have allies in many places.
But pressures at school were still strong, and also at home. I’d been deliberately trying to get as feminine an apperance as possible, which meant every little helps. I was therefore, as always, reluctant for my nails to be cut, as they are the only part of my body that’s really feminine. The same went with my hair, which I got really upset about because I felt I was being re-masculinised, and I never want that to happen to me. I felt I needed to tell you, and driven by the pain of losing some of my hair, I asked Glasgow University to send one of their prospectuses here, but not to Martin, or Llieno. To Miss Elaine O’Neill. This action could not be undone, and hence I knew I had to tell you, and tried keeping to the deadline, although this meant staying up late and getting up early to get the sheets together (I told Dad I was on some forum or other, although Mum caught me writing part of it and threw another ‘you’re not a girl’ at me).
So we’ve now reached the present. As you can tell, this is not some moment of craziness that only affected me iN Spring 2003, but something ongoing that is part of who I am. Removal of it would destroy me, and the thought of having to remain male for the rest of my life terrifies me. I already am gripped by frequent self-hatred because of my body simply not matching up to my mind.
It’s not a want, not a fancy. I don’t ‘want to be a girl’. I am a girl. Sorry, but I am. I’ve done so much soulsearching that I am totally convinced of this now. I’m not a guy wanting to be a girl. This isn’t some extreme level of curiosity, this isn’t like the feelings Mum says everyone goes through when they’re young. I’m a girl with a guy’s body, and I want to fix my body to match who I am. That’s the simple truth, as painful as it may be. This isn’t a fetish, it’s nothing remotely sexual. In actual fact, I currently identify as asexual. Guys don’t interest me, but neither do girls. When I see pretty girls, all I feel is envy. A wish to be like them, a wish to be friends with them, but nothing romantic or sexual. I almost wish there was, as being asexual is no fun, but I have carefully analysed myself, and where I should feel attraction, instead I feel envy. Venus Envy. And this is another proof to myself of who I am, for what sort of guys long to look like pretty girls? Ne, what sort of guys wish to be pretty girls? Answer is, none do. And I don’t want to be a pretty guy, or a handsome guy. I want to be a pretty girl, although being any sort of girl would be highly desirable for me right now, as long as it’s not a transgirl, as that is what I already am.
Ah, but you tell me that God created me this way, hence therefore I should be this way. God doesn’t make mistakes, right? He made me a physical boy, hence I should be a boy? Well, I don’t think that works. What about those people born with physical disablities? How many people claim ‘God made that person with only one arm, so they should never get an aritifical arm’? You may state that that’s totally different, but notso in my eyes. To me, my body is a disablity that prevents me living the live I know I am meant to lead. I can’t see how it is sacrilege to change that. If God never makes mistakes, than this a very strange idea of a perfect world. No, God made me this way, and if he made me this way for a reason, it is not to suffer as someone I’m not until I grow old and die, or take a faster route. It’s hard to fathom why God would have done this to me, but like we’ve heard from the altar, we cannot always understand God’s ways. Maybe this is meant to strengthen my spirit, or to enable to me help save people in the future. I don’t know. But I do know that I in no way meant to remain trapped like this. And if you do think that transsexuality and the church cannot combine, than I think that www.regenbogen-nak.de will interest you. It’s a German page for gay, lesbian and transgendered New Apostolics…
This morning Mum gave an article to me from The Sun about someone who had undergone SRS (a sex change) and then regretted it. I was already long since aware of this, and already know a lot more facts than the sensationalist and oft innaccurate Sun portrays. Firstly, the clinic mentioned, Munroe in Australia, is one that does not strictly follow the Harry Benjamin standards of care. The HBSOC are a measure put in place to prevent this kind of thing happening. A sex change, while almost irreversable, is only the final part in a long process. First, you are carefully assessed by doctors (I’m past that part), and then by specialist psychologists before anything can begin. You then start on hormones, namely estrogen and anti-androgens, and these do more than alter your body (for example, estogen smoothens the skin and accelerates head hair growth). Estrogen also affects how you feel, and there have been many cases where people are are not really transsexual have bailed-out when estrogen made them feel more wrong than before. Often, estrogen makes true transsexuals feel more right, and they often encounter severe depression if the treatment is stopped. Finally comes the RLT, Real Life Test, where the candidate for SRS has to spend a year (or two years, in places) living as their own gender (a girl, in my case). If that feels wrong, they can bail-out. Then, finally, comes SRS, after further psychological analysis. It’s a very throurgh process…your average Joe can’t suddenly decide to become Jane and have a sex-change at once. Of course, no system is perfect, a very small minority can slip through, but this happens with similar systems worldwide. Anyways, as it is, I don’t have anything else I can blame these feelings on (I’ve searched hard enough in the months after I first tried telling you). You claim perhaps dyspraxia, but the National Dyspraxia Foundation and Dr.Baker both disagree with you there.
I remember Mum telling me I couldn’t be a girl because of my lack of interest in shopping and fashion. Yes, because we all know that every single girl on the planet shops her entire life and is always meticulous about what she wears. That sort of comment would not prove popular with femenists. It’s like claiming all men are lazy, beer-drinking, sex-crazed gorillas; it’s stereotyping. Feminity and female are not the same thing, although they are linked. You get very girly girls, and you also get tomboys, who act masculine, but still identify as female. So discrediting me on the basis of clothes and shopping doesn’t work. As it is, they’re both wrong. I actually do enjoy shopping, and I am interested in clothes. Of course, when I’ve been taken clothes shopping before, I don’t get taken to the girl’s section, with all the clothes I find adorable, gorgeous and so on. No, I get taken to the boy’s section, where there are three drab colours to choose from and nothing I really like. It’s little wonder I’d have little passion for that. If you had followed me around Telc or Teplice, however, you’d have seen me flicking through T-shirt racks at every clothes store that wasn;t so small that the owner would stare at me suspciosuly the whole time I was in there (because what guys look at girly clothes?). I admit I have a limited wardrobe at home, but that’s a wardobe limited to girly clothes and a few guy clothes I actually like (such as the UN T-shirt). My final statement on this topic is perhaps best explained by the pictures sheet following this letter, where I’ve printed off a lot of dolls of my(dream)self wearing all kinds of outfits I love. Yes, I spent about 40 hours on a doll site in the weeks presecding Bohemia, and I loved it. Genuinely loved it. But just because I’m feminine doesn’t make me female…even though I am!
I know so much about transsexuality I could sit an A-level exam in it and pass. This whole thing isn’t, like you claimed in 2003, based on a New Scientist article, which, by the way, I only picked up because it related to the way I was feeling. I didn’t read the ‘symtoms’ of transsexuality and decide I have that, like one might with a list of symptons for some strange mental disorder. I wanted to be a girl physically, to have a girl’s body, and that magazene was about that. Anyways, as I was saying, I know a lot about the whole thing. It’s been scientifically proven, for one thing. MTFs (male-to-female transsexuals, like myself) were found to have female brains, wheras male males did not. If one has the brain of the opposite sex to their body, than how is that not meant to be fixed? I believe I have a girl’s brain. And it’s not just one way. There are many guys who are trapped as girls, many more than the media would suggest. I even met one at Amecon, and he was a very nice guy. Even moreso, there are people born who are not definitely one gender or another. Intesexed people who are born with a mixture of genitals, who are assigned to one sex or another at birth, which can often turn out to be wrong. It’s all very scientific and accepted, and nothing like the sexual fetishists that much of media portrays.
On my second appointment with Dr. Baker, he told me that when I tell you, to book a joint double appointment with him as soon as possible. Therefore, if you;ve read this far, I would very much like you to do that. You tell me I’m still young and impressionable, in which case, hearing a second opinion from a medical professional will help. Furthermore, he can explain a lot more of the details to you and will answer any questions. If, as you may well think, I’m not transsexual and this is one huge delusion on my part, than such an appointment would reveal that very quickly, so what have you to lose?
The hardest thing to write on my UCAS forms is not what courses or universities I’m applying for, but filling in the boxes marked ‘title’, ‘name’ and especially ‘gender’. I would like to be a girl at unversity, or at least to transition during university. It’s a new start where people will not draw prejudices based off the male me I portrayed, and I fully intend to use it. I feel so much happier with myself when I see myself as female, and I’m sure that can only benefit me, rather than depression of being trapped sapping my energy for study. In order to be feminine enough in appearance for the first day of university though, I would need to start on hormones within the next few months, as development is quite slow. That’s another reason why I chose to tell you now.
I will not re-enter another period of self-doubt and depression if you reject this once again, because I am entirely sure of myself. Regardless of what you think, I know myself to be female. I understand it’s a hard concept to grasp, and even I would struggle with it, if I was not actually suffering from it myself, but I amfraid it is one you will have to grasp. Either accept me as your daughter, or accept me as someone I’m not and will never be. It’s up to you, but please, do make that appointment.
With much sincere love,
(Elaine Dawn O'Neill, your daughter)
I hope this works. I really do.