Why I changed from a woman to a man

His parents mistook him for a tomboy – they had no idea that the person they thought of as their little girl felt that she – or rather he – was a boy.

By the time he was seven, Charles had learnt that arguing about not wanting to wear girly clothes just upset people and kept quiet but that didn’t stop him from feeling that something was very wrong.

And it didn’t stop those around him from recognising that there was something different about him.

“At school I was giving off the wrong gender signals and that’s when the bullying started,”

says Charles, a civil servant from Southampton in his early 40s.

“I’ll never know what it was I was doing but the girls picked up on it and very soon pointed out that I wasn’t a ‘proper’ girl. I became very isolated. I’d get gangs of kids following me home giggling. Because I was a boyish girl they assumed I was a lesbian so I got all their homophobia.”

Charles didn’t hear about transsexualism until he went to university and didn’t realise that other people felt the way he did or that he could do anything about it. Today he works as a volunteer for Southamptonbased charity Chrysalis, helping to support transsexual people but when he was growing up, such groups didn’t exist and information about transsexualism was not easily available.

He tried to talk to his parents about it but didn’t know how to explain what he felt and was afraid of how they’d react.

“I was frightened that if I told anyone how I felt my parents wouldn’t love me anymore.

I was frightened that I’d be treated as mad so I didn’t tell anyone how I felt inside.”

As a younger child Charles escaped into an imaginary world when he was on his own to help him cope but as he got older he turned to drink and later drugs as an escape route.

By the time puberty hit he had already started drinking heavily.

“Puberty was a crisis point. There were times before puberty when even though I knew it wasn’t logical I thought it would all get sorted out.

Waking up every day and seeing that body – it was very tiring every single day living with the feeling that you want to self-harm.”

Charles ‘came out’ to his parents as a lesbian as at the time it seemed like the only explanation for how he felt though he went onto have his first relationship with a young man at 18.

“It was very hard to decide whether I wanted to be with a man because I wanted to be him or because I fancied him,” he says.

It was around this time that Charles first learnt that there were other transsexuals out there and that transition to a male body was an option.

It was a huge relief but also frightening. The stories he heard about transsexuals told of people losing their jobs and being rejected by their families.

He spoke to his GP about the possibility of a sex change when he was 25 but shortly afterwards his father became terminally ill and he decided that it would be best for the family if he suppressed the problem. However, he realised that he couldn’t wait and began telling his friends who were very accepting of him.

He then started living a double life – living as a man with his friends and dressing as a woman when he returned home.

Eventually he told his mother. “She cried a lot and said the best thing she could: ‘well you’re my little human’. My dad was too unwell to speak but he held my hand.”

Shortly after telling his mother Charles began living fully as a man and went back to his doctor, who put him on hormone treatment.

He found himself effectively going through a second puberty, complete with acne and mood swings, in his early 30s.

His voice got deeper, the fat on his face and body redistributed and his bone structure changed, giving him an increasingly masculine appearance.

“The funniest thing was my shoulders grew by two inches and I kept banging into doors because I had no sense of how big my body was.

“It was very gratifying because my body started to look right. I still had breasts though. I bound them every day.

“For people who aren’t transgender they think a man must have a penis but for a transman until you have chest reconstruction you can’t walk around as a man – you can tell when you look at someone whether they’ve got breasts but not whether or not they’ve got a penis.”

The operations to turn female genitalia into having the appearance of male genitalia are more complicated and not always as successful as male to female surgery.

For this reason, although Charles has permission to have the surgery on the NHS he has decided not to have it done at the moment.

“It’s a big decision and it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel I need it. I don’t feel at this point that surgery is going to give me a satisfactory outcome where it’s worth going through five operations but it does distress me a lot sometimes.

“I’m always very up front with potential partners and I’ve found that people don’t fall in love with your genitals – by the time you get round to doing anything there are ways and means.”

Looking at Charles today, you wouldn’t consider that he had ever been anything other than a man but that hasn’t always been the case and earlier in his transitioning process he suffered abuse and violence in public.

“I’ve had half-bricks and full milk-bottles thrown at me, been spat at and had names shouted at me. You go to a restaurant and people think they’ve got the right to turn around and have a jolly good look and nudge their friends and talk about you. You get tired of challenging it but that doesn’t make it hurt less or mean it doesn’t undermine your confidence.”

Today, through his work with transsexual support charity Chrysalis, Charles comes into contact with a lot of young people who are transitioning and is a big supporter of making puberty blocking drugs – which delay the onset of puberty – available in the UK as they are in countries such at Canada, Australia, the USA and the Netherlands.

“People think of transgender as an adult thing,” he says. “They don’t realise what we’ve b e e n through as children.

I absolutely support the i n t r oduction of the drug in this country – to have the right not to be damaged by puberty because that’s what it is. Anyone who says you should have to go through puberty to make sure you’re in the wrong body before you make the decision is cruel. The desperation you feel is overwhelming and you spend the rest of your life undoing the damage.”

* Not his real name.

CLAIRE'S STORY

Nineteen-year-old Claire*, a care worker from Southampton, has already been living as a woman for around two years. She realised at the age of five that the male body she’d been born into wasn’t right for her.

She first heard about transgender and transitioning when she was 13 thanks to the internet. She came out as transgender when she was 16.

“When I told my mum she ran for the bottle of vodka under the sink,” she says.

“She was shocked at first but then she was perfectly fine. She brought us up to be very open and I wasn’t really worried about telling her.”

Claire started living as a woman when she was 17 and is currently waiting for her hormone treatment to start.

“I do pass for a woman easily. I’m lucky. My mum and friends have helped me with my clothes and makeup.

The first time I went out as a woman it was a bit ‘oh my god’ but I just went about my daily business. I did get a few comments from the local idiots unfortunately.

“I’m looking forward to transitioning being over. The only way to describe how I feel about my body is being stuck on a foreign island without a passport.”

Claire did have a brief relationship with a boy before she began living as a woman but does not want to have another relationship until she has completed her transition.

“I want to be with a partner when I’m fully female. It isn’t going to be a great conversation to have – I have to keep my barriers up until I feel I can trust someone.”

A friend of Claire’s introduced her to Chrysalis and she’s found it very useful.

“It’s brilliant if you need any help, she says. “They give you a lot of support.”

As well as offering Claire emotional support Chrysalis will also be providing her with expensive voice coaching to help give her a more feminine sound which won’t come through hormone treatment.

As it’s her voice that she says often makes people question her femininity, this will make a real difference to her life.

Claire still has a lot of her journey into womanhood ahead of her but she’s come a long way.

“I’m a lot happier and more confident now than I was a few years ago,”

she says with a smile.

*Not her real name.

CHRYSALIS

Chrysalis is a Hampshire-based charity which provides meeting centres for people who have gender identity issues. It aims to promote self-confidence and wellbeing through education, practical application and support of transgendered people.

It was formed by a counsellor, a social worker and a specialist gender adviser who realised through their work that young people with gender identity issues are slipping through the framework of help agencies. It has regular meetings in Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth for anyone with a gender identity issue area plus a support group for relatives and significant people in the lives of Chrysalis members.

It offers help with specific issues, support with practical matters, guidance for clients and their families and an opportunity to meet others.

The group currently has some 50 members.

For more information, or to make a donation, visit chrysalis-gii.co.uk.