‘Coming out’ … as what, or who?

When I first began coming to terms with being trans, I faced two major challenges.

The second of these was coming out to other people. How could I describe this … thing … that might appear so alien and irrational to many? How could I explain that I, who was known to all as a boy, felt myself to be a girl, and wanted and needed to move through the world as such?

Should I appeal to science and medicine, noting that ‘transsexualism’ is an internationally recognised condition, for which treatments have been carefully developed? Should I describe how dysphoria around gender and the sexed body can be deeply experienced, and explain the depth and perseverance of my feelings? Should I explain that I was one of many, part of a long history of gender-variant people who have collectively worked to find new ways in which we can live and prosper? Which of these approaches might be best for talking to my friends, my parents, my school – and my doctor, from whom I would seek both everyday healthcare services and a referral to the gender clinic?

The first challenge, however, was coming out to myself; recognising my trans experience as real. Like many trans people, coming to terms with the reality of my gendered identity involved finding a language to account for my feelings and experiences. At first, the only resource I had available to me were the limited images of trans possibility found in the mainstream media of the early 2000s. Guided by vicious tabloid headlines and popular TV comedies such as Little Britain, I believed that I must be mentally ill, that there was something ‘wrong’ with me that couldn't be cured, that I perhaps deserved to be the subject of cruel jokes, that perhaps I was a joke.