ALWAYS when I've
been lovers with people, the images I've had
about myself have been that my body was male.
From when I was about 5 I've always thought of
myself as a boy but I never said it out loud,
it'd just be my little movie going on in my own
head.
And even when people
react good it's kind of... like every telling
back then was really really scary cos I didn't
know how they'd be. Family was hard. My dad just
went "Oh well that's no surprise" (laughs) and
Mum was just so typical my mum, I got like one
minute of her on the phone and then she says
"I've gotta go! Your sister's emptying the
dishwasher and she's not doing it right!" My mum
and dad, it makes sense to them that I might
want to be a guy.
I changed my name
really early on because I had a real thing of I
didn't want a female name anymore. And my mum
said at one point "I'm sorry I can't call you JB
yet, I'm just not used to it." But my twin does
meditation and has an Indian name, and she's had
that for about 8 years and Mum hasn't got that
yet either. So I kind of don't take that bit
personally.
These 2 Irish dykes who
are old mates turned up and visited a couple of
weeks ago and they went 'Um, JB... that's like
initials isn't it? What's your real name gonna
be?" And I said "Oh well it's gonna be Jack, but
you know people won't be used to that..." and
they said "Well Jack it is then!" And so I was
Jack and I was Jacko and Wacko Jacko all
weekend. And it was so nice, it was so
nice.
And what's really nice
is when the process is so slow but people
acknowledge that it's happening. Or see you for
who you are and recognise you as the gender that
you see yourself.
I can't get over how
people think that they can totally decide that
you've totally changed and that all the things
they liked about you maybe aren't going to be
there anymore, and that there are all these
things that you're now going to be that they'll
hate. And they feel they can say that to your
face without it touching you.
Lots of people I've
known, cos I guess I've been around lots of
political people, would feel they had every
right to write me long emails or ring me up and
say well you know "Don't you think this is
betraying what it means to be female, that you
don't want to be one anymore? Why are you
choosing to mutilate your body?"
And it's hard because,
you know, I am me. I've been staunchly
supportive of women in my personal life and my
working life for 21 years, and suddenly people
think that because you take hormones you're
going to turn into some total
bastard.
I've had other friends
who I've gone up to and they've turned and
walked away, or they've sent me emails saying
they don't want to have any more to do with me,
or if I see them out they won't look at me. So
there wasn't a lot of "Well I don't understand
this but you're a mate and I'll always be your
friend." There weren't a lot of
those.
It's a change to a
relationship, it's like when a lover
relationship ends and you just need space, your
friends need space to come to terms with it. But
it's not just one person doing that, it was like
the whole world jumped backwards at the same
time. So at the time when I was going through a
really hard emotional thing, and more than
anything in the world probably wanted people to
say "oh well you're still the same person and I
love you and we'll always be mates", a whole lot
of people say "oh - I don't know what I think
about this".
In my head I totally
understand why someone looks at me and thinks
"female" but it's still hard that they
do.
It's like you've left
one riverbank behind and there's a lot of hard
work in the middle of the stream and sometimes
it feels like you're doing a whole lotta heavy
work and you're getting absolutely
nowhere.
Every day there's
someone new to tell because if you don't tell
them they still think of you as the old person
and you have to go "well actually my name's
changed, I'm transitioning".
My twin hated it
originally when I first came out, it upset
things. She told me she wrote a really angry
card about how I'm never contented and I always
have to keep changing and stuff, but she never
gave me that card. She gave me this really nice
one which is of Frank Sinatra, which I know is
just tacky and it's just a line from the song
["the record shows I took the blows, and did
it my way"] but
you know how when you fall in love you kind of
latch on to a song, well through the transition
thing there's different ones that I latch on to,
and that's become one of them, because this is
really just about doing it my way, and being
more myself.
But it's like walking
away from a helluva lot of places without a
clear sense of where I'll be. I know who I'll be
because it feels like I've grown into who I've
always been.
