Telling my family

WHEN I finally made the decision to tell my family about my TS and need to transition, I fair-dinkum s*** myself. I stewed and procrastinated for months about telling them, telling a partner is one thing – your family is a totally different matter. I mean what do you say, “Hey dad, you know how you say I’ll always be your little girl? Well, that’s not quite true.”

Unfortunately it wasn’t quite that easy, but it also wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined it would be. I had all kinds of fears, but mostly that I would be rejected and ostracized by the people I cared most for. Ever since my eldest brothers’ suicide ‘family’ has taken on a whole new meaning for us, so their acceptance and understanding of me and what I was doing was deeply important to me. At the same time, it had no impact on my decision to transition; I was doing with or without their support. As it turns out I needn’t have worried, my family generally took it pretty well.

Since as far back as anyone can remember I never dressed, acted nor spoke like the little girl my parents thought they were supposed to have. Instead I was out playing football and cricket, and trying my damnedest to knot my hair enough to get it all cut off. So for most of them it was no surprise when I told them, they had seen it pretty much as I thought they should have. In my mind it was like…if it looks like a bloke, talks & walks like a bloke then yep, chances are it’s a bloke. Turns out, that’s pretty much what they all thought too, their primary concern was whether or not I would be happy.

The people, whom I thought would react badly, my elder brother and younger sister, totally blew me away when I told them especially my brother. I’d never had a real close relationship with him from since when we were kids, and I thought that this would have severed what small tie we had so he was the last to know. Ironically, it had totally the opposite affect. In the end I didn’t get a chance to tell him that was kind of done for me. It’s funny to look back on now actually, but at the time it was bloody nerve-wracking.

Picture it OK…sitting around the garage at your brother’s 30th birthday, some of our family there, my partner and my brothers’ girlfriends parents. You’re having a bbq, a few drinks and generally a good time. Next thing you know my brother’s girlfriend’s father is asking me, at what seemed the top of his lungs, how on Earth do they make a dick for a chick? I swear the whole room chose that moment to stop talking, and let’s not forget my brother who also chose that moment to come back into the garage. Hey don’t beat around the bush mate, just come right out and say what’s on your mind.

Well, my jaw hit the ground, like in them cartoons, and I just stared at my brother. He just looked at me and said “What? You think I didn’t know? Gimme a break, look at yourself.” The next half hour or so turned into an open forum on phalloplasty and chest surgery, and I was the guest speaker. Like I said, I was blown away, for a couple of reasons actually.

Firstly, in the moments after my brother said that, things between me and him changed. It felt like all of a sudden there was a bond there between us, as I felt with the rest of my family. Maybe it’s not as strong, but we’re building on it pretty quickly. In fact, of my family, he is the only one that tries to remember to call me Ashley and not by my birth name, which I had changed 30 seconds after my 18th birthday ticked over. He even went so far as to ask me what he should get my nephews to call me, since they used to get extremely confused when told to call me Aunty.

The second reason I was so blown away was because of the questions they were asking, so openly, genuinely interested and curious. It was like any other everyday conversation, just another subject to chat over while waiting for the food to be cooked. My sister is a different story. I just don’t think she gets it, she’s OK with me, but she doesn’t understand it. I think that as she gets a bit older, and we talk about it a bit more, that will change. Although she is now telling me to stop taking hormones as I’m taking on too many male characteristics, but it’s more that I’m letting her see who I really am.

Ashley – Victoria, 2003

page updated 3 January 2011