BBC Documentary and its chord

• Posted by Deborah Taylor April 7, 2015 1,819 views
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  Victoria Derbyshire had a documentary on BBC2 this morning about two transgender children, and has written an accompanying magazine article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32037397

  This is bittersweet for me, because while I am happy for Lilly and Jessica I can't help but think about my own childhood.

  In the article, Victoria mentions Lilly's parents knew something was different when they collected her from a fancy dress party, and Lilly had swapped her outfit for a princess dress. There was a great deal of tantrum throwing when they tried to get her out of it. This part of the story struck a very strong chord with me.

  What a difference thirty-five years makes.

  When I was seven I went to a fancy dress party, I can't remember as what, but I came out as a nurse, having swapped outfits. My mother picked me up. She didn't realise that there was something different about me, instead she humiliated me in front of the other children and parents, she let me know how shameful what I had done was, how abhorrant. I was embarrassed. I was a freak. This wasn't the first incident, but it was the most humiliating.

  I was so ashamed, it took a number of years before the need to align mirror and body got too much for me, when I was 12 or 13. I caved, and (I admit it) wore some of my mother's clothes. But I knew it was wrong. I knew it was shameful. I knew it shouldn't be done. And that's a pretty potent combination for a child entering puberty, testosterone coursing through a young body. Arousal and dressing were combined in my head. I have to point out, I'm not a sexual cross dresser, but back then, there was no information, no indication that I was, contrary to what my parents would have had me believe, normal.

  My dressing was illicit and thrilling all the more so for it's illicit nature.

  This was very confusing.

  And it had deeper ramifications.

  I did not think any more I was a girl. It had been conditioned out of me. I thought this was a fetish. So, I stopped. It was wrong and shameful, and I'd never be able to have a family if there was a hideous secret in my closet. So I stopped. Purged.

  I found my soulmate, married had kids.

  Fast forward twenty-years and I was a fucking mess. No two ways about it. Bouts of depression, a long fling with anorexia that saw me drop from a healthy weight of 13 1/2 stone to just under 11 stone, and I looked like a junkie.

  I didn't know what was wrong. I was male. I wasn't a woman. I couldn't be a woman. That had been made very clear to me as a child.

  Thoughts long buried, and buried very deep kept coming to the surface. I felt like I was going insane, developing a multiple personality disorder or something.

  That's when I saw an online avatar based chat system called IMVU. I joined. As a woman. I never gave any indication I was anything other than Deborah Taylor, and people believed  me, I wasn't fooling them, I was who I was; I had female friends on there, somebody they would hunt out to talk to about their real lives. I didn't problem solve, I commiserated. I supported. And it felt right.

  Eventually I caved and bought a dress, and illicitly dressed.

  This time it wasn't sexual, it was right.

  Within a short time I'd got more dresses, shoes, hair, make up, underwear.

  It was the end of my suppression. I knew more now. The internet had answered the questions I'd had as a child.

  So when I saw this story of Lilly and Jessica, it made me happy for them that they were accepted by their mothers, but sad for myself that I wasn't.allowed the childhood I should have had.

  A lack of understanding destroyed my chance of a happy girl childhood.