My Bosom Swells with Pride

We’re a quarter of the way between Pancake Day and Easter, so let’s cast our minds back to Christmas Eve, 2014. This is the untold story of my transition, but in a few minutes it will at last be the told story and I’ll have no particular secrets from anybody

In 2014, it became apparent to me that yes, I was indeed on the transgender spectrum. For years previously, I had often wished I had been born a woman, or yearned to be female ‘but not in a trans way’. Those last six words were internalised transphobia speaking, as much as anything. I had taken to praying to God - once in a while, in amongst more pressing and material prayers - that I might be female in the resurrection, when the earth is boiled away and that general resurrection comes. I mean, I thought, I might as well ask.

But a couple of things turned a corner for me in 2014. First, my friend Eve transitioned. She’s only a fairly distant friend, but this seemed initially surprising to me, and immediately inevitable. I hadn’t anticipated what, in retrospect, made complete sense for her. At that point I knew I needed to scrutinize my own heart, a phrase that appears a great deal in my diaries from the time.

And secondly, my housemate of the time told me, apropos of nothing, that I should never mess around with hormones, or take them on a whim. I had never realised one *could* take hormones on a whim, or at all! Indeed, everything in popular culture, from The League of Gentlemen onward, had presented transgender life in a very surgical and groin-centric way - ‘sex change operations’, as they were schlockily called. Somehow I had never questioned where trans women’s breasts came from, or assumed that, too was surgery. But suddenly I had two fascinating facts: one, that even after puberty, someone taking hormones will change and develop in ways which are at once natural and miraculous — and two, that I shouldn’t do so. Well, now I knew it was physically possible, and the warning suggested to me that hormones might, in fact, be in my grasp! It was like learning magic potions are real, purely because someone warns you away from them! Naturally, I leapt straight to research, with confusion, fascination, and prayer. There was no mortal person I could talk to about this. Nobody but me knew how up in the air I’d been about my gender, so asking ‘could I really get mysterious Internet chemicals to upholster my physical form’ was something I couldn’t really do in person without triggering alarm and surprise.

Turns out online pharmacies do a roaring trade in hormones. With testosterone you need to be especially careful, as too much will do you a frighten. I already had testosterone on tap, so I looked in the other direction. With anything, it’s good to have regular blood tests, of course. I will caution you away from mystery pharmacies in general. My search was halted by the extreme cost of any of these synthesised hormones. I wouldn’t get any of the good stuff until Spring 2019, after the hugely lengthy waiting list for a Gender Identity Clinic, but that’s another story. Back to 2014, the good stuff was out, but that’s when I learned about pueraria mirifica. PM, as it’s known, is what’s called a mysterious Internet herb, plant estrogen, or phytoestrogen. It grows in Thailand, which might account for some of that nation’s historical proactivity in transgender adventure. It’s not real estrogen, but it’s better than nothing.

I ordered some of these capsules, as ordering things from the east to the UK was cheap in those pre-Brexit days. I ordered them suddenly an on a whim, and then had a few weeks to ponder and regret and vaccilate back and forth on the wisdom of this. Actually, I never doubted the wisdom of it - I knew it was magnificent folly, but it was driven by an urge I can only call curiosity. According to Wikipedia, at least in those days, there is next to no evidence that pueraria mirifica does *anything* whatever. The capsules arrived and I put them aside. But I couldn’t help wondering, even if I’m not sure what I’m doing or why, shouldn’t I do it, for science? Wouldn’t it be a fascinating scientific experiment?

I was depressed and untreated, in those days. I was just beginning to admit to friends that I had depression, and they encouraged me to treat myself better, and to write a diary. Diary-writing helped. The prospect of transition helped. Again, I was ninety percent sure the mysterious medicaments would be a placebo, and give me nothing but cancer. But they set the personal portion of my thoughts and my prayers in a particular direction, and in the absence of any other confidante, I spoke at great length to God. Should I do this? May I do this? Is this transgression - maybe, surely, in human terms. I was very down on myself, and expected everyone would regard me as perverse, a miscreant. Is it sin, though? I could find nothing to say so in the Bible, which seems to have no more to say on transgender life than it does on cats or bridges. That is, all three are common things, but none actually merits a single mention in canonical scripture. What I came around to is, if I sally forth on a voyage of scientific discovery and gender intrigue, would it distract me from God, and draw me away from him? It’s a simplification, but I think that’s the real, important question to ask when you’re tussling over whether something is sin: will it distract you from God, and place barriers between you. By this point I was, nightly, praying more at length, and with more vulnerability and sincerity than I had in all my life. If anything, admission that I was trans, and wanted to transition, had brought me closer to God, and to his Christ.

On Christmas Eve, 2014 I began taking Pueraria Mirifica. I felt like a movie scientist, like the lizard doctor in The Amazing Spider-Man, who resolves to experiment on himself when funding doesn’t allow for any other research. I have a great affinity for such people, villains and monsters though they are. Scientists, sorcerors, those with a fleeting chance to touch the supernatural. But hormones aren’t supernatural. They’re not even illegal. I had a secret adventure, and I would see if it bore secret fruit.

Astute listeners will realise I did things the wrong way around to usual. Almost any trans person you meet will be out to at least somebody before they begin their physical, hormonal transition. The waiting list for a GIC appointment, when I applied, was sixty-seven weeks. Now it’s even longer. Most people are living their best life in their right and chosen gender for years before they get the tingle and see the work of hormones. I, though, was off down the route of redistribution of fats, growth of torso, improvement of skin and hair quality, a full year before I breathed a word to anybody! I was secret trans, secret scientist. It was somewhere between exciting, terrifying, cool, magical and combustible!

One practical impact of this was that I developed breasts, of admittedly small stature - like half lemons, or a pair of hamsterheads - long before I told anyone about them. I realised my course was a little eccentric, and it put me in the fascinating position that I could hold off the announcement for as long as I liked, and while people could look at me and guess, none would ever dare ask! Starting in late 2015 or so, I gradually told friends. It felt like an admission. People were decreasingly surprised.

In about 2017 I told my parents I was non-binary, and had been having appointments at a gender clinic. They were very accepting and it was a relief for us all that I had had the conversation. But I didn’t tell them about my use of hormones. To be trans was one thing, but my parents are medical, a retired doctor and nurse. I daredn’t tell them I was using mysterious Internet herbs to effect a metamorphosis. They had taken my brother’s narcotic proclivities extremely poorly, back around the turn of the Century, and I wasn’t ready to let them know I was growing my bosoms out, as well as my hair. They could surely tell, and beyond a certain point, they knew, and I knew they knew, and they knew I knew they knew. But I didn’t dare have the conversation, and they couldn’t reasonably ask. I wore layers to half-hide my torso, which was portly with food as well as hormones, but I was immensely cagey about my gender. Coming out to them about my gender made me less uncomfortable around them, but concealing my physical transition, which felt like the final taboo, left things awkward still.

So when did I finally tell my parents I was transitioning? It was the fifth of February 2022, this year, a full two thousand six hundred days after my transition began on Christmas Eve 2014.

It’s an awfully long time to keep a secret. I decided this year I wanted to be more honest and less closed off, and telling them, and then telling all of y’all, is a weight of my chest. I feared for the longest time that people would revile me with disgust and react with nothing less than suspicion. As it transpires, no-one has reacted to my transition with nearly as much alarm or need to be convinced as I did myself. Internalised transphobia remains one of the two worst kinds of transphobia.

My advice to you, dear listener, is to trust God with your gender, your indecision and your adventures, but also trust your friends and perhaps your family a little sooner than I did. There are probably good psychological reasons not to start transitioning until you’ve at least had a conversation with a friend about it, if only so you don’t feel too alone in it all. I don’t regret starting when I did, but I regret my silence, which was unhelpful for all involved. One more word: if you think you might like to transition, get your GP to put you on the waiting list for a gender identity clinic as soon as you can. Your GP won’t care - it’s just a little bit of admin to them, but it will reduce what will be a honking great waiting list of months or years. If you change your mind later you can get off the list, but don’t regret hesitating. And if you’re dabbling in Internet hormones, tell your GP that too so they can monitor blood levels. Some people have leapfrogged the entire GIC system that way, with the GP reasoning, ‘well, it’s better we prescribe it than a mystery Internet realm’.

There. That’s the story the first seven and a half years of my transition. I remain myself, but moreso. I like to think it’s an improvement.