Trans young person…thirty years on

“In the 1990s, I was a teenager and still at school.

School was a nightmare. I did not fit in my body among my school peers. My deviance from classic beauty, stereotypical femininity prompted ostracization, rather than the unwanted, inappropriate sexual attention of some of my peers.

Practically, there was strict gender segregation in the uniform and in sports (attire and practice). Despite being more willing and skilled at rugby than my seventh boy classmate, I was refused to play for my class in the year group’s tournament. I was on the (mixed) team at the local rugby club, yet the school said that girls couldn’t play because they hadn’t played before. That was their answer, and they were sticking to it. That poor boy who was forced to play. He very obviously hated playing rugby and wanted to not play as much as all in my class wanted me to play.

At home, I studiously read the TV listings for anything that might have some queer content. After all, I had secured myself a black and white TV for my bedroom, and that is how I viewed Gay Time TV! And in 1996 how I viewed a Channel 4 documentary about three trans men of different ages. It clicked into place as I recognised myself in the youngest one. His parents were both supportive and well along the way to the children and young people’s gender clinic in London.

I obtained the information booklet by phoning the dedicated number at the end of the programme. After poring over the contents, I nervously put it under my mum’s bedroom door as a way to open up a conversation. “But I thought I should have been a boy when I was your age.” “I believe that you believe it.” I was undoubtedly loved, but isolated and getting nowhere. I had hostility from a family member at home, peers at school and a defiance that I would NOT die and have ‘female’ on my death certificate. The faintest flicker of possibly one day being able to transition kept me clinging on, weathering the disbelief and hostility.

I wrote a letter to Mermaids. Somebody knew I existed. Somebody believed that I believed it, and they also believed it.

Eighteen months on, the documentary was scheduled to repeat. I asked mum to sit and watch it with me this time, which she did. “Well do you know who we can speak to to get some help?!” “Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” And so we made some phone calls, visited the GP and secured and extra-contractual referral to the Portman Clinic (as it was then, before the children’s and young people’s gender clinic moved to the Tavistock Clinic).

That was an experience. About once a month, I made the trip to London, trying to miss a different lesson each time so as to not get too behind with any one subject.

I saw one psychologist and mum saw another. I was asked endless questions, with no answers or offers in response. I suppose I was being ‘supported to explore all options’. It was a carrot on a stick approach. Ever the promise that going to the specialist clinic was the place to get help. Over the months, I had a growing feeling that I was getting nowhere. I asked when I would be referred for puberty blockers. “If you’d asked you could have been referred from the start.” Oh. And yet I was not told this, only very broadly that the paediatric endocrinology service existed, as if a referral would be made in due course, as I would expect for any other health issue.

Around a year in, the endocrinology referral was put through. As I awaited the appointment, I asked more detail about the timelines, how many people went onto puberty blockers, how many went onto cross sex hormones, and so on. With my puberty already complete, it was very clear that puberty blockers would have little to offer me; that the requirement for taking them before being considered for cross sex hormones would result in me growing out of the age range for the clinic; that the clock would be reset once I eventually made it to the adult service. I could not wait. The clinic promised help but never delivered.

At the age of 17, I investigated a private route for hormone treatment. The practitioner insisted on waiting for me to be seen by the paediatric endocrinologist before giving the option to start cross sex hormones. So I waited.

The paediatric endocrinologist was setting up the expectation of very slow progress. I would have to return in a matter of months to have blood tests. Depending on the results, I may then be considered for puberty blockers. She had no sense of urgency, that my life was already intolerable, that I was clinging onto life but for the possibility of physical treatments, that I was struggling with studying, unable to work and that I would not handle going onto university after college without medical intervention.

I returned to the private practitioner and started hormones. Upon explaining to the psychologist, I was discharged on the grounds of deviating from their process. My GP showed me the letter: “I am confident that [this patient] will not change [their] mind.”

The cruelty of the undelivered promise of treatment was distressing and incomprehensible to me. I knew I had done the right thing, for me and for my continuing to live, by accessing the only real option available to me. A little over a year later, I was able to schedule surgery just in time to allow me to go to university, go about my life and function somewhat. I could never have gone without those treatments.

By this point, around 25 years later, I despair at the rhetoric of rushing young people and channelling them into ‘a trans pathway’. My experience was quite the opposite, and conversations with others who came after me have not convinced me of anything other than a continuation of a very conservative system. “Better to have a service of some sort than no service at all.” That’s how the cruel delays, unreachable treatments were explained and justified to me at the time.

And now, the acceptance, or tolerance, of trans people in the world has become horrifically polarised. Those who vilify trans people play out their own hurt and serve it up to the detriment of others.

Peace be with you all, today and forever.”