Living with Gender Dysphoria

I have lived with gender dysphoria my entire life. Of course I did not know this at the time, but now with nearly 60 years of life behind me, I know this is what I have had.

I was a tomboy right from the start. I preferred roughhousing with the boys when I was in primary school. I played football and cricket with them, I climbed trees, I made forts and cubby houses. I was competitive and I never let being a girl constrain me. The boys accepted me as I was and so did the girls. I hated girly things and had no interest in hair or makeup or fashion. Jeans, runners and t-shirts was about as fashionable as I got and how I felt comfortable.

Then I was sent to a private girls school for secondary school and my life fell apart. I had to wear the school uniform, which of course was a dress. There were no boys to rough house with. I was immersed in the world of feminine and I hated it. I felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Along with this, was my rapidly changing body; breasts, periods, body hair. I wanted to keep my flat chest forever. I hated my breasts. I hated menstruation. I hated becoming a woman. I hated being boxed in and told how to look and how to behave.

When I was around 12 or 13, my grandmother gave me a book about hair and beauty for Christmas. She said to me as I opened the book that “You’ll look lovely if you follow this book” I was horrified and can still hear my family guffawing at my horror. After my grandmother went home, I immediately gave the book to my sister and never looked at it again.

Not long after this, I remember asking my mother if she’d prefer me to come home pregnant and unmarried or gay. “Pregnant and unmarried” she said without pausing to think.

Since the age of four or five, I knew I wanted to grow up and marry a girl and not a boy. But I knew this was not possible and I also knew it was something I should never make known. I knew there was deep shame associated with wanting to be with another girl. And so I buried this very deeply and tried to make the best of being made into a good heterosexual “lady”. This didn’t work.

From the age of fourteen I developed severe anxiety and depression, I think from denying who I was. From desperately trying to fit into a mould that wasn’t made for me and from trying to work out who I was. I bottled everything up and there was no where for it to go, so it went inward and manifested as anxiety and depression. I had crippling panic attacks every day and became so agoraphobic, I could barely leave the house. As far as I knew, I was the only one at that girls school like me. I felt like a freak and I was terrified to be myself. I became very ill and had a couple of visits as an inpatient to the psych hospital. My poor parents had no idea what was wrong with me.

By the age of 18 or 19, I had accepted that I would forever be female. I accepted my breasts and I accepted menstruation. I did not like it, but I accepted it and I worked with what I had. At this age, I was able to also come out as lesbian. It was hard, the hardest thing I have ever done, but I could finally be myself and the anxiety and depression began to lift.

I met an older butch woman when I went to University and she was the most wonderful role model for me. And there was Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player. If Martina only knew how important it was for me to see another butch lesbian living a successful life. She was the only one at the time in the public eye. She was my absolute hero. She gave me hope that I could have a good life.

I have managed to live a successful life as a butch, lesbian woman. And I have lived with gender dysphoria, preferring male and androgynous attire and interests, and wishing beyond anything that I were not female. As a teenager, if I had been given an out from womanhood, I would have taken it. But this does not make me male and never will. If I had a dollar for every time I have been misgendered, I would be a wealthy woman. I am so used to it, I laugh it off and am slightly amused when the other person realises their mistake. But it’s not grounds for having a nervous breakdown. Being misgendered is not the end of the world. Neither is having gender dysphoria. Time has certainly helped me become comfortable in my own skin. It gets better as you get older.

I have never fitted into what society deems acceptable as a woman. I have experienced homophobia but this has been nothing compared to the misogyny I have experienced as a butch lesbian. Our society hates females who do not and will not conform. We are a threat to the status quo and to the patriarchal order of things. In that respect my path has not been easy, but I am comfortable in my own skin and can not imagine being any other way. Self acceptance is more important to me than societal acceptance.

If I were growing up today and not in the 1970s and 1980s, I would have been put on a pathway of body mutilation, puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones. I would be made into a faux male, a facsimile of a man because society is more comfortable with that than to have a woman who doesn’t conform to traditional female roles, and who actively reject them. It is possible to live a good and successful life as a butch woman. It takes hard work and perseverance but it is possible. And the gender dysphoria gets better, trust me, it really does.