Hayton Transsexual Apostate

My Journey Back to Reality
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80075-310-5
Verlag: Forum
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

'Brave and deeply considered... Her experience, and Transsexual Apostate, shouldn't be dismissed' The Telegraph In a compelling first-hand account of what it means to be a transwoman - and where she feels the impulse comes from - Hayton explains why much of gender identity ideology is, in her view, false and damaging. Once a prominent member of the TUC LGBT+ committee, she charts how her views developed and put her at odds with the majority of trans activists. She issues a compassionate call to move beyond ideological conflicts, and to acknowledge the legitimate concerns that many have with an agenda that asserts that transwomen are women. Hayton's honest, humane and moving book shows that by accepting reality, transwomen can live their best lives based on the truth of who they are - rather than the fantasy of who they are not. 'Brave, unflinching, insightful' - Professor Michael Bailey, author ofThe Man Who Would Be Queen

Debbie Hayton is a physics teacher, journalist and trade unionist. A transsexual, Hayton is now a leading commentator on trans and gender issues.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hayton, Debbie

Leseproben

1

Growing Up

My childhood was unremarkable. But since it’s the only childhood I can remember, it’s hard to judge. I was introverted – I was quite happy with my own company – but I would hardly have been described as asocial. I grew up in a loving family – with two younger brothers – and I had all the friends I needed. My interest in science blossomed early and, while my parents might not have expected me to join the teaching profession, they would not have been surprised that my speciality was physics. By the age of seven, my shelves were filling up with books about astronomy and space exploration. Perhaps I was a bit odd, but, to the outside world at least, my interests were stereotypically male. I played with construction kits; I even had a set of trucks.

Internally, I struggled. But doesn’t everyone? Life is a new experience for every young child, and the novelty is not limited to the external world. In some ways coping with external matters is easy: they go away when we close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears. But the internal world is always there. Our brains are the result of a billion years of evolution, and instinct is pre-installed within them. Nobody teaches us to breathe, or feel hungry, for example, and by the age of three I knew all about guilt, shame and fear.

I don’t think that three-year-old boy, sitting on the floor in his front room, would have been able to articulate the meaning of those words, but he knew how to feel the emotions they described. I was learning to count beyond twenty. My earliest memories date from the previous year, and those snippets were also seasoned with very strong emotions: guilt when I broke my grandmother’s clock; fear when my parents encouraged me to make friends with a boy I did not know; and a sense of loss when we moved house. But on that day in 1971 I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I have since labelled as shame.

Over fifty years later I cannot only picture the scene – I can still feel it. A family friend introduced me to new and bigger numbers. The pattern was immediately obvious to me – thirty, forty, fifty – the mere repetition made it easy. But when we got to sixty, a chill ran down my spine. Before it happened, I knew that we would soon get to eighty – a word that sounded similar to ‘tights’, clothing that I knew was only for girls. Where this taboo came from, I do not know, but it had already taken up residence in my head. Clearly, I already knew the difference between boys and girls, and the clothes we wore. But – significantly – I knew that girls’ clothes were forbidden to me. Instinct? It was certainly nothing I had been taught.

Clothes were an ongoing issue for me throughout childhood. I wanted to wear girls’ clothes but, at the same time, I was terrified that someone would read my thoughts. But without any sisters – or female friends, for that matter – my opportunities were limited. It was rubbish, sometimes literally. My mother would discard laddered tights, throwing them in the bin, and probably think nothing more about them. But for me they were oases in the desert. If circumstances were right, I could retrieve them before they were covered by potato peelings, soggy tea bags, or worse. But I also needed privacy to try them on, before replacing them exactly as I found them. I became obsessive about that. This was something that nobody else must ever know, including anyone else with a meticulous knowledge of the arrangement of discarded trash.

From the age of five this cycle would repeat, whether I wanted it to or not. First there was anticipation, then excitement. My heartbeat rose, and my body would become aroused. I was euphoric, though the exhilaration I felt was always tempered by the ever-present fear of discovery. Emotionally I was on a trip but, while my brain always craved for more, I had no idea how to respond to my feelings. The spell was almost always broken by worries about being discovered. As I came down from my high, I would replace everything as I found it. I was scrupulous about that. If I was ever dysphoric, it was the grief at the loss of the high.

Only once was I ever caught. Inexplicably, I had failed to lock the bathroom door. I was usually so careful about that, and my grandmother stumbled in on me. I was mortified. She called for my parents: ‘Come and look at this!’ Suddenly there were three faces looking at me. Nothing more was said. What – indeed – could be said? Then the adults went away, leaving me to myself. For what felt like a long time, I sat there in shock. Without knowing what else I could do, I reverted to my usual routine and put everything back as I found it. Then I had to face what I imagined would be an inquisition in the living room. I went in with my head down, looking at the floor. I grabbed a book and engrossed myself in it. As the minutes passed, nothing was said. Had I imagined it all? I remember weighing up that possibility. But it had definitely happened, and nobody said a thing. Not then, not ever. But – like the earlier counting incident – it was seared into my memory. I was eight years old.

If my bedtime wishes had ever been granted I would have been magically turned into a girl when I woke the next morning. For a while, I prayed that when I woke, I would always have been a girl. When that hope was finally extinguished, I pitched for second best – that the magical transformation would be news, and probably a shock, to everyone. I was certainly persistent, but fantasy was not reality. That was clear to me long before puberty. I knew that my dreams were futile and, beyond my anguished musings, there was a bigger world to explore.

Had I been growing up today, I would have certainly come across the concept of ‘transgender children’. Whether that knowledge would have precipitated a disclosure to my parents, I do not know. Back in the 1970s, I had a problem that I never understood. Shame gripped me tightly, and I knew that my inexplicable desire to be the other sex must be kept firmly under wraps. In many ways it was miserable but, at the same time, I was free to grow to adulthood without being socially transitioned. If that had happened, I would have been faced with the possibility of puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones. I’m glad I was never put in that position. I was a bright boy, but I was never competent to consent to such profound treatments. Or able to face the sense of loss if the possibility passed me by.

To understand what it meant to be an adult, I had to become one. As I grew, I yearned for children of my own. There was only one way that was going to happen: nature needed to take its course. Looking back, I’m pleased it did.

Primary school offered just two opportunities for public cross-dressing. I remember them vividly. First, the village fete. I was to be a ladybird. The red papier-mâché shell that my mother spent so long making was incidental: my mind focused on the tight black jumper and the black tights. The adrenaline that ran through my body was palpable, but I was too ashamed to say anything. Also palpable was the subsequent sense of loss when my own fears stopped me from asking to keep the tights, perhaps to wear when it was cold? I was six years old.

By the time I was nine, repression gripped me even more tightly. This second opportunity was the school Christmas play: my teacher had cast me as a carol singer. For some long-forgotten reason, the boys and girls were to be dressed the same – tunics and thick tights. I could not even take that request home without deliberately garbling the message. Alone in that group, I wore my school trousers. There was shame in being different – the odd one out – but it was preferable to the shame of articulating the thoughts that rattled incessantly inside my head.

Externally, my life was unremarkable. Despite my fears that I might sprout a thought bubble, nobody ever read my mind and I grew up without being discovered. Primary school was left behind and I navigated my way through a much larger secondary school. Science and maths came easily to me, and I was a high achiever in class. Still reserved – some aspects of our character are lifelong – I made new friends where necessary and I focused on my studies.

My internal struggles might have been sexual – they clearly related to my sex – but they were not erotic. I wasn’t acting like some miniature adult: I was playing like a child. Never was my focus a relationship with a girl; instead, I wanted to a girl. Certainly, until I stumbled into puberty, the hormone that drove me was not testosterone, but adrenaline. The mere thought of being a girl gave me the rush; writing it down in a diary focused it. Coupled with the fear of my words being discovered, I rode an emotional rollercoaster alone inside my head.

Puberty brings changes in everyone. Physically, my response to testosterone was textbook. I grew rapidly, sprouted hair and developed spots, and my voice broke. All rather normal and reassuring, starting bang on time around age thirteen. I had mixed feelings about puberty, but relief featured strongly. I had harboured genuine worries that I was so strange, puberty would not happen to me. Perhaps I was totally unique in my cross-sex identification, and if that were true then what else was different about me? The alternative – or so it seemed to me at the time – was that every boy felt as I did, but nobody talked about it, and I could never ask. But, looking back, I think both ideas were wrong. I now believe that I was developing a psychological condition called autogynephilia, which affects maybe 1 to 3 per cent of men. We are unusual, but far from unique.

At the time, however, I...