What makes a person trans-gender? Science has no explanation. Psychology has no explanation. In all probability God, has no explanation. You would have to ask her! Personally, I don’t care about the WHY or the HOW or the WHAT. All I do know is – I AM!

So, given my ignorance, what on earth can I say to anyone who thinks they are, or might be trans. Simple answer, don’t question, don’t doubt, don’t think, just do it, live it, embrace it, love it and above all ENJOY IT! There is not enough ink in my pen (yes dear reader, this originally was written with my pen and paper!) To cover the huge spectrum that is ‘being transgender’. At one end of the spectrum is the guy who likes wearing frilly knickers under his suit. At the other end is the person who truly believes they were born into the wrong body and who will spend a lifetime trying to rectify this mistake with hormones, surgery, voice training etc. Ask 1000 trans people their definition and you will get at least 1000 answers! I can only give you MY definition of what it is to be trans.

As a child, I was fascinated by women’s clothes. Shoes, makeup, perfume etc but could not understand why. As a teenager I loved girls and woman’s fashions but could not understand why. I was not attracted to males or females but always preferred the company of ladies as I felt more comfortable and had more in common with them. But I was a boy. So, to say I was confused was an understatement! I was not gay or straight, so what was I? You must understand that 50 years ago life was very black and white. It was all so binary. You were either one thing or the other. There was no grey, certainly NOT even close to 50 shades!

Have you ever had a “EUREKA!” moment? Well, I have had several. The first was when I heard about a film “The rocky horror show!” So, there were other people like me! Not gay or straight, just different. People who didn’t conform to the binary view of society. The “Happily married, with 2-4 kids, safe job, nice house” etc. This was our conventional set of ideals. But it was all lies! If you dug below the veneer of what we were supposed to aspire to, there was another secret world. “Real life” was not so clear-cut as we were supposed to accept.

Before the coming of the internet, information about anything trans-related was hard to come by. My second eureka moment was reading a book. Younger readers should know that books are like kindles but made of sheets of paper glued together which you read! The book in question was “Conundrum” – by Jan Morris. Google it and you will see why. She was an intelligent middle-class, writer and had what was then called a “sex change”. Clearly you cannot change your sex, but you can have a surgery to at least make you feel as though you had. Did I feel like I was like Jan Morris? Well, no, as I did not and still do not want surgery. I resolved to find out what I was eliminating what I wasn’t! I was not gay, straight, bi-sexual, trans-sexual, a drag queen, a shoe-fetishist (although I do love stilettos!) a pantie wearer, a sissy or any of the multitude of sub-species of sexual and lifestyle preferences. I decided I was trans-gender as it was how I saw myself. Society loves to place us into boxes and pigeon-hole us, to label us. The fact is (in my opinion) we are all unique. We all contain small bits of the above list as well as others, that are a bit to “niche” to list (and many even I don’t understand!) Observant readers will have noticed that I have admitted the 40-50 years from my “rocky horror” moment until 2021. This is because it contains the usual things, mistakes, buying then throwing away hundreds of shoes, clothes, makeup wigs etc, marriage, work, paying bills, holidays etc. In short- my life!  All too personal and boring to relate.

So, what am I? I am me; I know what I am, what I like (and like to wear!) and what I hate with a passion! The question is, do YOU? This may make me sound like a smug bugger! I have no answers or solutions as to what we all are. We just must be honest about it, accept it, live with it and enjoy it. To quote the song “I am what I am”. In my case I am Angie, a mature transgender person, who loves life, living as a woman as and when the opportunity presents itself. That’s me.

Angie

If you would like to find a trans support group in your area, check out Trans Unite website here.

For details on Trans Pride Brighton click here.

You can find Trans Pride London’s Instagram here.

A full list of UK Prides can be found here.