I was born female. At age 38 I came out as bisexual and also at that time I questioned my gender. I have always felt Male inside, my inner voice has always been male. Since I was very young, I felt like one of the boys until puberty hit and it sent me reeling in a mass of confusion. I just went with the flow of life, not unhappy but always feeling “different” and my feelings of attraction to women, along with the feeling that I may be a different gender grew stronger and stronger until like I say, at age 38 I came out. I have searched from then until now (I’m now aged 51) for the correct labels for me, always questioning the ones I chose, and swapping and changing as I learned more about myself. At one time I got myself into a near nervous breakdown because I couldn’t figure myself out. But I finally settled on bisexual and non binary. I chose non binary for my gender because after living for half a century in a female role, and also having a lot of health issues, I know I’d never want to transition to male. But as I say, the inner me is male. A feminine male. So what has this got to do with something positively nice? well I guess my mum has never really understood the aspect of my gender. I’ve tried to explain over the years and she’s been lovely about it all but then the subject was changed and I felt that I was always going back to square one until finally I felt that at almost 80 years of age it would be difficult for me to explain it properly for her to understand. Then today I spoke with her on the phone and she told me she’d watched a program and there was a transman in it. It had showed the struggle, the surgeries, the before and after etc etc. She said she ended up in tears as she saw this person transition into who he really was. Then I spoke about myself again and she was far more interested and asked why I’d never mentioned any of how I felt to her when I was younger. I explained that back then I knew nothing of gender issues. I couldn’t describe what I was feeling because I felt it was wrong and there was no internet to gain information from. No support groups and nobody else I knew who felt the same. So I kept quiet both about my sexuality and my gender. But we had a long chat about how I’d felt as a young person and how I feel now regarding my gender. I felt like after that conversation I’d had more understanding, and she was more educated about the whole thing. Bless her heart. We all need time to absorb new information and understand it. I’m so glad she stumbled across that program, which was actually a show about something entirely different to gender. It was just relevant to show this young man’s struggle as part of this particular episode. So today that made me very happy.
Hearing this has made my day, Suitsme! This is how society moves forward. By talking, by listening and by keeping minds open. Bit by bit this is happening and this is why we've made huge strides in terms of understanding gender and sexuality in the last decade and why we'll make even more in the next. Beth
Hi sunbird I’m glad you enjoyed reading it. It was just so beautiful and positive. Sometimes I feel it’s just so much more difficult for some of the elderly to grasp the concept of a lot of LGBT issues. All it needs is a bit of education. I love how that issue was put into a TV show that was about something entirely different. The more that LGBT issues are put forward in movies and dramas as well as other types of shows we might just see more and more changes as people become more educated. (I think I must like the word “more” lol)
What a beautiful story and a beautiful moment. You’re right too the more all these topics are out of their closets the more people will understand and go ok and the more irrelevant will become the “yeah but they’ll win at sport!” objections.