The Longest Road: Being Both Lesbian and Transsexual

 

Wanted to share an article I found on a topic near and dear to my heart. I've taken the liberty to italicize elements of this article that resonate with me:

Posted by:  Bridgette P. LaVictoire on October 11, 2008.

I’ve been attracted to women for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I had a huge crush on Anne Wilson of Heart. Growing up, my fantasies always centered around Women, and around the ways in which Women are together. I was a tomboy who played with action figures and  watched many of the same shows that the boys did, but I always focused  in on the Female characters, and lamented the lack of Female Transformers. 

I was Princess Leia when we played Star Wars. I was ten in  1984, and for me, that was the beginning of the depression. That was  the beginning of the self loathing, the self hatred, and self harm which  only got worse over time. At the age of ten, I knew two things about myself. The first is, I  was Female. The second was that I was and am romantically and eventually sexually attracted to Women. The one glaring massive problem for me was  my body. I had been born male. I was born with all the right equipment to be a man, and I hated it. I loathed my own body.

At the age of eleven an event occurred which pushed back the desire and need to be Female. I was molested. The majority of the memories of  that event have been purged from my memory and only a handful of them  have emerged, but the wounds of that event hurt me enough that the girl I was hid. After all, there was safety behind that mask. I started to  grow away from my friends, especially as they began to feel that I  wasn’t normal like them. Outwardly, I became, well, I became a gay male.  I never said that, and never dated anyone, but I let everyone assume.

 Compounding my problems, I grew up in a time when most people who  transitioned were, basically, gay men who wanted to be Women to be with  men. It was not until 1999 that I learned differently, about a decade after I first learned the words lesbian and transsexual.

 

In 1997, I met someone who was openly lesbian. By that point, I had developed an almost fractured persona. To the world I was a gay male, but inside I was really a lesbian woman. I fell in love, and what happened next is something which was more of a horrible train wreck. I lost my friendship with Her. I retreated again into hiding, but by then, the internet had been born.

 After I started online chatting, I began to realize that the person online was the real me, and that the person I presented to the world was  someone else. In that world, Bridgette was born, and had her first  relationship. That the relationship was a manipulation of someone who  ended up hurting me badly didn’t matter.

In 1999, I was in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. I was an internal wreck, and struggling to understand everything. All I knew was that the Woman I  needed to be could only be found online. I neglected my studies, and  focused on what was keeping me sane. I began the process of coming out  to my family. First to my grandmother, who passed away this last  November, and then to my sister. Both were supportive. My sister had  long ago figured it out. Then to my parents. It took a while for the idea to finally sink in to everyone else that I could be both a lesbian and a transsexual. It is still a frightening  place to be, though. 

 

There are a lot of prejudices out there which I must always confront from both outside the LGBTI community and from within. Perhaps ironically, nine years to the week after I first came out to  my parents, I started HRT. I have a wonderful and supportive family, and  feel incredibly lucky. As odd as it may sound, every time I tell my  story, I feel like I am coming out yet again..