T*

I can remember the first time that a casual remark by a guy came across as patronising rather than as flattering. For the first year of my transition, I floated through life in a fuzzy pastel haze. Any reference to my femininity was affirmation. No remark was too crass not to be considered a compliment. 'I AM a girl and they can see that!' But perceptives change. The insidious feeling of being trapped in someone else's skin was being replaced with foreboding about what life as female entailed. People took gender so seriously and I felt strongly that I was still the same person

I never wanted gender dysphoria, let alone gender, to be the focus of life. How boring. All I wanted was equilibrium. On the train that night I laughed as I realised how happy I was. I'd had the good fortune and the luxury of time to make a conscious and drastic decision about my future and then I'd acted on it. Did I need to pretend that gender reassignment had never happened? Did I need to disappear into the mainstream? Was my identity contingent on denying my roots from now on? Was my identity and future happiness dependent on deception? Where's the joy in that?

These questions plagued me for a while. What do you do? Male-to-female transsexuals still equate to freaks for many poor souls. To your face, they say things like 'You're so brave', 'Your story is inspiring', or more honestly 'I really don't understand' but in private they don't want their children to turn out differently from the herd. We don't see transgender role-models in the media. We don't hear about individual contributions to society. We see the casualties. Not everyone gets burnt to death in the streets, like poor Hayder Faiek did in Bagdad in 2005, but to be transgender is portrayed as a curse. What if that's bullshit? What's an out-there trannie to do? I decided that I need to strike a careful balance between in-yer-face pride and blending in with other women.

You're supposed to blend in. It's more convenient. The Australian Government only issues gender-amended passports when travelling for surgical reasons. I only discovered this after my first female passport had expired and I was re-issued with a male one. The fact that I was on a surgery waiting list and had been living full-time as a woman for five years was irrelevant. There's no scope in society for globe-trotting pre-ops. Stay out of sight, once you've transformed into a beautiful butterfly you can come out. Yeah right... The irony is that now that I'm entitled to regain that big F in my passport I haven't bothered. I am not someone's paperwork.

I never expected to be fully accepted as a woman and I never take acceptance for granted. Of course there will always be those who count chromosomes and dig up birth certificates (good luck!) but for most people, how you appear is what you are and that seems to be enough. And there lies the irony:

Just when society seems comfortable with me, ticking the right box this time, I'm finding it increasingly pointless to stay in it. Why NOT play with appearance, explore androgyny, and revisit my masculinity as you would revisit places from your childhood. Why shouldn't any person explore their boundaries? Transsexuals have less obligation than any to preserve the status quo. The system doesn't respect us. Maybe it's our role to evolve it. Having learnt from scratch how to carry myself, dress myself and interact with others as female, is it any wonder that I question the baggage that comes with it? How many myths are we memorising? Are we buying into a construct or an essential truth?

'Why would you want to be a woman?' Mum asked, long after the dram of discovering her son was taking oestrogen. 'It's awful!'. I expressed my sympathy. 'You're just doing it to be trendy' she shot back. That hit a nerve. Was I just trying to distinguish myself from the crowd, create some notoriety and novelty where none existed? I did research. No I decided. Being transsexual wasn't actually that trendy. I noted the lack of magazine covers and celebrity lifestyle. I discounted all the references to modern-day shamanism, mainly from transsexual literature and online communities. There seemed to be a distinct lack of respect and privilege associated with simply being. Hence the reason that many opted for subterfuge, letting their differences fade from view.

I needed a compromise. I didn't want transgender to define me but neither would I go to great lengths to hide it. It would have to be the elephant in the living room, and online. If people wanted to discuss it, they were welcome to. But they could bring up the subject. And so, nine years later, I still get amazed when people discover my 'secret'. I assume it's obvious. In many ways I've moved on. Honey, I was a teenage testosterone addict. I blogged my way through gender re-assignment surgery. Google knows it's all public but I'm not going to shove it down your throat either. Different cultures must coexist if we are to evolve as a civilisation. And besides, discretion has its moments.

'Why do I keep getting emails from transsexuals?!' my assistant exclaimed after a month in the job. She seemed taken aback by the revelation about her boss. 'But you ARE a woman yes?' she demanded. I assured her that I was. “Cool�, she responded and that was the end of the matter, until the very next day when a movie opened full-screen from her inbox, proclaiming 'THIS is a transsexual' over a photo of me. We laughed but I was so glad that this hadn't arrived one day earlier. Optus had licensed my image for use in a staff training programme. Apparently there is a real shortage of 'normal looking' transsexuals in stock image photo libraries.

* Within weeks, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard made his infamous “survival of the species” comment in opposition to gay marriage.

* Both the Catholic and Anglican archbishops of Sydney, George Pell and Peter Jensen, are well-known for their public homophobic comments, and are regularly invited to speak publicly, including on university campuses.

* On being told their child is queer, parents still cry and ask where they “went wrong”, as if it is one of the worst things that could happen.

* A recent official NSW study has shown that homophobic violence remains high, with queer people much more likely to be physically assaulted than their heterosexual peers. http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/cpd.nsf/pages/hide2bsafe

* Research indicates that about 30% of Australia’s high number of youth suicides involve despair over sexuality and/or gender identity. This despair is intensified, if not initiated, by negative comments and attitudes in the community toward queer sexuality.

* Australia still has a raft of laws that treat queer people differently from the rest of the country’s citizens, in areas including Centrelink allowances for students, employment, taxation, superannuation, marriage, access to reproductive technologies, child adoption and inheritance.

* School sex education routinely fails to include information on same-sex sexual activity, sending an unspoken but incorrect message that same-sex attraction is outside of the spectrum of diverse human sexuality.

* The media images with which we are bombarded present heterosexuality as if it is not just more common but the only natural way to be.

* The 1993 judgement of Chief Justice Brennan, involving the so-called “homosexual advance defence” meant men could be considered justified in inflicting grievous bodily harm or even killing another man who made a sexual advance.

* As recently as 2000, students at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) were refused permission to include their university logo in a cross-campus queer students' entry in the popular Mardi Gras parade. A document circulated at University Council in opposition to the proposal labelled queer sexuality "morally undesirable, perhaps offensive".

* Until late 2003, due to NSW’s unequal age of consent laws, it was illegal for health workers to provide information about safe gay sex to males under 18.

* The Howard government is attempting to introduce anti student organisation legislation (Optional Membership of Student Organisations, formerly called Voluntary Student Unionism), which would spell the end for campus queer groups offering resources and support.

* In 83 countries it is still illegal to engage in same-sex sexual activities. In 9 of those the penalty is government sanctioned execution.

* Australia's refugee assessment procedures consider it oppressive for people to have to practice their religion in secrecy for fear of persecution, yet effectively tells queer refugees they can hide their sexuality to avoid persecution. We then deport them back to their country of origin and supply to that country the files detailing why the applicant did not qualify as a refugee in Australia.

* Tens of thousands of queers were targeted and died in the Nazi Holocaust. This is rarely acknowledged, keeping queers invisible in history and contributing to their oppression.

* Far from living in pink-dollar prosperity, queers actually experience high levels of poverty, with lesbians the worst affected. Two thirds of lesbians worldwide live in poverty, a reflection of the inequality suffered by women generally.

* The current crop of queer characters on our TV screens, rather than breaking down prejudices, tend to trivialise, objectify and stereotype queers.

* In 2004 Australia's parliamentarians voted by a large majority to outlaw same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage has never been legal in Australia so this new piece of legislation served purely to make a statement that queers are considered second-class and not considered capable of the same commitment as our fellow adult citizens.