Tag Archives: Lana Wachowski

International Transgender Day of Visibility #TDOV

Transgender Day of Visibility #TDOV

The last day of Women’s History Month, the day before April Fool’s, is the International Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV), 31 March. Since 2009, it has sought to celebrate transgender positivity in contrast to the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) events around 20 November that draw attention to the high levels of violence and murder that trans people suffer in some countries. Even where murder is less likely, bullying, harassment, and discrimination can be part of the transphobic package that can add to the likelihood of suicide, which some 40% of trans people attempt, and twice that number, consider.

TDOV is an opportunity to portray positive role models, to let the many trans just coming out know that “it gets better“. I’ve spent ten plus years ‘out’ and it’s been a rocky road, with the almost requisite marriage break-up, suicide attempts, looks in the street, and transphobic abuse online. But that need not be everyone’s experience and for many, it is getting easier, with better support and a more accepting society.

SuperTrans Coming Out Transgender Visibility
SuperTrans ‘Coming Out’

Ironically, many trans people don’t want to be visible, they’d rather not be noticed, hopefully passing as fellow human beings in a crowd. Inevitably, some of us stand out more than others, some by choice, some by fate. Don’t always assume a trans person wants to be recognised or feted as one, many would rather be seen as your common or garden variety man or woman. I’m of the louder and more visual variety, who’ll probably die still not conforming to gender stereotypes and expectations.

Non-Binary leads to inevitable visibility

I’ve found, indeed, that being non-binary is a better fit for me than the discrete categories of man or woman, male or female, boy or girl. I, personally, don’t mind whether anyone sees me as a “real woman” or not, I know basic biology, although mine is more complex and many people exist that makes one think again about binary sex default and gender constructs.

I am, however, also not a “real man”, that too is fine! Perhaps, as one of my godchildren once cheekily remarked to me upon opening the door, saying, “Half-ladies first”, I am a “Shim”, also his delightful invention. Other people should be respected, however they prefer to be addressed.

Beyond He or She Gender Time Magazine cover
Beyond He or She Gender Time Magazine cover, March 2017

Whilst 2014 has been regarded as the “Transgender tipping point”, 2016-17 seems to be the year of Non-Binary Genderqueer and Genderfluid. In January, National Geographic ran a “Gender Revolution” special issue, and this March, TIME Magazine ran with “Beyond He or She”. 

Half of young people now see gender as a spectrum and identify their own sexuality between gay and straight. Most now know someone who is trans and/or non-binary, and they are broadly accepting, the best it has ever been, teaching older adults the way to be around identity and expression. Whilst traditional feminists regard gender as a construct, it is young women who are most likely to see it as a spectrum, blurring the lines between gender and sex. Some 22% of young women identify as other than 100% female.

New Gender Honorific Titles on Bank Cards

Just this week, HSBC announced 10 new non-binary honorifics besides the usual Mr, Mrs, Ms etc,. Metro Bank and RBS NatWest already allowed Mx (as I have) or no title. HSBC customers can now choose from:

  • Ind (individual)
  • M
  • Mx (pron. “mix” or “mux”)
  • Misc (miscellaneous)
  • Mre (mystery)
  • Msr (mix of miss/sir)
  • Myr
  • Pr (pron. “per”, for person)
  • Sai (pron. “sigh”)
  • Ser (pron. “sair”)

A Most Reluctant Transsexual

To be honest, I haven’t had it too hard, people have been accepting, and although gender dysphoric, at times I’ve been euphoric to finally be myself. Even with some trials and tribulations, it has been worth it.

Katy Went Transgender Voices NHS NSFT photoshoot
Katy Went “Transgender Voices” NHS NSFT magazine photoshoot

My ten-year journey as Norfolk’s “most reluctant transsexual” – as my psychiatrist once called me, has recently closed one chapter and turned the page to another. After nearly 6 years on hormones my resistance towards surgery shattered and I went ahead with a version of GRS that suited my identity and needs. It has made me a happier, healthier person, with no regrets. Rather surprisingly, to myself at least, it has improved my other mental health condition, bipolar, for now at least, with just pockets of extreme downs, rarer hypomanic highs, and many more days of productivity and calm.

In going ahead with surgery I found my mind changed as much as my body. It really was life-changing, even saving, surgery. Whilst I had near constant doubts leading up to it, I’ve had none since that no-going-back day of 6 February 2016, and felt as much lighter between the ears as between the legs. I feel like a psycho-emotional brain tumour has been removed, I have more space in my head, in my thoughts and feelings, no longer obsessed and disturbed by gender identity. I feel no more female, just less encumbered and more myself. Oddly, I feel just as non-binary, non-conformist as ever, and, if anything, less gendered, though more comfortable in my body.

NSFT NHS Insight Magazine
NSFT NHS Insight Magazine

Prevalence of transgender people

I am but one of millions of trans people worldwide, more than a million in the USA alone, perhaps 300-600,000 in the UK or more. The NHS used to say that there were around 1-in-30,000 people born male (AMAB) transitioning to female (MTF) and 1-in-100,000 people born female (AFAB) transitioning to male (FTM). Those serious underestimates are reflected in the huge waiting lists of 1000s of people to access the handful of UK Gender Identity Clinics (GICs).

Given that the incidence of trans people seeking NHS help is now around 7,000 new referrals p.a., figures over an adult working lifetime would suggest a prevalence of 300,000-600,000 adults, around 0.5%-1% of the population, 1-in-200 or 1-in-100 people, perhaps more. In addition, For every trans person not seeking HRT or surgery there are four or five feeling and presenting as gender questioning or non-conforming. Recent surveys suggest 2.5% may identify as non-binary, 1.75% may be born intersex, and 2% may identify as trans or genderfluid. Overlap between these populations may suggest around 5% total, 1-in-20 people. This isn’t to conflate intersex with trans, just that some can be both, and it shows the degree of sex and/or gender atypicality in the population as a whole.

National Geographic, Gender Revolution
National Geographic, Gender Revolution, January 2017

Visible Trans Persons

In the UK we have many visible trans already such as the comedian, actor and now marathon-addict, Eddie Izzard. Other trans comedians include Bethany Black and Andrew O’Neill. Then there’s the arts writer and ceramicist, Turner Prize winning artist, Grayson Perry. In the world of journalism, there’s LGBT Pink List-topping radio and print journalist Paris Lees, along with several contributors to the Guardian newspaper such as Jane Fae, Juliet Jacques, and Roz Kaveney. In the field of law and diversity, Professor of Equalities Law at Manchester – Stephen Whittle, Christine Burns, formerly of Press for Change, Rachel Reese of the University of Law, law partner Clare Fielding, and barrister, Caroline Harrison, QC.

In sport, there’s recently-out boxing promoter, Kellie Maloney, and MMA fighter Roxeanne/Alex Reid. In business, there is Kate Craig-Wood, an entrepreneur and founder of one of the UK’s largest IT groups. Musicians like CN Lester, Thomas Dolby’s son Harper, and a magician, Fay Presto. In politics, there are several trans people who have stood as councillors or for election, across the political spectrum. On television, there are actors and a spate of reality TV stars. Among people who came out in the 1960s and 70s, there’s models April Ashley and Caroline Cossey, and writer, Jan Morris –  all well known British women with open transgender histories. I could go on as I know of hundreds of trans lawyers, doctors, activists in public life, here in the UK alone.

Time Magazine Transgender Tipping Point Laverne Cox
Time Magazine “The Transgender Tipping Point” Laverne Cox

In the USA, Janet Mock, among others have blazed the way by being out and public in their defence of being themselves, creating a tipping point of trans visibility, perhaps leading to the timing of former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out.

Also, recently, we’ve seen big names like Lana and Lilly Wachowski of the Matrix films, Chelsea Manning of Wikileaks fame, Cher’s son Chaz Bono, and Laura Jane Grace of Against Me. Actors like Alexis Arquette, Candis Cayne (“Dirty Sexy Money”), Laverne Cox (“Orange is the New Black”) and Calpernia Addams. Nor are “Gender Outlaw” author Kate Bornstein or Jennifer Boylan to be forgotten. Dr Marci Bowers, is an American gynaecologist and surgeon and actually carries out gender/sex-reassignment surgery. There’s the US biologist and author of “Evolution’s Rainbow” Joan Roughgarden.

The names above are just a sprinkling of the probably tens of millions of trans and gender-variant people million worldwide.

For more information about the transgender spectrum visit www.genderagenda.net.

 

Another Wachowski comes out as Transgender, Lilly & Lana now Matrix sisters

Lilly Wachowski comes out as Trans

On International Women’s Day the other Wachowski sibling, Andy – until yesterday, has also, like Lana, come out as transgender under the name Lilly. She had prepared for this moment, but also seems to have been pushed by a Daily Mail journalist – now that bit isn’t news or surprising, although it is denied by the newspaper who claimed to be “courteous at all times” and “baffled” by the accusation. It is sad and intrusive. It is more invasive than investigative journalism. It’s also dangerous and unethical, like ‘outing’ someone in a witness protection program because of the high rates of trans suicide – almost 50%. The Mail has distanced itself and defended accusations that it ‘outed’ or hounded trans teacher Lucy Meadows, as quoted by Lilly in her statement below.

Lana Wachowski

Lana had been transitioning during the 2000s but first went public in 2012 when she revealed that she too had considered suicide in her teens because of her gender identity.

Gender binary – Two little boxes

Lilly describes the enforced binariness of gender as oppressive and a false idol:

“Being transgender is not easy. We live in a majority-enforced gender binary world. This means when you’re transgender you have to face the hard reality of living the rest of your life in a world that is openly hostile to you.”

“But these words, “transgender” and “transitioned” are hard for me because they both have lost their complexity in their assimilation into the mainstream. There is a lack of nuance of time and space. To be transgender is something largely understood as existing within the dogmatic terminus of male or female. And to “transition” imparts a sense of immediacy, a before and after from one terminus to another. But the reality, my reality is that I’ve been transitioning and will continue to transition all of my life, through the infinite that exists between male and female as it does in the infinite between the binary of zero and one. We need to elevate the dialogue beyond the simplicity of binary. Binary is a false idol.”

Lana wanted to “transcend the limitations of two little boxes” and the flat-earth pseudo-simplicity of binary bathrooms and their policing:

“I see few things as beautiful as my community and all the miraculous ways we transcend the limitations of two little boxes, blurring and even erasing the distinctions that legitimize and support the belief in all equalities of gender… I understand. I really do. I know how important these rules and regulations, these binary bathrooms are to your understanding of the world…”Lana Wachowski, at Equality Illinois 2014 Gala, accepting Freedom Award

Without putting words into their mouths, I think it is safe to say they are both ‘out’ as not only transgender but have left the binary gender matrix behind too.

Take the pill, leave the Matrix

The Wachowskis’ ground breaking films are both escapist and challenging. Lana says that what they were trying to achieve in the Matrix trilogy was:

“…a shift, the same kind of shift that happens for Neo, that Neo goes from being in this sort of cocooned and programmed world, to having to participate in the construction of meaning to his life. And we were like, ‘Well, can the audience go through the three movies and experience something similar to what the main character experiences?’ So the first movie is sort of typical in its approach. The second movie is deconstructionist, and it assaults all of the things that you thought to be true in the first movie, and so people get very upset, and they’re like ‘Stop attacking me!’ in the same way that people get upset with deconstructionist philosophy. I mean, Derrida and Foucault, these people upset us. And then the third movie is the most ambiguous, because it asks you to actually participate in the construction of meaning.” — Lana Wachowski, Movie City News, October 13, 2012

Red Pill, Blue Pill

The Red Pill represents reality, often raw and painful, whilst the Blue Pill is the illusion, the delusional space we inhabit to avoid confronting reality:

“After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”  – Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)

Alice in Genderland, Richard NovicA decade ago, one of the first trans* (explicitly a male crossdresser) autobiographies I read was called Alice in Genderland by Richard Novic, MD – yes he is a Doctor, psychiatrist  and psychotherapist. He describes his gender journey as like falling “headlong down a rabbit hole”, like Alice.

Other Worldly Queerness

Lilly also quotes from José Esteban Muñoz’s writings on queerness:

“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.” – José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009)

Several of the Wachowskis’ films including Jupiter Ascending have been about other worlds. Their private worlds have now been shattered and they are now both in the public domain, but I hope their ongoing transitioning(s) are respected and lauded, not hounded and sensationalised.

Lilly Wachowski’s full statement

Lilly Wachowski‘s statement in her own words to Chicago’s LGBT paper the Windy City Times:

“SEX CHANGE SHOCKER—WACHOWSKI BROTHERS NOW SISTERS!!!”

There’s the headline I’ve been waiting for this past year. Up until now with dread and/or eye rolling exasperation. The “news” has almost come out a couple of times. Each was preceded by an ominous email from my agent—reporters have been asking for statements regarding the “Andy Wachowski gender transition” story they were about to publish. In response to this threatened public outing against my will, I had a prepared a statement that was one part piss, one part vinegar and 12 parts gasoline.

It had a lot of politically relevant insights regarding the dangers of outing trans people, and the statistical horrors of transgender suicide and murder rates. Not to mention a slightly sarcastic wrap-up that “revealed” my father had injected praying mantis blood into his paternal ball-sac before conceiving each of his children to produce a brood of super women, hellbent on female domination. Okay, mega sarcastic.

But it didn’t happen. The editors of these publications didn’t print a story that was only salacious in substance and could possibly have a potentially fatal effect. And being the optimist that I am, I was happy to chalk it up to progress.

Then last night while getting ready to go out for dinner my doorbell rang. Standing on my front porch was a man I did not recognize.

“This might be a little awkward,” he said in an English accent.

I remember sighing.

Sometimes it’s really tough work to be an optimist.

He proceeded to explain he was a journalist from the Daily Mail, which was the largest news service in the UK and was most definitely not a tabloid. And that I really had to sit down with him tomorrow or the next day or next week so that I could have my picture taken and tell my story which was so inspirational! And that I really didn’t want to have someone from the National Enquirer following me around, did I? BTW—The Daily Mail is so definitely not a tabloid.

My sister Lana and I have largely avoided the press. I find talking about my art frustratingly tedious and talking about myself a wholly mortifying experience. I knew at some point I would have to come out publicly. You know, when you’re living as an out transgender person it’s … kind of difficult to hide. I just wanted—needed some time to get my head right, to feel comfortable.

But apparently I don’t get to decide this.

After he had given me his card, and I closed the door it began to dawn on me where I had heard of the Daily Mail. It was the “news” organization that had played a huge part in the national public outing of Lucy Meadows, an elementary school teacher and trans woman in the UK. An editorial in the “not-a-tabloid” demonized her as a damaging influence on the children’s delicate innocence and summarized “he’s not only trapped in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job.” The reason I knew about her wasn’t because she was transgender it was because three months after the Daily Mail article came out, Lucy committed suicide.

And now here they were, at my front door, almost as if to say—

“There’s another one! Let’s drag ’em out in the open so we can all have a look!”

Being transgender is not easy. We live in a majority-enforced gender binary world. This means when you’re transgender you have to face the hard reality of living the rest of your life in a world that is openly hostile to you.

I am one of the lucky ones. Having the support of my family and the means to afford doctors and therapists has given me the chance to actually survive this process. Transgender people without support, means and privilege do not have this luxury. And many do not survive. In 2015, the transgender murder rate hit an all-time high in this country. A horrifying disproportionate number of the victims were trans women of color. These are only the recorded homicides so, since trans people do not all fit in the tidy gender binary statistics of murder rates, it means the actual numbers are higher.

And though we have come a long way since Silence of the Lambs, we continue to be demonized and vilified in the media where attack ads portray us as potential predators to keep us from even using the goddamn bathroom. The so-called bathroom bills that are popping up all over this country do not keep children safe, they force trans people into using bathrooms where they can be beaten and or murdered. We are not predators, we are prey.

Lilly Wachowski selfie
Lilly Wachowski selfie

So yeah, I’m transgender.

And yeah, I’ve transitioned.

I’m out to my friends and family. Most people at work know too. Everyone is cool with it. Yes, thanks to my fabulous sister they’ve done it before, but also because they’re fantastic people. Without the love and support of my wife and friends and family I would not be where I am today.

But these words, “transgender” and “transitioned” are hard for me because they both have lost their complexity in their assimilation into the mainstream. There is a lack of nuance of time and space. To be transgender is something largely understood as existing within the dogmatic terminus of male or female. And to “transition” imparts a sense of immediacy, a before and after from one terminus to another. But the reality, my reality is that I’ve been transitioning and will continue to transition all of my life, through the infinite that exists between male and female as it does in the infinite between the binary of zero and one. We need to elevate the dialogue beyond the simplicity of binary. Binary is a false idol.

Now, gender theory and queer theory hurt my tiny brain. The combinations of words, like freeform jazz, clang disjointed and discordant in my ears. I long for understanding of queer and gender theory but it’s a struggle as is the struggle for understanding of my own identity. I have a quote in my office though by José Muñoz given to me by a good friend. I stare at it in contemplation sometimes trying to decipher its meaning but the last sentence resonates:

“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.”

So I will continue to be an optimist adding my shoulder to the Sisyphean struggle of progress and in my very being, be an example of the potentiality of another world.

Lilly Wachowski

 

2015 Year of Transgender Visibility, Voice and Vulnerability

2015 Year of Transgender Visibility

Time Magazine Transgender Tipping Point Laverne Cox
Time Magazine “The Transgender Tipping Point” Laverne Cox

Many are calling 2015 the year of transgender visibility, after 2014’s “transgender tipping point” and Laverne Cox in OITNB, heck we were even “word of the year“. But 2015 also began very differently as the year of trans youth suicides with a spate of them from Leelah Alcorn to many others until March last year when the coming out of a young trans male teen Tom Sosnik put the focus back on living.

2015 has undoubtedly seen increased and diverse visibility from Andreja Pejic in Vogue, FTM bodybuilder Aydian DowlingJazz Jennings in I am JazzRebecca Root in Boy Meets GirlRiley Carter Millington in EastendersCaitlyn Jenner and many others, not to mention those thousands in local communities without the double-edged privilege and curse of fame or fortune.

At the same time violence against trans people continues unabated with “at least 81 transgender people murdered worldwide [in 2014] — and those are just the victims whose deaths were reported.”

Transgender Voices

With visibility comes equality and acceptance, one hopes, but also a recognition that we have a voice, indeed several voices – for we are a diverse community.

“None of us can represent anyone but ourselves…”Janet Mock

There are trans Tories and Republicans, Christians and Muslims, politics and religion are no prevention to having gender dysphoria. Though sometimes one can lose one’s job or faith over it.

Does having a platform and a voice bring responsibility? There has been much criticism of Caitlyn Jenner and Kellie Maloney for not representing “us”. But they do, in the sense that they represent themselves. For anyone can be trans. We may need to add #notinmyname hashtags to some of their statements though when we disagree over image, progress, equality, and micro-politics.

Lana Wachowski on Vulnerability

If I wanted a voice that came close to my feelings and expression then listening to the funny and profound Lana Wachowski receiving the 2012 HRC Visibility Award and 2014 Equality Illinois Freedom Award had me applauding every sentence. I empathised with her experience of binary discomfort and not just gender dysphoria, being sorted by gender at school, not recognising that gender is a spectrum, not an either/or.

Putting ourselves out there as vulnerable, is the way in which to be strong, one first has to be weak. To gain rights one has to stand up, and be counted, before you have those rights:

“Policy is the battle ground where matters of equality are fought. Policy can institutionalize prejudice or can protect us against it.” – Lana Wachowski

Her being visible was a choice and a sacrifice of a precious privacy that she and her brother had sought to protect since becoming successful filmmakers. She reminded me of the trade-off between public and private, visibility and invisibility, vulnerability and protected, ‘out’ and ‘in the closet’.

“Every one of us, every person here, every human life presents a negotiation between public and private identity.” – Lana Wachowski

‘Coming out’ seems to be in the news all the time, more accepted, yet still a shock to some, and still unnecessary if you are a part of the cisheteronormative default (no judgement intended). There’s still seems to be a mixture of shock and awe when a sportsperson (rare) or a celebrity (more common) comes out as something other than the heterosexual or cis (non-trans) gendered norm.

Speaking of normal, in the context of her pink dreads inspiring children to think outside the matrix, for themselves, “recalibrating the possible”, Lana said this:

“…normal is something that does not have to be defined for you but rather by you.”

SuperTrans – Visibility as Superpower

As SuperGirl in 2015-2016 is to discover once you’ve come out and become visible, there’s no going back (2m54s):

Being Trans is not a superpower, being authentic and visible is. Ironically we spend our dysphoric early lives torn between wanting to be invisible, hiding in the closet, and yet wanting to be seen as our “true selves”.

SuperTrans Coming Out Transgender Visibility
SuperTrans ‘Coming Out’

Bisexuals have a visibility day (23 September) because they are so often erased, so do trans people (31 March) but we tend to emphasize the Transgender Day of Remembrance for those who were killed for being trans (20 Nov, TDOR). Trans people have little choice but to be visible once out, we could do with a national “please don’t look at me day”, sometimes we’d like a day off, to be ignored and not noticed. I’ve chosen to embrace the loss of privacy that comes from being continually visible, and not passing, it does not make me superhuman, I’m still vulnerable, but I like to be seen to encourage others, not just trans, to be empowered to be authentically themselves.

 

New Year’s Resolution – Don’t be afraid, Take a Walk on the Wild Side!

Overcoming Fear and Being Yourself

There is so much one could say about fear, one could write a book about it, indeed one is. So often fear runs, if not ruins, our lives. It did mine for 40 years. Learning to embrace fear, take the risks anyway, and have a walk on the wild side, was in part down to being ‘outed’ and then choosing to stay ‘out’ rather than retreat back into the closet of fear and self-loathing. I’ve been told I was lucky to be outed rather than face the fear of coming out! You learn to swim or run quickly when thrown to the sharks or wolves.

“fear is not something that I let rule my life, but gratitude is.” – Lana Wachowski

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

Feel the fear and do it anyway, Susan Jeffers
“Feel the fear and do it anyway”, Susan Jeffers

One of the most powerful books I’ve never read was the above titled volume by Susan Jeffers. Well I got as far as reading the front cover and never looked back. Nine years ago, in therapy, I paid approximately £15 a word to hear from my therapist at the end of each hour the two words, “Why not?” I spent each hour in fear and not a small amount of self-loathing, she responded, in essence, with “do it anyway”. Feed the fear – and you’ll end up paralysed and do nothing at all.

“The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.” – William Jennings Bryan

The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle’s book was also influential and similarly unfinished-unread. My ‘now’ took years to find and only a moment to nearly kill off. It took all my courage to attempt suicide nearly 4 years ago. I was “in the moment” and exhausted of surviving not thriving. Each day it took all my energy just to keep going. Albert Camus wrote that:

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” – Albert Camus

I’d given up trying to be normal, I had no energy left for the mask, vulnerability was easy, I had no defences left, and only one last resort.

Walk on the Wild Side

In 2015 Lou Reed was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a second time as a solo artist, the first time was as part of Velvet Underground. It was also the year that the “he [who] was a she” from his most well known Grammy Hall of Fame song -“Walk on the Wild Side“, Holly Woodlawn, died. From the appropriately named album, Transformer (1972), produced by David Bowie the song literally walked on the wild side, risking public outcry and censorship by referring to taboo topics such as transsexuality, male prostitution, colour and oral sex. Whilst British censors missed the references or ignored them, the US released an edited version of the single minus the oral sex reference. I want to live an unedited life!

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
He said, ‘Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side’

Candy came from out on the island
In the backroom she was everybody’s darlin’
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
He said, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’

The lyrics describe several of the colourful individuals who frequented Andy Warhol’s New York studio including transwomen and actresses Holly Woodlawn (who died this month after appearing as Vivian in two episodes of the Amazon television drama series Transparent about a family with a transgender father), Candy Darling (d.1974 aged 29), and Jackie Curtis (d.1985 aged 38). Warhol was an inspiration and mentor to Reed.

A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren
A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren

The title “Walk on the Wild Side” comes from a 1956 novel by Nelson Algren of which, he remarked:

“The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives.”

The New York Times Book Review said of it: “His hell burns with passion for heaven.” It was also the source of Algren’s “three rules of life“:

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

Rules to live by: Don’t be afraid of anyone

Lou Reed’s widow of a 21-year relationship and musician in her own right, Laurie Anderson, gave a speech on his behalf this year and quoted their three rules to live by:

  1. Don’t be afraid of anyone
  2. Get a good bullshit detector
  3. Be really tender

“One. Don’t be afraid of anyone. Now, can you imagine living your life afraid of no one? Two. Get a really good bullshit detector. And three. Three is be really, really tender. And with those three things, you don’t need anything else.”

The Cat in the Hat, Dr Seuss

Be who you are, Dr Seuss, Cat in the Hat
Be who you are, Dr Seuss, Cat in the Hat

So much irreverent wisdom comes from Dr Seuss, not the least of which is this:

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss

The most important bit of which is “be who you are“, sometimes “saying what you feel” can be worth some discretion and discernment. A past girlfriend taught me a lot about authenticity and learning to be myself has been the best journey of my life, and I’ve travelled extensively, and not without the odd international incident in the Middle East and Africa!

[It is disputed whether this is an authentic Dr Seuss quote]

Life begins at 49

Whilst mid-life crises often afflict us in our forties, it is said that life begins at fifty. “A massive 92% of women in their 50s say they’re happier than they’ve ever been“. At 50, we’re over halfway and have learned hopefully to let go of the things that held us back thus far. For me, having led a double life until 40, it feels like I’m having a second bite of the cherry. If football is a game of two halves, then I’m in the mid-match break about to kick-off the second half.

“What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.” – Quentin Crisp

New Year’s Resolution, New Me

I turn 49 in 2016, I’ll have been on female hormones (my male ones never worked anyway) for 6 years and I’ve finally plucked up the courage to go under the knife (6 Feb 2016) for what some would erroneously call cosmetic surgery – for many trans people, it’s life saving surgery. It’s actually a labioplasty not the usually requested vaginoplasty, and it’s probably not for the reasons one may suspect.

It’s more about a letting go of something than gaining anything new. But it’s the letting go, that was holding me back, leaving me in a literal “no man’s land” limbo the last decade.

One of my several psychiatrists (I’ve been married to one, and had four, along with a couple of psychologists) once said to me:

“You are the most reluctant transsexual I’ve ever met!”

I’ve tried everything from Christian deliverance and healing, denial, suicide, to sex and body workshops, self-development work, and yet more therapy and therapists, to avoid being me. I’m not expecting surgery to change me, rather to free myself up from some unnecessary encumbrances, literally! I dealt with the emotional baggage some time ago, now for the physical baggage. I expect to be travelling lighter from now on.

3 Rules of Life: Be Real, Be You, Be Free

“Sorry for being me but I have great difficulty being anybody else” – Spike Milligan

As Oscar Wilde never said, instead it appears to have been some millennial advertising slogan, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken”. What Oscar did say was:

“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead” (1882)

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” (1890)

Well, I tried the mask and he lied. Dropping the public persona and allowing the vulnerable inner me to step out and lead my real life. It has been undeniably scary but a ride nonetheless, and the journey is only just beginning. 2015 feels like it is the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end of my old life. 2016 will allow me to move forward with a bit less of my body and a whole lot more of me.