Don't dream it... be it
I’ve been giving blood for two or three years now despite having a fear of needles – the pain of being jabbed is more than cancelled out by the fuzzy feeling that you could have saved someone’s life. Also, you get cool certificates and badges – yay! But things get a bit more tricky when you’re transgender. So here’s my experience to date.
In my post about finally getting my first appointment at Nottingham GIC, I wrote that I’d not been sent the paperwork I’d been expecting – I just received a letter telling me to telephone the centre to make an appointment. I now have them – and here they are.
I’ve Googled those five words a few times over the past three years and not really found out too much – so I thought I’d write about my experiences of being a Slimming World member who just happens to be transgender – and it’s all good (well, mostly!)
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been a member of Slimming World for quite a while. Last week, I told my weigh-in lady about my trans secret. And this week, she nearly made me cry – because of the spelling of my name.
Finally, after 18-and-a-half months of waiting, I have my letter from Nottingham GIC – my golden ticket to a six-month gender clinic process and then (hopefully, please!) my passport to estrogen HRT for the rest of my life. Wow!
I’ve had so many lovely messages from the Mumsnet TERF Mafia over the past couple of days – I really have! Naturally, modesty prevents me from publishing most of them. But one thing struck me yesterday – and that’s the question surrounding transgender children. What does a TERF do when little Jimmy tells Mummy “he’s” really a girl?
Oscar Wilde (or was it George Bernard Shaw?) once famously wrote that youth is wasted on the young. I reckon femininity might be wasted on females – well, some of them, anyway. As women fight – quite rightly – to make their voices heard in a still-male-dominated society, should femininity really be a victim of that battle? [Read more…]
As regular readers will know, I have no patience with TERFs – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists. I had my very own “situation” a few weeks ago – and then had my say on Dame Jenni Murray’s despicable comments about trans people in a national newspaper. I decided to investigate these TERFs further. And guess what – they’re massive on Mumsnet. [Read more…]
I’ve not been in touch with Georgie for about a month, but I still think of her all the time, every day. And I dreamed of her last night. When does this start to get easier?
There’s an old saying that British people are great at waiting for things – taking their place in a queue and being patient. Well, it’s now 18 months since my referral to Nottingham GIC and I am seriously losing patience. [Read more…]