"I've seen the signs and the looks and the pictures that give your game away yeah": Duran Duran
Having spilled the beans to all and sundry about my life of smoke and mirrors over the last five years, I'm encountering a new reaction.
One I've heard often happens.
No-one likes to be duped.
If you go to a magic show and see the conjurer do a sleight of hand card trick, a lot of the audience will swear blind they know how it's done, and that they were never fooled.
It's not the perfect analogy, but close.
Trans people are not illusionists. While we all want to blend in for reasons of acceptance, we are not doing an act.
We are being ourselves.
Over the last few days, I've heard a few people say they always knew.
I'm not arrogant enough to claim that in my early days of exploring girlhood that nervousness, uncertainty, or the wrong look didn't send out a signal.
Taking those first tentative permanent steps was terrifying. Bambi on ice.
However, people who have met me much more recently and briefly now claim to have had me rumbled from the off.
Did they?
Who's benefit are they saying that for?
I have been interviewed for jobs by people I worked side-by-side with for ten years and not a flicker. I have been on nights out in clubs and bars alongside fabulous looking women and been chatted up. I have even been in the same room as someone I used to read the news with every night and not been twigged.
Yet a woman in a cafe where I drink for one hour a fortnight always knew.
I'm very conscious that I have voluntarily stuck a badge on myself which could bring all sorts of pre-conceptions and possibly a degree of stigma.
Fine. Bring it on.I enjoy a good debate.
Trans is a mega-universe of difference.
Depending where you sit on the spectrum, it can be a temporary or permanent state of being.
For me, it was always temporary. I was born transgender, but now I'm moving to where I should always have been.
I'm done with the double dealing.
That's not to deny my past or delude myself. To try and do so would be ridiculous.
It would also be a betrayal of my previous self, and I'm not going to do that.
Being fortunate enough to pass - which I know I do - I could of course have kept quiet. Never mentioned my transness - but why should I even consider keeping schtum?
Not everyone in my position has a choice.
It's interesting to me how the addition of the trans word changes things.
I'm the last person to carry a placard or god-forbid go on a march. Too hard on the make-up and hair!
Yet while being trans remains something that can attract mockery and violence, I think it's better for the greater good that more women like me make ourselves known.
That's not a view I've always held.
There's very little sisterhood on Planet Trans, and I'm more guilty than most of selfishly protecting my own needs above others. Hence my five years flipping back and forth.
I used to strongly advocate padlocks on the doors of all non-passing trans, because I felt they were an awful representation of what I was.
Ludicrous.
Being seen as a parody of a woman, or a caricature, is the most devastating dagger anyone could deliver - and the above group represented the biggest risk to me.
The same applied to drag queens. My equivalent of scary clowns.
I guess because in a very simplistic way they are men who dress as women, and that's what transgender people are, right?
They also actively go out to invite mockery.
I grew up blaming drag queens for making it impossible for me to ever tell anyone how I was feeling.
Ridiculous of course, because most drag acts are actually gay men with no malicious intent against the trans community whatsoever.
Evening knowing this and understanding they are completely different still makes me feel uneasy.
I'm mentally scarred. They are my devil in a dress.
Over the last few weeks, some of my pals have told me I'm brave - which is nonsense! I'm a self-confessed coward.
Real bravery in the trans world is found among those who are taller and broader than the other girls, but still hold their head high.
That takes guts.
Leading a life of stealth is a doddle if you get the right genetic cards.
Some of the fortunate few secretly wish their less blessed brothers and sisters would stay in front of the bedroom mirror with a padlock on the door.
Don't scare the neighbours.
These people are called Transgenders Who Are Ashamed of Transgenders.
Or TWAATS for short.
Sadly, I grew up as a TWAAT.
Though I am trying to fight it.
To gain real acceptance in mainstream society, people like me shouldn't have to betray our own kind.
Deny who we are. Blank out our origins. Wipe out childhood memories of playing football or doing anything even slightly boyish in case it raises eyebrows.
I would never spare a questioner any discomfort about my past. I hate the fact that I had to wade through so much crap to transition, and get the female body I should have had from the start.
I would never deliberately introduce the subject into a conversation because I don't want trans to define who I am, but if asked, I'm not going to conjure up a fib about my first dress, or the time I played Mary in the school nativity play.
I'm taking pride in my life from here on in and not re-scripting it for others expectations.
The grim times growing up as a boy actually made me the woman I am today. And God help anyone who tries to tell me that I'm not real. That I'm playing a game of dress-up and not fooling anyone.
After all the pain and fighting, no-one is going to take this hard earned victory away from me.
I'm grabbing life and wringing it dry.
I am Secret Agender - Trans Avenger.
Legitimately entitled to wear tights.
