Transgender Life

I don’t want this site to be solely about being transgender. From my experiences so far, it’s not even something I could write about every week – being in the closet is far more intense and frustrating and writeable. However, there are moments when things happen, unique to trans people. I’d like to share those moments with you, and let you into the mystery.

What's On (my lips)

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What's On (my lips) With a conference talk in London to prepare for this coming Friday, and with my PowerPoint slides empty in front of me, I did what any self-respecting, prospective academic would do in my position, by going out and buying lipstick. Wait, Gina, I hear you ask – But no. Do not ask for connections. Ask only for the colour. As ...
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Learning Curves

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Learning Curves: speaking at my first conference This post could go one of two ways, narcissistic or focused on the bigger picture. I spoke at Edinburgh Mad Con yesterday – the conference of Madness, Mental Illness and Mind Doctors in 20th and 21st Century Popular Culture. I spoke about the moral panic caused by the issue of transgender women using...
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To have or not have cosmetic surgery

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To have or not have cosmetic surgery It started as I was browsing images of Sarah McBride, the trans activist as girl-next-door, so pretty and passable. Then came Janet Mock, her model-good-looks, and I thought, 'fucking hell' and also, 'oh for fuck's sake.' And these are supposed to be my transgender role models? It's the weird dynamics ...
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My love for GLOW

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GLOW (Netflix TV show) I've seldom watched a Netflix show all the way through, season by season. Orange is the New Black, I watched into the third series before the grimness of the prison setting began to wear me down. Brit Marling's intelligent sci-fi, The OA, I did watch, and was sad it covered only one season. Sense8 I could happily watch f...
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The Highs and Lows of an Intersectional Easter

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The Highs and Lows of an Intersectional Easter For Christians there's a sense of re-birth in the air, but Easter brings its own reflections for this non-Christian trans woman. I'll be away this coming Easter holiday, to be with people still trying to come to terms with my identity. I read somewhere that to come out as trans is to take the leap of f...
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Saturday Night Party at Valentina's

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Saturday Night Party at Valentina's How is it possible to get lost on the way to Valentina's, of which I've been to twice before? Pulling behind me a suitcase filled with gifts and alcohol, I took a long route up my favourite street, then realized it wouldn't take me to the party. A swirling blizzard soon enveloped me, and I found myself at a motor...
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Please, I don't want to dance

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After the cinema yesterday evening, I entered a gay bar with some friends. I never go to gay bars – or any bars, except in cinemas. I get anxious in crowded rooms of strangers, where alcohol is flowing and the music is slightly deafening. Like Alicia Vikander's cyborg in Ex Machina, I feel vulnerable in my artificiality. In the gay bar we were okay...
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Identity Politics

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Identity Politics Sunday morning, I dropped £1 into the empty cardboard cup of a homeless person while the snow fell around us. It's the first time I've done such a thing in a while. It didn't make me feel good, it felt like a drop in the ocean. Earlier this week, the staff of my university went on strike. At one point, a picketing staff membe...
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Anamorphosis

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Anamorphosis On Thursday I went to a public speaking contest where I watched my flatmate get first prize. I was late, turning up in the dinner break, with everyone milling around me, chatting excitedly about talks I hadn't witnessed. I drifted wordlessly, in a gentle trauma where I couldn't articulate anything. I found a friend I hadn't talked to i...
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A Shop I Used To Know

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A Shop I Used To Know When you're six foot tall and trans-female, entering a women's clothes shop isn't like entering a cinema or a newsagent's. In M&S, the women seem so small – maybe it's the age of the average customer there? – that you can't help but stand out by comparison, even though it's got easier than it used to, from an emotional poi...
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At the Dentist's

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At the Dentist's The dentist's chair is a place of tension for me. In childhood I never cared about my teeth and saw dentists as my nemesis. Then one day in early adolescence I fell as I was getting off my school bus and smashed a front tooth. It got fixed but I'm permanently insecure about breaking it once more. Then last summer, after nearly...
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In tribute to Laura Jane Grace

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In tribute to Laura Jane Grace Back then, circa 2008, it's Tom Gabel singing to an acoustic set with their band. The song, called The Ocean, twists and turns melodically, the voice is straining passionately. The song is fucking good already, If I could have chosen where God would hide his heaven I'd wish for it to be the salt and swell of the ocean...
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2018 All Shiny and New

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2018 All Shiny and New 12.01.18 I wake up in darkness: too cold and too dark. It's 2018, Edinburgh-style, in a freezing bedroom. Thoughts of studies and part-time work come to me. In my part-time job I am writing a manual, with a page of FAQs relating to work. There's a question I kept to myself for obvious reasons, but it re-appears in the morning...
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Final Message of 2017

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Final Message of 2017 22.12.17 I wrote this post yesterday, but it had a strange effect on me afterwards: I wrote about my excitement buying things for my family, about spending money on stuff. Christmas can have a strange effect on people, on me at least. Briefly I got swept up in the glittering waves, imagining how it's going to be, tha...
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Christmas Party

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Christmas Party 16.12.17 Isn't mulled wine the best? I am still glowing with the aftertaste, from last night's Christmas party. I wore my new, shiny black pleated skirt – which you can see in the top photo if you really peer and use your imagination. Well done Gina. Must model New Favourite Skirt with better strategy next time. Anyway, some introdu...
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On Orange Is The New Black

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On Orange Is The New Black 11.12.17 It was only a matter of time before I wrote about this show. Orange Is The New Black is the Netflix drama with one central location, where no one can escape, not the prison guards or their captors. There are several strong characters, all suffering from bad decisions that have cost them in life, from drug addicts...
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What's On?

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What's On? 08.12.17 Note: I wrote this for a What's On? post, but I'd like to add it here as a companion piece to the Christmas Party posting. I so seldom write about clothes, especially the ones I like, and writing this about beautiful skirts made me happy . . . This is a difficult What's On? to do, because I've been invited to two housewarming pa...
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On AIDS, Twitter and a Bad Week at Work

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On AIDS, Twitter, and a Bad Week at Work 03.12.17 I went to an event on AIDS on Friday afternoon. I know so little about AIDS, mainly fragments from my childhood in the 1980s, of adverts with gravestones, then later a televised concert commemorating the death of Freddie Mercury. In the late 1990s I read a book by journalist/broadcaster Andrew Neil,...
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A Difficult Week for Trans Rights

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A Difficult Week for Trans Rights 26.11.17 Since I joined Twitter a month or so ago, I've become aware of the vitriol about trans and non-binary rights. Effectively you can boil the debate down to one side battling for its own existence, while the other side attempts to strangle this possibility at birth. It is a seismic debate. It is effectively d...
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Trans Remembrance 2017

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Trans Remembrance 19.11.17 We gathered, commemorated, and also celebrated our identities. I wish I had promoted the event more successfully, and yes, more professionally, but that's a thing for another time. Elaine Gallagher, our guest speaker, spoke movingly about unemployment, about being single, and the awkward, probing questions that she's aske...
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