Dawson - The Gender Games: The Problem With Men and Women, From Someone Who Has Been Both

Hollow Pike

Cruel Summer

Say Her Name

Under My Skin

All of the Above

Margot and Me

Being a Boy

Mind Your Head

This Book is Gay

www.tworoadsbooks.com

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Two Roads

An imprint of John Murray Press

An Hachette UK company

Some names, places and identifying features have been changed in order to preserve anonymity.

Copyright Juno Dawson 2017

The right of Juno Dawson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978-1-473-64861-6
Audio Digital Download ISBN 978-1-473-66982-6

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

To Charley

It was a balmy, sticky night in mid-July, the type of weather Yorkshire calls close. On the corner of Heath Street, the back door of the end terrace was wide open, to entice what little breeze there was across the concrete yard and into the narrow kitchen.

As Angela was washing up at the sink, quite without warning, a kitchen cabinet came detached from the wall and crashed to the floor. Plates and cups and glasses smashed and clattered over the lino. Ian a man with a fashionable handlebar moustache pelted in from the lounge to investigate the commotion and ensure his heavily pregnant wife was unhurt.

She was fine, but as she was cleaning up the mess, Angela realised shed gone into labour. Her baby, the couples first, wasnt due for another three and half weeks. The young couple rushed to Ians Ford Escort and sped to Bradford Royal Infirmary.

The labour was relatively quick. In three short hours, a baby was placed in its mothers arms. The midwife, a red-faced woman with a sturdy Yorkshire bosom, took a cursory glance between the babys legs and said, Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Dawson. You have a healthy baby boy.

And that was where it all went wrong.

Once upon a time there was a little girl.

No.

Once upon a time there was a little boy.

Also no. Any creative writing teacher worth their salt will tell you that a great story never starts at the beginning, it starts when something changes . On 6 August 2015, I told my mother that I was a woman.

Her reply was, Well, I cant say Im surprised.

It would be lovely if the story did start with Once upon a time there was a little girl , but while that should have been the case, it wasnt nearly so simple. You see, to the rest of the world, Juno Dawson was born a boy. She looked like a boy, she had a boys name, she had a boys body.

But she was never a boy.

The problem was that maternity ward introduction to Gender. Gender, like so many imaginary friends, lied to me about the world. I was a child, so I believed him. For many, many years he was to feed me lies. He told me the world was made up of two types of people men and women and that these two distinct, dissonant groups, their sex set in stone, behaved, thought, dressed, existed in certain ways.

Gender, long before my arrival, had whispered the same story into the ears of my parents, my peers, my teachers, society and the media. Like Maleficent at Auroras christening, he materialises at every birth, without invitation, and bestows his curse. Hes silver-tongued, and has an admirable, global work ethic. His stories have been shared and recycled so often that, for most, they have become fact.

That is why my story my change, my turning point began some thirty years after that baby was born.

Gender and I were always heading for a showdown. It was only a matter of time, and its a battle not yet won.

Back to 6 August 2015. The day it all changed. Telling my mother Im transgender was the hardest thing Ive ever done. Harder than living through a divorce as a child; harder than being mugged for a Buffy VHS boxset outside Virgin Megastore in Bradford; harder than being a queer teenager in rural Yorkshire; harder than being a teacher in an Ofsted failing school; harder than getting my first novel published; harder than being unceremoniously dumped by the love of my life. Yes, even harder than telling Mum I was a gay man more than ten years earlier. That was, I know now, a personal misdiagnosis, for which the catalyst was what Gender had told me.

I struggled home to Bradford, navigating the London Underground with a wonky wheelie suitcase and my Chihuahua, Prince, with the sole purpose of telling her. I couldnt not. By that date, Id reached deadlock definitely a woman, always should have been a woman and my transition couldnt properly start unless she knew.

I wanted her to be OK with it. But had she not been, theres precisely nothing I could have done about it. I needed to transition. About a year earlier, Id sought the advice of Boy Meets Girl actor Rebecca Root after wed done a panel event together at the Australian Literary Festival at Kings College, London. She had told me, I always say, if you can survive without transitioning, dont transition. Im starting to understand what she meant by that its not something to enter into lightly.

Wants and needs are different.

It was with heavy, sad feet that I boarded the Leeds train, knowing or rather fearing it could be the last pilgrimage I made.

You see, coming out as LGBTQ comes with a profound fear of rejection. Yeah, we have our Ellens and Caitlyns and Eltons, but they all have their mothers and we have ours. My mum doesnt give two shits about Tom Daley, she cares about me and, as far as she was concerned, she had one son and one daughter. Not her fault, Genders. One of Genders most common refrains is that if it looks like a boy and it sounds like a boy, its a boy.

Peterborough, Grantham, Stevenage, Warrington Bank Quay, Wakefield Westgate and home. Two hours, twenty minutes.

The ideal scenario would have been hazy and soft-focused. She would embrace me and say, James, weve always known, but you know that whatever choices you make, we support and love you. Its whats on the inside that counts. In that version of events, my mother would be portrayed by Susan Kennedy from Neighbours or Connie Brittons character in Nashville . I didnt know what my real mums reaction would be, but I knew it wouldnt be that. We are not that kind of family.

Coming out as a gay man was a slow process for me. It was cowardly, but I let her work it out for herself, gradually distancing myself from her until it was down to her to reel me back in, like a fish on a hook. She initiated the final coming out conversation as we took a stroll on Brighton seafront in the summer of 2004. I still remember the harbour boat sails chinking in the breeze as we walked over the pebbles. At the time, I sported a fashion mullet, with a blond stripe in both the front and back. For a visual, you may wish to google an image of the boyband Phixx. It was very on-trend, I assure you. If you want a visual of my mother, imagine me but much shorter and with a blonde bob. Shes quite glamorous for a grandmother-of-two and certainly doesnt look like shes in her sixties.