Caroline Cossey - My Story

My childhood was a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces were there, but there was no one to fit them together, no one to make a complete picture. Nothing felt right. I could trust no impulse. All I knew in those early years was isolation and confusion. I see myself as I was then, a small, anxious boy hiding amongst the bean rows, truanting from school, standing alone in the playground. I could make no sense of the world that ran and skipped and jumped beside me. Life was a game that I could not learn to play.

I would lie on my bed and dream that I was somebody else, somebody respected and admired, somebody who belonged. I had no words for my unhappiness, but, with the blind faith of a child, I believed that there had to be a better life for me. What I could not know then, and wasnt to learn for many years, was that I had been born with a body at war with itself. I was a girl trapped inside a male form.

Had I come into the world a hundred years earlier, I would probably have killed myself. As it was, even in the early 1970s, the problem I faced was surrounded by the mists of mythology and misinformation. Transsexuality was slowly emerging into the light of day, but it was still beset by prejudice and ignorance. Many thought that transsexuals were synonymous with transvestites. Many thought that transsexuals were thwarted homosexuals. Many thought that transsexuals were freaks. Many still do.

As I lay dreaming on my bed all those years ago, I had no way of knowing that I had been born between two sexes, and that one day I would, for the sake of my sanity, have to choose between those warring genders.

I could not know then that the impulse which led me to seek the company of girls, to play their games and to imitate their behaviour, was the irresistible call of my true nature, I could not know then that the force which drove me into the arms of men, which led me to abhor the sight of my naked body, and sent me away from home on a journey that was to lead to London and surgery, sprang from a chromosomal blueprint laid down in the womb.

I now know that I was born transsexual and that I was starved of the formative experiences I needed as a little girl. It took years to fit the pieces together, to understand the past, to make the picture. I wrote this book not as a medical textbook to explain the technicalities of gender reassignment, nor as a legal brief describing the long-drawn-out battle I have fought in the European courts, but as an honest and unadorned account of my life a life made remarkable by an accident of biology.

I hope that my story may help others who are in search of unity between body and mind, as they struggle to piece together their particular jigsaw in the face of prejudice and ignorance mankinds greatest enemy.

Transsexuals are in a minority. But it is a larger minority than many might imagine. To date many thousands of sex-change operations have been performed in this country, and many more abroad. And yet the immensely painful surgery that the transsexual has to undergo is the least of his or her trials. When I had my operation in 1974 I imagined that, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, I would spread my wings and fly. Nothing could have been further from the truth. What I did not know then, but have since learnt to my cost, was that as a transsexual in this country I had none of the legal rights of my new sex. I could not marry the man of my choice. I could not alter my now inaccurate birth certificate. If convicted of a crime, I would be sent to a male prison. I could not legally be raped. In those heady days when, rejoicing in my new body, I was accepted by all who met me as female, I could not know what lay ahead. I had no idea that a country which allowed its doctors to perform and perfect this revolutionary surgery would refuse to protect the woman they had helped create.

Once again I was to find myself wandering in no mans land, a target for the snipers from the gutter press. Without my legal rights to protect me I was fair game for anyone, and consigned to a half-life. Be a transsexual, the law said to me, but be silent. Be humble. Be grateful.

I wont be silent. I wont be humble. I wont be grateful. I did not choose to be born the way I was, and I refuse to be punished for something over which I had no control. And so I have written this book not only for transsexuals but also for the many men and women who have no understanding of what it means to be trapped in the wrong gender, who have no idea of the persecution that transsexuals suffer. I hope that it will teach them to show a little compassion, tolerance and understanding. For, in the words of the barrister David Pannick, The way in which our society deals with minorities is a guide to our civilization.

This is my story.