Jennifer Brown - From the Inside Out

www.grosvenorhousepublishing.co.uk

To my Mum, who sadly died just as this book was
coming into print.

I often describe my life as a train journey. The terminus, the end destination. was decided before I was even born; the consensus of educated opinion now suggesting that destination was the result of an abnormal hormonal event in my brain that happened at around the 16th week of foetal development.

Through my childhood, the train careered along - often coming off the rails; often crashing into dead- end sidings as it followed a confused and bewildering path towards its destination. Adulthood was the train crashing through various barriers put in its way to stop its headlong dash, until finally there were no more barriers, no more emergency stops and nothing to stop it accelerating into one final dramatic breakthrough dash to the terminus.

During its journey the train had to pass through many dark tunnels, especially in that frightening final phase of its travel. At times, those tunnels seemed endless- the oppressive darkness seeming to swallow life itself up but finally it got there, emerging into the brilliant sunshine of happiness and joy.

This book describes what it is like to be on that journey: one which is often misunderstood, resulting in the traveller being a very lonely and confused passenger - unable to stop the train and in no way responsible for the end destination and the route to get there but often having to face prejudice, bigotry and discrimination along the way. Indeed, many travellers never complete the journey, for it is terminated unnaturally through some form of intentional or unintentional self-destruction.

This book is not a text-book on gender dysphoria. It just describes my journey. It is not for me to describe the journey others make in some form of academic or generalised sense, for each journey is unique and only the individual traveller knows of their own routes taken and the stresses and strains along that route.

Another thing I must apologise for is the lack of professional editing. This book is about human emotion, the thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviours of someone confronting some of the most extreme stresses in life that can ever be faced. At times it is raw emotion and I want that emotion to be left raw - not sterilised through editing; my feelings not bottled into academic justifications; my thoughts not being transcribed by clinical psychology. This is me; my heart, soul and mind; nothing else, so excuse the bad grammar, the typing errors and sometimes the lack of syntax, for human emotion is all about raw edges and I have retained those raw edges.

It is an accurate story, relying as much as possible on known historical fact, but like any story involving emotions, especially childhood ones, there may be others who would not wish to be identified and therefore the names of family, jobs, employers and friends who have had no involvement in the preparation of this book have been deliberately altered. Also, some incidents that could identify others or identify circumstances that could affect currently ongoing issues have either been modified, omitted or had dates changed.

When I look at the happiness I have now in my life and the various chapters that have led me here, I realise just how fortunate I am. I am surrounded by friends and family who have given me unconditional love and support, and have a partner who for over half my life has been everything anyone could want in their lives. I live in a stable, safe country where we take freedom of speech and freedom to worship for granted. I have never experienced the personal disruption of a war at home and I have access to some of the finest medical treatment on the planet. It would be very easy for me to complain that society does not accept me when in fact I live in one of the most tolerant and peaceful societies on the planet.

My good fortune can be compared starkly with those peoples across the planet that face only genocidal hatred; who for no reason of their own face murder, mutilation and starvation just because they are the wrong colour, worship in a different way or come from the wrong tribe. Today, some of the most desperately oppressed people are facing the evil of genocide in what is probably the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet occurring now, at this minute, in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. I am therefore pledging 50% of the royalties earned by this book to Christian aid agencies helping those desperately unfortunate peoples.

David was born on the 8th of May. A few short years earlier to the day the nation had rejoiced as it was officially proclaimed that war with Germany was over. There was victory in Europe and forever more the 8th May was to be remembered as VE Day.

These were not easy times for the nation generally, and for Davids parents, they had been especially difficult. At the time of conception, they already had another daughter, Shirley, who was less than two years old and they were living in cramped accommodation with Davids paternal grandparents.

A few weeks into foetal development , Davids grandparents decided that a pregnant woman with a young child was too much for the cramped accommodation, and asked his mother, also called Shirley, to find somewhere else to live. For weeks, she tramped the streets, pushing the young Shirley in a pushchair and with the fatigue and sickness associated with a child growing inside her, until finally they found somewhere. It was one of those ubiquitous dwellings called a prefab, short for prefabricated house, that seemed to sprout up on every available bit of cleared land in war- torn London. this prefab was one of two side by side on a plot of land hastily cleared of piles of rubble that had been previously been deposited there by a German landmine destroying a large Victorian house that had once stood proudly on site

Today, attention would have been paid to the pollution risks. The land was soaked with chemicals from the explosives the bombs were packed with, broken sewers had leaked their filthy contents into the ground and the detritus of bombed building rubble was all around, but in the desperate conditions caused by five years of war and intensive bombing, these were issues that did not matter then. -Inside the deeply stressed mother, living in heavily polluted surroundings, certain parts of the foetal brain of the developing child entered their most critical development stage.

David was born at home. It was, a relatively straightforward birth, other than he was a rather large baby, weighing in at over 10 pounds, and the doctor, having had a quick glance at the genitalia, pronounced to the happy couple that they had a boy.

There was no discussion on the name. As Davids mother had named his sister after herself, so Davids father felt it his manly right to assert himself and rushed off down to the registry office to register the male infant with his own name.

Being seen to be manly was very important to Davids father. This was at the height of gender polarisation in British society, where men were men and women were women and there was no blurring of the edges. These were days of hard manual labour, of heavy industries such as steelmaking, shipbuilding, coal-mining, -rail and road car manufacturing.

Two bloody hard- fought world wars had heightened gender polarisation, with men going off to fight, but by the end of the Second World War, the cracks were beginning to show. Towards the end of the First World War women drafted into previously male-dominated industries started to wear trousers, and by the 1920-s, the wearing of trousers by women was taking hold despite stiff opposition from a male-dominated society. The Suffragettes had achieved emancipation and women now had the right to vote. The drain in manpower of the Second World War caused yet more women to take their place in previously male only jobs and each of the armed forces had its own female wing: the Waafs (Womens Auxiliary Air Force), Wrens (Womens Royal Naval Service) and Wracs(Womens Royal Army Corps). Women were contributing to the final sacrifice given in wartime by so many; the toll of heavy bombing raids on dockyards, airfields and military bases exacting a heavy price.