The first problem is when your fears of your child being ostracised seem to be coming true. My eldest daughter is a happy, sunny, bright and popular child. She makes friends very easily (I envy her!) and for her first two and a half years at school she was constantly getting party invitations and being invited for dinner and sleepovers. This was when my appearance was that of a normal, if rather awkward, housewife.
However, when my image began to noticably change, sadly my daughter started feeling the effects of it. At the end of about six months, when it must've become quite obvious to the people who saw me waiting in the playground for the school to open, or picking up my daughter in the afternoons, that I had drastically changed my image. The reasoning I heard for it on the gossip grapevine was that some people had assumed I'd discovered I was a lesbian and left my partner and 'gone butch' (as one tactful soul put it)!! But a lot of people also cottoned on and started whispering the words 'sex change'.
The effect was that my daughter didn't get any more party invitations, she had hers declined by at least 50% of the people she invited, and I noticed that when I approached the playground in the mornings to drop her off at school, loads of kids who'd been happily running around and playing together were suddenly called to their parents' sides and told to stand still the minute they saw me coming with my daughter, or when they saw her running up to play with their kids. Although she was still popular in the school itself, and didn't actually get any bullying from the kids, it was the parents who decided they didn't want their children associating with the family of a transsexual. The teachers at her school were very professional, and when I explained the situation to them, they immediately stopped the use of the words 'mum' and 'she' and politely referred to me as 'Mr' - and, since I couldn't take on the name of 'Dad', with the kids' dad being still very much in the picture, the teachers simply called me Sammy, as the kids do.
So ironically, most of the problems were caused by ignorant adults.
Many of the people in my neighbourhood couldn't restrain themselves from shouting some sort of comment, or sniggering, or even throwing something at me when I was out and about, and sometimes they didn't even bother to hold their tongues when I was walking with my children. Obviously it upset them to see me being taunted, but I had to set an example to them of not becoming violent, as was my extreme temptation!
Eventually I realised that, although it's not really within my character to 'run away', and I always prefer to confront and solve problems, I reflected that realistically this wasn't something that was really going to change. More to the point, I thought, though I was willing to deal with the abuse, I was not willing to stand by and watch my children become victims of it through the ignorant parents of their friends. So I decided that it would be best all round if we moved to an entirely different area, where my previous appearance wasn't known. I found that it wasn't my appearance in itself that was causing the trouble, but the fact that everyone locally had seen it change before their eyes. How could I try to pass as male in my daily life when everyone, every cashier in every shop, every bus driver, everyone, just carried on referring to me as female? I was incredibly demoralised about my ability to pass as male, until I went away on a holiday. While on holiday I was almost invariably referred to as male and treated as male by everyone I came into contact with. What a reality shock to have to come back to my neighbourhood again!
So we moved house. Obviously, the neighbours can't help but speculate on why there appears to be two men with two children, living in a two-bedroom house! But they only speculate, and because they didn't know me before I began to change, they don't suspect that I'm actually a parent of the children. It gets difficult sometimes when I have to sort of publicly disown my kids in a way. My appearance is that of a very young male, I sometimes have trouble convincing shop assistants that I'm old enough to buy alcohol (even though I'm 25!), so there's no way I could pass myself off as their dad - especially with their real dad living with us! If anyone asks, I say I'm their uncle, and we all stick to the story that my partner and I are brothers, that his wife left him alone with the kids and that he took me in as a teenager wanting to leave home. Only once have I been questioned further, but I answered that as I am self-employed and work from home on the Internet, it's more practical for me to take care of his kids during the day so that he can work full-time. Then there only remains the anomaly of our apparently sharing a bedroom! But as long as they don't actually come upstairs and see the double bed, I'm content to let them visualise two single beds in a mini batchelor dormitory!
One other problem I get, is that while I'm trying to present myself as a young lad, and the kids' uncle, I'll encounter a situation where a parent's signature is required for, say, some health of school permission form. But this situation was easily (if not very cheaply) solved. I simply contacted a solicitor, who drew up documents of guardianship for me which I can present if I need to prove that I'm legally able to sign things like this for the kids, without having to explain my relationship to the children.
Sometimes I run into some unprofessional or insensitive behaviour from the odd teacher or club leader, who will stupidly stand there in front of a queue of parents waiting to collect their kids, and call me over to them by the words 'Kathryn's Mum'! If this happens, then I just calmly go up to the person who called and say quite audibly, "Her mum's not here, I'm collecting her today" and then after taking the errant teacher into the privacy of the empty classroom, I find a non-too-placid explanation of what will happen to them if they ever do that again (such as being sued for mental anguish, defamation of character, unprofessional behaviour leading to harrassment), usually stops them from repeating the mistake! They often try to pass it off as a 'simple mistake', but when they do that I just explain that it was such 'simple mistakes' that cost me my dignity and home in my former neighbourhood, and which led to abuse of me and my family by the ignorant parents who overheard and 'spread the word'.
Basically if your children are young, and perhaps whatever age they are, you will probably have to face the idea of moving home once you feel you can comfortably pass as male. This depends on what sort of community you live in, but I'd definitely start thinking about the idea anyway, just in case. Don't judge when you can pass by your local area; if you go somewhere you've never been before, and pass there all day, then you can pass anywhere your previous image isn't known (except, maybe, the gay scene!!).
Samuel D'Herblay, 14. January 2003. BACK TO HOMEPAGE