Happiful September 2019

Ashley (right) and wife
Morgana (left)
Social media makes it easier for
the defiantly different to find each
other; a refuelling stop before we
go out into the world again
extent I wanted to take
them in 2010, having
changed my name in 2005.
I took the full version of
a nickname I’d chosen in
1996, when I was 10 – the
year I’d cut my hair short.
There had never been
a time, in the five years
my parents had allowed
me to choose my own
clothes, that I’d gone for
dresses, despite growing
up with several friends
who were happy being
girls, and saw no reason
why tree-climbing and
skateboarding couldn’t be
done in pretty, feminine
clothes. I knew women
who were practical and
competent. But I’d always
headed for jeans and
T-shirts. I built dens, drove
go-karts, climbed trees,
and created elaborate
stories that I acted out with
my toy cars and Lego.
Morgana had just started
to bring her feminine self
into the world when we
met in 2013, having gone
through the route of not
really identifying with
gender or sexuality at
all, thinking she must be
a gay man, because she
didn’t feel anything for
the girls her male friends
were pursuing, and then
coming across the idea of
asexuality, and feeling that
made a lot more sense
than anything else.
She is still asexual, as
am I, but her hair has
grown out into a long,
thick waterfall of dark
curls, while the summer
dresses that contrasted so
strikingly with that short
hair have been replaced
with pastel jeans, vintageinspired
blouses, and
humorous T-shirts.
Morgana and I both
live with mental health
and neurodiversity, and
this has caused a lot of
difficulty in our path to
introducing the world to
ourselves.
My initial referral to
Charing Cross Gender
Identity Clinic, London,
was delayed for almost a
year and a half, because
I have schizophrenia.
This, it was believed,
meant that a ‘lack of a
permanent sense of self’
made it impossible for me
to be trans, even though
I’d been permanently
identifying as ‘not a girl’
for at least a decade prior
to making it in front of a
gender identity specialist.
Despite the unwavering
insistence of just about
every part of the medical
community that people
with schizophrenia
don’t have a fixed sense
of self, my identity as a
working class bloke who
prefers to form intimate
relationships with women,
has more of an affinity
with dogs than cats, enjoys
both the reading and the
writing of books, and
starts to get restless if he’s
kept indoors for too long,
has never shifted.
Morgana has Asperger’s,
and, since hers came
without the ‘brilliant at
IT’ upgrade, but did have
the free add-on of social
anxiety, she has struggled
to find paid employment.
Those who decide
whether trans people
are allowed to have
hormones and surgery
(assuming they want
either, which they may
or may not) don’t like it if
you’re not working.
For Morgana, the anxiety
of being criticised for
‘not working’ means that,
for the moment, she has
chosen to simply ‘get on
with being a woman’, and
let go of the investment in
doing things ‘officially’.
Social media makes
it easy for the defiantly
different to find each
other; a refuelling stop
before we go out into the
world again.
I’ve spent years living
and working stealthily,
going in to maledominated
workplaces,
biting my tongue as I sat
through ‘equality and
diversity training’ led by
someone who was clueless
about a transgender
person working at
the company. I’ve had
managers try to force
54 • happiful.com • September 2019