My transness - a timeline

I'm going to presage this with a comment: forcing trans people to divulge their story, then judging their fitness for sex reassignment surgery or other treatments based on whether that story is sufficiently distressing is honestly awful. This is why I don't typically identify as trans. The trans narrative is one of distress, while the whakawahine narrative is one of becoming. People like me exist, and I'm not really ashamed of the clothes I wear. - I don't think my attire is slutty. I think it's colourful and forward-thinking. I'm into glamour more than sex: why else would I come to Parliament in fabulous outfits? - Ok, but here's the timeline. 5-6 years old My Mum and Dad taught me about sex (the real version with illustrations from a medical textbook). Mum told us the legend about her ultrasound, which said that one of us was supposed to be a girl and the other one retarded. I got mistaken for a girl at Hanmer Springs. * 8 years old Fell off the slide, munted my dick. * 11 years old People began to notice that I was fey, and my goalie outfits for soccer weren't helping with disproving that. One of my teachers threatened to dress me up like a girl to punish me, starting the cycle of BDSM that continues to this day. I began crossdressing, starting with a bathing suit of my Mum's, and then moving onto her entire wardrobe. * 12 years old My brother caught me. I made him promise not to tell. * 15-16 years old By this point, I'd been wearing the clothes for a while; I was fully aware of transvestic fetishism and transgender people, but being out seemed like a pipe dream. My friends used to call me Michel [deliberately pronounced as Michelle] to piss me off. That's why I chose another name btws. I think that many of my teachers had figured out that I was effeminate, but this was the era of that Bro'Town episode where Mack joins the netball team. So, yeah, the vibe in the late 2000's was that transness was something for adults. Instead, I consoled myself by getting really into petticoating fiction. It wasn't a happy puberty. I never masturbated as a teenager because I was very uncomfortable about my dick and having erections. My nipples were on fire for a while during year 12, but I wasn't diagnosed with gynecomastia. Gynecomastia became an obsession of mine, partly because I actually wanted boobs. * 17-20 years old I moved to Wellington, and began encountering real trans people via the marriage equality debate. Cameron Sloan came out, and got a very mixed reaction that kept me in the closet. I mostly focused on my studies, though I went through phases of intense desire to express my feminine side IRL. * 20-24 years old I wrote my first two musicals, took a bunch of drugs, learned to masturbate, and began the journey of self-discovery (via acid) that eventually resulted in becoming Amanda. I also began compulsively measuring myself and attempted to keep an hourglass figure. That, plus the strong arsecheeks that classical guitar requires = why I'm able to pull it off. This was also when I began actively crossdressing again, using clothes that I stole from the charity bins near Toi Whakaari. * 25-29 years old I came out. My friends and family largely rejected me. I became part of the Daktory team, who were very supportive of me. I fought for my right to wear the clothes that I choose, which is something that I was actually already legally entitled to do. This shouldn't have been a fight, and hence I'm honestly not willing to help Wellington because I was in the right and they made me feel like human garbage. I fell in love. I still haven't had sex or even kissed anyone, but I fell in love a few times. Became a journalist and a proper writer. 🏳️‍⚧️⚧️