So, back to why she is determined to speak up, and take the aggression that comes her way? "Quite apart from my personal experience, identity is fascinating because goes to the heart of who we are. The first few years can be very joyful, but there is so much surgery and medication, for life, involved it's a hard road." I was contacted by an awful lot of people, some who had de-transitioned, others who were maybe 10/15 years into transitioning, who were saying 'if I had my time back, I'm not sure I would do this…' It carries a heavy burden of medical treatment.
Anybody who speaks up gets a huge amount of public shaming and public animosity, as I did." Does she still? "I do, yes. "It's such a hostile, polarised environment. Stella's chapter Trans Kids: It's Time To Talk, details her experience of making a documentary for Channel 4 a year ago, and the hostile response to it from sections of the trans community. By the time I had moved out of puberty, I had left it completely behind."Īnd so she has contributed a chapter to a new book Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, a compilation of perspectives from psychiatrists, academics, social workers, social activists, parents, a de-transitioned man and more, all committed to exploring fully the many, complicated aspects of transgenderism, and what society can do in response to it. And yet ultimately, it fundamentally released me from what is now termed gender dysphoria. Yes, I was an unhappy kid, and particularly unhappy as an adolescent. That was so deep and profound, from as far back as I remember. I was very dismissive of other tomboys, I thought they were very girly-boys, and I was the real thing. "It just seemed fundamentally wrong that I was a girl because I was so boyish and I was so good at being a boy. It's not that I thought I was a boy - I hadn't lost touch with reality - but I thought I should be. I was a strange little kid that's how I would have been perceived by adults. The experience she refers to is the conviction she had as a child, "from as far back as I can remember I was extraordinarily convinced 'I should be a boy so let's all just say I'm a boy.' This was 1980, so everybody just went with it. "If I didn't have a personal interest - if I hadn't had the experience I did, which was so visceral, at such a young age - I'd say I'd be watching the debate, I'd be interested, but I wouldn't be right in the centre of it."
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