For Dad
Last week, Wednesday 31st March, was International Transgender day of Visibility (TDoV) which takes place every year to raise awareness of discrimination faced by trans people worldwide. The day was founded by US transgender activist Rachel Crandall of Michigan in 2009 as a reaction to the lack of recognition of trans people.
I have to admit- this day slipped by me un-noticed. That might not seem like a big deal to many, but for me, I grew up from a very young age with a transgender dad. In fact I don’t have any memories of my dad being a man at all, only photographs. To me she has always been a woman.
I was scrolling on social media over the weekend and noticed a lot of people and organisations posting the trans flag in support. Realising that I had forgotten to post something I felt guilty- but then the more I thought about it, TDoV has been almost every day of my life, not just once a year. So I decided to write this blog instead. It is great to post a flag as a symbol of support, but if you were to read a story about someone you know, perhaps someone you work with everyday, then maybe when you see that flag again next year it will have more meaning for you.
This is my dad holding me as a baby. I was born in the late 80’s and my dad would have been 32 years old- The age I am now. I couldn’t imagine how it must have been for my dad to live over thirty years of her life having to hide and suppress who she really was inside. I feel so lucky that I live in a time where to be yourself and express who you are, your creativity and individuality is celebrated both in society and the media. I will never know prejudice in the same way my dad would have known it transitioning to be a woman in the 90’s.
I have memories of things like eggs being thrown at our house, my mum having to walk with my dad to the local shop, people shouting names in the street, my dad having to dress as a ‘man’ to go to certain places. She lost her job and was unemployed for years, no-one wanted to hire a trans person and I remember walking to the job centre with my dad to wait in line for the dole money. I know now that my parents struggled massively during my childhood but I can honestly say my sister and I were quite unaware at the time, we were happy children and my mum was a hero at hiding the bad stuff from us whilst working two jobs to support our family.
My mum and dad were open and honest with me and my sister. We knew about our dad from a very young age, I remember not really understanding it but accepting it anyway, It didn’t change the dynamics of our family and we grew up with it being our ‘normal’- never really knowing any different.
I won’t go into any more details about my mum and sister, they both have their own stories. But I will say that we stuck together, and lived in our family home until I left for University and my sister got married and had children of her own, who all adore my dad (as they know her, ‘Paps’).
When I think about growing up in the 90’s I think of the Spice Girls, Tamagotchi’s and hair crimpers. But when I think about what it must have been like for my dad as a trans person living in the 90’s, it must have been so difficult. LGBT+ people were not well represented in the media, gay marriage wasn’t legal, and AIDS was still very much a hot topic- By 1993, over 2.5 million cases of HIV/AIDS had been confirmed worldwide. By 1995, AIDS was the leading cause of death for Americans age 25 to 44. Discrimination and judgment towards LGBT+ people was still very common and I was taught not to talk to anyone about my dad to keep our family safe. It was a secret, but never at any point was it something I felt ashamed of.
I am so happy with how far we have come in society today and how we celebrate the LGBT+ community. I just feel sad that my dad didn’t get to be my age when it happened, that most of her life was hidden.
I am a big time daddy’s girl and always have been! Not ashamed to say I still have her wrapped around my little finger 😆.
Here is a photo of me and my dad when I was a teenager, I’d guess I’m around 13 here. (We all had an emo phase okay! Black hair dye was cool).
I was never the most girly girl but when I hit my teenage years was when I took more of an interest in my dad’s life as a trans woman. I started taking her shopping for nicer clothes, doing her hair and makeup. Asking her questions like how she decided what her new name as a female would be. I talked about her to my friends all the time, they all met and loved her. It was never a secret anymore and we became closer. My dad loves music and we would listen to her vinyls of Fleetwood Mac and ABBA together on full blast singing all the words. She took me to my first live music concert (It was the Sugababes, and I still love them 😎). My dad and I still send each other music we love quite regularly now, it is something we will always bond over.
The thing that I owe my dad the most for is my love of tech. When I was around the age of 13/14 my dad bought me my first computer. It was this huge thing I had on a desk at the end of my bed and I mostly just played solitaire and drew silly pictures in Paint. But my interest in this thing and how it worked and what I could do with it started to grow. I chose ICT as my main subject for GCSE’s and A-Levels, I taught myself to code in HTML at the age of 15 from my bedroom and made my first website (which was probably about my Spice Girls tribute band, I was Sporty Spice of course). I achieved A* grades in IT at school and college and a distinction for my higher diploma. My dad also bought me my first laptop when I left home to study ICT at University.
Life has taken me on many different paths since then, but now I am right back where I was always meant to be, working in tech, learning new things everyday that I love, for a company that makes a product that I love — DAZN.
I am still very much Sporty Spice. ✌️
