The Colonel is not speaking to me. Until this week he was the famous one in this house, and he has taken the change in billing badly.
Because a few weeks ago I got an email from Monika Kowalska, asking if I’d give an interview for The Heroines of My Life. For those who don’t know it, it is quite the institution. Monika has been interviewing transgender women from all over the world for well over a decade. Hundreds of us. Writers, politicians, scientists, athletes, activists, and the archive reads like a who’s who of women who walked through the fire and came out the other side worth talking to. It’s the sort of site I used to read late at night, long before I’d done anything worth being asked about.
So yes, I feel like I’ve arrived. It was an honour to do.
Here is how Monika introduced me, which I’m including mostly because reading a stranger’s tidy two-paragraph summary of your own bonkers life is a genuinely out-of-body experience:
Stevie Bennett is a British transgender woman, writer, software architect, former quantitative trader, Ironman finisher and father of three. After spending decades suppressing her gender identity, she transitioned in middle age and has since documented her experiences through her writing and social media. Stevie built a long career in software development and architecture and also worked in quantitative trading. Before transitioning, she was married and became the parent of three children. She met her future wife in Dublin when she was thirty-six, and the family later lived in London and rural Ireland. Endurance sport became another important part of her life. After taking up cycling and triathlon, Stevie completed a full Ironman in 2016. Medical investigations into her hormone levels later became an unexpected turning point in her life. After discovering unusually low testosterone and experiencing subsequent hormonal and physical changes, including feminisation, she began confronting the transgender identity she had spent much of her life trying to suppress.
Her transition brought both profound personal fulfilment and significant upheaval. Her marriage ended, and she has written openly about the joy of finally living as herself, alongside the grief and loss connected with the changes to her family life. Stevie has since undergone gender-affirming surgery and continued to document her experiences through her publication, Fast Track Femme, where she writes about transition, family, divorce, surgery, ageing, dating, technology and artificial intelligence. Alongside her writing, she continues to work in technology and has explored the use of AI agents in software and creative projects. Today, at fifty-seven, Stevie is continuing to build a new life while remaining a parent, technology professional, endurance athlete and writer. Her story is an unusual combination of a decades-long hidden transgender identity, family life, elite endurance sport, an unexpected hormonal journey and a rapid public transition later in life.
I’m not going to reproduce the interview here. It’s Monika’s work and it belongs on her site, so go and read it there. But I’ll tell you it covers the lot: Ironman, Graves’ disease, three countries’ worth of surgery, a month of enforced silence, my mother, loneliness, white jeans at the worst possible moment, and what comes next.
If you’re interested, this is it:
And while you’re there, have a rummage through her archive. It’s quite something.
Great interview Thank you. :)
Congratulations! Well deserved!