Recently, I came across something rather fascinating.
I can't remember whether it was an article I read or a video I watched, but somebody posed a question for people who were uncertain whether they were transgender.
People who had spent years questioning themselves. Wondering. Doubting. Changing their minds. Trying to work out whether what they felt was real.
The question was beautifully simple.
Imagine that at any point in your life, you could have pressed a button and instantly found yourself in the body of the opposite sex.
No surgery. No hormones. No painful transition.
Nobody would be hurt. Your family wouldn't suffer. Your marriage wouldn't be destroyed. Your children wouldn't be distressed.
You wouldn't have to worry about whether you'd look convincing, whether people would laugh at you, whether you'd be marginalised, or whether anybody would ever love you.
All those complications simply vanished.
There was only one condition.
The button worked once.
You pressed it, and that was it.
No going back.
Ever.
Would you press it?
I thought about this question for approximately three seconds.
Actually, that's not true.
I didn't need to think about it at all.
I was discussing it with my mother over breakfast this morning, and I told her something that I realised, with absolute certainty, had been true for my entire life.
There is not one single point in my life when I wouldn't have pressed that button.
Not when I was a child.
Not when I was a teenager.
Not when I was building my career.
Not when I was happily married, living in a beautiful house, with three wonderful children and a life that, from the outside, looked absolutely magnificent.
Not for one second.
If somebody had offered me that button at any of those moments, with the conditions described, I'd have pressed it.
Immediately.
And I would never have wanted to go back.
That's what makes the question so interesting to me.
It removes the fear from the equation.
And fear is an enormous part of transitioning.
Will I lose my family? Will I lose my career? Will I look ridiculous? Will I destroy everything I've spent decades building?
Those are extraordinarily powerful reasons not to transition.
But they're not answers to the underlying question.
What do I actually want to be?
For me, the answer was always the same.
I could be happy. I could be successful. I could love my family enormously. I could have a life filled with things I valued.
And still, if that button had appeared, I'd have pressed it.
That doesn't mean my old life was a lie. It wasn't.
It doesn't mean I didn't love the people in it. I did.
It simply means that something fundamental about me remained unchanged throughout all those years, regardless of how good the rest of my life became.
Of course, I don't think this is a scientific test for being transgender. People experience their identities differently, and not everybody would answer the question the same way.
But as a thought experiment, I found it extraordinarily illuminating.
Because when I stripped away every practical objection, every fear, and every possible consequence, I was left with an answer that had never changed.
I've spent much of my life wondering why I'm transgender.
I still don't know.
But there's one thing I've never really needed to wonder about.
I'd have pressed the fucking button.
Every single time.
Perhaps the difference is that I saw myself with absolute clarity as a girl at the age of 12. That certainty never went away no matter how hard I tried to be ‘him’.
So why did I wait 45 years?
Because I knew very little and what I did know was that my life and that of my family was a very shaky house of cards. I had committed to my wife and my children and I absolutely had to keep them safe. It was an unvoiced promise.
I was right too. Within months of beginning my transition I was out of my job in the business I had co-founded 30 years before.
Interesting question and I'm ashamed to admit that I've spent a lot more than three seconds thinking and I'm not sure that I would have pressed the button at any time in my life other than the odd fleeting moment when the gender issues became overwhelming. It's not that I don't want the physical results from pressing it, in fact I've never wanted them more than I do at the moment, but just that as Amanda I occupy a completely different world to 'him' and I've never seen, or even wanted, those two worlds to overlap. And for a long time, I was trying to be the person my chromosomes dictated so pressing the button would either have felt like a cop out or I’d have hesitated thinking that maybe tomorrow would be better.
There’s also another factor here and that’s that who I am now is a consequence of who I have been. It’s only now with the benefit of the wisdom of life that I feel in any way capable of inhabiting the feminine world. Of course, in the past I’ve envied women and wished that things had been different and I’d been born female but that’s not the same thing as becoming one with the push of a button.
That leaves the present day. I would definitely seriously consider taking a chance and pressing that button but as I suggested above, I’m not sure I would want to occupy my male world as a female even if acceptance was guaranteed. To me, it’s not just becoming a better version of me but being able to inhabit a world that seemed closed to me for so long. Enjoying total tolerance and acceptance from those closest to me is an attractive thought but, horrible as it may sound, I’m not sure that there is room for them in my feminine world.
And, of course, what none of us know is how we’d feel after pressing the button. Would we get the contentment we crave or would we just look at the male world with a tinge of envy? I can see the attraction from your point of view as it gives you all of the positives you fought so hard for and none of the negatives that you’ve touched on in other posts but for those of us straddling the gender divide, the waters are a lot muddier.
Finally, had a quick listen to the audio - your voice sounds amazing! You must be beyond delighted.