To make matters worse, the government hardly enforces employment law, so I’ve had to fight for my rightful protectionOn a warm summer day in 1966, when I was a five-year-old boy, I was chatting with two girls in the playground at school. At least five inches shorter than me, they were pretty, fair, had long blond hair, and were wearing colourful dresses. One of the girls said to me: “You’re really tall, and have big hands.” For the first time the thought hit me: I didn’t want to be tall and have big hands. “I want to look like you,” I thought. I knew then that I wanted to grow up to be a woman. But in the 1960s we didn’t talk about stuff like that, so I bottled it for years, notwithstanding the pangs of jealousy I would get when I saw girls wearing skirts and feminine sandals, and plaiting each other’s hair.Fast forward 18 years and I was having a drink with a girlfriend in the pub. She said, “There’s something different about you, compared to other men.” “You wanna know why?” I asked. “It’s because I want to be a woman.” That was the first time I’d ever said it out loud. The fact that someone knew, and didn’t react negatively, was a huge release. Continue reading…
Via: As a transgender woman working in the gig economy, I'm humiliated daily | Hayley Stanley
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