Transgender people reveal the reality of coming out to family, friends and colleagues

‘They were extremely religious Jehovah’s Witnesses and homophobic,’ one woman tells Maya Oppenheim

(Supplied)

Transgender people have revealed what it was like for them to come out to those closest to them - noting it is an ongoing, evolving process that never stops.

As Transgender awareness week starts, a time designed to amplify the voices and visibility of trans people,The Independent has spoken to six people about coming out.

The stories shed light on the fact revealing you are trans to friends, family, teachers and colleagues is a process, which can be plagued by angst and frustration, but also coloured by relief and joy.

Nicci Take

Nicci Take first started questioning her gender at the age of 12, explaining she grew her hair long enough to put in a ponytail and would wear cowboy boots to her boys’ secondary school.

The 54-year-old, who is a businesswoman, added: ”I wore cowboy boots because they had a heel. My dad found my hair in an elastic band and said ‘That is no son of mine’.

“I burst into tears and went to bed. My mum came up a few hours later and gave me a hug. I said: ‘I don’t like the school, I don’t like the boys, I don’t like the rough and tumble. I want to be reading Jackie’.”

(Nicci Take)

Ms Take, who helps businesses win contracts, explained she didn’t have an understanding of trans issues at the time, saying she could not “articulate it”.

She added: “I buried the idea of being a girl. Then I went on to head up a business. On 16 December 2012, I needed to change the culture of my business, I turned up to the staff Christmas in a Ms Sexy Santa outfit from Anne summers.

“When they all stopped laughing, I said: ‘We are going to change the culture of the business, stop thinking daddy I’m going to get into trouble, think of me as mummy’.”

At a later date, she asked the staff if she should be Nick or Nicci, and everyone said Nicci, telling her they much prefered her as a woman, she added.

Ms Take, who lives in London, said: “It suits me so much better. I am definitely a better person. I am a better manager, I am a better parent, I am a better coach, I am a better partner.”

The businesswoman, also a professional stand-up comedian, told of how when she started an interim contract earlier in the year, colleagues ignored her but that quickly changed.

“Nobody would talk to me,” Ms Take, who has three children, added. “They thought there is a six-foot trans woman walking around the building, I went back last week and I’ve had 40 hugs. These are people I suspect had never met a trans person before. They work in corporate circles in London and live in the home counties.”

Luan

Luan, who realised he was trans in early 2020, said the prospect of coming out to his family was “scary” but he knew they weren’t going to have an “awful reaction” due to the fact they were “liberal and left-wing”.

The 19-year-old, who did not want his surname used, added: “I knew I was safe and I wasn’t going to be kicked out the house. I came out to my mum first via writing and she was chill. She just wants me to be happy.

“She can read me really well. So she knew something was wrong. So I couldn’t just keep saying ‘nothing, nothing, nothing’ because it was very obvious that something was wrong. It was a relief to not have to hide what was wrong anymore.”

(Luan)

Luan, who made friends online after realising he was trans, said he then came out to his dad over a year later, as he explained coming out to his wider family has been a “gradual process”.

He added: “This year, I came out to my mum’s side of the family and the reactions were generally okay. Coming out to my grandparents was made a little bit easier by the fact they had previously hinted I might be trans. So I was like, they, on some level, know.”

After coming out, Luan, who suffers from a chronic illness, was “hit with so many misinformed questions”, he added.

Luan has plans to develop a resource for coming out as trans to grandparents - saying there is a massive lack of resources out there.

He added: “If invasive misinformed questions were answered in a resource, the pressure would be taken away from the trans person to defend themselves.

“They are not bad questions. It’s just coming from a place of no knowledge. But having something you could give to them so they could understand before having that conversation with you, would be great. As well as it including in basic terms, ‘what is trans?’

“It’s really needed. I haven’t come out to my other grandparents yet and I need this to come out. I just need to try and make the resource as diverse as possible - I don’t want to make it from a middle-class white perspective.”

Brandy X

Brandy X, a 35-year-old performer, said she first realised she was trans when she was four, adding her parents wanted her to stop playing with a doll and she could not understand why.

“I was naturally just feminine,” she added. “I always wanted to be a girl. And so when I realised that I wasn’t and I had to stop playing with certain toys and start presenting myself a certain way, that is when I was honestly crushed.”

Brandy, who has given her performer name, said she initially came out as gay to her family in 2006 when she was 17-years-old.

“It was really difficult because my family did not support me,” Brandy, who grew up in Los Angeles but has lived in London for six years, added.

(Brandy X)

“They did not understand me. I was constantly being bullied by not only my family but by people in general.”

She came out as transgender aged 19 and started transitioning then, she added.

“I remember getting rid of all of my male clothes and I just told myself, I’m never going to be this person,” she recalled. “I did not want them to have any type of influence on my decision to transition because they were extremely religious Jehovah’s Witnesses and homophobic.”

Brandy, who is Mexican-American, did not speak to her parents for six months but then they all met up at a family get-together.

“I was already on hormone therapy. There was no going back. It was the happiest I’ve ever been. This was the beginning of my life,” she said.

“I remember walking in and my sister was holding my hand and everyone was in shock and lost for words. But you could tell they were on their best behaviour - wanting to make me feel comfortable.”

She said her family - who she is now very close with - apologised and it was a highly “emotional moment” with everybody in tears.

Brandy, who started a transgender club-night in London called Temptation, noted it was a very different world when she transitioned and she could not be openly trans while living as a woman for around eight years.

“You were either a woman or you were a man. There was no in-between. There was no trans visibility.

“I met my husband here in the UK and when I got married, his friends did not know I was trans. I wasn’t proud of who I was. Now I’m 110 per cent proud.”

Prior to being open about being trans, she was working as a dancer and a model and was “constantly having to look over” her “back” and being outed by people, she added.

Brandy told of an adult entertainment magazine event she was supposed to perform at but was removed at the eleventh hour after they discovered she was trans.

Emily Ember

Emily Ember, who is 18-years-old, said she first started questioning her gender and feeling like something was wrong in late 2019.

Ms Ember explained she initially came out to LGBT+ friends from all across the world on Discord, a group messaging platform, telling her friends she did not like her name or the way people perceived her.

She added: “They were all very understanding. Most of them had already been through the struggles of understanding and accepting their gender.

“They were good at giving advice on how to handle it. I was worried about telling family. After about three or four months, I talked to one of my teachers about having my name changed in the system.”

(Emily Ember)

Ms Ember, who lives in Wiltshire, said the issue was then flagged as a “safeguard matter” and safeguarding teachers were immediately informed.

“I thought it would be more private between me, and them and we could work out something first, but suddenly six or seven teachers knew what was going on,” she added. “It was overwhelming. It is quite invasive and very, very scary because any of those teachers could have slipped up and told my parents or people I didn’t want to know yet.”

Discussions were then arranged with safeguarding teachers and she was informed she would have to tell her parents she was trans before the school could change how they addressed her, she added.

I was already on hormone therapy. There was no going back. It was the happiest I’ve ever been. This was the beginning of my life.

Brandy X

Ms Ember, a sixth-form student who also works part-time in a care home, said: “It made me feel absolutely terrified, it was only four or five months after I’d started to question my gender. I didn’t know what my parents thought about trans issues at the time - we had never discussed LGBT+ or trans issues.”

Discussing her identity, Ms Ember said: “I feel androgynous. I fully identify as being a woman but sometimes I want to be more presenting as androgynous or non-binary and I don’t feel as connected to being a woman as I would other times.”

When she came out to her parents, she decided she had to have her sister there, who “essentially came out” on her behalf, she explained.

Ms Ember recalled: “I needed her to tell them because of how anxious I was. They were very judgemental about it. They had known about my online friends, they started to assume I’d been influenced. I hate that. This happens so often.

“I remember I was quite worried they would start telling me to stop talking to my friends. But they are okay. All of my extended family are very accepting. I’ve been very lucky not to have any discrimination or abuse from family or friends.

“Meeting new people all the time even just being out in public is a constant coming out process.”

Martina Corvi Mora

Martina Corvi Mora, a 22-year-old who lives in London, said it was difficult to “pinpoint” when she first realised she was transgender.

“I’ve always been gender non-conforming,” she added. “I had an inkling I knew I was trans from when I heard of it as a thing. I realised it, and then thought that wasn’t me. Then I thought about it over lockdown and I thought, let’s get real.”

(Martina Corvi Mora)

Ms Corvi Mora, who is a music producer and a DJ, explained she started identifying as non-binary over the lockdown and then came out as a woman around mid-2021.

She said her parents had an okay response to her coming out but she also felt like thought they “had understood before they actually had” due to perceiving themselves as being open-minded.

“When they weren’t getting stuff, it was somehow difficult for me to make them see that,” Ms Corvi Mora added.

Her friends were accepting of her coming out as trans but she has grown apart from some friends she had known for years, she explained.

“When I started taking hormones and identifying as a woman, I think it became a real thing in some people’s minds in a way that I don’t think it was before,” Ms Corvi Mora added.

“So it was less easy for them to be dismissive of it, or patronising. With gender comes gendered expectations and all your relationships are to some extent dictated by gender. As the way I saw myself and the way I was presenting myself to the world changed, some of these friendships were just not sustainable anymore”.

Sasha Misra

Sasha Misra, who is 41, said she first came out as trans when she was a teenager in 1998, living as a woman for a few years before transitioning back as a result of “societal pressure”.

She noted she was a teenager in the 1990s which were a “hostile environment for LGBT+ people”.

“I was going out as a woman clubbing, but in college, which didn’t feel like such a safe space, I was still living as a man,” she said.

(Sasha Misra)

Ms Misra, who works for leading LGBT+ charity Stonewall, added: “I recognised that sense of dysphoria very early on in my life, but I didn’t have the language or the understanding to really depict it.

“You only really had understanding of trans experiences through very salacious, lurid headlines in the press - that is how I learned about my identity. And that is something that makes you want to keep it hidden.”

She said the advent of the internet was a “defining” moment for her as it allowed her to “learn” but also “talk about these feelings to other people”.

Ms Misra explained she then gathered “confidence and the support network” she needed to live as a woman again in a “lasting way”.

She added: “You will have heard everyone say you don’t come out just once, you come out over and over again. I’ve never been able to send a mass email and tell everyone all at once because I don’t have the guts. And also, because it feels like it’s a personal thing.

“When you come out, you’re changing in some way the perception and the dynamic with someone. So it feels like something that really needs a one-to-one discussion and to give them the ability to really talk it out.”

She said some reactions to her coming out have been positive, while some have been less positive, but “overall” it is always a good experience irrespective of the person’s reaction, as you “come out of it being a bit truer to yourself”.

Ms Misra explained sometimes when she has told younger people she is trans, they have responded by saying they have a friend who is trans and then moving the conversation on.

“It is surprising sometimes when people are like that but there is comfort in that it is not an earth-shattering thing,” she added.