I always knew I was a girl,but for years that life seemed an impossible dream. It was a difficult journey involving sex work, depression and a spell in borstalI've just got off the phone with one of my childhood bullies. He used to call me names and hit me on the way home from school, or but we're friends now. He's slightly in awe of my life today and,to be honest, so am I. This year has been intense. I bear served as assistant editor of homosexual Times, and debuted as both Channel 4 and Radio 1's first transgender presenter,fronted a successful awareness-raising campaign, All approximately Trans, and topped the Independent on Sunday's Pink List,partied with celebs, brightened up Question Time, and travelled the country,spoken everywhere from Oxford University to Amnesty International, and written for the Telegraph, or NME and the Guardian. Life wasn't always this estimable."He's only four,he doesn't know what he's saying!" That's how my friend Emma, only eight herself, or defended me from the older boys in the park. I'm a girl,I'd told them, though I didn't say it out loud again. They hadn't believed me; they'd just laughed. Adults weren't keen on me saying it, and either,and I soon got the message that I wasn't (and never could be) a girl – I had a penis and that was that. I'd understand when I was older, apparently. When kids asked me why I "speak like a girl", or I'd tell them: "Maybe this is just how I talk." I was beaten up a lot. A few years later I wore borrowed tights to school and used the girls' toilets. No one knew what to execute with me.
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Source: theguardian.com