If you only read one article about my transition, make it this one!
This is a piece I wrote for RBC’s intranet (where I work) for Transgender Day of Visibility. I’ve only removed a few sentences that contained internal company information.
Being trans is something you discover about yourself. It’s like being born with the “software” of one gender but the “hardware” of another, but it’s often hard to figure out.
My name is River and I’m a transgender woman.
Egg Phase
In the trans community, people who don’t yet know they are trans are called “eggs”, before they “crack their egg” and realize they are trans.
Let’s go back in time. Before moving to Canada, I lived all my life in France, close to Paris.
The earliest sign of me being trans was when I was a young kid. I told a friend on the playground: “I wish I was a girl”. At the time, other kids made fun of me for saying that, so I never talked about it ever again during my childhood.
Later in life, especially after becoming an independent adult, I felt this constant urge to look more feminine. I always wore clothes bought in the women's section, but nothing too explicitly feminine, like wearing skirts, because I felt it was socially off-limits. In the summer, I presented so feminine that people would refer to me as “ma’am.” I never corrected anyone; I liked it. But, as strange as it might seem, I did not consider myself to be trans. I would not even put a label on what it was. When asked, I justified it by saying: “I’m just original.” In fact, I did not know much about what being trans was. I knew someone who was trans, but I had no idea I could even be trans myself, so I never considered this possibility.
One day, friends suggested putting makeup on me to make me look like a woman, just for fun, and they felt I might enjoy it. I immediately accepted. Then, we met on a weekend, and they made me up. I liked how I looked, and I said: “I know exactly which clothes to wear to take pictures in” and I wore a black denim skirt and a sleeveless shirt. No one questioned why I had those clothes in the first place. We were all just happy. I loved those pictures and posted them on social media. My parents were worried I could get in trouble for that and receive negative comments, but everything went fine. Reflecting now on this day, I feel it was like testing transitioning just for one day.
But life went on. I focused 100% on building my start-up company, and I had no time to think about myself. I looked pretty androgynous in my day-to-day life though, with feminine clothes, long hair, no facial hair, and I used every costume party at work to dress fully feminine. My gender non-conformity was accepted and a known thing about me, even though we put no name on it.
Moving to Canada
Then, I emigrated to Canada. I had to open a bank account, get a local drivers’ license, find a home, a job… I intuitively felt I had to hide the “trans part” of me to “look normal”. So, I dressed in a boring masculine way. But on the weekends, I met amazing people in the LGBTQIA+ community in Toronto, and I realized Toronto was an even more open-minded environment than Paris. Outside of work, I started wearing skirts in public (which I never dared to do in France), and people seemed accepting. Then I started dyeing my hair again. In France I had tried almost every possible hair color, purple being my favourite.
But something was wrong. I was getting older, and my body was becoming less androgynous, for instance my hairline started receding and in general my hair would get scarcer. As a result, I was looking more and more masculine. I hated it, but I could not figure out that this masculinization was the problem. Something just felt deeply wrong.
In the local LGBTQIA+ community, I met several non-binary people. I had no idea such a concept even existed when I lived in France. For me this opened a new possibility. Maybe I was like them? I started researching it. The final step was reading this website “Turn me into a non-binary person” which explained how non-binary people felt. I found it very relatable. This was a huge realization which brought me to tears.
Today, I know that I’m not a non-binary person, but a trans woman. This realization came later in my transition, but before then, it was too difficult for me to directly accept such a radical thing as being the opposite binary gender.
Transition
While I may not have been sure if I was non-binary or a trans woman, I was sure of one thing right away: I wanted HRT.
HRT is the process of taking hormone medications to replace the hormones your body produces on its own with the hormones aligned with your gender identity. It makes your body “switch” its internal biology. In my case, it slowly feminized my body. I was racing against time. HRT meant I could stop the “natural” masculinization of my body, so I wanted it as soon as possible. Two months later, when I received the text message from my doctor saying I had the approval to start HRT, I went into a meeting room to cry.
Later in my transition, I decided to change my name (to River, obviously). I announced my new name on the Transgender Day of Visibility.
I am thankful to RBC for allowing me to change my name (and email) in all systems even if it was not my legal name. […] I also sent an email to my team explaining that I was changing my name to better match my gender identity. My manager and team were fully supportive and started using my new name immediately.
And then I did my final coming out a few months later, I explained I was a trans woman and would now be using she/her pronouns […]. That was my second “coming-out” considering I initially came out as non-binary (and at first switched to using they/them as pronouns).
Liberation
Slowly, the effects of HRT have now largely taken effect on my body. I started experiencing this new feeling for the first time in my life when looking at myself in the mirror: I liked how I look. To be honest it was not only HRT’s effects, I had also undergone surgery to feminize my hairline, and laser hair removal on my face (and now electrolysis).
Now I’m not afraid of aging any more. I know several old trans women, and I’m not afraid to look like them one day. I would choose that any day over the appearance younger me had before starting HRT.
In addition to liking my appearance, being seen as the correct gender by other people brings a lot of happiness. In my case it feels like a sensation of relief and peacefulness, as opposed to a feeling of “tension” that I would feel when people referred to me as a man before.
I know these days the world seems to become more intolerant of trans people, and in general transitioning can mean stress, hard work, and pain, but if you asked me if it’s worth it, then I would answer: Yes, absolutely.
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