Liam's statement
My name is Liam, Im 27, Im from Hertfordshire, but I live in London now.
My preferred pronouns are male pronouns (he, him, his). My gender identity is male, but I still have a strong connection to my trans identity because I didnt transition until I was 23, nearly 24; I see that as a really long time living in a different gender and I think all of these experiences play a part into the person that I am now and how I interact with the world. I identify as male, but as a trans guy too.
The reason it took so long for me in a sense is because I didnt actually realise that it was possible to transition. I vaguely knew about cross dressers and male to female trans people, but for some reason it never occurred to me that it was possible to go from female to male. I just didnt really have the language to describe what was going on. I knew something wasnt right, but I couldnt place what it was. When I found out about it and I finally had the language to describe what I felt, it was this kind of big light bulb moment.
After learning more about trans issues and meeting other trans people, I realised that it all applied to me. I spent a few weeks in denial; I didnt think I could be a trans guy, but I thought that maybe I was genderqueer instead. Ive always naturally been drawn to queer community in a sense, but I never really understood way. In terms of my sexuality, I never identified as straight, I used to call myself bisexual before, but now Im queer because my sexuality is very fluid and Im also attracted to people whose gender is neither male or female. I feel that queer describes it better than bisexual and is more inclusive for people who identify outside of the binary. Since I discovered that I am trans, Ive been involved more in the queer community and Ive been able found my family in a sense which is nice. My physical transition has happened really quickly, within two and a half years. It took me quite a long time to figure it out so once I knew, I knew it was the right thing to do. I came out in March 2010 and, with the support of my family, I was able to start hormones in November 2010 and then I had my top surgery in June 2011. As soon as I started presenting as male and being treated as male, everything felt right and I really had to do something about it.
For my primary school years, I pretty much lived as a boy, I played football with the boys and I was very tomboyish. I remember clearly in primary school one day playing football, as Id normally do, and looking over at the group of girls on the side of the playground, who were just standing and chatting, and thinking that they were really boring and that they were the odd ones, wanting to do that, because I couldnt understand why they would want to do so. I also felt that I was expected to be with them and behave like them while I didnt want to and I enjoyed much more playing football and getting into fights. I was treated like one of the guys and I liked it. It was only once I got to secondary school that I began to feel more the pressure of other peoples expectations regarding my behaviour. I was going to a new school and I was one of youngest ones, so I stopped playing with the boys because I felt that Id be judged and bullied if I did. I definitely felt more pressure to try and conform to what was normal and my way of escaping that pressure was to adopt an alternative grunge style that would also give me an excuse to not be too feminine. When I grew up I thought that one of the only things I was good at was caring for other people, so I did a lot of care work, working in a day centre for adults with learning disabilities. While I was at school, I did some work experience in a school for people with special needs, I went to one of the drama therapy sessions and I thought that Id like to work in that field. To work in drama therapy you need either a degree in drama or one in psychology but Im also the kind of person who feels Im not knowledgeable enough, and feel inadequate most of the time, even if Im not so I decided to do a combined course. Eventually the more I got comfortable with myself, the more I realised that care work wasnt the only thing that I could do. Ive come to the realisation that when I do care work I put too much of myself into it. In the queer community in itself, there are so many people with mental health issues or just generally needing a little bit more looking after, so I have a lot of that in my personal life and I feel that, if I did similar stuff in my working life too, itd be too much and I wouldnt look after myself as much as I need to. I always tend to put other people first and I know that working in care Id probably suffer too much, so I have to take a step away from it at the moment. Now, Im concentrating on the more creative aspects of myself, Im currently training towards becoming a theatre technician and working on my art.
