THE CHANGING FACE OF MY FAMILY One writer tells the story of her dad’s transitioning into a woman

What happens when your dad comes out as transgender? Cosmopolitan’s CATRIONA INNES reveals the trans-tale that’s not often told… ›

With a ting, ting, ting, the steel drum begins to chime and Here Comes The Bride

rings through the air. I grip tightly onto my bouquet, the last of summer’s wasps flocking around it. I watch my bridesmaids step out in front of me, walking down the aisle two by two, their sequinned dresses gleaming in the September sunshine. It’s almost time. My stomach feels full of air.

Beside me is the presence of a woman who has been there for me my entire life. “Ready?” she whispers. I reach over and take her arm. It’s not the steadiest – she’s being propped up by a stick – but it is safety. I look down at her ruby-red ballet pumps and feel the soft skin beneath my palm. I feel instantly calm as we begin to walk towards the man who is about to become my husband.

They told us this moment would never happen.

That no daughter would ever want her father walking her up the aisle in a dress. And yet, here we are. Afterwards, I hug her.“I love you so much, Dad,” I say, while my three-yearold nephew, Alex, runs around our feet. “Grandma, Grandma,” he shouts. “Look at my bubbles.” Then he blows some at us, and my dad reaches over and pops one. Alex yelps with delight.

I can’t remember the precise moment my dad told me she was transgender. I don’t know how she phrased it or even if the ‘t’ word was used. I just remember that it made sense. I was 16 and a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that made me who I was had been found, and clicked into place: the reason behind the black skirt that would be slipped on ‘for comfort’ after a day of wearing trousers and why, when I got my ears pierced, Dad did too. Or that time, while pulling a brush through my long strawberry-blonde hair, my dad burst into tears – before confessing that he wished his hair was like mine. To outsiders it must sound like a shocking revelation, but to me it was neither of those things.

Yet, back then, and even 15 years later, my dad now a fully transitioned woman with a new birth certificate and passport, it’s as if people expect more from me than this. They see our family as complicated and they want answers.

“Does your nephew understand? Is it not confusing for him?”

“But you still call your dad ‘Dad’? When you also say ‘she’?”

“What does your mum think of all this?”

Some of these are easy. It’s not confusing for Alex because it’s all he’s ever known. I call Dad ‘Dad’ because that’s who she is: my father. But I use the feminine pronoun because she is now a woman. The latter is less straightforward: I don’t know what Mum thinks as she died when I was 19, and Dad transitioned shortly after.

It’s an answer I perhaps should have sought out. But, until recently, this is something I have refused to do. Instead I’ve clung onto what I do know: how happy we all were in our chaotic ‘upside-down’ house where the living room was on the very top floor, and “I love you” was the most common phrase. My parents said it to each other daily,

“When you love someone, you see beyond their physicality”

sometimes twice – as well as flooding my sister Rebecca and I with affection.

Their story was a love-at-first-sight ’60s fairy tale. In the year before going to St Andrews University, my dad lived in Spain – and his best friend, already studying there, would send him copies of the student newspaper, which was edited by my mum. Dad would read all her articles and think,“That’s the sort of woman I’d love to be with some day.” But, harbouring deeply rooted desires to wear the flamenco dresses he gazed at in the shop windows, he thought this was an unattainable dream. Then, months later, she saw him – drinking a cup of tea at the table in her flat, in bell-bottomed faded denim, with ice-blue eyes.

Later, they would each place a tab of acid on one another’s tongue and wait to see where the trip would take them. Mum spent much of hers jumping gleefully up and down on her bed. But Dad stood still, entranced by the mirror hanging in the hallway. Staring back was a female skeleton. He confessed his secret that night, and she told him that his deeply feminine qualities were one of the things she loved most about him. That carried on throughout their 33 years of marriage – as they grew from hippie rebels living in a commune, surviving on nettle soup, to career successes with two (almost) adult children. So why have I never delved deeper to find out the impact my dad’s transition might have had on their relationship? It’s not that I’m afraid of the answer, as such. It’s because I want to break the rhetoric that surrounds being transgender. There’s a message out there that this is something that destroys families and I’ve always wanted to send out the positive side of the story. Especially since I’ve found that, unless you let it, there’s no need for a transition to affect a relationship at all – a lesson that most certainly emerged following my mum’s death.

It was while I was on my gap year that she had her first stroke. I was in a hostel in Florence and reluctantly accepted a call from my dad before going on a night out. I remember feeling mildly annoyed – in that selfish, teenager way – that my evening had been ruined by this news. I was so far away I felt detached from it all, and had no idea of its significance.

Then – a few weeks after my return – she had a second stroke. It uncovered a brain tumour, one that was inoperable and that would, the doctors said, kill her within days. She lived for six more months. When she did die, we’d been waiting for so long it didn’t even feel real.

It taught me what real loss is. So, when Dad told us six months after Mum’s death that she was going to transition fully, I accepted it. I simply saw it as something that wasn’t really anything to do with me: it was Dad’s own lifelong struggle and something that would, undoubtedly, make her happier.

Dad had been dressing in genderneutral clothing for several years by then, and her transition was purely hormonal, without any surgery, so it wasn’t a sudden change. It was so gradual that I used to think that her appearance hadn’t altered that much at all. When you love someone you see beyond their physicality: I recognise her mannerisms, the way her eyes widen when she’s telling a story or how her laugh rumbles through a room.

Then I look back at old photographs and I see a completely different

person staring back at me; someone who I don’t know any more and haven’t seen for a very long time. When I do I’m hit with this longing, of wanting that version of my dad back: the one with the huge mole on the side of his nose and a shaggy bowl cut. It hits me right in the gut, and suddenly I wonder, ‘Am I as OK with all of this as I make myself out to be?’

I’m told this is a natural feeling, that when someone transitions there are, of course, things that are going to be lost – and it’s OK to mourn those elements; it’s when you feel angry at the person for taking them away that problems can arise. Anger is an emotion I definitely don’t feel. In fact, as I get older, I feel more guilt for the sacrifices my dad must have made for me. She concealed her identity for such a long time – and that can send a person to some incredibly dark places. To ensure I had such a blissfully happy childhood, what did she have to hide?

“I was in this deep conflict,” she tells me.“When I was coming out, the general transphobia in the UK was very intense and, as a man, I was doing very well in the world: I had a beautiful wife, successful career and amazing children. I didn’t want to lose all of that – I thought I would be rejected by you all.”

Protecting us became her main priority.“I was afraid that you would be bullied in school. Your friends were always round and we were part of a community. I thought that I might be outcast from that, but also, much more importantly, that you would suffer because of who I was.”

Looking back, I can sadly see this fear being realised. There were zero trans role models in the public eye and very few laws in place to protect transgender people from discrimination. It was only in April 2005 that the Gender Recognition Act came into place allowing people to legally change their gender in the UK – my mum had died in February that year.

But coming out wasn’t easy. There were a few times that Dad would step out of her front door, her favourite skirt on, only to be verbally abused. Members of our family, including my maternal grandma, refused to acknowledge Dad’s new name, and people she had worked with in the past disappeared. In comparison with what others go through, this isn’t so bad: my dad is fairly well off, works in a creative industry and is surrounded by people who love and look out for her. Factors others are less lucky to have.

Everyone deserves to feel free and supported to be themselves, but life doesn’t always work out that way – even now, in a society that appears more accepting than ever. Studies show that 62% have experienced transphobic harassment from strangers*, and 81% will avoid

“Family refused to acknowledge my dad’s new name”

certain public situations out of fear. Over 40% had attempted suicide.

It’s no wonder that Mum was afraid. When I decided to pluck up the courage to ask Dad whether she was supportive of her transition, I found out that Mum – a year before she died – had said that if Dad wanted to live full time as a woman, they would have to split up.

This is the part of our story I don’t even want to acknowledge. By admitting this in such a public forum, am I perpetuating the idea that relationships crumble when one person comes out? In order to stop future wives or daughters from feeling as if there’s something wrong with their family because it doesn’t match the ‘2.4’ stereotype, we have to change the record.

And today things are different. The situation is improving slowly. There has been an increase in transgender people coming out, as well as a rise in their representation, with Caitlyn Jenner, model Hari Nef and Orange Is

The New Black star Laverne Cox all appearing on magazine covers.

Looking around at my own family, it’s clear Dad’s transition has brought only positivity. We are all closer than ever. So had she been alive today, in this much more open and accepting world, would my mum have thought differently? It’s a question I will never have resolved, yet, as I sat listening to the chorus of laughter from my Dad’s ‘trans-parent of the bride’ speech on my wedding day, I am almost certain the answer would be yes.