`Tolerance is for starters, but I prefer acceptance’
Alessandra Hereman is a young transgender woman who is studying at the University of Guyana
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
Audre Lorde
When my mother gave birth to me the doctor and nurses said I was ‘male’. However, as I grew up, I did not identify with or adopt anything masculine. As early as age four I knew I was different.
My name is Alessandra Hereman and I am a trans woman. This means I was assigned male at birth but identify and live as a woman of trans experience.
While still in nursery school I played with dolls and cross-dressed. As I transitioned into primary school I avoided rough outdoor games. I still have memories of my male cousins and other family members making fun of my feminine behaviour. There was no psychologist, child psychiatrist or gender specialist. It was just me and my thoughts: I am a girl… but I have a penis… girls don’t have penises… I want long hair… girls have a vagina… can I have a baby?
As I grew older, I stopped playing with dolls and dressing in a feminine way, but I still experienced bullying because of my feminine disposition. In my later primary school years, I was introduced to the term ‘antiman’ and the things an antiman does like “suck cock” and “bugger”. They said I was an antiman.
When I began high school, fellow students and school vendors bullied me. I experienced name-calling and verbal harassment. I assumed that this mistreatment was a result of me being an antiman and that I deserved to be treated this way because being an antiman was a bad thing.
Accepting my transgender self
It wasn’t until a few years after high school that I came across the concepts ‘transgender’ and ‘gender dysphoria’. The term transgender is used to describe individuals whose gender identity or sense of self is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. The more I researched this concept, the more I became aware of who I was, and the more I started to identify as transgender. From there, everything else followed: growing my hair, changing my name and coming out as trans to some close friends. Trans experiences are different - there is no right or wrong way to be transgender. Not all trans people undergo hormone therapy or legally change their name or opt for gender affirming surgeries.
It’s been eight years since I first identified as a trans woman. It has been a liberating yet challenging journey. In 2012, I legally changed my name. The process was a relatively smooth one. The Justice of the Peace and staff told me what I had to do without questioning the name change. The clerk at the High Court also advised me to go and change my identification card at the Guyana Elections Commission. The Guyanese constitution does not allow trans or gender non-confirming people to change their gender markers on identification documents, nevertheless, the ability to change my name was/is a small victory for me.