A journey towards herself
Kyle Mewburn was married for almost 25 years before telling his wife he was transgender. They’re still married, writes Debbie Jamieson.
The conversation began innocently – a familiar face from the pub stretched his arm around the newly transitioned Kyle Mewburn and told her she looked ‘‘f ...... gorgeous.’’
But the arm remained there an uncomfortably long time and the drunk speaker began pouring brutal details of a grim childhood into Mewburn’s ear, followed by unsolicited and unwanted compliments of her body parts.
Mewburn sat in stunned silence as the man grew increasingly aggressive, eventually threatening explicit sexual interventions.
His parting words were that he would visit Mewburn’s house one day ‘‘and I’m not going home’’.
For Mewburn the incident was a traumatic and unwelcome introduction into life as a woman, but her instinct was to brush it off.
‘‘It was early on in my transition and I felt I didn’t have any rights to do anything about it in a way. I didn’t want to make waves.
‘‘I had to deal with it in other ways – writing and crying a lot.’’
The harassment was one of the many hurdles the children’s author has had to overcome in a life as a woman trapped in a man’s body for 50 years, now shared in her new memoir Faking It, My Life in Transition.
In one sense it is a simple story of growing up in suburban Brisbane in a house with ‘‘little love and no books’’, adult years of travel and discovery, love found and family lost. But it is underpinned by Mewburn’s constant awareness of her differences – of being a woman in a man’s body.
As a child she would lie awake and make deals with God to be the best Christian ever if her body was changed.
That failed, and she spent most of her adult life battling with a resigned acceptance of her masculine fate while secretly accumulating a collection of women’s clothing, shaving her legs and teaching herself to walk in high heels.
In between times she married Marion, and they moved to New Zealand in 1990, settling in the small Central Otago town of Millers Flat, population 200.
While building and living in their quirky sustainable home, Mewburn wrote some of New Zealand’s most popular children’s books, including Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck!, Old Hu-hu and Hill and Hole.
It was 2011 before Mewburn confessed her secret to an unsuspecting Marion. She started hormone treatment and six years later, they shared their secret with the wider community.
They flew to Argentina for Mewburn to have facial feminisation surgery, a hair transplant and liposuction to complete the transition. ‘‘He’’ finally became ‘‘she’’. There would be no more
‘‘Nobody does this ... for brownie points. There are no advantages to being trans.’’
pretending. She would be living her authentic life for the first time.
Ultimately, Mewburn has been amazed at how she has been accepted into the Millers Flat community, a town that first welcomed her and Marion as hippies in a camper van.
The liberal writing community provided support, and Marion’s understanding has been incredible, she says.
Mewburn’s relationship with her family – detailed at length in the book – is, in her words, ‘‘complicated’’. However, those who are aware of her journey have been positive in their response. None has read the book yet.
But Mewburn knows that most people struggle to comprehend what it means to be transgender. ‘‘It’s hard to get your head around, which is one of the reasons I was excited about the chance to write my story. I felt that possibly I could explain it a bit better.’’
Ultimately it comes down to people accepting what she, or any other person, says about themselves.
‘‘Nobody does this, or claims to be anything, for brownie points. There are no advantages to being trans.’’
If people stopped thinking of men and women in black and white
terms, it would be easier. ‘‘It’s not that terrible . . . it’s people trying to understand who they are. Yes, we might not understand what ‘pansexual’ is or ‘pan-gender’ or the other 150 options, but is it a big deal?
‘‘Why do we need to understand it? Can’t we say, ‘I’m just happy to let you be what you want to be’?’’
She makes a similar argument when it comes to the use of pronouns. Using ‘‘them’’ or ‘‘they’’ instead of ‘‘he’’ or ‘‘she’’ is not anything to get excited about.
The fact that she has not changed her name from ‘‘Kyle’’ is another frequent discussion point. ‘‘I feel like ‘Kyle’ is quite neutral. It’s not like it’s Roger.’’
Various people have suggested it would be easier to call her by the correct pronoun if her name was different. ‘‘They say it’s not a big deal. It’s just a name. And it is, but it’s my name.’’
As comfortable as Mewburn is now feeling in her new skin, the travel limitations of a post-Covid world mean she has not spent a lot of time away from home yet, and further challenges lie ahead as she participates in festivals and spends time in cities.
She is not sure if she wants to aim for the oft-touted transgender ideal of looking and acting so similar to a woman that she is indistinguishable from a biological woman.
Her voice remains unchanged and, despite her expertise in walking in high heels, at 1.85m her height becomes intimidating with another inch or two added.
She no longer wants to pretend to be a biological woman. Nor does she have plans for further surgery.
‘‘I’ve wasted so much of my life coming to this point I don’t want to spend more time fluffing around doing stuff that’s not important.
‘‘I’m out there living my life.’’