You either love or hate me.You call me ‘tranny’ ladyboy, shemale to mention just a few.

I am one of those people who have risked and lost all by answering a call so deep perhaps even primeval certainly genetic, that it has confused even me. But I have embraced it with a conviction so solid, so passionate that not even the most wilting, derogatory ridicule and physical assaults on and against my person my every waking minute, from people of every strata and age in our society has not and will not quench. It is likely that many of my persecutors will neither read nor hear of this letter.

You insist I do not have a right to live in your communal paradigm of who should be living in it. Your concept of society and its mores condones and espouses some of the most extreme sexual expression yet you shrink from a topic still cloistered in a shroud of taboo and ignorance. In your unmitigated prejudice that is your moral bench mark you have concluded that I am a blight on society, nature’s freak and that I should be spat at, slapped, ridiculed, insulted.

You may have been in that group of 13 year old school boys who, after passing me suddenly felt that surge of indomitable courage and cast insult at my back reassuring yourself that your dad will be well pleased with your effort to denigrate these obvious social misfits.

Perhaps it was you in that group of young people who sniggered, jeered, mocked and insulted me. I wonder if you would have the same courage if you were alone. And why is it that when finally i decide to confront you that suddenly it is some else that you are shouting at.

Where are you my attacker, who ran up behind me whilst I was window shopping and pulled my legs out from beneath me and ran off jeering in unison. And those of you who walk past me or deliberately change your direction so that you can pretend to heave and vomit as you pass me.

Or, perhaps it was your exclusive fashion boutique that I visited, and whose select clientele do not include anything like me. You didn’t have to say anything to reveal your impression of me, your demeanor alone did that and your contempt of my effort to try on a garment expressed in comment to me whilst I was changing that the item was delicate was enough to tell me that I wasn’t welcome and even when you accepted my cash custom with an attitude that belies your desire that is you’d would have preferred to see such an expensive dress on someone more appropriate, your disgust and contempt of me is still so apparent.

You could very well be that security officer who as a self appointed guardian of our morals you wage a private war against the scourge of society who attempt to enter a place of recreation and entertainment by telling me that I cannot enter because I am too drunk. And even when I tell you that I suffer with advanced Parkinson’s you deny me entry. Or maybe you are a little less subtle and all you feel you have to do to send us scurrying is to turn your face away and point to some indeterminate point - I guess your conviction that we are freaks of nature that deserve no more than a dismissive gesture to convey the hatred and contempt you have for me.Besides your attitude for these despicable people must be justified because you are so fair and perform your duties so well. And my manager will always look back me because he told me, albeit in the alley next to the club, to - “keep these wierdos out”

You could have been out on a night of fun who decided to jointly mock and ridicule me using derogatory terms because I look in your eyes an idiot certainly worth a good rollicking or you snigger because everyone else is doing it and the cloistered anonymity allows you to just do enough because you were not taught to mock others and you’re really not sure about all of this.

Was it you that walked past as I sat on a bench and had this irresistible urge to call me a filthy trannny and continuing to say it until you reached a point that you were out of sight. You reminded yourself to tell your pub mates about your brave deed.

Were you that policeman on duty that night who when “I reported the abuse I had endured that evening simply sniggered and walked away or perhaps the officer in uniform standing next to the security officer that denied me entry and refused to even look at the proof of my illness I had purposely brought with me.

Maybe you prefer to just give me an accusing stare hoping that I see your disapproving expression, because your pastor says I am an abomination before God. Jesus also said ‘let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.’

Look across now at that person who has committed his or her life to you in matrimony and whom you love dearly. Are you sure he/she is not trying to make sense of the conflict within that calls to their spirit to question his/her gender identity,

It is not a midlife crisis, a flight of sexual fantasy, a spin-off or side effect of my medication or a mental health issue that fuels me to now live as a woman and walk into a barrage of scorn, ridicule, hatred and contempt every-time I leave my home. Neither is it - a ‘gay thing’.

Perhaps you are son or daughter or relative or brother or sister or mother or father of who has disowned that wayward member of your family at a time when they needed you the most. When they cried out for acceptance and love and received rejection instead.

Nothing will turn me back except my death but then I will have died being the person I have always wanted to be. You may kill and injure my body but you will never quench my spirit and desire to become the woman I want to be.