“ I was born in Melbourne, lived there with my family until my family moved to Brisbane. I moved up with them and shortly after I became a ward of the state. I had some pretty severe conflict with my parents as a kid largely because of, what we didn’t know at the time, was gender stuff. This was 42 years ago and there wasn’t really a context for it so we didn’t really know what was happening except that there was a lot of pressure for me to conform to norms which didn’t feel right for me and so in expressing who I was it created a lot of drama.
It started to get weird from the age of about 6 or 7. I was a state ward and out of home by 12. I was independent from the family from that point on. I lived in foster homes, group facilities, on the streets at times and with friends. I had a lot of different scenarios as a kid. I was a state ward technically until I was 17 but I was independent and doing my own thing by 14. I was volunteering for the RSPCA. I had an interest in animals and was living in a share house.
I came out as gay when I was about 15 or 16 which I kind of thought I was at the time and again worked out retrospectively, a little bit down the track, that it wasn’t actually a sexuality thing that was going on. It was a gender thing.
I moved to Sydney to be embraced by my gay family which I was sure was going to happen the minute I stepped off the Greyhound coach. I pretty much got eaten alive by the culture down there. It was very intense. I was a kid and I got chewed up and spat out and I wasn’t in a particularly healthy place in myself at the time. I ended up meeting someone from America who was travelling around Sydney. I went off travelling with her and ended up in Lismore. I lived in Brunswick Heads for a while and ended up here. When I came here for the first time in 1992 I was 17 and I thought, why would anyone want to stay in a place like this. I couldn’t work out what this place had going for it. Fifteen years later I was still here.
I did an undergraduate degree at SCU. I also completed a post graduate qualification in Psychotherapy and it was in my Psychotherapy training I started to dig into this thing of, I’m just not happy, I don’t know what it is but it’s just not right. I thought I was gay, I thought it might have been this or maybe that. Through the process of doing a lot of personal therapy I explored gender for the first time as a concept. Thank God for the internet because I was then able to search and found out about this thing I had never heard of before, Transgenderism. I didn’t want to do anything radical or crazy straight away. I wanted to be sure that was what was going on for me. I talked about it a lot with my peer group and the people I was studying with. I did lots of processes and therapy around it.
It felt like, if you can imagine, wearing a pair of shoes that are two sizes too small for thirty five years and then all of a sudden taking them off. The relief of that and then realising there are another pair of shoes which are perfect for you and putting them on. It was like coming home in a profound, radical, amazing and awesome way. I was like, this is what I need to do.
Any big thing you go through in life whether it be love, parenting, enlightenment or anything. We have concepts about things in our mind of how we think things are going to be. There is no preparing for the present moment. You have no idea of what you’re getting yourself into when you decide you are going to take a journey like that. How could you possibly? Its mammoth, its epic!
The changes, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Every single molecule in your body turns into something else. Your fluids change, your thought processes, your emotions change. It’s been 8 years now and I still look in the mirror and blow out. The radicalness of change. What our bodies are capable of doing is wild.
The family didn’t respond well with it. My parents asked me not to contact them again. We already had a patchy relationship. My mum and I had sort of reconciled but that blew it apart again and we haven’t recovered since then. I would like it to be a happier scenario for all of us but that’s just where we are at. Other family were really good. My sister is a happy Pentecostal Christian Minister and she is the most supportive member of my family ironically enough. My cousin in Brisbane who is more like a sister is amazing. Her husband and kids are phenomenal allies.
The stuff they don’t really prepare you for through gender clinics are things like not being a socialised male. Trying to adjust to all new rules for everything. All of a sudden you can’t pick babies up and you can’t stand too close to public toilet entrances. You can’t always have a conversation with a woman without it being interpreted as a sexual sub text. No-one looks at you and knows that you have lived your life as a woman for thirty years. When a woman says ‘I’m bleeding, it’s horrible!’ and I’m like I know. It’s outside of most peoples realms of comprehension. It’s interesting making those sorts of adjustments.
I then sort of felt like I outgrew Lismore a little bit. I needed something else so I moved to the Gold Coast and I was living there when I tried out for the X Factor. The second time I tried out I got through to live auditions. I got through and that was a game changer fro me. When I tried out the first time I told them the whole story of being Trans. The second time I got through on an online audition process. I walked in and the guy remembered me from last time so I didn’t tell my story again. I didn’t want that to be the thing I got through on. I sang and I got through. When live auditions were approaching they contacted me wanting photos from my childhood. All of a sudden I realised they had forgotten. I said: Do you remember that I was born female? There was this silence. They had forgotten. They didn’t grab it but they gave me the option whether I wanted to tell it or not. It felt like a big roll of the dice. I thought this could go really well for me or it could mean that I get my arse kicked at Fitness First next time I wanna use the locker room.
There was a question we used to use in Gestalt where we had to make a decision around a big thing. It was, It’s ten years from now and you are looking back and giving advice to yourself now. What do you imagine you would tell yourself? I was like, If you decide not to do this purely on the basis of fear you will regret this for the rest of your life. You don’t know the outcome. It could end well, it could end badly but you have an opportunity.
I went in with a specific goal of wanting to profile the issue of gender diversity in the country. If I got music out of it as well, bonus, awesome but hopefully it will help some people out there. That part of the show was pre recorded and I was at home when it aired. No joking, I spent 4 weeks after it aired fielding messages from people all over the world. It was unbelievable. Perez Hilton the gossip columnist picked up the live audition and put it on his site. The last time we looked it had 1.2 million hits and that was a long time ago. People who had lost a child who was trans to suicide got some closure out of it. Trans people who had been hiding in their bedrooms were inspired to get out and start living their lives. It was far beyond anything I could have conceived in terms of what it meant to other people. It was like, F@#k the music career.
Once that chapter happened Melbourne was a no brainer in terms of a place to do entertainment work and gender activism. I got into public and private sector gender education. I also got into training the cadets in the Victorian Police Force in cultural diversity for three and a half years.
I do gigs by invitation. I have the peoples Pride Rally this Saturday in Brisbane. I fly down to Melbourne on Monday for the Ballarat Frolic Festival doing the closing gala event.
I got really sick with a cold and ironically fell completely, totally, madly in love with someone who lived in Lismore. Of all the places in all of the world my great love could live. They were here so now I’m here… again. Lucky me!
That whole journey really helped me to refine what I wanted in my life as well. I worked out that I want my life to be about being in service in some way. Im not massively attached to what that looks like. It looked like entertainment and doing stuff that was gender specific for a while. It’s moved into doing energy work, I’ve started studying animal communication as well. There’s a really beautiful dovetail with not only my partners interest, my interest and their business but also the community up here. It’s a really great place to come back and re-focus. I was at the Tropical Fruits Fair Day on Saturday and my heart just wanted to explode. It’s a truly unique place, not for everyone in terms of individuals who would resonate with the place but anyone can come here and feel so totally welcome. It’s a diversity magnet.
I really would have liked to have had a shave and done my hair before you take my photo..ah well..lets do it!”
(for those who haven’t heard Paige sing. What a voice)https://youtu.be/woPur2tNXXc