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The idea of stuffing her underwear to give the appearance of the male organ, running around bareback and believing she was a superhero named Adam, was not just silly kids stuff for the newly-legally-renamed Oliver Michael Hirst.
When puberty hit, discovering she actually wasn’t going to be a boy like her many male cousins she often played with devastated the young woman, who preferred her birth name be withheld. Hirst said for her, having breasts and dealing with a period was just awful.
Recalling her initial reaction, she jokingly told the Sunday Guardian, “Life starts happening. I have a chest, things are coming out of me and it was just like very bad.”
The Sunday Guardian met Hirst at last weekend’s inaugural LGBTQIA Pride Parade, which was held at Nelson Mandela Park in St Clair.
The 19-year-old, who suffers from social anxiety and depression, was not at all nervous on the day into speak out on gay rights, even taking to the stage at one time to share in a nutshell her experience as a trans-male and her name changing process. She also exuded pride and joy for the day, saying, “I never thought this day in T&T would come where you can see so many trans-people. I am really glad to see that trans-people are coming out.”
But that joy and pride Hirst felt on July 28, 2018, are feelings estranged from her everyday life since discovering what she calls her real identity.
It’s still a hard pill for her mother and brother to swallow. And though her mother has reluctantly come around, her brother has completely distanced himself from her and never accepted or supported her transition.
“He doesn’t acknowledge it but I haven’t been particularly close with my brother. We have always had kind of a rough relationship, so we pretty much avoid each other in the house,” she told the Sunday Guardian.
School was another pit of depression for Hirst and although most would identify with her obvious masculine behaviour, the former Holy Name Convent student said she did not have that many friends.
“I was pretty much a loner, struggling with social anxiety, depression and other mental issues,” she related.
Hirst added, “For the first three years in secondary school, I did not have a proper group of friends at school. People would come and talk to me occasionally but I didn’t really have a place.”
Things changed a bit for Hirst once she got to form four after meeting for the first time amongst her peers, an openly bi-sexual schoolmate. She immediately gained comfort in this similarity and for the first time stopped viewing herself as a ‘weirdo.’
“At the time I really did not understand what I was going through, everything was confusing. I knew I was questioning my gender but I did not know there was a name for it. I eventually understood what the term transgender meant,” Hirst said.
The chest-binder wearing teen, who has not yet fully transitioned from female to male, explained that she is unable to begin her actual transition because of her doctor’s concerns for her mental health. Although a psychiatric evaluation revealed unconfirmed autism spectrum disorder and ADHD, she has been refused the nabido hormone used in transgenders, which is a three-month long-lasting shot.
This is not good for Hirst, who has to deal with a very painful and heavy menstrual cycle each month, something that runs in her family. But more seriously, with these periods also comes severe suicidal thoughts.
“I understand the doctor’s concerns but I also find it a little bit unfair because you don’t know how close someone is to the edge or how bad they need that,” Hirst reasons.
While it is thought people of the transgender community take the decision or choice to live the ‘lifestyle,’ Hirst says she never had a choice. In fact, she told the Sunday Guardian if she could give it up she would, as the experience has all been too painful.
The roller coaster life as a trans-teen has caused Hirst to attempt suicide on several occasions. Without soliciting for that kind of attention, she has also endured online bullying and hate messages from anonymous people threatening to hurt her and wishing death upon her.
Hirst, who has a transgender boyfriend living in New Jersey, admits the space at the recent event was one that was safe only because it was predominantly made up of people from the LGBTQIA community.
“The solidarity is nice but people who do not support the LGBTQIA plus community here tend to be very violent about it so it is scary,” said Hirst, who is currently seeking asylum in Canada.
While Hirst told the Sunday Guardian she understands her mother’s grief in what she might perceive as losing a daughter, she had a strong message to send to parents of trans-children.
“You can have two choices, a dead daughter or son lost to suicide or hate crimes, or you can accept them and help them through it.”
The Maraval native said there was still a long way to go in T&T accepting differences.
“Not everyone is going to agree with this and I don’t need anyone to agree with why I am the way I am. A lot of times, I don’t understand why I am the way I am…it’s kind of just how you’re born,” she said.
“All I ask from people is basic human decency. Refer to me as Oliver. Treat me as any other guy. I’m not going to tell people they have to go advocating for trans-rights if that’s not their thing.”
MORE INFO
Transgender is an umbrella term that describes people whose gender identity or expression does not match the sex they were assigned at birth.
Nearly 700,000 adults in the United States identify as transgender, according to 2011 research by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.
However, being transgender means different things to different people, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE).
A person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else is their gender identity. For cisgender, or non-transgender people, their gender identity matches their sex at birth. For transgender people, the two do not match.
Sometimes, a person’s gender identity doesn’t fit neatly into two choices.
People who see themselves as being both male and female, neither male nor female or as falling completely outside these categories may identify as genderqueer, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQIA advocacy organization.