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3 On her eighteenth birthday Megan walked into Tattooz 4 U on Nelson Street, its walls smothered with photos of tattoos etched into every body part imaginable (and unimaginable) her birthday money was stuffed into her jeans pocket to give to Rex, the bald tattooist, who had a second (younger, handsomer) version of his face tattooed on to the back of his head she wanted a design that reflected the story of her life: flames, she instructed him, to show that she was living a life consumed by the fires of hell

Rex said her tempestuous feelings as a teenager wouldn't last, was she really sure she wanted to create a tattoo that would? she wanted to snap that he was patronizing her, reminded herself that this man was going to be scraping an electric needle over her skin for the next few hours as slowly her pain transmuted into bloody body art to show the world how upset she was with it and to really piss her parents off which it did when she returned home flashing her first full sleeve of raw tats at which point Mum having prepared a birthday tea of homemade chicken pie, chips, mushy peas, trifle, cake and candles pulled it all off the kitchen table via her best tablecloth in one dramatic bullfighter moment the entire contents ended up scattered and smashed on the kitchen floor whereupon Dad threatened to throw her out for upsetting her mother she shouted back that she was the one who was upset, it was her birthday and they'd ruined it, and in one equally dramatic moment stormed out of the house without any money or keys only to turn around and ask to be let back in again which they did, without hesitation to apologies all round cosmetic, as it turned out her mother couldn't get over the tats, which she saw as symbolic of the beginning of the end of her daughter's life as a normal person Megan came to the conclusion she was never going to find herself if she remained living with her parents she dragged a black rubbish bag of her possessions down the stairs, refused her father's offer to drive her to wherever she was going, ignored her mother's pleas that she stay: we can work things out, we love you, we really love you, Megan, talk to us too little too late, Megan said (she'd heard that somewhere) she moved into a hostel with other teenagers determined to live a life no longer defined

by her parents she spent the first few hours in her newly independent republic staring out of a window that framed a small square of pure sky all hers over the next few months she felt herself shedding layers of what had been imposed, hoping to reach the core of herself she wondered if she should really have been born a man because she sure as hell didn't feel like a woman perhaps that was the root of her problems she came home from work to the noise of fellow youngsters having fun through the partition walls exacerbating her aloneness yet she knew this was exactly what she needed solitude to register what she was feeling forcing herself to become deaf to all sound except her own it felt like meditation as she concentrated on the concertina of her own breathing for moments or was it minutes? at a time finding peace momentarily enough to consider her next move which was to explore the internet, that held the answer to all questions while lying in her single bed in the chilly early morning hours, wrapped up inside the dark insulation of her duvet, lit by the glare of her laptop she found sanctuary in chat rooms with other young outsiders as pissed- off as she was, discovered the trans world, engaged in conversations with people on the trans spectrum sometimes saying the wrong thing online, encountering someone called Bibi who wrote back, I'm going to hit the next person who confuses transsexual with transgender, I swear! people won't tolerate ignorance on here, love, transgender people are only transsexual when they medically transition, okay?

right fine Megan clearly had to walk on eggshells or risk setting off a land mine, none of it really made sense to her, weren't manhood and womanhood set in stone? she asked Bibi wrong again! Bibi replied, gender's a social construction, most of us are born male or female but the concepts of masculinity and femininity are society's inventions, none of it is innate, are you following? no, not really hey, it's actually 'Feminism 101', where you been, Megan? head in the clouds? yeh, 'spose so, living on Planet Parents, don't bite, btw, just curious ah, a sensitive one, I'll go easy on you from now on, do your research, seriously Megan discovered that feminism was massive right now, how could it have passed her by? she thought of her mother who'd disparaged feminists as man-haters, not for me, she'd say whenever it came up, I like men, I like being domesticated and I love your father, so how can I be a feminist? Dad would nod his head and say something like, you've seen what happens when I try to hang up the washing or make the beds Megan told Bibi she'd thought feminists were synonymous with manhaters, although as she typed the words she realized she'd never actually made up her own mind about it O here we go! Bibi fired off, of course feminism isn't about manhating! it's about women's liberation, equal rights and freedom from limiting expectations, you need to think for yourself instead of parroting the patriarchy, time to grow up, Megan! I thought you were gonna go easy on me er, yeh, okay, can't help myself, I promise to be sweet as candy from now on I just want to be myself, Bibi wow, talk about low ambitions, don't you want to change the world? I wanna change my world first, Bibi, one step at a time like like like like like ☺

now you're taking the piss nope, I honestly agree with you, we all just wanna be ourselves and make sure we're okay in the world, hey, I'm a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious person, really I'll be the judge of that ooooh, now you're giving as good as you get, lol Megan studied the photo of Bibi more closely, she was Asian, twenties, maybe? thick, square black glasses, thick black hair about her shoulders, serious expression attractive very Megan already knew it was time to grow up, the whole point of leaving home was to find out where she began and her parents ended tell me more about what you know about feminism and gender, and I know I should already know but I don't, OK? gotcha, so here goes: women are designed to have babies, not to play with dolls, and why shouldn't women sit with their legs wide open (if they're wearing trousers, obv) and what does mannish or manly mean anyway? walking with long strides? being assertive? taking charge? wearing 'male' clothes? not wearing make-up? unshaved legs? shaved head (lol), drinking pints instead of wine? preferring football to online make-up tutorials (yawn), and traditionally men wear make-up and skirts in parts of the world so why not in ours without being accused of being 'effeminate'? what does effeminate actually mean when you break it down? the thing is, Megan, much as I reject conformist gender bullshit as above, I still feel female, I've known it since like forever, for me it's not about wanting to play with dolls, it goes much deeper than that it's what I've become these past seven years as I transitioned from Gopal to Bibi oestrogen, breasts, vagina now you know so Bibi had been born a man and was now a woman, Megan had wondered, daren't ask, she might bite her head off

and Megan was a woman who wondered if she should have been born a man, who was attracted to a woman who'd once been a man, who was now saying gender was full of misguided expectations anyway, even though she had herself transitioned from male to female this was such head fuckery she shut the lid of her computer to go to sleep, when she opened it again Bibi would be there they were now messaging deep into the night and early the next morning, hardly sleeping in between, both admitting they daren't Skype or meet just yet, in case when they came out from behind the deceptive smokescreen of social media, the chemistry wouldn't be there let's keep the fantasy alive a while longer, Bibi wrote, I've been here before and when I met the person face to face we had nothing to say to each other Bibi lived in Hebden Bridge, had grown up in Leeds she worked as an administrator in a care home after getting a degree in Cultural Studies in Sussex, chosen to be as far away from her parents as possible who really didn't get that she was a girl in a boy's body it wasn't part of their master plan, Megan, which was to marry me off to a suitable girl from the right caste and produce the next generation of my family instead they got a cross-dressing son who kept his alter ego inside his bedroom, until he started to venture to the local shops in dresses and make- up in a Hindu community where everybody knew everybody I was kicked out, don't contact us again, you are sick in the head, you are no longer our son, and let's get one thing straight you will never be our daughter Bibi said the old people at the care home accepted her as a human being, you're our Bibi and we love you, they'd witnessed her transition to female Bibi felt she'd finally got the body denied her at birth, which was also an eye-opener, Megan, once I started presenting fully as female, I realized I'd taken a lot of things for granted as a man

I miss sitting alone in bars late at night nursing a quiet pint, without feeling self-conscious or being hit on and I can't stand watching the plague of telly dramas where young women are butchered by psycho serial killers and end up on a slab with their torso slit open down the middle with a coroner holding their bloodied heart in their hands I used to love those shows, now I feel they're ultimately a way to wield power over women, to frighten them – us I'm also wary of walking home late at night on my own, I miss being respectfully called sir when I'm in a shop or restaurant, and I'm definitely taken less seriously when I open my mouth you see, Megan, I learnt first hand how women are discriminated against, which is why I became a feminist after I'd transitioned, an intersectional feminist, because it's not just about gender but race, sexuality, class and other intersections which we mostly unthinkingly live anyway right that's enough of me talking (till the cows come home), hope I didn't sound too preachy but I can't help myself what about you? Megan, where do you stand with all of this? time to spill the beans, love Megan replied that she was working it out, taking her time, she'd recently been taken aback when she came across hundreds of genders on the internet, that, annoyingly, complicated the matter she'd spent hours trawling, assessing, evaluating genders like trans female or trans male and non-binary made sense to her, and she came across non-binaries in other countries like the Hirjas of India and the Two Spirits of Native Americans, others were total head fucks like quivergender – a gender whose intensity fluctuates, polygender – identifying as multiple genders, or staticgender – like fuzzy television static and how can your gender change multiple times a day as the synchgenders claim? Bibi, by the time I finished travelling into the batshit-crazy end of the Transgenderverse I was stressed with a capital S, I call it the Transloonyverse, lock 'em up and throw away the keys LOL!! Bibi messaged right back, how dare you disrespect trans people's right toself-define, weird to you not to them, you sound like an ignorant oppressor, don't come into our world and make fun of us, fuck off! Megan shot right back with fuck off yourself

hitting send in the heat of the moment there was total silence for nearly four whole days, Megan worried she'd lost her, she didn't want to be the first to make contact Bibi did three simple words we should meet.