Kelly Worrall's story: the costs and the courage of coming out
TRANS / Why one trans woman is presenting male again
Robin Perelle and Angelina Cantada / Vancouver / Wednesday, February 20, 2013
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Kelly_Worralls_story_the_costs_and_the_courage_of_coming_out-13185.aspxWhen Kelly Worrall took off her men's clothes for what she expected would be the last time in 2011, she felt free.
"It was very liberating to be able to give myself the opportunity to be who I needed to be in the moment," she says. "For 37 years I've played by the rules and I've done everything I was supposed to do, and it didn't make me happy. I still felt trapped inside."
As a seven-year-old, Worrall wished she had been born a girl. She wanted to wear long skirts and grow up to be a tall, beautiful woman. But it was the 1980s, and transitioning back then was barely an option on most people's radar. So she repressed her feminine self. Until she couldn't anymore.
Coming out gave her permission to be her true self, she says.
Now, after two years of living full-time as a woman, she is presenting again as a man. Does this make her any less trans? No, she answers without hesitation.
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Whiskers in the mirror
EDITORIAL / The costs and the courage of coming out trans
Robin Perelle / Vancouver / Wednesday, February 20, 2013
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Whiskers_in_the_mirror-13186.aspxI read Kelly Worrall's Facebook post three days after Christmas. "That takes guts," I thought, remembering the articulate woman I'd met at a gay travel conference two months earlier.
She had just presented a talk on coming out trans in an often-unwelcoming world. I chatted with her briefly afterward and was struck by her warmth and authenticity.
Now she was coming out again.
"I've been experimenting with letting my body be the way it was designed, for the most part," she posted. "Facial hair is growing out. A little sparse, but two years of spironolactone and estrogen and a few months of laser treatment will do that."
