Content note: sexual violence, physical violence, forced medical treatment, depression.
Please, express your feminine side!’ I looked at her and thought, Shoo, is it this woman who is telling me this? I was impressed. In my final year, I started putting on earrings and strutting my stuff. Professor M even made me meet some social workers at school.
Another person who looked out for me was I . She was a poet and a dancer. She was the mother I never had and she made me super strong. She was a phenomenal person. She taught me dance. She taught me choreography. She taught me to be bold about who I was. She called me ‘Woman’ even before I started to. I could not accept it at the time, but I was always free around her. She was strict and disciplined, yet open. People didn’t understand her, but I did. If she screamed at me, I understood. She used to call me ‘JP’, which means ‘sweet to have’ in Yoruba, and was always telling me, ‘Look, the world is bigger than what you think, JP.’
There was a day in 2009 when my mum used my brothers to beat me. They locked me up inside the room, but at 11pm, I _, who was in Ibadan, rescued me. She called a doctor who was a friend, told him how to get to our place and he got me out of the house.
I had to move on. I didn’t go back home. During the holidays, I stayed at the hostel. They normally didn’t send people away because there were 400-level ¹ students who wanted to do projects. My mum would say, ‘Come back home. You’re sleeping with a man,’ but I just ignored it all. Sometimes I received text messages from my friends, from people who were at home. I ignored them too.
Some people at school were transphobic but at least the people who stood up were like, ‘No, uhm uhm, let her be.’
A person who detested me once gathered the whole department for the kind of meeting where students discuss departmental issues, but this time they were castigating, talking rubbish about me. A lecturer came in and annulled the whole thing. He called me and told me what they were saying. For the most part, though, I was favoured. I am eternally grateful to UI. I doubt if there are other schools like the University of Ibadan. I had one HOD who took a shine to me and other people who cared about me.
In fact, all the women who groomed me were powerful and wild in a positive way. The wires in their brains used to touch. They thought outside the box. They were strong and hated injustice. Sometimes they were super aggressive. Somehow, I fell under the tutelage of such women. When I was finishing university, it was assumed that I wouldn’t do my NYSC ² . But I served in Kaduna State.
Note, I had not had any surgery but I was presenting as female by then and everybody was like, ‘Oh, she has had the surgery.’ I just had to keep it mute. But deep down I was freaked out by the fact that when I went to serve, I would stay in an all-female space. Oh my goodness, I thought. How am I going to do it? Oh my God! But I did. I was lucky because I was given the last hall in the female hostel and there were only ten of us. The halls are spacious with lots of bunks so I could do whatever I had to do.
In the past, I’d acted Ms Bello but now I was living the dream. So when people tried to convince me to contest for Ms NYSC, I refused. They would have to dress me up and we might reach a stage where I’d stand naked before a couple of people. So I said no.
During my service, there was a guy who was pampering me. My clothes were washed. Everything I needed was sorted out. I dared not tell this person that I was trans. To this day, he still doesn’t know, but he was so interested in me, spoiling me with everything I needed. Other men would also make passes at me, but I could not tell them, ‘Look, this is who I am.’ Some of them, I would see them and like them. Some of them would come up to me and say, ‘I love you’ and all I could do was watch with teary eyes and say to myself, I wish I could tell you who I am . They would look at me like I was a heartbreaker, mean or wicked. But all that time, I was thinking, I can’t say anything .
When I finally started working, men were still making passes at me. I knew I was attracted to men. I started accepting myself, understanding myself a little bit. Around that time, I had a two-bedroom flat all to myself, so there was that privacy and that happiness. At least I was no longer acting the dream, even though getting to that stage had not been easy To date,
my mum still has not accepted me. I am not really bothered about that. One of my brothers turned against her and started protecting me. He said, ‘For goodness sake, nobody wants to be persecuted. Nobody wants to go on the streets and see people stoned. Nobody wants it so don’t make it look like that for my sister.’ He refers to me by the proper pronoun. ‘Please take care of my sister,’ he will tell me. ‘Please be careful of mummy. Mummy is still on your neck. Be careful. If she invites you somewhere, please don’t go.’ When I am financially challenged, he will send money to me. This was someone who was an attacking bulldog, pinning me down with his strength. He said he did his own research and started studying and studying.
When I was still in school, my family told him they wanted to take me to the hospital to have my hormones measured and get female hormones so I could live as a woman. I knew that was a lie but they tricked him. They hired a cab and took me to the psych ward in LASUTH ³ . My brother was like, ‘You people told me we were going to the place where they will check her hormones. What am I seeing here?’ ‘I told you,’ I said, but he could not see it. He wanted to give them some benefit of the doubt. But inside, he noticed that one of the nurses gripped my hand, not with care, but in a tight fist. When they started taking me away, he flared up. ‘This is not the deal. This is not what you told me. Oh my goodness, you wanted to operate on her.’ It wasn’t long before they called the doctor in charge of psychiatry. By the time he came, they had registered me as male, so he asked, ‘Who is Mr. So-and-so?’ When he saw this female-presenting person, he said, ‘Oh, I understand.’ He asked me for my name, I told him, and he accepted it. And the tables turned. He took me inside his office to talk. He was not trying to change my mind; he was talking to me to make peace. He said, ‘I have come across these cases. From the look of things, it’s your family that needs psychiatric evaluation. I am going to call them in.’
They claimed that they wanted to give me male hormones. The doctor said, ‘Do you know what you are talking about? To give male hormones, you have to obtain consent. Or else she could commit suicide.’ They kept saying, ‘We don’t care, we just want …’ ‘Wait, you don’t care?’ he said. ‘You don’t care about her life?’ He printed a document on intersexuality and transsexuality and gave it to them. ‘Go and read,’ he told them. From that moment on, my younger brother started shifting ground. That doctor played a big role.
My mum and brother tried again when a doctor from the UK came to join the discussion. She didn’t know who I was and said, ‘This lady is beautiful. What’s going on?’ My mum and my brother shouted my birth name. The UK doctor said, ‘Oh, we understand.
Did we give them anything on intersex and transsexuality?’ They said, ‘We did but they seem to be very stubborn.’ The doctors said that from the look of things, they needed to give me female hormones and take me to Israel to do a sex change. The doctors were talking about doing it free of charge and my mum and brother stopped taking me to the hospital.
They continued their persecution but this time they could not go far with it as my younger brother refused to participate. Their bulldog wasn’t there to attack me any more. He said to them, ‘No, you were not straightforward. It seems as if you were wrong all this while. You people don’t want to face the truth.’ Since then he has evolved. He calls me his sister. From the way he talks now, my brother has really changed for the good. My mum is always afraid of laying a hand on me because of him.
I still maintain contact with my mum. I am just careful with her.
The last time I saw her was June 2014 but she called me last month. Sometimes she talks to me once a week. It depends. Sometimes she pretends. She refers to me as ‘she’ but I know it is a ‘he’ in her head.
I was in a relationship last year. She came and ruined it. She tried to make the guy sabotage me. I got wind of it so the guy and I went our separate ways. We’d been together for a year and he’d abused my mind, always threatening to out me. That was after I went to Belgium.
Everything changed in Belgium. When you change environments, you get some fresh air. You go out and see people who appreciate you. Even looking at you is enough of a compliment. My eyes opened and I tasted the forbidden fruit of freedom. Now I know what is good and bad.
Over time, I have had lots of people stand up for me. I can’t pick one but let me tell you about some of them. A long time ago, I wanted to seek asylum and leave Nigeria, but I never knew the processes. So I went to the Dutch embassy and they helped me. They asked if I had a degree and I said I did. They said, ‘You are a trans woman and you have a degree. Do you know how many people have degrees and are presenting as women?’ So they put me in touch with Z _. He looked at me twice and said there was no way he would let me go out. ‘You are going to work with us,’ he said, and that is how I got my first job.
He made me feel free. We could fight. I could express myself and say, ‘No, this is wrong.’ He treated me like everyone else, without being personal about it.
I eventually got another job, but you know how it is when you go to work and it is boring because you are not doing anything serious and nothing is challenging you? I got my salary working on HIV and AIDS but those were not the primary needs of the trans community. I got that job expecting to attend to trans needs, but I wasn’t, so I left. Z _and I organized a conference on trans and intersex people. Now, we are trying to get a sub-grant to start an organization focused on trans and intersex people in Nigeria.
I am vocal. I am ready to flaunt who I am unapologetically. If you want to tell me rubbish, I’ll give it back to you. And I realized that the trans and intersex community has been marginalized and put aside. Many trans women and trans men are seen as lesbian or gay and so they are not fully understood. Most people, even those who work in this field, do not know anything about trans or intersex issues.
I was talking to one who believed that a trans person must switch and look either feminine or masculine in presentation. What of those who are intersex, I asked. They assumed the person must have two genitalia, and I was like, Oh my goodness! You are so wrong! I explained the definition of an MSM according to a trans. ‘An MSM is a trans man who is attracted to a man,’ I said. ‘A trans MSM – that is someone who went from female to male – is a woman to you, but to this person, they are male and they sleep with men.’
I am a one-partner person. With my first crush, I couldn’t say anything as it was someone I tripped for when I was seven. I fell in love for the first time in university. He was bisexual but wouldn’t accept his sexuality. He was also the first person I kissed. We separated when we went to serve. The last time we saw each other was five years ago, and once in a while he still calls me. I think sometimes he wishes we did not break up, but I moved on a long time ago.
I never really had a steady date back then because I was being security conscious. I met my current partner online. We got chatting for a long time before we met in person. It took a long time for me to tell him who I was because we were always talking about sexuality and other things. I said I was not interested in a relationship with him but that my friend might be. He asked who the friend was. I told him it was a trans woman and he got the gist: ‘A trans woman, really? I would love to meet such a person.’ Whenever we chatted, he asked about the trans woman, saying he would love to meet her. So I said, ‘Okay, you must not disappoint her.’ I gave him a fake name and my other number. But when I saw his number calling I would not pick. One day I told him I was the trans woman. He didn’t believe me. I said, ‘Yes I am a trans woman,’ and started explaining things to him. ‘And the number you gave to me?’ he asked. I said, ‘That is my number’ and he was like, ‘So that’s why you didn’t pick.’ I said, ‘Yes, that is why I didn’t pick.’
He travelled from Port Harcourt to meet me here in Abuja. I have a very good relationship with him and he has been supportive. I feel very loved by him. For someone to say, ‘Look, you don’t have to do the surgery to be accepted,’ is an encouraging thing. In my previous relationships, I couldn’t even stand naked in front of someone or feel free walking around. Most times, trans people don’t like what is between their legs, especially when they have not transitioned. Now I am indifferent because my partner tells me, ‘Look, I am not interested in what is between your legs. With or without surgery, you are okay.’ I can walk freely without someone saying, ‘Don’t remind me that I am sleeping with a guy’ or ‘It makes me feel like I am sleeping with a guy.’ My partner has even gone as far as trying to introduce me to his mum and grandmum.
He is unshakable and tells me, ‘Who cares when they come to know who you are?’ Because many of our mutual friends are his family members, I’m always asking, ‘What if people find out?’ He says, ‘Come out. Let them send me whatever. Let them say they disown me. I don’t care.’ So we moved on and got this far. When I asked him what he’d do if his parents found out about me, he said, ‘I will bullshit them and be with you. As a matter of fact, I think it is high time you started flaunting.’ Now I am the one telling him to slow down. He has been wonderful, if not perfect. I feel free with him.
As with life, everything has this ripple effect, this domino effect. All the things that happen to women I now experience, especially the power play between sexes: men making passes at you and believing it is their right to have sex with you or rape you.
Men calling you ‘ashawo’. If you disagree with them or stand up to them, you must be a prostitute. I didn’t understand, before, how a woman could get raped and not scream or speak out. Now I understand. People say, ‘Ah, she is a woman. She should have screamed. She should have fought back.’ I look at them in consternation. They are talking from the point of view of a man with masculine strength. I now know that it is not a woman’s fault. It is not our fault.
I was nearly raped as a guy and I stood my ground. But when I was living as a woman, the same thing happened and the person nearly conquered me. I had just met this person, and he wanted to get me tipsy but I refused. I was fully confident in my strength and thought he couldn’t try rubbish with me. I didn’t realise that I was no longer as strong. Since my place was close by, I thought it was okay to walk home even though he was complaining. When we got to the end of the junction to get a cab, this guy turned and slapped me, held me and dragged me to a waiting bike. This happened fast and I was in shock. When I came to myself, I started whispering to the bike driver, ‘This guy wants to rape me. You have a sister. You have a mother. Help me.’ The driver stopped and the would-be rapist started beating me, saying ‘Imagine o, my wife is misbehaving.’ But the bike man turned and started fighting the rapist. Passersby heard the sounds, and helped me get away. I was just thinking, Ah, he mustn’t find out who I am. If he can be this violent, he shouldn’t know. He mustn’t know.
Sometimes when I’m sick, I can’t go to the hospital because they ask me all manner of questions: When was your last period? Have you had any abortions? All these questions that don’t apply. You can’t open your mouth and tell them that you are a trans woman. I don’t come out to doctors. I did once, a long time ago, but Nigerian doctors like playing politics. They said that I would have to take hormones for a very long time before the effects would even start manifesting. Then the price: they said that to take hormones for a month would cost N300,000. When I came to Kaduna State for NYSC, I priced all those hormones and they cost less than N30,000. I was shocked. It was affordable. I took them once and the effects showed faster than what I’d expected. But I stopped taking hormones after that first time. I chose to plan for the future, to get ready and restart. When I start I will not take it for a long time. Probably one year, two years to three years and I will stop. I always pass for female anyway. I became patient. When the time comes, I will take the hormones.
I used to want surgery but now I am indifferent. Patience is the most important lesson I have learned in life. You will get what you want. Never lose focus. No matter what, never lose focus, ever.
Another thing I am proud of is me. I am not a proud person, but I love the fact that I am confident.
Even when I was living as a guy, no one could come and spit trash to me or try to break my spirit, no, uh uh. I do not let it happen.
I am not a religious person. I am a spiritual person. They say that religion is the opium of the masses and some people play that religious card too often. They go, ‘The Bible says’ or ‘The Quran says God hates your type.’ To beat religion at its game, you have to study it. What did the scripture say? What did it mean? What was it implying? I tell people the Bible is like a pharmacy. In it you find expired goods and you find recent stuff.
Study it like it is the law. You need to understand it so they can’t twist it. I can’t imagine going to a Bible that says that if you have a stubborn child throw him off the edge of a cliff or something. It also says that it is a sin to eat crayfish or wear garments made of more than one fabric. So if you want to bring the religious card to me, I will go and study that religion very well so I can give it back to you, with facts.
In the future, I see myself living with my partner. We would have adopted kids, probably two, have cats and dogs and be in Nigeria, probably Abuja. I want to bring up my children so they respect all people and it will be easy for them to relate to me. My children will be able to tell me if they are gay or lesbian or trans or whatever. If people are homophobic and transphobic, I will be BIASphobic. My kids will realize that they have to respect everybody. I will lay this foundation in my children so that they pass it on to the next generation.
Outside family, I am focused on this NGO we are starting. I hope it gives birth to other NGOs and trans and intersex issues are taken seriously all over the country. I hope Nigeria becomes a tolerant place for everyone over the next fifty years.
When I was younger, I was always hoping I could live as a woman.
I used to play with Barbie dolls and pray my hair was like theirs. I am very happy that dream was actualised even though I lost friends. Looking back now, I realise that I am better than them. I have moved on in life. That taught me a lesson. No one can be your best friend except you.
–JP, age 33, Lagos/Ogun / Abuja
1 400-level = Fourth year at university 2 NYSC = National Youth Service Corps
3 LASUTH = Lagos State University Teaching Hospital
