We have a long way to go

1

Aris: We have a long way to go

Hello, my name is Aris, I am 34 years old, and I am a transgender

guy. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, I knew I wanted to be a boy ever

since I realized that there are little girls and little boys in the world. In preschool,

we were all the same, and I didn’t notice anything, I was just a little kid. Then in

elementary school I started to understand that there was this difference: I am a

little girl and they are boys. So that’s when I started to understand that

something was wrong. I started to wonder, if I’m a little girl what does that

mean? What should I do about it? I started to like girls, I mean looking back, at

that time I didn’t understand what was happening and what it was all about. I

thought it was completely normal but then I started to notice around me that to

like girls you have to be a boy. At that point, I started to hide how I felt.

For years and years, I dreamed of waking up a boy so I could be free to

like girls. Of course I never said that to anyone, but I always hung out with boys, I

always wore so-called boy clothes. Of course I don’t actually believe clothes

are definitively for girls or for boys. Luckily, I have very open parents and they

always let me choose what I want to wear. They gave me the space to choose

freely: what I want to play with, who I want to play with, what I want to wear,

what sports I want to play. I was never pressured to do ballet. If I wanted to

learn taekwondo, they put me in taekwondo, if I wanted to play basketball they

signed me up for basketball, if I wanted to swim, they signed me up for water

polo. I wanted to ride bikes all the time, and they were supportive. I biked with

all the little boys in the neighborhood and we generally did what little boys do in

elementary school. Up until high school, that’s about how it was. Fortunately I

had and still have very, very open and accepting parents.

Until high school, I had accepted that I was a little girl. Okay, I didn’t

like it and I still wondered why I was a girl. I didn’t understand, but I hid my

thoughts because I understood that society had given me this role, that I was a

girl, and that it was wrong to say I was a boy. Back in about 5th grade, I had

introduced myself once as Aris and of course everyone believed me, because2

at that age all little kids look the same, especially if a so-called biological girl is

dressed in boy’s clothes, no one would ever know. So they believed me and I felt

very, very good about it. But my friends started bothering me about it,, asking

me, “why did you introduce yourself as Ares? If you are a girl, your name isn’t

Ares. What is this? You are not a boy!” So, I started to see that all in all they are

not accepting or open to all this, so I started hiding it. I hid it through middle

school, I hid it through high school, I hid it all until 3 years ago.

As far as sexual orientation, I have always liked girls and that never

changed. I had never had a relationship with a girl or done anything at all, not

until I was 20 when I had my first girlfriend. As a teeanger, I always hid my sexual

orientation and my gender identity…Well, I didn’t even know what gender

identity meant and I didn’t even know what sexual orientation meant,

because we’re talking about a decade in Greece when all you were likely to

hear about lesbians was that they were “unshaven communists.” That’s how

people talked about lesbians and gay men and how they were shown on

television. I’ll put it in simple terms just like it was done then: they were just dykes,

and it was a bad thing, and gay men were a laughing stock. And let’s not even

start about trans people because in the years I was in elementary, middle

school, high school, trans essentially only meant the trannies on Syngrou. So

what were trans people? they were prostitutes. So I grew up getting all of those

cultural messages. I never got that from my parents, but generally I see that the

messages that you get as a child you don’t just get it from your parents but your

whole circle has an impact, so the whole society around you. Your parents

might be great, but what you hear at school and from the friends around you

has a bigger impact. For me at least that’s how it worked.

I was bullied a lot because I always wore baggy pants and had a

hip-hop style and never looked like a girl. I’ve been chased in the schoolyard,

and had tomatoes and eggs and flour thrown at me because I just looked

different. I’ve been thrown in a dumpster with my head upside down because

the appearance of my hair was different. I have curly hair and I’ve always had it

short. I’ve generally been bullied a lot about my appearance and how different3

I’ve always been, so I’ve always hidden what I felt and what I was. I stopped

thinking about it until my twenties when I had my first relationship with my first

girlfriend. It hardly lasted a month but at the time it was everything to me. That’s

when I started to accept my sexuality, at least.Gender identity was still an

untouchable topic for me, it was buried very deep. As things stood, I was a

woman and I liked women. I was never at ease, of course, with the fact that I

was a woman and I never liked being called a lesbian… not that there was

anything wrong with being a lesbian. I understood afterwards why, because I

wasn’t a woman after all.

6. Well at 20 I had this first relationship and it was the most liberating

thing that had ever happened to me. That’s when I started to at least accept

my sexual orientation. I was a little late in telling my parents because I was still

scared, even though they had given me no indication that they wouldn’t

accept me or that they wouldn’t love me. Finally I told my parents and

everything was fine. I had prepared for the worst reaction even though in my

heart I knew I would have the best reaction. My mom was like, “yeah, okay, I’ve

been waiting for you to tell me for years. I’ve known since you were 8 years old

that you like girls.” So then I started to feel okay with my sexual orientation and I

started dating girls. I had relationships, and I never hid the fact that I was a

lesbian at the time, although again I never liked that word. I never said I was a

lesbian. Instead, I always said “I like women” or “I have a girlfriend.”

When I first came out as a homosexual, things weren’t very open in

Greece but I faced that discrimination and I never hid. I have been kicked out

of bars because I was with my girlfriend and we kissed, nothing major, just one

kiss. I’ve been kicked out of 3-4 bars for that, still I didn’t hide and I never hide. I

don’t like hiding, but my gender identity issue I didn’t face it, at all, until I was 30.

From 20 to age 30 was a period of discovering myself. At 30, I decided to leave

Greece, I decided to leave and move to Scotland to find, I don’t know, maybe

a better life, maybe better conditions. On February 26 of 2018, the day after my

birthday, I took my suitcase and my ticket and I up and moved to Edinburgh.4

In Edinburgh I started to see a different attitude in general from the

people around me, not just in terms of the homosexuality issue, but I started to

see…well, I started to see trans people, I started to be exposed to a wonderful

new world where everyone was so accepting and so open. I would see

seemingly men on the street, and I say seemingly men because I don’t know

how they identified, wearing skirts and wearing makeup and having painted

nails and I would look around and I was the only person looking. But you know I

wasn’t looking in a judgmental way, I was looking and saying, wow! But I was the

only one, nobody else. People didn’t pay any mind and I started to see more

diversity around me and at that point I started to feel ready to examine my

gender identity a little bit, to see what happens. Because I wasn’t happy, I

didn’t like being called a lesbian, I didn’t like being called a woman, I didn’t like

having breasts, I hated them, and I always covered them up.

One useful thing about Scotland is the weather. I could always

wear a sweatshirt that didn’t show much of my body. In Greece, summers were

terrifying because I had to wear a t-shirt, due to the heat. I went through

summers in high school, especially when my breasts started to show, wearing a

sweatshirt in 35 or 40 degree weather, because I couldn’t stand the breasts I

had. So the weather made a big difference in Edinburgh. At some point, after

about a year of thinking about all of this, anyway, I started having some panic

attacks and general anxiety issues, a lot of which I eventually realized had to do

with my gender identity.

I met a very, very nice man in a gay bar in Edinburgh. He came and

talked to me and somehow, without any explanation, he understood me

straight away. We started talking and he helped me a lot, to finally see that yes I

am transgender, and that it’s okay. I don’t have a problem, I don’t have to hide

it, I don’t have to be afraid. The first thing he said to me was, “you’re a very, very

handsome boy, what’s your name?” But he didn’t hit on me and I felt so

beautiful and so safe at that moment. And I opened up to this man. After that, I

started going to therapy, I accepted the fact that I am transgender and started

taking steps to start hormone therapy.5

And I realized later, that was why most of my relationships broke

down. Because I couldn’t accept myself. Basically, I stopped having sex,

because I didn’t feel good about my body. Because as we all know in a new

relationship you try things, you do new things, sexually. But as my relationships

started to evolve, I started to shut down more, I started to hide my body even

more, because when you are in love your partner wants to see your body more.

That’s the point at which I started to hide more. In most of my relationships I

reached a point where I stopped having sex. I have never felt at ease having

sex. I mean there have been very few times, I could count them on one hand,

that I’ve felt relaxed and actually enjoyed it. I’ve always been tense, it’s always

been my breasts, my hips, my womanhood, getting in the way, so then I hide

and stop.

12. When the panic attacks started I went to a psychologist and she

helped me to understand what was going on. After a year of that, I set out to

start hormone therapy. The thing is that abroad it’s very, very easy to get

referred for gender related treatment, it’s very open. In the UK, there is free

hormone therapy, free mastectomy, bottom surgery, hysterectomy, it’s all free.

The only bad thing about the UK is that it has a waiting list. I’ve been on that list

since 2019 and I’m still waiting. So I went to my GP, because that’s where we

have to go when anything is wrong, you’ve got a toothache, you’ve got a

backache, anything you go to the GP. So I went to the doctor, he said, well it’s

very simple what we need to do, he takes my details, he takes a questionnaire

out there and he does my reference, he gives me a referral to the gender clinic

which is free to go, make an appointment, talk about starting hormone therapy.

The thing, like I said, before is that I’ve been waiting for my first appointment

since December 2019. So I decided to go to a private clinic, which is not the

cheapest option. Luckily, in Greece, I have friends who have gone through the

process and it’s pretty simple. Right away, you get a paper from a psychiatrist,

you take that to the endocrinologist who then prescribes testosterone which you

pay for. I think with public health insurance it’s about 20 € , and that’s simple.

However, in Greece there is no free mastectomy, there is no free hysterectomy,6

there is no free bottom surgery. The only affordable thing you have is the

hormones. Anyways, I decided to go to a private clinic in Scotland because I

couldn’t wait any longer.

I reached a point where I realized that I’m 34 years old now and I felt that

I couldn’t wait until I’m 40 to start all this, that would have other health

implications. The good thing is that I’m getting closer to the top of the waiting list;

now the National Health Service is seeing people who were referred in August of

2019 so it’s getting close to my turn. So the national health service will take over

my hormone therapy. At that point I will stop paying and they will provide it for

free, and eventually they will cover mastectomy and also bottom surgery if I

decide to do that, which is something I don’t want to do at this point because I

don’t feel that the technology is adequate. (άντικουιτ)

I started taking testosterone in August. It was very simple. Well, I should

say as a disclaimer that one should always start hormones with the supervision of

a doctor and by doing the proper blood tests. I say this because I know a lot of

people who have started on their own and it’s not healthy at all, given the

effects of testosterone in general. When I started seeing an endocrinologist he

prescribed testosterone to me and he administered the first dose because I

chose to take an injectable. There are 3 methods of taking testosterone. There is

the injectable which is available in a few different brand names that don’t

make much difference. There is also a gel form of testosterone which you put on

your shoulder every day. As for the injectables, there is one type you take once

every 3 weeks which is the one I have chosen. The other injectable is done once

a month but it’s a higher dose and it has to be administered by a nurse. I

perform my own injections, in the thigh, alternating legs each three weeks. I am

on my third dose, so the one I will do next week will be the fourth dose.

As for changes, I’m in my second month so I haven’t seen all that many

changes yet. I see a little bit of fluffy hair starting to grow where I never had any

before. I’m not especially hairy, unfortunately I didn’t get those genes!7

My voice hasn’t dropped yet– that usually happens after about five

months. A lot of people tell me that they think my voice actually has dropped a

little, but I don’t notice a significant difference. Although my voice–from what I

remember and from what I’ve always been told– has always been a little lower

than the typical female voice; it’s never been a high voice.

I have seen changes in my period. Generally this happens with

testosterone it takes a while but around the five month mark the period starts to

stop.

As far as mood swings, a common side effect of testosterone, I haven’t

had any major effects yet. All I notice when it’s approaching the time to take

my next dose is that I feel tired, I have hot flashes and in general my mood is

lower. I’m not all fine and dandy as usual. I don’t know how much this will

change as my testosterone levels go up. My levels whenever I’ve looked at my

blood work are going up so the injections are doing their job. Yeah, it’s also

showing and from the fuzz I’ve started to finally get. However facial hair is

typically genetic, you never know if you’ll have a full beard or if you’ll grow hair

everywhere. The mother’s side plays a big role genetically. One negative effect

of testosterone is hair loss so you can experience baldness, again depending on

your genes. You don’t know in advance what’s going to happen to you. In that

sense it’s a bit of a Russian roulette game you’re playing with testosterone.

Another change that I have seen with hormone therapy and especially

with testosterone is that I gain muscle much more easily and my body fat is

getting redistributed. So I have noticed that since starting testosterone, I see

more significant and faster results from, say, doing weight training at the gym.

Not huge changes yet, because hormone therapy also requires a lot of

patience. You can’t compare your transition to anyone else, you have to have

faith in the whole process.

Nowadays, I’m a little more aware of how I talk to women and how I talk

to little kids. Before transition, I often talked to kids while I was out and about.

Nobody minds if a woman on the street says hello to a little kid. Now I’m more8

aware of myself and I’m more reserved when I meet little kids; for example I

won’t touch them or pat their heads because I’ve gotten strange glances from

parents doing that. I’m also much more aware of how I behave towards women

in bars, for example. Like, if I need to get by a woman in a crowded bar I might

have used a gentle, platonic touch and then walked by. Nowadays I just say,

“Excuse me” with no touching at all.

These days, especially in Edinburgh, I’m not usually misgendered. That is

to say, everyone reads me as a teenage boy. I do feel I have to be a bit more

careful so to speak. For example, when I joke around with my colleagues, I’m a

lot more careful with what I say – I don’t make any sexual innuendos in my jokes

because I worry it might be taken the wrong way.

And now I wonder how my life will change. I can’t do the same things

and behave the same way because it will be understood differently. I had a

customer come into my Starbucks job, where I work now in Edinburgh, and start

fighting with my barista, because he didn’t like something. I intervened and

apologized to the customer but he started yelling, “Tell me who you are!” When

I told him that I’m the manager he said, “I don’t talk to women, I only talk to

men.” So I corrected him by saying, well, actually I am a man. He started

laughing at me, saying you’re not a man, you’re not a man! So I threw him out

of the store. In Scotland, you have the right to throw a customer out. Here in

Greece, in as many customer service jobs as I’ve had, and in all the arguments

I’ve been in, I never felt empowered to tell the customer to leave.The boss has

typically intervened and appeased the customer, because, as they say, the

customer is always right. At that time, I was read as a butch lesbian and I got

different treatment. I mean, feminine women are typically respected more than

someone who is seen as butch. I was made fun of and I wasn’t taken seriously

at all.

I also had a challenging situation with a colleague who I have corrected

many, many times. He told me, “When I look at you, I don’t see a man, I see a

woman.” I said, “I don’t care what you see. I respect you, you will respect me9

or I will take you to HR.” The thing is, in Edinburgh I have the right to file a

complaint against him and I feel safe enough to do it. In Edinburgh, I have rights.

I have rights as a trans person and as a worker and that’s the main difference

that keeps me there. I don’t like Edinburgh , it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s winter 10

months of the year, it’s still dark at 9:00 in the morning and it gets dark again at

3:00 in the afternoon. But that’s what I like about it: I feel human, and I feel like

no one will judge me except, ok, some religions and their followers. I’m being

counted. That’s the main thing, and especially as a trans person, I am not

questioned by strangers.

26. I do want to move back to Greece so badly. I want to come back

but I don’t know what kind of treatment I’ll get here. This respect that people

have in the UK for the individuality of everyone I think comes more from fear of

the laws, and legal ramifications for not abiding by the law. People are

reluctant to hurt you because it’s forbidden, legally. If someone says something

that I consider transphobic, I feel good knowing that the law is on my side. . So

they avoid confrontation in the first place, they tell you, “what you want to do is

your right and I can’t come between your rights because that’s what the law

Well, as far as the bureaucratic issues are concerned, I want to change

my name legally because eventually I’ll have a beard, and if my passport

shows a very old picture, has another name, and says female, I think I will have

a little problem. So I will have to change it. From what I know, here in Greece

you have to file papers and make a court appearance to change your gender

marker, then you have to submit that court decision to have the authorities

change your passport and your identity card. Female to male trans people also

have to obtain a male registration number and that’s where the army comes

into play, since Greece had mandatory military service for men. I know many

people who received army summons after changing their gender marker to

male. And beyond that, if you have university records you have to apply to

get them changed, plus everything medical. All your information.10

So this is a long process. You have to pay lawyers and appear in court

and then months later you get the decision. Then you have to go through a

whole process of running around, to different bureaucratic departments. I’m

going to have to do that at some point and I’m going to have to travel here to

Greece and handle it. In the UK there is a document called a deed poll. You

log onto the UK government website and you download the file, you print it out,

and it’s sort of like an affidavit that says “I declare that as of this date I am legally

using this name and that my old name was such and such, with the ID number

such and such.” You pay £50 if you want extra photocopies. You mail in this

formand, within a week you’ve got the paper saying, “yes, okay you are this

name, you are a man or you are a woman, use this form attached to submit

your passport and documents you need to change.” That’s it. No courts or

anything. It functions like an affidavit. But I can’t use this process because I’m a

citizen of Greece. So I will have to come here to change my papers.

Generally, since I came out as trans I can say that I’m very lucky first of all

with my family because they accepted me as I am. Okay, they don’t use the

correct pronouns 100% of the time, but they are trying. As far as my friends, I’ve

actually gained friends. Such as people from high school that I never thought

they would accept me because I remembered how they talked back then, I

remembered their ideas back then, but of course we haven’t talked in a

decade. I never thought they would accept me but some of them have sent

me messages and said, “I’m very happy for you,” and they talk to me with my

correct name, not making mistakes, and ask me questions they’re curious

about. A couple of friends, yeah, have drifted a little bit apart but that’s to be

expected. I actually like this opportunity to clear the air to see who’s truly a

friend and who’s not, so for me it’s an ideal situation. Thankfully the way I’m

treated at work hasn’t changed at all. I’m abroad of course in a country where

the treatment of trans people is different than it is in Greece. When I came out,

the people at work changed from one day to the next without making a

mistake. Well, one colleague had a bit of an issue but we sorted it. It was also a11

matter of his religion, so I can understand somewhat, but we discussed it and

sorted it all out.

From the time I came out for the first time, as a lesbian, I was part of the

queer community here in Athens. I remember going to Myrovolo then, and Noiz

and S-cape. Of course these were places to go to have fun but there was

always a sense of community and I always felt safe in these places. I created

friendships, some that lasted and some did not. I met many of my girlfriends in

these groups. I felt like part of a community and I truly felt like I belonged

somewhere. I loved the feeling of belonging even though I didn’t feel like a

lesbian back then. When I left Greece I distanced myself from that community

because I no longer felt like I needed it. In Edinburgh, I felt so safe everywhere in

that city that I didn’t need to feel like part of a community to find the feeling of

safety. I made friends regardless of queer affiliation and I don’t have any explicit

contact with the community.

33. These days I also don’t know what’s going on with the community in

Athens. I’ve distanced myself and every time I come back here I feel further

and further away from the community. It’s as if since I left , I’ve forgotten about it

and it’s forgotten about me. I mean a lot of the friends I had back then in the

queer bars, now I don’t even know what they do and where they are. I don’t

feel like I need to participate in a queer community especially living in Scotland.

Maybe if I was still here in Greece I would still feel like I needed it. But there were

also a lot of things going on before I left that started to wear me down in terms

of the community.

34. I started to see a lot of homophobia within the queer community. A

lot of judgment coming from a place where we’re not supposed to judge

anyone and we’re all fighting for something in common and we all came from

the same place. We’re supposed to be united as queer people yet we end up

calling each other names because so-and-so is too butch and so-and-so is too

femme. Criticizing and making fun of each other. So that was starting to push

me away from the community a lot, even before I left Athens. To tell the truth I12

certainly don’t feel like I want to be a part of a community that acts like that

again.

Also because I now identify as a straight man I don’t feel like I belong in

the gay community. I’m not a lesbian, I’m not gay anymore. And I don’t even

know where trans fits in that community. In the beginning when I was first

coming out as trans I found myself wondering, can I go to a gay bar or a

lesbian bar anymore? I mean, of course I can go but I started wondering, since I

see myself as a man and I see myself as straight I started wondering where I

belong.

Now as far as Greece is concerned, the challenges are even bigger here

because you always have to defend yourself. Society, at least in Greece, has

started to be a little bit more accepting. It has started to accept that there is

another side of the coin, that not everything is black and white, but I think we

have a long way to go. Trans people here in Greece have always been

persecuted, they have always been a laughing stock and now slowly society

has started to come a little bit closer to acceptance. Slowly I see people

coming out and I see laws changing, but there are many challenges. Say

you’re looking for work.. Some of my friends have told me about incidents early

on in their transitions when they faced pushback from potential employers

about their gender presentation or identity. Or, imagine someone who is being

read as a man but he hasn’t done his papers yet and has a female gender

marker. He can’t get a job because of that. Compare that to Scotland where

you can make a declaration of gender identity and legally, you can’t be

challenged.

We have a very long way to go and we have to face a very big fight

here in Greece in terms of rights for trans people. Even with the name change,

right? We need to make it a little bit simpler and a little bit easier because I feel

that they want to prevent me from doing it by making the process so difficult. It’s

a challenge to go through this whole process. And for another example, simply

going to a gynecologist when you’re a trans man. Anyone who hasn’t had a13

hysterectomy needs to go to the gynecologist routinely and that is a challenge.

They stare at you, and I’ve heard people tell me that they go to hospitals and

the staff use dead names, the staff call them by female last names and don’t

give proper medical care because they don’t personally agree with trans

people existing. I’ve heard extreme things and if you go abroad, at least based

on my experiences in the UK, there’s no way you will be refused treatment if

you’re trans. It’s also a challenge to travel when you’re a trans person who

hasn’t changed their passport because you have to explain to every clerk why

your passport says something that doesn’t line up with the person they see in

front of them. The challenges all come from living in a society that doesn’t fully

accept trans people, in which even just walking down the street you’re likely to

get dirty looks if you don’t fully pass as a binary gender .