Many years ago he and our author were colleagues. There is something wrong? Then just like this: Thies was a man who no longer wanted to look like a woman. A reunion.
This is the story of a boy born in a small town in northern Germany. When he was seven he played soccer, climbed, carved and had his hair sheared. When he was twelve, he lathered his chin with shaving cream and scraped it with the blade: Maybe that will stimulate the growth of the beard! A few years later the first girlfriend, the first job. He's always the last person to notice when a colleague gets pregnant or gets married. Women talks? Not his thing.
Absolutely normal"?
A perfectly ordinary man's life. Just not. His body is that of a woman. He has a female first name, others say "she" when they speak of him. And he lets her. Only after his 50th birthday does anything change.
But from the beginning. At the turn of the millennium we were colleagues in an editorial office in Hamburg. What I saw: a sporty, not unfeminine mid-thirties, blonde curly hair, lip gloss, with whom I chatted about music and fitness. That she loves women was not our topic. Everyone should, should everyone please keep it as it pleases – at least in my environment that was the tenor. I didn't have the term "transgender" in my repertoire, however. No trans model walked the catwalk, even in sports, politics and business, trans people were as good as invisible.
It's different today. And my colleague is now called Thies. When I got his friend request on Facebook some time ago, I almost deleted it. Because I thought: I don't know what does this guy want? Then I read the surname, took a closer look at the profile picture: the facial features, on the one hand familiar, on the other hand more distinctive – in a way that could not only come from the additional years. The hat, the man's shirt. Was that the brave correction of a misunderstanding or a late life crisis?
My brain tries to match the image on my retina with the old images.
Months later we are sitting across from each other in his eat-in kitchen. His voice, already deep and full, has slid down a semitone again. My brain tries to match the image on my retina with the old images in my head. The alert blue eyes, the mouth ready to smile are the same as before. But the shoulders on this new body are wider, all contours more angular, the feet fit sneakers in men's size – consequences of the testosterone gel that Thies uses daily and that calibrates the hormone mix in his organism to be masculine. The female breast is held back by a tie under the shirt. If Thies faced me as a stranger, how would I classify him: M, F, D?
"I have known all my life that I am not a woman. But for a long time I had no words for it," he says. In the first few years this was not a problem: "I was wild, boyish, was often mistaken for a boy, but everyone accepted – I was just me." It was the early seventies when there were neither gendered toys nor pink bling-bling clothes for girls, but all kindergarten children wore the same rust-red nicknames and prince iron heart cuts. But gender-neutral paradise wasn't forever. When he was ten, he confided in his diary: "I'm a boy, can it be operated on?" With the onset of puberty, things got more complicated: "Suddenly I had breasts and was thus defined as female." Even wide Norwegian sweaters didn't change that.
Stand by yourself? Not easy
But the longing to be oneself flies under the radar, the pain he makes out with himself. He falls in love with women, finds like-minded people in a gay and lesbian discussion group at 18, including trans people, whose role models both fascinate and frighten him: "I thought: Then I have to go all the way to the operation of the genital organs. With all legal ones and medical hurdles. " The suffering was high, but the obstacles were even greater.
You have to know that not only has the zeitgeist changed since then, but also the legal situation. For a long time, both the Transsexual Act and the regulations of the health insurance companies contained provisions that were not only perceived as tormenting by those affected. Married couples had to get a divorce until 2009 before they could officially change their entry at the registry office; until 2011, sterilization was a prerequisite for this. Health insurance companies demanded degrading everyday tests. In 1999, at the time when I had no inkling of the internal struggles of my colleague at the time, only 265 people across Germany took on all of this. Today, after several legislative reforms, there are around ten times as many per year.
Thies struggled with his identity for decades, sometimes less, sometimes more: "A cork that you press under water always comes up." A TV documentary finally untied the knot in 2017. "It was about trans men who had gone different ways. While one had not changed anything in his female sexual characteristics, the second had only chosen hormone treatment, the third had a complete operation, including an artificial penis. It was like a revelation to me: there is not just black and white, not just doing or not. " On the same day he sticks artificial whiskers to his chin and is as happy as a child when he passes a mirror in his apartment: Great, that's me! Shortly afterwards he goes to a concert with Bart and receives enthusiastic feedback from friends. A feeling of being reborn. He makes his decision. First for a new name – angular, masculine, Nordic – then for a new body. "Hormones and breast surgery, yes, but my lower abdomen is taboo." Thies does his thing, doesn't want to adapt. Neither the majority nor the own community. "Even in the scene, especially among younger trans men, there is competition: Who does the chin fluff sprout the fastest, who looks the most manly naked? I won't go along with that."
There is still a long way to go
He's not there yet. An official change of civil status is expensive, 1500 or 2000 euros can easily be charged for reports, the medical measures have their risks and side effects. It helps when the environment catches you: "My friends, my roommate – almost everyone is celebrating my transition. I started a new job last year, and I'm totally accepted there."
Not a matter of course: The German Society for Transidentity and Intersexuality states the unemployment rate among adult transgender people at 21 percent, three to four times as high as the national average. What about the family? "My mother still calls me by my previous first name, I can't talk her out of that. But I still feel loved."
He says he has become more relaxed in recent years, at the same time more argumentative, less addicted to harmony. A consequence of testosterone, which is considered an aggression hormone? Yes, but not only. It is also getting older itself. And the experience of finally arriving at yourself. He does get sad sometimes when he thinks about how much life his decision has cost him. But there is nothing to regret, and the woman he sees in old photos is not the enemy, not a stranger. "She is a part of me. I also celebrated, worked and loved in her shape." Oh yes, love. The last was six years ago. Isn't there a piece of luck missing for a man who likes women? Something else is more important. "You know," says Thies, "I've always been looking for someone who makes me whole. That's why I couldn't be alone." And now? "I have everything in me. I can love myself. Sometimes I'm really infatuated with my own reflection." What does he see in it? A person as familiar as they are new. And sometimes a little boy who likes to carve, climb trees and yell, "Man, dude – where have you been for so long?"