ABSTRACT
“A Person Beyond Gender” is an honest first-hand account of one transgender person’s experiences of early life, teenage years, and early adulthood while in the grip of what he now understands to be gender dysphoria. In a desperate attempt to gain control of overwhelmingly powerful feelings of wrongness, confusion, and turmoil, he spent years battling eating disorders and obsessed by extreme diets and weight-training regimens that lead to national-level bodybuilding competitions, while trying to concentrate on his prestigious professional career. It was only with the help over many years of a therapist that he finally began to make sense of it all and was able to recognize and accept that he is a transgender person. He describes the crucial support he gained from the therapeutic relationship and the importance of the work that was undertaken, particularly around concepts of gender, identity, and what constitutes a person, and how this facilitated his subsequent successful social and professional transition two years prior to the time of writing when he was 33 years old. He also discusses the challenges faced in therapy, his physical experience of transition, and his first years living as his true male self.
