Bethany Black is a stand-up comedian. She also happens to be a post-operative transsexual lesbian - but don't dare try to pigeonhole her

It's difficult to know how to sum myself up. I'm tempted to go the Goodfellas route: as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a lesbian.

I'm often billed these days as "Britain's only goth, lesbian, transsexual stand-up comedian". I'm also a vegan and recovering drug addict and alcoholic, but by this point you might as well just call me Beth because pigeonholes become redundant.

It's the lesbian and transsexual bit that confuses people. They stare and think that a) I don't look like any of the ones they've seen on Jerry Springer, and b) what's the point of being both? They don't understand that sexuality and gender identity isn't the same thing: gay men don't want to be women, and lesbians don't want to be men.

Being trans is like being gay, and as Sarah Silverman says of being a comedian: "You're just born that way and it's beyond your control." Sexuality exists on a spectrum, as does gender identity - mine just both point away from what you'd expect based on biology at birth.

When I started doing stand-up I was most of the way through my transition, living "full-time", as they say, but pre-surgery. It was 2004 and Peter Kay was popular, and as much as I was a fan at the time I knew my observations wouldn't work like his did: "I tell you what you don't see anymore ... urinals! Oh, just me on that one ..."

For the first three years I didn't mention being trans at all on stage. I was scared to, and as I "pass" very well it wasn't necessary to mention it. For the first six months I was terrified to mention that I was a lesbian, but through repetition it becomes easier and less scary because you know what the reaction will be.

Other comics knew I was trans and it led to some in-jokes off stage. I was so comfortable with it that it wasn't an issue, so it was inevitable that I should talk about it in my act eventually. But it's a difficult subject to broach the subject on stage, because it needs time to explain.

British comedy audiences start from a position of: "Go on then, make me laugh!" First you have to prove that you're funny, and only once they trust you can you get away with talking about things that are outside their comfort zone. Also, people don't like to be confused, and the fact that I'm pretty, a lesbian, and on top of that transsexual, is pretty confusing to your average stag party on a Saturday night.

People don't tend to heckle with transphobic comments. I've had a few, but they were borne out of homophobia rather than transphobia. Occasionally an audience member will shout, "Are you a man or a woman?", to which I reply: "Your chat-up technique could do with a little work."

As a kid I was very bookish and geeky, and really into comedy and science. I sat in my room obsessing about things to escape the dawning realisation that I was transsexual, which was described in the dictionary we had at home as "someone biologically of one sex with an abnormally strong desire to be of the other sex."

I've never been sure what an "abnormally strong desire" is. I mean, it wasn't abnormal to me - there was very little ab and a whole lot of normal, and if you're basing it on the consensus then surely the word abnormal is redundant?

But "abnormal" I was to society, so I went from a smiling, happy little blonde kid to a dark black thundercloud of a human. I was on a downward spiral of depression and self-loathing as the gap between my self-image and outward appearance grew day by day.

Fortunately, I'm terrible at suicide. I attempted it a couple of times and spectacularly failed: I tried to hang myself and dragged down a ceiling, losing my deposit on the flat; I tried to gas myself in the car and ran out of petrol. Suicide, it seems, is not the easy way out, nor is it painless.

Upon reaching rock bottom I decided to get help, and I've never looked back. I'll never forget my mum's response when I told her I was transitioning. She stared at me for a couple of seconds, and then said: "But we've just had a conservatory built!"

My family was on the whole totally supportive, and some of my friends said: "That makes sense". I never had to use all the counter-argument and righteous fury I'd built up to deal with the inevitable intolerance. I felt like a 17-year-old with parents who do understand what they're going through. Still, every time I left the house I was sure that someone would find out my secret and throw rocks at me. No one did.

After I transitioned my life just got better and better. Mostly people don't care about me being trans, and coming to terms with the fact that those who do are the ones with the problem was a big moment for me. These days it affects my life so little, it's strange to think why it was such a big deal, why I let the depression get so bad.

It doesn't affect my comedy much now. I talk about it, but it's not all there is to me. I just get on with my life. Sometimes people can't understand that: they want there to be more tragedy; they want me to have suffered, so they can raise me up as a beacon of hope and show how brave I am.

I'm not brave; I just did what anyone else would do in the same situation. Reduced to its least sensational terms, I was born with a congenital birth defect and a hormone imbalance which I've had treated with surgery and hormone replacement.

The comedy that I do is based on honesty and telling true stories, and my hope is that in the telling it makes it easier for those who follow. And to be fair to my mother, it was a fabulous conservatory.