My name is Jo Pavlov. When you have a gender-neutral, monosyllabic name, people often ask you to repeat your name. I say "Jo." They hear "Jill." I repeat, "Jo." They scratch their heads. They say, "As in Joanne?" I say "Jo. As in Joseph."

The fact is, my parents named me Joanne when I was born, a nice name for a girl.

The only problem is, I wasn't a girl. How could they have known that? A cursory look at my genitalia at birth had me swaddled in pink. I went through something akin to female puberty at 14, and found myself buying a bra and feminine hygiene products. My parents came by their mistake honestly. Later in life, I did an Ancestry DNA test and it came back with XX chromosomes, and to make matters worse, I liked boys, and boys liked me back. That's a girl, right?

But I always knew I wasn't a girl. The way most people know what they are, I just knew what I wasn't. I railed against the patriarchy, wore army boots, shaved my head, got large masculine tattoos and stopped shaving my body. There was never anything girlie about me. I wore suits and ties or hoodies and tees in my twenties.

Later I gained weight and my body betrayed me. I was trapped in plus-sized ladies wear to accommodate a mammoth bust. I was angry a lot of the time about that, but I'd wear men's jeans and shoes and that was good enough for a while.

At 28 I decided to start going by "Jo." I'd returned to college, ready to reinvent myself. My new friends called me Jo. In the ensuing years, my college diploma had "Jo" printed on it. I ran for the Green Party in three elections and "Jo Pavlov" was on the ballot all three times. But legally, I was still Joanne.

Through the years, when asked about my gender identity and sexuality, I didn't have words to explain what was going on. I was fascinated by transgender, but I knew I wasn't one. Before the vocabulary came, I told people I was "a gay man trapped in a straight woman's body" because that's the best I could come up with. I liked men. I had several gay boyfriends, gay boyfriends who broke up with me because I lacked what gay boyfriends want and need — male parts.

Then came that magical day after Chaz Bono's transition, when trans topics exploded in the media, when I found a YouTube channel that gave me the word I'd been looking for my entire life: Genderqueer. I didn't know there were other people out there like me. I was 36 years old. I was neither male nor female but there were words to describe us. I was a female-bodied genderqueer person, or a genderqueer person "assigned female at birth" — AFAB. I was genderfluid, or gender variant, or agendered. It was like the sky opened up and the sun started shining.

Since that glorious day, life's been pretty good. I work for a school board and my name got out there as a gender identity activist. I have had myriad public speaking gigs with high school kids about gender. I was even invited to speak at a Halton board-wide Pride event. I made YouTube videos for years on a channel called "genderqueerchat" about every genderqueer topic under the sun.

In 2014, I managed to get the breast reduction I'd been wanting to get for a decade. The doctor was transphobic, though, and despite my pleadings, would not give me the chest I asked for. He reduced me to a size "appropriate for a woman my size," according to him. I felt I had no choice unless I went private and paid. I bought a chest binder and was able to fit into a lot of menswear, and even bought a few new ties. I chose to focus on the new chest I had and not the chest I wish I had.

And then this year, when I moved back to Hamilton, I went to get a library card. The library staff would not put "Jo" on my library card because it wasn't legal. After years of going by Jo, I was fighting this fight again. After some bickering, they handwrote it on the card, but I didn't know they didn't change it in the system. One day I received a message with an automated voice saying, "JOANNE PAVLOV your book has arrived." I was furious. What if I was a transgender person in a situation where the revelation of my birth name or birth gender would result in violence toward me?

I stormed down to the library and had another showdown with the staff. This time my name was changed and finally, I decided to legally change my name at 44. It's only $137 and takes about eight weeks. Jeez, if I'd known that, I'd have done it years ago.

Recently the papers arrived in the mail. I spun around like a ballet dancer. My name is Jo Pavlov.