Many trans women seek to feminise their appearance, but you've chosen a beard – why?

Alex Drummond: I was aware that I was unlikely ever to pass as natal female, so what I wanted to do is to see if it was possible to create another space. I did it in a very radical way; I was testing new ground. I knew that simply shaving my beard and putting breasts on wasn't going to make me pass, and I used to work for an architect and he used to say, "When you're designing something you either make it very deliberately level or very deliberately off." So that was the philosophy.

What I want to do is to widen the bandwidth of gender, to make it more possible for more people to come out as a transgender, to live authentic lives. If all you ever see is trans women who completely pass and are completely convincing as natal females, then those of us who just don't have that kind of luck won't have the confidence to come out.

For the people who don't pass I can say "don't be afraid" because what I've discovered is you don't need to pass, what you need is to act authentically. And if a child sees me and thinks, "Bloody hell, so it's not as simple as pink or blue or football or ballet – there must be 101 possibilities in between," then maybe I can serve the greater good.