The author in 1989, one year after beginning her transition.

This question was going unanswered on Quora:

What was it like to be transgender in the 1980s?

Did you have a vocabulary and concepts for your identity and who you were as trans? Who did you identify with? Who were your role models? How did the culture of the 1980s make your life easier or more difficult? What other aspects of the 1980s shaped your identity as trans? How do you think your experience then differed from the experience of people now who have greater internet access to support and visibility in the media?

I am intrigued that this question has been sitting here for 2–1/2 years, unanswered by any of my (1980s) trans generation…I conclude that a) there are very few of us; and/or b) we are all woodworked. Probably both…

I think of the 1980s as the latter part of the Trans Dark Ages. Perhaps someday we’ll see the present time as the Middle Ages leading to the Enlightenment. I hope so.

I cannot speak to how it was for everyone everywhere, but I can say how it was for me, as a trans woman, where I was, and what I saw happening around me. With the caveat that I was, in many ways, the exception to the rule, and I’ll summarise and contrast that at the end.

But first, here’s my story:

I began my transition in 1988 and ‘completed’ just over twelve months later, in 1989, at age 32. If this seems quick, it was: it had to be. And this kind of haste was usual in the women I knew.

I was in a larger, relatively liberal city in a western country. Nevertheless, it was bloody dangerous to be trans (and yes, it often still is). I was very fortunate, in that I achieved something like 90% passing privilege within 6 months. I was also very careful. Nonetheless, I was assaulted more than once during the early months, and escaped what could have been severe beatings.

The greatest hardship by far, then vs now, was the complete lack of information. I know for certain that I’d have transitioned 10 or 15 years earlier had basic information been available (as it is now). As it was, by the most unlikely chance I came across some printed material about gender dysphoria and treatment for same. Had that bizarre fluke not happened it could easily have been another decade or more before I learnt that transition was possible. On the unlikely chance that I survived that long (I was in bad shape, gender-wise).

Once I learnt that transition was possible, it was very, very difficult to locate caregivers and other trans people. I ended up by telephoning across several countries, tracking down people-who-knew-people, until I was finally put into contact with the tiny trans community in my city, and through them got access to an appropriate therapist and endocrinologist and, ultimately, a surgeon. It was all semi-underground.