Rachel Attard

“In the past I was so unhappy with myself that I barely have any pictures of myself. Now I am so happy with the way I look that I flooded Facebook with my selfies,” says Mick Cordina, a 50-year-old transgender man who started the transition from female to male 18 months ago. He spoke to The Malta Independent on Sunday about his past which was hard as he had always lied to himself, and a present in which he is now himself.

Mick explains that it is not easy to pinpoint a particular moment in his life when he decided that he was transgender: “For me, it was the slow realisation of who I really was, but not everybody is the same. I am the type of person who thinks and reflects before I actually act. As for society, I was born a girl so I needed to act like a girl. I was born in the sixties when even the word gay was still taboo in Malta and very few people knew someone who was gay. People with a different sexual orientation were hardly seen on TV, and if someone had a family member who was gay, they would make sure s/he was not in the public eye. Because society had imposed on me certain social mores, I used to wear a mask and hide behind it. At first, when I felt I was attracted to women I thought it was a bad thing because at that time society only accepted a relationship between a male and a female. Luckily, this is not the case today.

“I remember that when I was about 35 years old and saw two young women holding hands in Paceville, I asked myself, ‘How come they can do it and I can’t,’ and decided to join the lesbian community.

“However I still felt I was not happy with my identity. Eventually, when internet arrived in Malta, the doors opened wide and as a result our Maltese mentality started to change because we were able to see what was happening in the rest of the world. I remember using MIRC to chat with other people abroad.

“When I turned 46, I realised who I was which provided the answers to all my questions. Internally I was really a guy imprisoned in a female body and had lived my entire life lying to myself. I realised that the way I use to act was a complete lie. I have been on hormone treatment for the past 18 months and living fully as a man. I can assure you that this mask that I used to put on for so many years has now fallen off,” a visibly relieved Mick said. “Nowadays I can say that I am at peace with myself, this is who I am even though living with the change is a daily challenge. One of my fears when I came out as a trans man was that I would be rejected by people who are close to me, and luckily I wasn’t.”

Mick says he was so unhappy with himself that he barely has any pictures of himself as a female.

“Now I am so happy with the way I look that I have flooded Facebook with my selfies and the running joke is that I am the king of selfies. Today I form part of an NGO called Gender Liberation, an organisation that works to connect, inform, and empower gender diverse communities in Malta. In this organisation I am an outreach officer for trans men.”

Mick spoke about the way he lived his childhood and teenage years as a girl. “I always felt more comfortable doing a man’s job even when I was a child. I used to go to a girl’s school run by nuns and there was this girl who, for a particular health reason, was allowed to wear trousers. I remember going home and telling my mother that I also wanted to wear trousers because I never wore skirts and dresses when I was not at school. Unfortunately, the nuns would have none of it and I remember feeling very angry and disappointed.

“When I attended primary school, I used to remove my skirt when lessons were over, put on shorts with no T-shirt and go to the field next to our house and play football or ride my bike with boys. I never played with dolls; I remember my father giving me a big cute doll and within hours I had shaved her hair off, applied war paint, put her on a tree and shot arrows at her. In fact my parents ended up buying me boys’ toys like bikes and scalextrics; my biggest hero was Evel Knievel, an American stunt man. I use to look in the mirror and hate what I saw because what I wished to see was a boy. Another incident I remember was when I was around four years old and my mother sent me to ballet lessons and dressed me in a tutu. I cried my heart out because I didn’t want to go.”

In his teenage days, Mick started becoming more and more aware of his male tendencies, although physically he was a girl. “Puberty and sex education in a nun’s school during those years was almost non-existent and I remember thinking that when I got my period it would transform me into a man and when this did not happen I said wondered why. I remember the feeling of frustration and the inability to express what I really felt. At that time there were no support groups and structures in place to help people like me. In fact, when I was 14 I started drinking a lot and this lasted for almost four years. With hindsight, I say that I suffered from depression. I use to socialise but I was also withdrawn. I used to feel this anger inside me which I couldn’t express. When I was in secondary school my nickname was il-Bulldozer and instead of being interested in makeup and dresses, I started taking an interest in motorbikes and their engineering. Mick shared a particular episode which will always remain printed in his head. “My teenage friends locked me in the bathroom to apply makeup on me and everybody was laughing at me. I could not blame them because they did not know what I was going through; for them it was a way to make me look pretty and more feminine.

Asked about how he sees the situation in Malta when it comes to transgender people, Mick immediately replied: It is great to have the legal framework that the Gender Identity Bill gives us but the problems we are facing right now are the lack of support services.” He added that when it comes to medical treatment, the state has changed things. He confirmed that the Gender liberation group had meetings with Health Minister Chris Fearne and expressed their concern about the lack of medical treatment that is offered; their next meeting is with Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli. Mick said that trans people need these medications throughout their entire life for them to be able to live according to their gender. These things are needed now because people are suffering now and transgender people are a minority within a minority.

Asked if it is difficult to be in a relationship as a trans person, Mick smiled and said, “I can honestly say I’ve had more interest from the opposite sex than I ever had before and the reason is because before I wore a mask. I am a man and like to go out with women, I am not gay.”

Before ending the interview, Mick wanted to send a message to the public: “Educate yourselves, open your mind and listen to what we are saying and listen and support your child. Everybody knows of a gay person or has someone who is in his family and is accepted. I have nothing different from you, I am a human being and I have the right to be who I am. Now I am ready to help others who are like me and want to be given support.” Mick added that “probably if I’d had Willa’s book when I was a child, I would have told my mother this is me. I know Willa’s parents and I have seen nothing but love and support for this child. Willa is a great little diva and I love her to bits. Parents know what is best for their child but the child is the person who knows what is best for himself/herself. Do not judge and attack them; it is terrible to live a life trapped in a cage because society doesn’t let you live your life the way you want to.”