ANDY Guy knew from a very early age that he was in the wrong body.

Here he tells Sunday Style magazine of his amazing journey of sexual reassignment and how it changed his life.

When I was little, I asked Mum how she chose my name. She replied: “If you were a girl, you were to be called Anna, and if a boy, Andrew.”

“Then I am Andrew,” I declared.

Even at five, I knew that although I looked like a pretty, blonde girl, I was really a boy. I identified with boys, I wore boys’ clothes, eschewed dolls for skateboards and dirt bikes, and threw colossal tantrums if my hair wasn’t properly shorn like a boy’s.

Mum presumed it was a tomboy phase and I’d grow out of it. It was the ’80s and words like ‘dysphoria’ and ‘trans’ weren’t in the general lexicon. She didn’t know I was secretly making myself boys’ parts out of cardboard, putting them down my pants and even trying to urinate through them.

She also didn’t know that whenever people failed to recognise I was a boy, it caused me real physical pain. I was sent to a private all-girls’ school near our home in North Sydney. In retrospect, it was the safest option for me. I’d have been bullied in a co-ed school. I dismissed my school tunic as “just a uniform”, blocked out puberty and was delighted when I only developed small breasts.

media_camera Andy as a child.

As I grew older, however, the dating puzzle was less easy to resolve. Because I was attracted to girls, I tried dating lesbians. That didn’t work because they somehow recognised I was a man in a woman’s body, so they ended the relationships. I tried dating boys, but only because I wanted to hang out and go to the footy. That didn’t work either, because I wasn’t attracted to them.

Despite having a loving family and successful career in marketing, I became suicidal with misery and confusion– something I now know is very common among transgender people. I had to get help orI wouldn’t survive.

I consulted a psychiatrist. He concluded I was intelligent and grounded and could start hormone injections to turn me into a man immediately. But it was a huge step; I had to be completely prepared.

At the time, I’d been dabbling in acting. I approached a studio, explained my situation and asked to play male roles only. After three months of moving, dressing, expressing myself as a man and having people exclaim, “Wow! This is who you are,” I felt able to begin treatment. And that’s when everything fell apart. My mum had battled cancer since I was 10 and passed away when I was 21, so now it was just my dad and my younger brother. When I explained I was about to embark on gender reassignment, we had a fall-out. I guess they were upset I had made this life-changing decision without them. Perhaps, too, my dad was sad at the thought of losing his little girl.

We stopped talking. I told friends. Some of them also freaked out. I even lost the daily support of work, as I was so unsure of how people would cope with my transition, I quit.

media_camera Andy as a young woman. Picture: Sally Flegg Photography, www.sallyflegg.com.au

I knew no transgender people and, in a way, was too fearful to seek them out in case their experiences were different to mine. As I prepared to step into the unknown, I felt totally isolated.

Thank goodness for Augusta Miller. The daughter of Happy Feet director, George, she wasn’t just a wonderful, non-judgemental friend, she supported me in another way… I heard a doctor once observe that gender dysphoria was one of mother nature’s cruellest jokes.

I agreed and wanted to pass the lessons I was learning on to other transgender kids, as well as to families and medics. In 2010, Augusta and I began to film my journey.

Every two weeks, I had hormone injections. Very quickly my voice deepened and my shoulders broadened. My breasts shrank and hair grew on my face. I worked out with a trainer to build upper body muscle and went from monthly female cycles with moods going up and down to developing a new empathy for teenage boys as I coped with feeling constantly pissed off and sexed up.

media_camera Andy always knew that he was in the wrong body. Picture: Sally Flegg Photography, www.sallyflegg.com.au

Within seven months, people were calling me “mate” and I was transformed from an attractive thirtysomething woman to a very youthful-looking lad. In fact, I looked so young, I was constantly refused entry to bars! The potential for confrontation with bouncers if I showed them my ID stating I was female was unthinkable. I needed to change my gender legally, so in May 2011, I had a complete hysterectomy.

I was now officially Andy, except for one very important thing. Although complete gender reassignment, phalloplasty, isn’t available in Australia, it is in Europe and America. Even there, only a handful of surgeons are expert, but after much research, I found one I was happy to have operate on me.

There was one more major hurdle. The cost was $80,000 and I could raise only half that. I spoke to a family friend – my mum’s bridesmaid – and asked her to approach Dad about a loan. I still don’t know what was said but, shortly after, an email arrived. The money was in my bank account.

In June last year, Augusta joined me in the US both to film and care for me. She was a true friend. My surgery took 14 hours and involved removing a large piece of flesh and skin, two nerves, and an artery from the sensitive area on my inner forearm.

media_camera Andy is now 33 and living in Sydney, awaiting further surgery. Picture: Sally Flegg Photography, www.sallyflegg.com.au

The nerves were microsurgically attached to other nerves, including one around what was my clitoris so my new phallus had erotic and tactile sensation and I could still orgasm. I had a vaginectomy to stitch everything up, the skin was made into a scrotum and an urethral extension created so I could stand up and use the bathroom just as I’d dreamed of doing when I was little Anna.

I woke up in terrible pain, but we still managed to film me taking my first look. It was extraordinary. I was very definitely and very completely Andy.

Today I’m 33, living in Sydney’s inner west and awaiting further surgery in March. This will enable me to have an erection. In the meantime I continue to heal both physically and psychologically, and part of that will probably involve moving overseas. I need some space from everyone and to live in a new environment where people only know me as a man, don’t judge and don’t have this endless curiosity about what my genitals look like!

I’ve seen Dad, but he hasn’t commented other than to worry that I looked worn out. He calls me ‘An’ rather than Andy, but that’s fine.

I’m just grateful for what he did. Meanwhile, Augusta and I are editing two versions of our film.

One is an educational version. The other will tour the film festivals. It’s called It’s Not About the Sex. That’s because my journey was never about sex. It was about my own wellbeing, health and quality of life.

I still have photos of myself as Anna; I honour her life, but she was miserable and in pain, and that was taking its toll. Andy is much happier. And he’s me.

To follow Andy Guy’s journey, visit his blog, andrewiguy.com

To download the Sunday Style app, click here.

Originally published as Becoming Andy: ‘Why I changed gender’