About the blog authors

Blue: I had the incredible "luck" to begin my transition right after Paul McHugh had just shut down the Johns Hopkins clinic, in effect triggering the worlds first anti transsexual backlash... really? Wasn't this hard enough? But like dealing with the many many many physical assaults and beatings I endured growing up an effeminate child who wasn't a girl? This was just another miserable thing to work through...

Back in the pre-internet days, it was so incredibly difficult to find a surgeon who would even talk to you about this much less perform SRS, particularly in the vacuum left by the shuttering of John Hopkins... but eventually through the grapevine, I heard tell of a doctor in absolutely nowhere Colorado who was "doing the op!" Many letters exchanged, and three years of working 7 days a week, scrimping and saving every penny I could beg borrow or steal. I had the funds!

I scheduled surgery, hitchhiked halfway across America because I was too poor for a roundtrip bus ticket...arriving in that far corner of Colorado a pretty boy, but leaving a woman. Albeit very sore scared and very very broke but... with the one thing no one could ever take away from me now.

I was physically a woman. (Or as close as medical science could get me)

Lets just say that first quarter century was anything but easy... but when you've lived through the beyond nightmarish things I have? If and when you come out the otherside it gives you the impetus to want to make the most of every single moment, and I have!
I went back to school, fell in love, married, we adopted then divorced and I built the first of several business, fell in love again, married and together he and I built a life...

No, I never got that white picket fence and rose covered cottage I dreamed about as a child and I've absolutely no regrets...and had a surprising and wonderful life. I'm a mother and a grandmother and those dark times are but distant memories...

I've helped others along the way over the years and it's my deepest wish to continue to do so in hopes that NO ONE every has to walk the paths I did. Leanne Mills

Leanne originally started her transition in 1979, aged 18. During this period she took part in a local TV documentary about transsexualism, most probably the first 'trans teenager' to do so.

However since little help in prescribing female hormones was available in those days, she decided to abandon her course after 2 years and try living in the male role as 'Lee'.

This proved disasterous for Leanne, 10 years that witnessed her switching between male and female roles in further unsuccessful attempts to resolve her gender dysphoria. Severe depressions and mental instability took their toll until she attempted suicide in 1992.

Feeling she had nothing left to lose, this act motivated her into transitioning once and for all. This time she succeeded, finally undergoing SRS in Hove in 1995.

But after what she had already been through, Leanne was pragmatic enough to know the years ahead as a trans woman would still be difficult. Indeed it proved, encountering societal prejudice, rejection from male partners and suffering post-operative problems.

Despite these setbacks Leanne does not regret her transition, knowing there was no other alternative. Recently she has become very concerned at the rise of aggressive trans rights activism towards women and the subsequent increase in children and young people identifying as trans.

In reaction she approached the UK press last year in order to raise her fears. This was followed up with a Twitter account to promote her message, which Leanne hopes will eventually help to bring peace back to the trans debate. 

Jenny Randles

Jenny knew something was not right from early childhood and started seeking help from doctors in the 1960s. The policy with children then was to watch and see - not assume you are trans and hope for the best. It was hard but Jenny considers it was the right approach.

From school she trained as a science teacher in Cheshire but when starting medical transition was advised not to continue as the world was not ready.

She took secretarial work which paid her way whilst being assessed over treatment options by psychologists and psychiatrists in various clinics. This was a long process under the NHS then and had already included several attempts to 'cure' her with transition only regarded as the very last option not the first. Part of the 'treatment' involved qualifying as a football referee in junior games. Something she gave up pre transition as women were then not allowed even to play.

Attempts to find less invasive ways to resolve the diagnosis of transsexualism also were intended to make sure, very sure, that transition was the right way forward in each case. It built both resilience and realism as to what was and was not possible.

When forwarded for reassignment surgery, this followed in 1976, and a waiver had to be signed confirming this was not 'changing biological sex' - a sensible step sadly since unwisely abandoned, Jenny believes.

Two years later Jenny got engaged to her boyfriend and, though unable to be married since UK law had recently changed to prevent that for transsexuals, they were blessed by a minister and bought a house together.

Jenny qualified at college post transition in educational media work and wrote her first feature for BBC TV in 1975, was published as an author in 1979 with the first of 50 books, and wrote features for magazines including New Scientist and She. Later she wrote and appeared in many TV and radio shows including documentaries for BBC Radio in the 1980s. During the 1990s she worked on and wrote the books associated with the hit ITV series, 'Strange But True?' 

None of Jenny's writings discussed her medical history, out of respect to her family who had stood by her through hard years  as a child when transsexuals were not part of daily life in an inner city suburb. However, her medical history was known to many in the media who chose not to regard it as necessary to discuss instead of her other work. It was then possible to be a person without transsexual coming to define your entire life. Something we have unhappily moved away from in recent years.


In 2004, as one of the first to obtain a UK Gender Recognition Certificate, Jenny became a full time carer for the next 13 years but continued to write her long running monthly column for the magazine Fortean Times.