‘I developed anorexia trying to stop male puberty – hormones were a life-saver’

As told to: Tom Stichbury

This article appears in the Attitude Sex & Sexuality issue, out now to download and to order globally.

I grew up in Barcelona, in Spain, and it was only when I moved to London – I was 18 – and met other trans people that I actually became relaxed and at peace with the fact that I was trans. Until then, I thought that my transness was the biggest curse.

I arrived in the UK and I got into nightlife and met my queer friends and other trans women. I realised that I had been blinded by a society that was constantly telling me that my transness makes me sub-human, less of a person, a second-class citizen.

Meeting these girls – some of them hadn’t had gender reassignment surgery; some of them had; a lot of them had boyfriends; a lot of them had great lives – they were happy with themselves.

You get into this whole community and you discover that you’re beautiful, that it’s not something to repel or hide, to be scared of or dramatized. It even made me question, you know, do I want sex reassignment surgery?

We’re finally allowed to have conversations that allow us to enjoy our transness, and I do things like this [the photo shoot], because I want other girls to see that it’s fine to be a trans girl with a penis and that it doesn’t rob you of your femininity or your identity.

I’ve started to do a lot of research into my trans heritage, into trans women who have come before – like April Ashley and Caroline ‘Tula’ Cossey – and the Stonewall movement as well.

Photography: Francisco Gomez de Villaboa

I have read so many biographies and I became really proud of the stamina and the resilience of these girls, and how hard it was just for them to exist but, regardless, they did it and they did it flawlessly. I, in turn, became proud of my identity as a trans woman and I wanted to be open about it.

I’m a triplet so I have two brothers who are the same age – I know, it’s crazy. I was extremely feminine as a kid, like, playing with Barbie dolls, and my parents always thought I was going to become a feminine gay boy. They already assumed that I wasn’t going to be a ‘traditional’ straight man, but they never considered that I might be trans. I came out as gay when I was 10, but when I came out as trans, at 12, it was a massive shock for them.

It was because of Kim Petras, who was the first trans girl to get sex reassignment surgery under 18. I think she was 16 and it was all over the news. Back then, I didn’t know that you could transition, I was just dealing with it how I could. I was, like, wait, what do you mean? Can I do this? As soon as I read the news article title, I went to my mum and told her. It wasn’t cute – but it got cute later.

Photography: Francisco Gomez de Villaboa

My parents have been so supportive. It didn’t take them that long, but the first two weeks of me telling them, they were not having it. Then there was a point where they thought about my whole life and were like, “Obviously.” It is really scary in the beginning and it comes out of love, for sure. They’re just worried for you; they were thinking about the references they have for trans women, who were either the dead bodies in the movies or sex workers.

When I started this whole process, I was depressed, and I had an attempt at taking my own life. I was seeing my brothers go through puberty and the understanding that I was going to go through the same thing was driving me nuts. I developed anorexia because I thought that was going to be a way out of it; I knew that anorexic girls lose their periods, so it was something I started doing just to try to avoid puberty.

Hormones didn’t come until I was 16. I spent three or four years having psychological check-ups and speaking with all of these doctors. They couldn’t prescribe me hormones because back then it was illegal; you could give blockers to minors, but you needed to go to a court and, for some reason, I couldn’t do it; there was a problem with the legislation or something, so I was not able to access blockers. Those three or four years were the darkest years of my life so far.

Photography: Francisco Gomez de Villaboa

The trauma of the experience is pretty intense, and I think that’s why many trans people long to change their physique a lot. I go through that a bit, because you’re trying to run away from that image you have of yourself, of that 12-year-old boy that was bullied and that you, yourself, didn’t like… you get obsessed with changing your physique to get away from that image.

Something that is great about the queer community is not just that they accept you as the woman you are; it’s actually about how that past is what makes you the woman that you are today, your bravery, your fight.

I always think, if I had been born a cis girl, a biological girl, I’m not sure I would be the same person. Maybe I wouldn’t be as kind or as empathic as I am, or as motivated by people’s struggles because I wouldn’t have gone through them myself. There’s a beauty as well to the struggle.

Photography: Francisco Gomez de Villaboa

I love fashion and I became obsessed with the female form as it’s something I couldn’t obtain for a while. A lot of my clothes come from a sense of, making the illusion of a really curvaceous body without the need of having to have one, doing certain cut-outs in certain spaces and exposing certain areas of the body.

There are always connections between my clothes and my transness. One collection, I had this woven embroidery made out of flowers that had headlines from the ’60s and ’70s of transphobic newspapers referring to trans women. The concept was trying to bring the naked body of the trans girl into the visuals without having it be in a sexualised way, so the flowers are actually bottom halves of trans women, like the hips and the penis.

Femininity actually saved my life. If you don’t ‘pass’ as a trans woman, you put yourself in such a dangerous position. Every time you go out into the street, or every time you get clocked is an opportunity for you to get attacked. I get clocked sometimes and it’s a terrifying thing.

Photography: Francisco Gomez de Villaboa

That’s why femininity is so important to our community because it allows us to survive. People just see, oh, trans women are so obsessed with their looks and their physiques and they think we’re so vain. There is a part to that, but at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is modify our bodies to please society’s standards to actually be respected as the women we are. Women die because of this – it’s not a joke. I’ve been attacked because of this when I was just starting transitioning.

I think the root of [transphobia] is the lack of understanding and knowledge and representation. A lot of people see us as this ‘othered’ individual. We’re just people – it’s not that deep. There is so much conversation and warning and drama to it all that when you actually meet somebody who is trans you’re like, oh, OK.

If I ever become a super-big designer, I would love to have a show in Paris inspired by the girls I’ve been reading about – April, Tula. I think that would be so fierce to give them the spotlight.

Follow Alejandra Muñoz on Instagram @missalejandramunoz.

If you’re LGBTQ or questioning and need someone to talk to, call Switchboard any time between 10am-10pm BST on 0300 330 0630.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the Beat Helpline from 9am-8pm during the week, and 4pm-8pm on weekends and bank holidays on 0808 801 0677.

The Attitude Sex & Sexuality issue is out now.