I Believed Myself to Be a Homosexual Woman - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Realize the Reality

In 2011, several years ahead of the celebrated David Bowie display opened at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I came out as a lesbian. Until that moment, I had exclusively dated men, including one I had married. After a couple of years, I found myself in my early 40s, a newly single caregiver to four kids, residing in the US.

During this period, I had started questioning both my gender identity and romantic inclinations, seeking out clarity.

I entered the world in England during the early 1970s - before the internet. During our youth, my peers and I were without social platforms or YouTube to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; conversely, we turned toward music icons, and during the 80s, artists were playing with gender norms.

Annie Lennox donned masculine attire, The flamboyant singer adopted women's fashion, and pop groups such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured performers who were publicly out.

I craved his narrow hips and precise cut, his angular jaw and masculine torso. I aimed to personify the Berlin-era Bowie

During the nineties, I spent my time operating a motorcycle and dressing like a tomboy, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I decided to wed. My husband transferred our home to the United States in 2007, but when the union collapsed I felt an irresistible pull revisiting the masculinity I had previously abandoned.

Considering that no artist experimented with identity to the extent of David Bowie, I chose to use some leisure time during a summer trip visiting Britain at the gallery, anticipating that maybe he could guide my understanding.

I was uncertain exactly what I was searching for when I walked into the display - maybe I thought that by immersing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's identity exploration, I might, in turn, stumble across a hint about my true nature.

Before long I was positioned before a compact monitor where the visual presentation for "the iconic song" was playing on repeat. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the primary position, looking polished in a slate-colored ensemble, while off to one side three backing singers wearing women's clothing gathered around a microphone.

Differing from the performers I had encountered in real life, these female-presenting individuals failed to move around the stage with the self-assurance of natural performers; rather they looked disinterested and irritated. Placed in secondary positions, they had gum in their mouths and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"Those words, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, apparently oblivious to their diminished energy. I felt a brief sensation of empathy for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, ill-fitting wigs and restrictive outfits.

They gave the impression of as awkward as I did in female clothing - frustrated and eager, as if they were hoping for it all to be over. At the moment when I realized I was identifying with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them tore off her wig, removed the cosmetics from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Surprise. (Naturally, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I became completely convinced that I wanted to rip it all off and become Bowie too. I wanted his slender frame and his precise cut, his angular jaw and his flat chest; I aimed to personify the lean-figured, Berlin-era Bowie. And yet I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Announcing my identity as queer was one thing, but personal transformation was a considerably more daunting outlook.

It took me additional years before I was willing. In the meantime, I tried my hardest to adopt male characteristics: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my feminine garments, cut off my hair and commenced using masculine outfits.

I changed my seating posture, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I paused at hormonal treatment - the potential for denial and second thoughts had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

After the David Bowie exhibition completed its global journey with a stint in New York City, following that period, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Facing the same video in 2018, I knew for certain that the issue wasn't my clothes, it was my physical form. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a feminine man who'd been presenting artificially since birth. I aimed to transition into the man in the sharp suit, moving in the illumination, and then I comprehended that I was able to.

I booked myself in to see a physician soon after. The process required additional years before my transition was complete, but none of the fears I anticipated came true.

I continue to possess many of my female characteristics, so people often mistake me for a homosexual male, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I desired the liberty to explore expression as Bowie had - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I am able to.