Gender Affirmation Journey

Hi everyone!

First of all - thank you so much for taking the time to read my story & consider donating towards my journey. I am incredibly grateful for any support shared towards my journey & it truly does mean more than I could ever express in words.

Before sharing my truth & speaking on my journey, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land I am speaking from: the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. I would like to pay my respects to Elders, past, present & emerging. This Land ALWAYS WAS and ALWAYS WILL BE Aboriginal Land.

My name is Chloe, and I am a proud transgender woman based in Warrang/Sydney. Many of you may know me from my ongoing work as a queer events curator, promoter & performer.

I have been undergoing a medical & social transition for a number of years now - undergoing hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as well as taking other steps towards living in a body I feel more comfortable and at home within.

Living and working within the queer community for my entire adult life has taught me the importance of lifting each other up, of having each other’s backs, of showing love and kindness to each other & above all that we are all stronger together than we could ever be alone.

I am grateful to all of the transgender women, and the transgender community both at large & locally; who inspired me to start my own journey years ago, and have continued to gift me the strength & conviction not only to live my truth proudly, no matter how hard things have been; but also to ask for support when I can’t make it alone - which is what I am doing today.

I am grateful for the community that have showered me in love and affirmation from the beginning of my transition and taught me the power & great importance of protecting & nurturing Trans Joy in ourselves and others.

Starting my transition amidst a global pandemic has been nothing short of an immense challenge, both emotionally & financially; and coming from an incredibly low socio economic background growing up has made my journey all the more financially difficult.

It is for this reason I am forcing aside feelings of shame & unworthiness and asking for financial support from anyone who can contribute;

towards my goals of undergoing Gender Affirmation Surgeries - primarily GRS/SRS (Gender/Sexual Reassignment Surgery also known as bottom surgery); as well as minor surgeries such as trachea/Adam’s apple shave & corrective rhinoplasty; in order to live more peacefully as a woman within my own body.

Unfortunately, the combined costs of these procedures in surgery fees alone (without factoring in travel, accommodation, time spent unable to work due to recovery, insurance and other fees) is likely to exceed $45,000 AUD

& this is not an amount I can reach on my own. For this reason I am humbly asking for support from anyone who can contribute, no matter how small the amount is, to help me find greater peace and embodiment within my journey.

To continue the story of my journey; I grew up in a very poor household in regional Australia, in a situation that unfortunately isolated me from queer community & thus possessing an understanding of my own transgender identity until later in life. Going through a male puberty unfortunately means ones body & face developing in a way that was is masculine, something which I am now as an adult attempting to alter & feminise through the ongoing processes of Hormone Replacement Therapy & feminisation surgeries.

When I did eventually find my way to Sydney (after a 6 month stint in Brisbane), I began to slowly understand that who I was was vastly different from the person I’d been taught to be growing up. Over time, I began to meet other queer people of varying identity & lived experiences - through living in sharehouses, performing in drag venues, struggling through half a degree at USYD, living & working all across Sydney for many years and so on; this began to show me the inner truth of who I was and who I knew I was to become on the outside.

In around 2019, very early in my transition; I launched myself into very public visibility and started running my own queer events (including Going Zodiac) as well as working with others (including Honcho Disko & the Imperial Erskineville) in order to harbour safe spaces for all queer people; especially those of us who identify as transgender and often feel ostracised from both the world at large & queer communities due to a lack of visibility and understanding of our experiences.

My dream was & always has been to be a visible, outspoken & powerful transgender woman working within the events & arts community. When I started my journey; I experienced so much fear and uncertainty about transitioning that almost lead me to take my own life - and this is something no transgender person should ever have to experience just because of who we are.

I felt compelled by my own difficult experiences in transition to become so bold, so vibrant, so sentient, so visibly proud, powerful & joyful in my own trans identity and experience that no one could ever feel that damaging and life threatening fear and feeling of isolation I felt ever again.

I wanted to be so loud, and so happy in my identity, that trans people who came after me would no longer feel shame or sadness on account of living as our authentic selves, but rather know just how beautiful being transgender really is; and just how much all transgender people deserve to live full and long lives that are joyful, peaceful, safe, vibrant & embodied.

This has been a big dream, and I of course don’t think I’m the only trans person to have dreamed this dream or wanted to bring it to light - but it is a dream that is ongoing, and the conversation on, the fight for, and the struggle towards full transgender liberation is also ongoing, and is an ongoing fight I intend to continue taking part in.

Being transgender, and undergoing what is most easily termed “medical & social transition” is not always easy, and often times comes with hardships. Despite the joy I have felt across my transition, I cannot deny that I have also found transition emotionally damaging, socially isolating, physically endangering on a great many occasions & above all financially suffocating.

Attempting to pay for the ongoing costs of transition - including paying for hormones, hormone blockers, specialist doctors, endocrinologists, laser hair removal costs, ongoing vocal training, surgical consult fees & surgeons fees - has been an incredible challenge amidst a global pandemic no less. This has lead me to work concurrently within a number of industries to keep on top of everything - including but not limited to events industry, hair & beauty, performing, promoting and working in adult industry.

The total combined costs of the surgeries I am intending to undergo in my transition exceeds $45,000 AUD for surgical fees alone; and unfortunately this is not an amount I or any trans person from a financially disadvantaged background such as myself can feasibly reach on our own.

For this reason I am humbly asking for financial support, no matter how big or small, from the community around me in order to reach my goals of gender affirmation and living at peace within my body.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my story, and for supporting both my journey and the ongoing fight for transgender liberation. Any support is appreciated, no matter how big or how small, and even sharing this GoFundMe Link across social media would mean the whole world.