3 months gone and nearly there!!!

 I am a transgendered woman, I have a male body but a female mind.  I am serving a 5yr 8mth prison sentence and have been in an open prison since 11/09 because I'm in an open I get out for a week and go back for 3 weeks on a rotating cycle.  I am due for release in June this year.  On 18th January 2011, I started living as a woman in a man's open prison in Scotland(after the newspaper,The Daily Record, had plastered it all over their pages.  

All the prisoners have been great and they were the ones that I thought would be the most problematic.  The staff have been OK but mostly they have been getting their digs in by being slow to change my name, even refusing to change it on my permanent record, after I had changed it legally with my lawyer.  The hardest part was trying to get friends who have known me for years to call me by my 'new' name, Cassie!

 I am attending a gender clinic and getting all the right treatment.  I am going for full gender reassignment and I am lucky to have the full support of my family!  A few of my friends said that they were surprised when I told them what I was doing as they don't know anyone as 'manly' as me, yet they don't understand that all the things that I did was to cover how I was feeling on the inside!!!

I will use this blog to raise awareness of trans issues and let you know what trials I face, for example: One evening when I was out I used the toilets at the Gala Casino in Glasgow and when I came out management sent a bouncer over to pull me up.  In front of lots of patrons of their establishment it was mentioned, loudly for all to hear, that if I used the female toilets again I would be barred.  I am incensed at this and go to speak to management, who refused to speak to me in an office in private but out in the open(again).  They had no problem in showing me their disgust at who I am and the attitude for management was a complete disgrace. 

 These are the trials that I face on a daily basis and will keep you all up to date on them, also the good things that happen too. 

I will write more to give a complete update before I go back to jail for my 3 weeks there.