I'm 74 years old, have four children, four stepchildren and eight grandchildren, soon to be nine. Yet I was transgender for 15 years, between the ages of 12 and 26. It was a painful and unforgettable experience during which I was obsessed with not letting my trans-identity show through effeminate behaviour or a spontaneous reaction that would betray my homosexual tendencies. I mention it here because, at my age, you have to ask yourself what you want to do before you die. Well, I want to pass on my story to tell young people suffering from gender dysphoria that there are at least three ways of dealing with the pain of gender dysphoria:

1) Resigning oneself to living with dysphoria.

2) Changing one's body to match their mind via hormone therapy and surgery.

3) Reconciling your psychological identity with the biological identity of your sex with help from a qualified therapist. Today, this third path has become a new taboo called ‘conversion therapy’. It's a mistake to make it a new taboo, even if a famous documentary on the subject has mixed conversion therapy with exorcism, guilt-tripping speeches, group prayers and behaviourist therapies from another age, as well as some legitimate and honest speeches, with a certain amount of bad faith.

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My experience seems to prove that there is a third way, which I call ‘reconciliation therapy’ between gender identity and sexual identity (not to be confused with ‘conversion therapy’). Yes, psychological identity is a flexible thing and there are therapies that allow you to change not only your behaviour, but also your self-image in the eyes of yourself and others.