I have been living with these feelings since I was a kid. I can remember telling my parents I wanted to be a girl when I was about four.

I remember having a conversation with a bisexual man once, who told me that what I described was the wrong woman when it came to my ex-girlfriend. How and why? Well, I remember my ex-girlfriend spraining her ankle and I prepared us a meal. She didn't like the fact that I was more comfortable doing traditional female things (she even disliked how I followed the soaps) than traditional male things. I came to loathe the hair on my body and I have taken to removing it and I feel some less dysphoria.

I can remember having horrible dysphoria when my father was friendly with a work colleague who was, I would be describe as, a selective feminist. She said that she and my mother would sit and drink wine and send the men off to go fishing. I remember, numerous times, we played Trivial Pursuit and she had a son a few years older than me, and she would want it to be men against women. As it would be four against two, I would end up playing on the women's team. I remember, nearly 36 years to the day ago, playing Trivial Pursuit at a picnic, and her husband said to me, "The little girl in the yellow sweatshirt," as I was playing on the women's team.

This woman, however, believed that a woman should be able to make it in business (she should) BUT, in 1988, the company people were given Ford Falcons, and she got one as she was promoted. My father told her not to start it and rev the engine, but she did, thinking she knew better. One Saturday morning, in January, 1990, she rang our house in tears because she had her Falcon in the garage and she started it and had the driver's door open. She wasn't concentrating, and she had it in reverse and the park brake off, but she went to rev it, and reversed out of the garage, taking the door clean off. She demanded that her husband rope the door on! And, on January 26, 1991, she invited herself on a holiday and her husband had a 4WD the same as my father's (he bought a Ford Maverick (a rebadged Nissan Patrol) and she rang the Ford dealer while her husband was away (he had been interested in a Holden Commodore, and then a Mitsubishi Pajero) and ordered a 4WD for him and later told him that my father had one and he had to have one, too) and she had to get something out of the back of his Maverick. She performed an "I'm a defenseless woman," routine, and her husband sighed, drew back on the cigarette he was smoking and went across and opened it for her. It wasn't hard to open, you just had to pull a small lever on the side of the door and it would open. She also would act like Hyacinth Bucket but not comedic, and tell anyone who asked that her husband worked in transport and logistics and went away sometimes, while he more accurately told people he was a truck driver. But she loved to spend his money!

Many of the people who have the type of didactic memory that I do are women, and that has been a factor for me, too.

I have never been interested in men, in fact, I went to school with a guy who has come out as gay who hated me because I was committed to study and he wanted to be a performer.

My experience with my ex-girlfriend made me think that a heterosexual relationship would not be for me. In fact, post-transitioning, I would want to have a fellow autistic girlfriend.

One way in which I think it will make my life easier, transitioning, that is, is that I have never really had good relationships with male doctors, so, I usually ask for a female doctor. Okay, I have a female GP, who I see regularly, and she sends me to female specialists, but it can be awkward, if she sends me for an x-ray, to say, "Can I have a female radiographer, please?" As a transwoman, it will be easier, as I'll be able to give a female name and they'll ask fewer questions. I was admitted to hospital a couple of months ago, and had female staff look after me, and I told the nurses that I didn't readily relate to most males. I said that I have a special interest in Japan, and that, say, someone gave me a 4WD, I would want to know if it was made in Japan, and retain that content, not how to make it rough. She understood.

I say, I have lived nearly half a century as someone who was born in the wrong body (heck, I have no time for the ridiculous doctor who is a faux quasi feminist, but wants to preserve the gender roles) and after learning after a little over a third of a century on this planet, that I am autistic and that explained a lifetime of difference, now, I want to spend the rest of my life as a transwoman. I have already started with buying some pink clothes, and I like polo shirts and shorts and jeans, and flannelette shirts, and that doesn't have to change, but now is the time to embrace the rest of my true self.