Abi

ABI

AUSTEN’S LIST OF FIRSTS ARE IMPRESSIVE....

SHE IS THE FIRST TRANSGENDER BRITISH ARMY OFFICER, THE FIRST TRANSGENDER SCOTTISH POLICE OFFICER, THE FIRST TRANSGENDER DIPLOMATIC AMBASSADOR. ABI IS ALSO AN AWARD-WINNING

TELEVISION PRESENTER AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR: HER LIFE

STORY IS CURRENTLY IN THE FINAL STAGES OF PRE-PRODUCTION WITH A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD STUDIO. >>>

>>> Her new book has now been released on all major formats and bookstores.

“Sugar and Spice’ is the true story of her journey as the first and only female Parachute Regiment officer in the British Army. Dismissed from service for being transgender after a decade of decorated service, Abi has gone on to become a top international diplomat and representative for the trans community.

Abi's story, told in her own words, is unique, profound and a parable for our times:

‘At birth, I was designated male by a midwife who summarily examined between my legs and pronounced judgement. I was to become many things, but I have never been male.

I am woman. I always have been.

I was forced to live as somebody I am not for the first 44 years of my life. A rather grim prism through which to exist; I am sure you will agree. A life sentence awarded to the innocent.

My only offence was to be born female. I didn’t ask for the medical accident of attached flesh, or the false midwife diagnosis. That error reverberating through my life has caused so much pain.

I turned that mistake around to find a life I could have otherwise never enjoyed. I became an officer in The Parachute Regiment. I passed the rigorous Airborne selection 20 years before the army said another woman was the first.

That is simply not true.

I am the first.

I became a paratrooper by adopting a disguise forced upon me by a midwife’s designation. I didn’t choose that. Having been forced to live with it, I turned it around to beat the patriarchy at its own game. Women were not allowed to join the Regiment. To achieve my ambition, I hid my identity. It was the only way to win. No other woman has ever achieved what I achieved.

I went all the way with The Parachute Regiment, commanding paratroopers in combat in Iraq and Bosnia. I went to the Special Air Service. I deployed multiple times with Special Forces in Afghanistan. I served in Cyprus, Kenya, Belize, Oman, Poland, Germany, Jordan, Kuwait, the United States and Northern Ireland. I packed in more in my decade with the Regiment than most do in a lifetime.

When I tired of hiding, I had my own ‘voila!’ that appalled them all. I revealed to the military who I really am. Now that truly was a moment… they said I’d betrayed them. I said you didn’t think that when two British Princes of the Blood decorated me for my service. I stayed with the army just long enough to be confirmed by the army as the first female Parachute Regiment officer, therefore, the first female to pass Airborne selection.

Then I was gone.

The army made it clear women weren’t welcome. Merely by becoming me, they rejected me.

I had worked my way round the regulations. All within the rules. They weren’t expecting that. They couldn’t then walk it back. I’d proved to one and all I was Airborne. They thanked me for my service, then told me I had to leave.

Women weren’t allowed to serve in The Parachute Regiment. The army had found a stop sign I couldn’t work around.

I have a letter from the Regimental Colonel that says exactly that. No matter. The army can’t deny I walked on their forbidden ground.

I have been female all my life. That is the rock that forms the foundation of my existence. There’s a whole gas-lighting epic about ‘biological sex’, but that’s merely the last gasp of baby boomer bigotry.

The attached gonads I happened to arrive with were a mere medical accident. No different from webbed feet or any other paradox of gestation. When I could, I fixed that, and changed every aspect of my life accordingly. I’m an awfully happy person now, but continually unhappy at how society continues to persecute my right to self-determination.

I firmly believe that in decades to come, folks will look back on the way my community has been pilloried by society and view it as the same sort of aberration that once saw left-handed people condemned as evil. I think we’ve just about reached that tipping point over same-sex sexuality. I hope I may yet be alive when my people are viewed with the same relative tolerance.

It was logic and reason, not cultural discrimination, which gave me my answers. A sort of gender enlightenment, if you like. And it was science that provided me with my final, external solution. I was always me, always have been. I was female from the moment I was conceived and will be till the day I die. What society did was make me ashamed of my lived reality by teaching me I was evil. I was given no other option.

Until now:

I will no longer accept the things I cannot change. I will change the things I cannot accept. That, I think, deals with that…I’ll not apologise for any of it, nor second guess myself anymore, nor allow you to second guess me either. It’s taken me sixty years to achieve that self-belief. Society ranges every power it has against my community. Life remains a constant challenge.

None of this has been easy.

I’ve got a female passport, but I get a ping every time I go through customs control. Nobody says anything, but then I get the nudge and the look from the border police. If I phone a government department and give them my social security number, there’s a pause and a throat clear and the line goes on silent while I get put through to a ‘special’ helpline. I am now calling Orwell’s Room 101. Somewhere, in some dark and dank office down a dark and dank corridor, behind a door and a sign marked ‘special’, there’s somebody sitting with a list of ‘special’ people, ready to treat me in a ‘special’ way. No matter how apologetic, every engagement is beyond intrusive.

I’ve tried to find a partner, but there always comes the dreadful, hateful moment when I have the conversation. I rarely get beyond the look of shock and confusion. I live alone now. It just got too complicated.

The dichotomy is evident because that societal rejection has also been my greatest blessing. I had to learn to be somebody else. The foundation of my professional success was predicated on being enough of an actor to work the other side of the gender divide.

Without that midwife’s error, I simply could not have enjoyed the career and the adventures I have had. As a woman, I would not have been allowed. Such is the patriarchy. Such is the paradox.

My life has been unique in its challenges and unique in its achievements.

I am my own superhero.

Being called a man allowed me to develop a confidence I would never have been permitted to enjoy had I always been openly female. The leadership skills I learned as an officer would never have happened for me, simply because women were barred from the Parachute Regiment.

Was I an imposter? Don’t think so - I passed the same tests as everybody else and served my time in the same way everybody else did. I led soldiers. Everybody brings baggage to the parade square. I may have been different, but I met so many oddballs in the army, I am far from being alone in my difference. I had an awful lot of mental trauma bags to haul about, but I also had a blinding, OCD level, ambition that drove me onward. It’s not my issue that the army didn’t see me for me.

The army recognised my talent and ambition and fully exploited it, so the institution was as complicit in my career as I was. I never lied about my identity, just that nobody in authority chose to ask me the question. When I did tell them, they fired me. I have no regrets about not mentioning it before.

I owe the Regiment and the army for the opportunities it gave me. In seeing me as a man, they opened Pandora’s Box for me to exploit. I did just that, picking up, examining, and loving every jewel on offer. Jewels that would have been forbidden to me, had they known me as the woman I am.

The army isn’t the only career I’ve had. However, it is the only one that was so extreme in its rejection of women that I had to forge another identity to be allowed to participate.

Of the rest, I wouldn’t change anything. I look back now with a strong and deserved sense of professional success. In spades.

That, believe me, is a real rarity for somebody with my background. Not many make it this far. Those that publicly do, tend to end up in entertainment, largely as a curiosity of parts, a sort of PT Barnum oddity. I am not sure whether folks are laughing with or at us. I’m not judging, survival is what it is. Whatever gets you through the night, right? I just wish there were more of us openly out there doing something different. We are just as diverse as any other group of humanity.

That was where war came into the equation.

My struggle to reconcile my outer appearance with a wholly different inner being became reflected in my desire to be part of conflict. War meant I could forget. When the fog starts to suffocate, you got to up-change the weather. So that was what I did, constantly charging onwards, taking ridiculous risks, a butterfly dodging the flame.

I went to eight major conflicts; I willingly went to every one of them, most I volunteered for.

I was drawn to war between peoples as a reflection of the war I fought within myself. Society rewarded my sacrifice in those terrible conflicts with awards and medals. The more I acted as a man, the angrier I got at the utter ridiculousness of my situation, the more decorations I was given. They gave me prizes for putting myself in a position where I could be killed. A form of release from my own torment. All I did as I got older was amplify the risk.

I nearly died on the battlefield many times, just as I nearly died in life fighting my own internal struggle for liberation. I fought my learned hatred of myself to the bitter end. To the stage where I could fight no more, and the only alternative was eternal darkness. I fought myself to a standstill before I capitulated. I stopped caring if I lived or died, and only just found my redemption in time.

I am resigned to death. I don’t seek it, but if the fight becomes too much, I will happily end this life if I must. I’ve been so close so many times, mortal end fails to have any fear.

Those wars remain seared into my mind and contribute to making me the person I have become. I have spent 17 years on the forgotten frontlines of some forgotten war in forgotten countries. When the rest of the world was forming relationships and families, I was trolling over some battle-scarred landscape. Most soldiers count themselves lucky to see one war – I’ve seen far too many.

No one could be the woman I am without the mould being cracked just a bit. I am wary of humanity because my life has always been adversely judged. Now, I am very, very careful about who I let in.

It’s a necessary carapace.

I found my own joy without others. It is simple; I live life as the woman I always have been. I revel in that joy every day as if it could be my last. A joy that took me more than half my life to find.

I don’t need your pity; I chose this.

What I do ask for – nay, demand – is your acceptance.

I want you to know that I am a very, very, very happy woman. It could have been an easier road, but it is what it is. I found my grail – and I drink deeply from that battered cup.’

Her deeply moving autobiography tells her hard scrabble journey of self-realisation from a broken childhood of abuse and neglect. To an end state of international success and material reward. As a journey of self-realisation alone, it is worth the price. As a journey through British societal change over the last 60 years, it is remarkable.

In her book, she reflects on the culture wars, the discrimination and hatred she has faced, and the lessons she has drawn from a life of struggle to achieve personal happiness and love.

‘Sugar and Spice’ by Abi Austen is available via all store fronts, apps and physical shops.