What has been the biggest plot twist in your life?

Up until the end of October 2015, I was living as a woman and had spent the past over 6 years wearing the hijab. Now, I had suspected long ago that there might be more to my gender than my chromosomes and other physical accoutrements, but I kept trying to live as a woman. It cost me a great deal. I felt like I was being raped 24/7 for decades. Sometimes I wanted to die. I wished that cancer on myself…

But that said, I liked wearing the hijab. It was a portable place of worship. I found a way to wear it that was comfortable and looked good. It felt and looked natural - as if I had been wearing it my whole life.

My version was a bit subversive though - I sometimes used men’s skullcaps as underscarves for my amira and, after draping a lace shawl over the amira, topped the whole head-covering with a men’s iqaal - the thick double cord Middle Eastern men use to keep their black-and-white, green-and-white or red-and-white checked headscarves in place.

Then I met someone who confronted me yet again with the fact that I am not able to live as a woman, unless I am willing to live in a cage and live and die alone. Which I no longer wanted to do.

So, one night in October, this friend asked me if there were any circumstance where I might remove the hijab. And I told him that there was one: if I decided to transition and live as a man. And his eyes came out on stalks: ‘Have you considered this?’

My reply: ‘Yes.’ Two days later, the decision was made, the hijab came off, and I began my new life as a man.

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Karol Thornton-Remiszewski on Quora:

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