It was a waking nightmare. When my Californian alarm clock rang on Wednesday morning, my new Governor was Arnie the Terminator.

Well, I suppose I can't talk. I'm a responsible psychologist and graduate school professor who once debagged a man on breakfast television. Now, I don't intend to promote Governor-elect Schwarzenegger, to discuss all those worrying sexual harassment claims, nor question the wisdom of my fellow Californians who saw fit to vote for a man with a bright orange face.

However, I do fully endorse the concept of radically changing one's career. Frankly, transformation is hard; it takes enormous courage. One must risk one's livelihood, respect, and precious self-concept.

Thus, too many people opt instead to hang on to careers that have failed them, burnt them out, or simply become boring. The best thing about Arnie is that he's a poster-child for self-belief and determination. His monumental drive transformed him from small-time Austrian body-builder, to Kennedy kissing cousin, to one of the world's most bankable movie stars … and all that with a comedy accent.


If voluntary change is tough, though, it's still a piece of cake compared with what is suffered by the true heroes of change in our society: trans people, whose physical bodies are at odds with their inner sense of gender. How do you react when you meet a man in a pleated skirt?

No, I am not talking about a Scotsman in Highlanddress; if that were my husband, the only incongruous thing about him would be his purple beard. No, I'm referring to those people who defy gender description; the frilly-bloused matron with a five o'clock shadow, the tomboyish teenager with flattened C-cups, the gravel-voiced coquette in the size-12 heels.

I have met many such gender terminators, in different parts of the world. Most of those who were raised in Western societies have been horribly scarred from an early age by the trauma of rejection, mockery and persecution, just because they do not fully conform to the shape of their genitals. I have come to realise that our society is all the poorer for want of an accepted role for people who don't know whether to tick the male or female box on their passport forms.

In some other societies, Samoa for example, such people are generally allowed to be more flexible. They can do tough-guy work and soprano choir-singing all in the same day. By contrast, inBritain we are only comfortable when a person's body-shape consistently matches the mind, the voice, the facial hair, the manner. Nature loves variety … but society hates it.

The fact is that, worldwide, there are a great many human beings whose gender identity is at odds with their appearance, and recent studies have shown that an interesting development in some people's brains may trigger such a phenomenon.

Whatever the reason, different cultures react to trans-people in myriad ways, some revering them, some ostracising them, some even putting them to death. In Britain our modus operandi is to ridicule, avoid and deny them human rights … unless, of course, they're in showbusiness.

Few men who wear a dress on television, however, are actually transgendered. I used to grit my teeth when my Not the Nine O' Clock News co-stars stole my thunder by wearing "drag". It was always a hoot to see them that way, yet at the time I felt there were few enough female roles to go around without any of the boys getting in on the act … but I digress.

There's a big difference between transvestites (people who cross-dress for fun or pleasure) and trans-people, for whom cross-dressing is rather an often-painful attempt to achieve mind-body congruence. Our long tradition of entertainment gender-bending, be it Shakespearean, pantomime dame, the "bearded lady" of the circus or Benny Hill, may have served to decrease understanding for the ordinary trans-person desperately trying to hang on to a job in a bank.

By the way, transgenderism is not about sexuality, or sexual orientation - in fact, they are quite separate concepts. Some people are apt to assume, for example that the "man" in the street wearing a miniskirt must be gay, when in fact that person might be either gay, straight or bisexual. Yes, it's complex, but so is personkind.

We've come some way in tolerating difference, but I wish we could follow the example of some Native American tribespeople who, when observing gender ambiguity in a child, will contentedly remark, "Look. There's woman-spirit in that boy" and offer to swap his arrow for a bowl.

Our trans-people deserve to be appreciated as rightful and valuable members of our society, but beyond that is the hardest and most necessary step: abolishing the binary system. Surely we can make room for the ambiguous, the third-gendered, the "not neatly boxed". Some people simply need to be respectfully consulted about which pronouns they prefer, and given a washroom marked "Just Different".


Talking further of transformation, I'm worried about my husband. He's been reading too much Cervantes and has lately become obsessed with Don Quixote to the point where he's actually beginning to assume the identity of the errant knight.

Yesterday I jokingly suggested that, when taking spins on his Harley-Davidson trike (he's named it Rocinante, after Quixote's horse), he should wear a Conquistador battle-helmet. He snorted that he didn't need that, for a saucepan would do just fine.

In many ways, of course, Billy was already a contemporary Don Quixote. He has long enjoyed tilting at beige-wearers, speed skaters, and political bogeymen. Yesterday, however, he offered me a ride in his sidecar, and you can see where that's going. I had rather hoped he would see me as his winsome muse Dulcinea, but he's taken to calling me Sancho Pamsy. Damn. A short, fat, balding fool. Billy, if I have to play a man, can't I at least have a bod like Arnie's?