Ms Tröndle, first of all: Is the term transwoman appropriate?
“Yes, that is actually the best way to put it, that is what I would call myself, especially when I am talking about the subject. But the range of transpersons with different sensitivities is very wide. What someone wants to be called is very individual.”
Why don’t you tell me about your journey? When did the thought come up that you no longer wanted to live as a Cis gender man (a Cis gender man is a person in whom both the biological sex and the gender identity as male)?
“I came to terms quite well with my masculine identity for many years. The desire to belong to the opposite sex, or the feeling of having been born into the wrong sex, was not so strong in my youth, but it was there. I would rather have been a girl. But the fact was, I was a boy. Over the years, the urge to somehow live femininity, to dress feminine, for example increased. At that time, I considered that to be crazy, which then again and again led to strong inner tensions. You have to see, those were different times, there was no internet yet. The term transsexuality alone was not so well known.”
When did the desire for action become more concrete?
“Relatively late. In 2007, when I switched to the chassis department, I slowly realized what was happening to me. I already had some contacts via the internet, interestingly enough even one here at the factory. It was also the first time I went to pubs with her as a woman, which was great. It felt right.”
A big step...
“I honestly had my doubts too. I didn’t want to take the burden of a transition on myself, it didn’t fit into my life plan. I distracted myself in other ways, did more sports, and other things to suppress the desire. At that time, I simply did not dare to do it. In 2007 the transsexual law was also something else. The suppression went well for a while, but at some point, it didn’t work anymore. That was in 2016. In 2017 the topic came up at home, with my family. The genie was out of the bottle and could not be captured anymore (laughs). At home I was already a woman from then on. It just couldn’t be any other way from that point onwards and you don’t want to be any other way.”