The Heroines of My Life: Interview with Véronique Renard

Monika: Could you describe your childhood and share when you first realized you didn’t identify as a boy or man?

Véronique: I played with the girls in the dolls corner at kindergarten and sided with females ever since. Even as a toddler I knew I was different because boys were different from me. I was more like the girls. So as I always felt part of a group called Females, I always felt I was/am like them. Therefore I called my female penis a birth defect that has been fixed in hospital at age 18. I have never been a boy. For the first 18 years of my life, I was a girl with a penis. It was never a question of becoming someone else, I’ve always known exactly who I was.

Monika: For most transgender girls, the most traumatic time is the time spent at school, college, or university when they had to face lots of discrimination. Was it the same in your case?

Véronique: Yes. I was scared at high school. I feared for my life. For 4 years I was a very unhappy child close to suicide. I got bullied for being a slender blond fairy gay boy with a handbag. The children at school came from farms. They still talked about tractors and hayforks. I talked about David Cassidy, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and handbags. Our school opened each morning with a prayer to God and ended the day with a prayer to God. So you can imagine how much I got to endure. I even got bullied by the teachers, especially our religion teacher and the school’s principal. I got back at the bullies and the teachers 10 years later at a school reunion. I made them all apologize to me. One teacher left the building because he couldn’t stand being in the presence of a transsexual.

Monika: At what age did you begin your transition, and what challenges did you face during the process? Did you receive any support from your family or friends, and how did it affect your professional life?

Véronique: I was so young, I transitioned from a boyish child into a young adolescent girl. I was only 17 when I started hormones. I had the big operation at 18. I never got to know what I would have been like as an adult male. As I was so young, I could experience life like my girlfriends. I got my first boyfriend at age 18 as a girl. I experienced my entire adult life as a female. This prevented me from lying about my past. I never had a past as a man. I never needed to adjust the truth. I was able to write a truthful autobiography without mentioning my transsexual history. Looking back, transitioning early gave me a kind of freedom many don’t get to experience.

Monika: Transgender women often face the difficult challenge of being judged on whether they "pass" as women or not. You are a beautiful woman yourself, but what are your thoughts on other transgender women who struggle daily with this issue?

Véronique: It must be a horror. I am sure some T-women struggle with their looks, yet they might be more feminine than I am. I feel blessed with my looks. As I already looked like a girl, it was very easy to transition. It was difficult for me to pass as a boy at that time. I don’t need to do anything to pass as a woman. I am even lucky at 48 to be considered attractive by many people. It’s not fair. I never had a pimple in my life, never a weight problem, and I never had to remove unwanted facial or body hair. I never menstruated, no PMS. However, mentally, I have had my share of problems. Thus, good looks alone are not enough to find happiness. It helps a lot, I agree, but you need to develop your female spirit in order to pass as a woman. Passing as a woman has more to do with the spirit that you project. There are plenty of women, especially older women, who look like men. They have short grey hair, no makeup, glasses, and wear unisex clothes. It’s sometimes difficult for me to see whether they are male or female. Always need to look for earrings or breasts. But as soon as they start speaking to me, I know whether they are female or male.

A photo taken by the same photographer
as Pholomolo's book cover. Here
I was 19, one year post-op.

So it is not their looks but their voices and spirits that project and reflect their true gender. The voice is most important. Spend all your time on your voice. Lots of time. All the time. I can’t stress the importance of the voice. It’s the voice that makes you a woman. It doesn’t even need to be high, but feminine and confident. So instead of spending much time and money trying to look like a model who’s 20 years younger, try to be comfortable with the slightly unusual-looking woman that you are.

Look at women your own age and try to be and look like them (if you want to blend in). Unfortunately, transsexuals are often very insecure regarding their looks, so they always try to look better than other women. This is hard work. I stopped doing that at 24. But remember, even though I look good, if my voice hadn’t been good, I wouldn’t pass either. I started voice training at 18 with a professional voice coach. At 47 I still practice in my bathroom. And I think the more we embrace our uniqueness, the more naturally we begin to shine in our own way.

Monika: In today's world, modern cosmetic surgery allows for transitioning even in one's late 50s or 60s. Do you believe this is truly possible? What advice would you offer to transgender women at that stage in life?

Véronique: I can assure you it is very possible. Most western patients traveling to Thailand for SRS are over 50. The results are great. The skin of older people is easier to work with as it is thinner. If they feel they might be happier with a late transition, they must do what they feel they must do. I think at that age, they might not care anymore what other people think of them. The fact that they waited so long often has to do with being afraid to come out of the closet and make a huge change. It’s not easy to do this between the age of 25 and 50. At 17, I was too young to understand the consequences of my decision to transition. At 60, you’re old enough not to care.

So I think transitioning is easiest as a very young person or a very old one. However, physically, it is better to change as young as possible. With hindsight, my timing to transition during puberty was perfect, and that made life much, much easier as an adult female transsexual. It's important to remember that every person's journey is unique, and the right time to transition is when you feel ready, no matter your age.

At 19, I remember still feeling a bit insecure
presenting myself as a woman. It took
a few years to feeling fully comfortable.

Monika: When you transitioned, did you have any transgender role models to guide you? What was your understanding of transgender issues at that time?

Véronique: Practically zero. I only knew about Caroline Cossey, the James Bond girl who appeared with her story in magazines in the early 1980s. This I took to our GP, who had no knowledge of transsexualism. There were only 200 transsexuals in Holland back then. I had no idea what to expect. I was part of an experiment. It turned out well. At the time, it felt like there was little to no support or information, and I had to navigate my journey largely on my own.

Monika: What was the most challenging part of your journey of coming out?

Véronique: I am not sure which coming out you mean. I had many. I came out at 14 as a gay boy, at 17 I came out as a trans girl to my parents and friends, yet I kept that a public secret until recently.

I came out in 2007 by means of a book published in English in the USA. I came out as a transsexual celebrity in Holland just a few months ago when I was invited to speak at a gay and trans conference in the Netherlands. The Dutch still had no idea, as I never talked about it during interviews, and no journalist ever asked about it.

So I had many coming outs. Some are good, some are bad. There are plenty of new people I meet who do not want to be friends with me just because I am a transsexual. And of course, there are also people who don’t want to be friends with me because they don’t like my personality. I think the hardest part is often dealing with people's assumptions and judgments, but it gets easier over time when you learn to embrace your true self.

Monika: You're married, which is such a special event for many women. Did you enjoy the experience of being a bride, from the hen party to trying on the wedding dress, and finally the wedding ceremony itself?

Véronique: I didn’t have a traditional western-style wedding. I actually felt more comfortable with a traditional Buddhist-style wedding. My Chinese husband felt comfortable with that too. Buddhism doesn’t believe in a God creator. Communists don’t believe in God either, so a Buddhist wedding worked out well for this Dutch-Chinese marriage. What mattered most to us was the deep connection and shared values, rather than adhering to any specific cultural norms.

Monika: What do you enjoy the most about being a woman?
Véronique: The fact that I can feel relaxed this way. I love to interact with straight men as a woman. I used to fear straight guys as a young gay male-kind-of-like child. Straight males used to bully me and beat me up. Now they feel attracted to me. So that feels good. My enemy has become my lover. It’s empowering to experience that shift, and it gives me a new sense of confidence and freedom.
Monika: Are you involved in politics or any lobbying campaigns? Do you believe transgender women can make a difference in the political landscape?

Véronique: No, I am not active in politics. Like the Dalai Lama, I never voted in my life, and we try to refrain from speaking politics. I do accept invitations these days to speak about LGBT issues. But no matter where I speak, I always speak as a Buddhist, a student of the Dalai Lama. I believe that speaking from a place of compassion and understanding can have a positive influence, even if it's not through political engagement.

Taken by my friend Cameron Wolf in
Bangkok in 2008. It was part of a photo
shoot for a charity for an AIDS Calendar.
It was a nude calendar. It was my first
and only nude photoshoot.

Monika: What are your thoughts on transgender beauty pageants and their impact on the community?

Véronique: In Thailand they are huge. It’s the biggest thing on Thai TV. In the Netherlands, it was a brief hype over a decade ago. I have mixed feelings about them. There are many different types of transsexual women. Some don’t like pageants, find them degrading, while others love them. I can understand what thrill it must be to be voted the prettiest tranny. I wouldn’t reject that idea either. I love it when people call me pretty. The older I get, the better that word sounds. However, I see myself as an academic. I only wear makeup when I need to impress a man or need to go on television. I don’t care for clothes. So it’s not my personal thing. Still, I admire the confidence and strength of the contestants, it takes courage to stand proudly in front of the world.

Monika: What kind of outfits do you usually wear, and do you follow any particular fashion styles, cultural influences, or color preferences?

Véronique: I don’t care for fashion and makeup. I have a few outfits that I can wear at funerals and television interviews. I have a Tibetan Buddhist habit that I might wear in Asia. I have traditional Tibetan clothes and hats that I wear in the Himalayas. I wear traditional Indian clothes when I am in South India. In Bangkok, I dress up as Madonna and dance in skimpy clothes on gogo-stages in jet-set gay clubs in the Silom area. In the Netherlands, I wear jeans and t-shirts. I have one pair of decent shoes. It’s not about clothes anymore. I dress in the west like Steve Jobs did.

Monika: Are you actively involved in your local or international LGBT communities, and how do these experiences differ across the countries where you live or travel?

Véronique: In Thailand, my husband and I have been adopted by the LGBT community. Almost all my/our contacts are with LGBT people. I really like them. My husband is a plastic surgeon specialized in SRS. In India, most of my contacts are with Tibetan monks and nuns, and Buddhist students from all over the world. In the Netherlands, most people aren’t aware of my transsexualism, but I am willing to speak about it and interact with Dutch LGBTs when I am there. For some reason, it’s not happening in Holland for me.

Monika: Would you say that you are truly a happy woman today?

Véronique: I create my own life. I would say I feel content and relaxed 95% of the time. At the moment we’re spending time in our Japanese holiday home in a nature reserve in Holland where I have created a Japanese garden. After living in the heart of Bangkok for years, I really feel happy with the four-seasons-in-one-day type of climate in the Netherlands. We’re considering staying here for some time.

Monika: Véronique, thank you for the interview!

All the photos: courtesy of Véronique Renard.