Monika: If someone is considering gender-affirming surgery, what benefits does your clinic provide that they wouldn’t get by contacting a surgeon directly?
Zofia: In collaboration with our surgical partner, we created a shared-care package designed with emotional comfort in mind. Coming to a foreign country for life-changing surgery is an experience filled with excitement, fear, and vulnerability – and the last thing a patient should have to worry about is how to book accommodation, navigate local transport, or deal with unfamiliar logistics.
Most surgeries require a seven-day recovery period in the city. During that time, many patients want – and need – someone to talk to. Not just a doctor or a nurse, but a fellow trans person who understands from lived experience. There’s a unique kind of comfort in being supported by someone who has faced gender dysphoria, who knows the emotional terrain intimately. Even the most compassionate cis professionals can’t offer that.
And finally – though it’s perhaps the least critical, yet still meaningful – Imago members benefit from pricing guaranteed by our partnership agreement.
Monika: I assume that Imago is also a response to the shortcomings of the state-owned healthcare system, which often fails to provide adequate support for transgender individuals. Are the service prices at Imago accessible and reasonable for patients?
Zofia: That’s a deceptively simple question – and the answer is layered. Compared to the very few alternatives that even exist in Europe, our prices are lower. If you consider average GDP and purchasing power in the countries where most of our patients live, our services are often ridiculously cheap.
But if you look through the lens of economic exclusion – which so many trans people experience – the picture changes completely. A meaningful portion of our patients struggle to make ends meet. For them, even our reduced prices are barely within reach. And for those in the most impoverished countries in Europe, starting therapy may feel as distant as traveling the world.
Balancing our pricing is one of the hardest parts of my work. I want to pay our staff fairly, maintain medical excellence, and keep the lights on – but I also want no one to be left behind. On top of that, our mission requires funding. The real tragedy is how little collective support we receive from within the broader LGBT+ communities.
If everyone who cares about trans lives gave just €10 a month, we could transform this reality. One less drink at the bar. One less pizza. In exchange, you’d become someone’s fairy godmother, someone who waves a wand and turns tears of pain into tears of joy.
In a very distant past, I’ve exited a company for an eight-digit valuation – and it doesn’t come close to what it feels like to save someone’s life. That kind of joy, that sense of meaning, is immense.
And yet... most people choose to have another drink instead.
Monika: How many patients have you served so far, and are they primarily from Poland? Also, what is the typical age range of your patients?
Zofia: Exact numbers are one of the very few things not covered by our transparency policy. But I can say this: Polish patients make up only a tiny fraction of those we serve.
That might sound surprising, but it really isn’t. The overwhelming majority of our patients come from Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, and the UK. Countries often described as “advanced.” And yet – the way they treat trans people through their state healthcare systems is ignominious, unscrupulous, and morally repugnant.
We’re talking about systems that consciously humiliate, dehumanize, and psychologically torture people seeking basic medical care. Practices that break people emotionally. And yes – all of this is happening today, in nations that market themselves as progressive and humane.
So why not more patients from Poland or Czechia, you might wonder? Simple! Ironically, higher levels of corruption in former Soviet bloc countries can sometimes be a strange kind of blessing for desperate trans people. In more corrupt systems, there’s always someone willing to exploit your pain for profit. A doctor might despise you, but still sell you a prescription – and sometimes that’s the only lifeline available. It’s a morally bankrupt system, but it creates loopholes that people in crisis can fall through – and survive. Practically speaking, trans healthcare in the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, not to mention Ireland or the UK, are lightyears behind Poland in terms of accessibility and harm-reduction.
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| "When I founded Imago, some quietly wished it would fail." |
Monika: How did you choose the name Zofia? Does it hold special meaning for you?
Zofia: I’m glad you asked! Once I realized I was a trans woman, I wasn’t sure about many aspects of it, many choices I was about to make. But choosing a name was not one of them. There was no extended analysis, I knew immediately the only name I could carry, one that’s meaning is the very thing my heart and mind cherish most deeply!
Monika: Transitioning is not just a personal journey; it also reshapes our relationships, especially with those who support us. Have you noticed a shift in how people treat you since your transition?
Zofia: What surprised me most was how overwhelmingly kind and supportive strangers have been – especially the Dutch, Germans, and most of all, the Poles. At one point, I left Poland because I couldn’t stand what I perceived as a deeply ingrained hostility toward anything different – a mentality steeped in toxic envy, casual malice, and blind submission to catholic totalitarianism. But when I returned as a trans person, I was amazed! The change was real. I’ve experienced so much kindness, politeness, and openness, with only a few unpleasant exceptions (all from large public institutions). Among “ordinary people,” the response has been overwhelmingly positive, which is both uplifting and genuinely hopeful.
As for personal relationships, my story is not exemplary at all. For most of my adult life, I was surrounded by hundreds of people, and was one of central figures of various social circles. However, months before discovering my transness, a long process of disconnection and alienation has already began – for reasons unrelated to gender.
Very few people expressed transphobia openly. More often, it took the form of Janus-faced evasion: “I’ll get back to you tomorrow” – followed by permanent silence. But these were marginal cases. (During my early-mid transition, I did experience acts of truly sadistic cruelty – some from people I trusted most. But I don’t believe they were driven by transphobia.)
Monika: And how was it when you came out publicly? Was it a similar reaction?
Zofia: When I came out publicly, I received overwhelming, heartwarming support – even from distant acquaintances. To put this in perspective: I don’t think I was ever, even once, intentionally deadnamed or misgendered by a person I knew.
Some people were so tactful, it was almost as if I’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. I made a conscious effort to break the tension, I always wanted people to feel at ease around me. I didn’t need awkwardness. Let’s be honest – that wasn’t helped by the sabotage masquerading as activism of a tiny but loud group of virtue-signalling ‘useful idiots’ who give trans people bad rep, a label of perpetually offended, irrational, manipulative, authoritarian snowflakes – with no sense of humour, no self-awareness, and a constant thirst for drama. Their narcissistic need for the spotlight undermines the entire community, distracting general public from real injustice we suffer with preposterous sideshows, and destroying our credibility.
If anything, I encountered more resentment over my rejection of profit-maximization, my “betrayal of capitalism”, and my refusal to keep playing the game of consumption, hedonism, and polite self-delusion. That, I suspect, unsettled people more than my gender ever could.
Monika: What kind of response did you receive when you founded Imago?
Zofia: When I founded Imago, some quietly wished it would fail – not out of malice, but because my success would force them to confront their own moral compromises. It would shake their internal justifications and make self-deception harder.
It’s much easier to sleep at night when you can say, “See? That path doesn’t work.” But success? It disrupts the story they tell themselves. Especially those who posture as progressive – but would never dare to defy the system, those social media contrarians, to put their precious comfy careers at risk, to shatter illusions they put so much effort in preserving.
I didn’t need to accuse anyone. My choices must have felt like accusations all by themselves. And finally – at the lowest point of despair – I discovered who my true friends were.
And most of them were not the people I thought they would be. Their support meant the world to me.
Those tired clichés – “quality over quantity” and “a friend in need is a friend indeed” – struck me with brutal accuracy. And it never rang more true than then.
Monika: The journey to being our true selves often comes with a heavy price, losing friends, family, and sometimes even our jobs. What was the hardest part of coming out for you, and how did you navigate it?
Zofia: For me, this was actually not the difficult part. I had zero hesitation or doubt about coming out. Not for a single moment.
I chose to do it on a social media platform I hadn’t used in years, but where I still had around 1,300 contacts. There was one reason and one reason only: statistics. Based on probability alone, there should have been at least 15 to 20 trans people among my connections – yet I was the first openly trans person I had ever met in real life. That meant many were still living in the closet, in denial, in fear.
Even though I never saw myself as a “social media person” or influencer, I had some quiet influence. I’d gained a modest following over the years – people interested in my writing, political commentary, reflections on society, literature, history. So I thought: even if one person, just one, finds courage through this – it’s worth it.
Monika: That post must have gone viral.
Zofia: The reactions exceeded my wildest expectations. That post became the most popular in my 13-year history on the platform. I received an overwhelming wave of support – even from people I knew weren’t particularly LGBT-friendly. Maybe I changed a mind? Or at least planted a thought? Even if some of those public declarations were performative, a kind of tribal loyalty signalling in a political, polarized context where only one of the two possible choices was not cringy or embarrassing for an educated and cultured person –it still meant something. Even though I was experiencing a period of extreme loneliness, and many people would rather talk about me than with me, that virtual ocean of support felt, frankly, very comforting.
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| "I don’t rage at the past." |
Monika: Some people might see it as radical.
Zofia: Yes, I know I’m often called radical – an extremist even – for holding this core non-negotiable conviction that human dignity is not a bargaining chip. It is not something to be sold off for professional comfort or social benefits. I’ve never traded it, and I never will.
Let me offer a different perspective: How often during a lifetime do you get a chance to reveal the truth about your world? To watch false friendships fall away and expose people for who they really are? Would you really prefer a life padded with illusions – or the pain of disillusionment that frees you to build something authentic?
People create elaborate and absurd belief systems to reduce cognitive dissonance and avoid confronting this – just like victims of narcissists and domestic abusers often idealize their tormentors, clinging to a fantasy instead of facing reality. Similarly, many people would rather remain emotionally hostage to a morally repugnant person than feel the pain of detachment and transformation.
Let’s take one step further, let me propose a simple intellectual experiment: If you were cisgender, privileged, untouched – would you still accept having a transphobe, misogynist, or a racist as a family member, colleague, or business partner? Would you choose to hang out with bullies, or befriend someone who draws their sense of worth from humiliating others?
And if the answer is yes – what does that say about you…?
Monika: Do you remember the first time you saw a trans woman on TV or met one in real life that helped you realize, “That’s me!”?
Zofia: I remember that it never happened. :(
In the time and place of my youth – Radom in the 1990s – the idea of being trans simply didn’t exist in public consciousness. It was a fallen, post-industrial city struggling with sky-high unemployment and crime, a sort of “Polish Detroit”. Nobody around me ever mentioned this even being an option.
There was no internet. No accessible representation. No language for what I was feeling.
By the time I did see a trans person, I already had a mess of internalized misconceptions. I misattributed my own thoughts and longings in early puberty and it turned out to be challenging to fix those decades after.
That’s why comprehensive education and trans visibility in public life are so crucial. I wasted half of my life playing the wrong character in the wrong story. Realizing that – sitting with the knowledge of what was stolen from me by ignorance – is a devastating burden. One that most trans people share.
Monika: How do you feel about it now, looking back?
Zofia: I don’t rage at the past. I don’t waste time on resentment over what humanity didn’t yet know. The march out of darkness is slow. It’s pointless to despair over progress that simply hadn’t happened yet.
But what I do rage against – what infuriates me – is when people today actively try to rob the next generation of knowledge and self-recognition. When they demand that children be kept in the dark, and dare to call it protection.
It’s not protection. It’s cruelty. It’s theft – the theft of childhoods, of adolescences that can never be relived. I will never get to be a little girl. Never a teenage girl. That door is forever closed.
I’ve coped with that loss by choosing to make the second, “worse” half of my life extraordinary – by chasing dreams so big they almost seem like fiction. If I can’t recover the lost years, I will reach for the stars in time that remains.
But those who try to brainwash, silence, and shame young people, who strip them of their right to truth and joy – they must not only be opposed. They must be stopped. They must be held accountable for each life they have broken.
What they are doing is not a “difference of opinion”. It is an atrocity in the making.
Monika: Many of us feel the pressure to “pass” as women, and even after surgeries, society keeps judging us. How do you personally deal with the outside world’s expectations?
Monika: Many of us feel the pressure to “pass” as women, and even after surgeries, society keeps judging us. How do you personally deal with the outside world’s expectations?
Zofia: I know this outside world’s pressure appears to be a near-universal experience among trans women – but my own observations and personal experiences reveal the expectations of society being twisted in a very particular way: “How dare you even try to pass?”, “How dare you dream of being ‘taken for a real woman’? Let them transition – but not too far!” (A disclaimer is necessary here: the sample size is still insignificantly small, so my observations remain anecdotal, it wouldn’t be rational to generalize based solely on that.) This fits into a broader pattern I’ve seen across human behaviour – the compulsive need to poke into other people’s lives, to pass judgment, to speak with authority where there is none, and to offer unsolicited ignorant opinions dressed up as universal truth.
And to be clear: people are absolutely entitled to their opinions. Just as I’m entitled to assess those opinions – and their authors – for what they (usually) are: hateful, idiotic, or rooted in malice, envy, or sheer ignorance.
Monika: So, what do you do? It seems like you don't care.
Zofia: Personally? I couldn’t care less about society’s expectations — maybe because my overall view of humanity isn’t exactly flattering. I wouldn’t call myself a misanthrope… but I definitely understand the appeal. ;)
But don’t get me wrong: I respect radical honesty. I genuinely value constructive criticism. One of my most cherished principles is the ability to change any of my views under the weight of credible evidence. To me, that’s the foundation of real wisdom.
Truth matters. Whether I like it or not – or whether I like the person who’s pointing it out – is irrelevant. I’m not interested in winning arguments. I’m interested in finding out what’s true. And for that, I keep my ears open, always.
But I’m digressing – back to your question. Yes, at the end of the day, I am the ultimate judge of my choices, and that conviction is unshakeable. But it would be dishonest to deny how joyful it is to be seen and recognized for who I am.
When I didn’t yet know I was a woman, I used to feel bad for women who had to endure all the shallow, trivial compliments men throw at them daily.
Now, I recognize such gestures addressed to me – however clumsy – as signs of kindness (perhaps because I never experienced the creepy importunate variant of it). I receive them with gratitude and grace, and I answer them with a small smile and a quiet “thank you”.
END OF PART 2
All photos: courtesy of Zofia Radosław.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
Very impressive woman and a wonderful interview
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