Jessica McKinnon started out life in the mid-70’s in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa, as a little boy named Jason. She was the youngest child in her family, with one older sister, and with mom and dad both still married and living together. Her earliest memories (age 2) are very happy ones, and she enjoyed playing with blocks and toys that involved some level of problem solving, as she had a special love of patterns, the more intricate the better. By age 5, she could feel that something was wrong, but she just could not comprehend it at that age. Later that same year, her satisfaction with herself came even more into question, when she was first exposed to an intersex child (with both male and female genitalia) during a communal restroom break at pre-school, thus opening the door to the possibility that someone could actually be something other than strictly male or female and that her occasional thoughts that she should be a girl started to emerge. However, being so young, she just accepted that because she had male parts, she simply had to be a boy.
From as early as age 5, long before Jessica reached puberty and her genitalia were still underdeveloped, she used to regularly invert her penis, and in that way, she liked to pretend that she did not have one [I won’t even try to go into detail, but just trust me that it is very possible prior to puberty]. Over the years, her unhappiness with her genitalia grew, and she clearly remembers a few occasions, at age 9 and 10, that she made numerous unsuccessful attempts to cut off her penis. Thankfully she was afraid of sharp object at the time and was only using a pair of safety scissors!
Jessica found it most interesting to read some of the comments on her pre-school progress report, which, when read in the current context, leaves Jessica feeling very satisfied that in her own way, she has lived up to some of the qualities that her teachers had picked up that that early age. They reads as follows: “Jason’s creative activities are of a very good standard. He works with forthought and concentration and his work is very neat and imaginative... Jason settles down quickly, listens attentively and concentrated well for the duration of the story... Although Jason is quiet and tends to be shy, he nevertheless volunteers to tell his news... Jason has made great strides in his social development... Jason is very reliable and most conscientious. He is helpful and co-operative, well behaved and well-mannered.” [These qualities are ones which Jessica had always associated more with young girls than young boys, so it really made her day when she read that just recently for the first time while going through some of her old things looking for old photos for this section of her biography.]
As Jessica entered puberty and started becoming more sexually aware, she remembers feeling very awkward when forced to change and shower in the boys locker room. She knew she had the same kind of ‘equipment’ as all the other boys, and so she had trouble trying to understand exactly why she didn’t feel like she belonged in the boys’ locker room. This discomfort continued and grew for many years, as she saw her own body changing in ways similar to the other boys, and even though she had no idea why, she just felt that the changes were all wrong.
Throughout her childhood, as many impressions of right and wrong were imprinted into her mind, it was a continual battle between what she knew was right and the repetitive thoughts of being female, which she simply knew were wrong. Because she could find no way of stopping those seemingly evil thoughts, along with a growing tendency to lie about almost everything else in her life, she thought very little of herself, knowing that she must simply be a very bad person. She found herself unable to control the desires, and started to dress as a girl in secret using her mother and sister’s laundry which was conveniently located behind the only lockable door in the house—that of the bathroom. Outside, she struggled to relate and make friends with the other boys and she was often teased at school for wanting to be friends with the girls, and her sensitive nature made her cry often, thus feeding the cycle of being teased and bullied. Over the years, she spent more and more time in the bathroom, which became a sanctuary for her, where she could allow herself, even for just those few minutes at a time, to be who she believed she was inside.
As is traditional at most schools, students in their final year at the school are given additional responsibility and encouraged to take leadership roles in various aspects of school life. When Jessica reached her final year in primary school, she took on the role of Kindergarten Monitor. Unlike many who applied for positions in the KG squad who only applied after being declined a position as a school prefect, Jessica had no wish to be a prefect herself; Rather, she had simply longed (for a few years, by then) to join the team of dedicated students who tirelessly helped to keep the younger children just starting school safe, and helped make it a fun place for them to be. Could this have been her maternal instinct crying out for attention? Despite her being one of two boys who offered their services in this traditionally girl-dominated group, and being teased on a regular basis for it, Jessica loved every minute that she was on duty, and took on an almost motherly role to some of the weaker children who were more susceptible to being bullied—the way she had been bullied herself throughout her first 6 years of school before she took on the leadership role.
Starting high school, with the possibility of a fresh start, Jessica decided to try to be a better person, and became a very active member of one of the school’s religious societies. She found that she was able to like herself a lot more, but for some reason, the conflict between male and female raged on, especially as her testosterone levels were climbing due to the normal development of her male body. With her growing religious beliefs, she attributed the thoughts to being temptation by the devil. As such, she was very embarrassed about it, and since she didn’t want to appear to be a bad person to her peers, she continued to keep it all bottled up inside.
Jessica’s dedication to changing herself to fit in at school was largely successful. Being a bit of a geek, she found her place as a very active member of the school’s computer club, and despite the stigma attached to being a geek, as well as not being as athletic as many of her classmates, she still managed to make it onto the senior boys’ first basketball team. Making that grade was quite an achievement, but for her, the best part of that was a door that was opened to her. The head of basketball was looking for someone to help out as a student coach for some of the girls’ squads. Jessica seized the opportunity (which many of her macho team-mates derided her for), but she derived an unsurpassed amount of satisfaction from her role as the coach of the senior girls’ social basketball squad, as well as assistant coach of the junior girls’ basketball team. The girls warmed up to her almost as if she were one of them, sometimes even confiding in her about very personal matters due to her very understanding nature. She just somehow fitted in there.
Meanwhile, at home, her parents’ marriage had been deteriorating and it became ever clearer that a divorce was inevitable. She tried to hide her embarrassing home situation away from her peers, and her web of lies and deceit grew at an ever more rapid pace. Despite everything, she still managed to do reasonably well at school, but struggled with subjects that involved extended periods of studying, like History and Geography, because she was constantly plagued by what she continued to believe were evil thoughts, which distracted her from her work. It was her extraordinary talent for problem solving, a skill that was nurtured by astute Math and Science teachers over the years, that allowed her to compensate for her weak subjects and still come out with fairly good grades overall as she graduated from High School.