Auckland University lecturer’s move to come out as a trans woman

Auckland academic Dr Ciara Cremin came out as a trans woman 10 years ago. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

A decade ago, Auckland University sociology lecturer Dr Ciara Cremin came out as a trans woman. She talks to Greg Bruce about the risks and rewards she faces every day.

She came out 10 years ago next month, in front of a lecture theatre full of her university students. The previous day, she’d been Colin. From that day on, she was Ciara.

Before coming out, she had sometimes dressed as a woman in private and enjoyed it. “With male-bodied people, we see young children, they love to dress up, and it’s weird to me that we live in a society where boys and men are discouraged from doing that and that there are consequences if they do.”

So why did she do it?

Ciara Cremin says she could not imagine living her life any other way. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

“It’s like moving to another country, it’s like changing one’s profession and going somewhere completely new, abandoning your job and becoming self-employed. These are profound decisions we take in life and they’re choices, because, in many of those instances, you don’t have to move abroad, you don’t have to take up another career. I didn’t have to come out as a woman.

“I give you a comparison: imagine Albert Einstein as anything other than a physicist. Imagine Prince as anything other than a musician. Just think about that guy living his life working as a banker or being forced into banking. It’s just unthinkable, because they live it and breathe it.

“Their entire lives are defined by their science, by their music, and readers can no doubt think of many other examples. And that’s what it is to be a trans woman or trans man: once you’ve crossed that threshold, once you’ve embodied that existence – maybe even before, for some – it’s unthinkable that, even if like me you disregard these categories, to live any other way.”

She sees it as absurd that we live in a society where someone might be adversely judged for wearing clothes that half the population can wear without raising an eyebrow.

She thought her students would be receptive to the idea and she believed it would help affirm those students who were questioning their gender or in the process of coming out. She describes her decision as “one of those ‘F*** it’ moments”.

“I felt like a coward. I thought: ‘I need to be more courageous and just do it.’

“There was a moment of madness and impulse, and I found the courage, stepped foot out of the house, and gave that lecture.”

The result, she says, was a revelation.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got away with this.’ The students were fine about it. My colleagues were fine. I got over a huge barrier.”

And then the rest of her life began.

“It’s like ground zero. You begin again. You’re reborn in a sense.”

Leered at by men

However, she didn’t realise the full consequences of everything she was stepping into.

“If I’d contemplated this would be it for me, that for the rest of my life I’d have been living as a woman, I would not have come out. I would not have been able to handle the implications of that.”

She faces dangers she never faced as a man; she now knows what it is to be vulnerable at night. She has been leered at by men, has been seen as a sexual object (“When a man says ‘Oh, you’re beautiful’, it’s not a compliment. It actually can be quite menacing.”) She doesn’t feel able to travel to the United States and no longer feels safe in Britain, where she’s from.

Ciara Cremin says she has been leered at by men and no longer feels safe travelling to the United States or Britain. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Now, when she travels internationally, she often goes in disguise, as a man.

“I am subject to discrimination and hostility like I have never been before. I’ve gone from being white, heteronormative middle class, male privileged … and then, overnight, I’m ‘other’.“

At the University of Auckland, she has taught sociology for 16 years and been top of the senior lecturer scale for the past seven.

She feels lucky compared to many other trans people, and trans women in particular, because many of them are unemployed, in poverty, and are often forced into the sex trade to survive.

“And thankfully, I still – and I touch wood as I’m saying this – have a job.”

In spite of the massive impact that coming out has had on her life, she cannot and will not go back to life as a man.

“Technically, it’s possible, because I haven’t had operations and so forth, but you can’t undo what you learn, and to go back to that would feel like utter defeat. It would go against everything I stand for.”

While she identifies as a woman, Cremin rejects the idea that anyone is a man or woman in essence. For her, being a woman means not having to “do masculinity”, and that, she says, is liberating.

“So, for me, there’s no going back, and I have to live with the consequences of that. And in a society that has become increasingly hostile to trans women, that terrifies me.”

More from life as a woman

Cremin says the decision has not only enriched her life, but maybe even saved it.

“I sometimes wonder, if I hadn’t come out, whether I would have even survived because I, like anybody else, have moments of depression, boredom, frustration, and as you get older and older, and life seems sometimes less and less meaningful, you find yourself in a box. And I think transforming my life in this way got me out of that and made life seem suddenly interesting again, exciting again.

“I think if I hadn’t come out, who knows, maybe I would have taken my life. I don’t know, I don’t think so, but one thing I can say is I am happier. Happiness is elusive, I would say, but I certainly feel I get more from life as a woman than I did as a man.”

Everyone makes decisions at some point that can be disruptive or negative, she says, but the changes brought about by those decisions can help people to grow, expand their horizons, outlook and opportunities.

“Life does involve risks. There’s also that kind of nagging feeling that, in the case of gender, we would be happier if we lived as a woman or as a man. And we never know. I’ve had people get in touch with me privately – and people in retirement – and say ‘I’ve always wanted to live as you have, but I can never pluck up the courage.’

“And it’s tragic because you think of how much they must regret their lives that they didn’t come out 20-30 years ago. And that was me, in my 40s: ‘It’s now or never.’ I think sometimes you have to say that: ‘It’s now or never.’”

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