At the age of 13, Munroe Bergdorf was a swimming sensation. But in her memoir, she barely devotes a sentence to her feats in the pool, merely saying she swam at national level, was ranked 11th in the country and didn’t have her heart in it. That’s all. She doesn’t tell us whether she enjoyed swimming, trained hard or dreamed of competing in the Olympics. Not even her stroke of choice or distance. Now I’m curious. Fancy being so brilliant at something yet so indifferent to it that it barely merits a mention in your life story.
So I ask, and it all pours out. She swam the 50m backstroke, won race after race for her all-boys school, and hated every minute of it. Not the swimming (that was fine), but the culture. “Going to meets, the boys would all have fun together on the bus and I’d sit at the back,” she says. “I was never part of the squad. I was just there to bring the average of the team up. All of my teammates hated me.” It says so much about how she viewed the world, and how the world viewed her.
Swimming was not the only sport she excelled in. She was the school’s top high jumper and a gifted middle-distance runner. Did she take pride in her achievements? “Not really. Not when teachers are poking fun at the way you move, and calling you a nancy boy because you’re running away from the ball because you don’t want to play rugby.”
Fast forward 23 years, and Bergdorf is a renowned model, writer and activist. She was the first trans person to appear on the cover of Cosmopolitan UK and to be hired (and fired and eventually rehired) by the cosmetics giant L’Oréal. Her achievements are indisputable. As are the many attacks she has been subject to. Bergdorf has been vilified in public for her views on race and gender, and abused in her private life. It’s not been an easy ride.
Her memoir, out this week, has been a long time in the making. She signed the book deal almost four years ago, but admits writing it has been a struggle. Not least because it’s such a painful story to tell. “It’s been the most brutal form of therapy I can fathom,” she says.
It feels appropriate that the book is coming out now – the debate about transgender rights has never been so high profile or heated. In the latest census for England and Wales, only 0.2% of the population identified as transgender (equally split between men and women), but the issue has caused a mighty schism between Scotland and the rest of Britain. While arguments rage in Westminster and the Scottish parliament over the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform bill, drafted to make it easier for people to transition, we’ve heard remarkably little from trans people themselves. Which, Bergdorf tells me, is a huge part of the problem.
* * *
We meet at a hotel in Soho, London. Bergdorf is strikingly beautiful, with an extraordinary stillness to her. Even when she cries – which she does more than once in the couple of hours we chat – she retains that stillness. And yet her anxiety is soon apparent. Congratulations on the book, I say. “Thank you. What did you think?” she replies, with a sense of urgency verging on panic. “I’m really nervous. When you lay your life out there for people to consume it’s nerve-racking.” And she really does lay her life out here. It’s part confessional, part manifesto and part philosophical treatise – a guide to how we can all live together without tearing each other apart (with plenty of examples of how she has been torn apart, and torn herself apart, to get here).
Transitional is a clever, moving book that packs a lot into its 194 pages. Yes, this is a story about Bergdorf’s transition from he to she, but more importantly it’s about any number of transitions that we all go through in life – culturally, politically, financially, intellectually, socially, you name it. As she says, barely a day passes when we don’t evolve, or transition, in some way.
Bergdorf, aged 36, grew up in Stansted Mountfitchet, a conservative middle-class village in Essex. Her working-class parents had done well for themselves (her white British mother had a senior job in financial PR, her black Jamaican father was a carpenter) and moved from London to Stansted. There were hardly any other black people in the neighbourhood, though this was never discussed when she was growing up. Her parents liked to think they were the perfect fit.
She was happy at primary school, but as she grew up she became increasingly alienated from her peers. “Once gender roles were introduced and the girls and boys started dividing, I didn’t really have a place because I was too girly for the boys and I wasn’t a girl – or seen as a girl. So I was ostracised, and the ostracism never stopped until I left high school.” Her own family struggled with her sexuality and gender dysphoria. Her father, in particular, found it hard to accept that his son wanted to be a girl.
She was at school during the era of section 28, legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher that banned schools from “promoting” homosexuality. In reality, this meant that teachers were terrified of even discussing sexuality, let alone trans issues. Meanwhile, Munroe was beginning to realise her skin was political; that she was judged for its colour. In 1999, the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence and subsequent botched investigation by the Metropolitan police was published. The report concluded that the Met was institutionally racist. Neither her father nor brother discussed it at home. It didn’t seem relevant to their lives. But when she visited her extended family in London, it was a different story. They knew exactly why Stephen and his friend Duwayne Brooks were attacked without provocation by white strangers – it was blind hatred. They understood that they could have been the victims of the attack just as easily as Stephen. And so did Bergdorf, because as an effeminate black boy she was particularly vulnerable.
Bergdorf grew into a sad, angst-ridden teenager. While her struggles prevented her from excelling academically, she did well enough to win a place at the University of Brighton to study English. When she left home, she says, she was reborn. Did she finally feel she belonged when she got to university? She corrects me, gently. “I felt I belonged in Brighton. I didn’t go to university for reasons of academia, I went to start a different life.”
In Brighton, she began her transformation into the Munroe Bergdorf we see today, experimenting initially with clothes and makeup. After university, she worked for three years in fashion PR, then co-founded the queer rave Pussy Palace in London’s Brick Lane. At the age of 24, she began using hormones to transition and later had surgery. In her book, she is deliberately vague about what procedures she has undergone. Is she saying it’s none of our business? “Basically, yes. It’s obvious that I’ve had surgery. It’s the first thing you see about me.”
Do people ask? “They do, but I don’t normally feel I have to give them an answer.” She pauses. “If another trans girl asks me, I will talk about it, because if it can help her feel as good as I feel within myself, then I will disclose what doctors I’ve gone to and what procedures I’ve had, but I also don’t want to feed into the narrative for young trans people that in order to feel complete they have to have these surgeries.”
The one thing Bergdorf does talk about in detail is facial feminisation surgery. In 2018, she underwent a series of procedures, including re-contouring of the chin and brow bone. For most trans women, she says this matters so much more than what they do or don’t do downstairs. “It’s my priority, because I show it to the world. But the ins and outs of what I’ve had done, I don’t talk about.” She hopes the book is more about interiors than exteriors. People can see for themselves what she looks like. She wants to show us what it feels like to be her; what it has taken to get where she is today.
She nibbles at a pain aux raisins and tells me that the joy of her student years didn’t last. She spent much of her 20s in chaos. Transition brought new challenges. There were so many dysfunctional relationships with men who fetishised her as a trans woman and despised themselves for doing so, she says. Invariably, their self-loathing ended up expressing itself in acts of violence towards Bergdorf.
In the book, she describes a terrifying sexual assault by a man she met on a night out who pushed cocaine up her nose and into her mouth as he raped her. “When you look at someone and you know they want to kill you, and they don’t see you as human enough to respect you when you say no, you don’t want to have sex with them, and rape you anyway, that just kills a part of you.” She chokes up. “I don’t know how I can unsee that. I still struggle to think of that period because I lost all hope. After that, I started hating myself a lot and entered abusive relationships because I didn’t think I deserved any more.” You went looking for them? “I wasn’t looking for them, but what I was attracted to wasn’t healthy. I’d see people who would display controlling behaviour as somebody who cared. I just wasn’t in a good place.” That’s awful, I say. She smiles and sniffs up her tears. “It wasn’t great.”
She says her story is the story of so many trans women – dysfunctional relationships, abuse, seeking solace in drugs and alcohol, mental health collapsing. At one point she was so worried that she called the police to protect her from herself.
Not surprisingly, this period of her life was particularly tough to write about. Transitional has helped put it in context, she says. “I do feel proud of myself for getting through it and for taking something positive from it. For a long time, I struggled to see the upside.”
Did she think she would get through it? “It was touch and go. There was a lot I didn’t put in the book. Put it that way.” Did you try to take your life? The words don’t come, so she nods. More than once? She nods again. I’m glad you didn’t, I say. “So am I. Don’t make me cry!” She laughs – just about.
While she was becoming increasingly desperate within herself, her public profile was growing – drag queen, DJ, model, columnist. In 2014, the Evening Standard referred to her as a “cornerstone of London’s trans scene”. And the more that was written about her, the less she really understood who she was. She began to believe her own press, whether good or bad. Then in 2017, she was hired by L’Oréal. When the cosmetics giant got in touch, she initially assumed it was a joke. But sure enough, they really did want her to be their first transgender model. Then, barely before she had signed her contract, she was sacked for comments she had written on Facebook before getting the job.
Bergdorf was responding to news of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia where neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, injuring many and killing 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer. Bergdorf had posted a comment on Facebook saying that “all white people” were racist “from microaggressions to terrorism”, the white race was “the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth” and that white “existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour”.
Facebook removed the posts from its site, regarding them as being in contravention of its rules against hate speech, while L’Oréal issued a statement that it “supports diversity and tolerance towards all people irrespective of their race, background, gender and religion” and that Bergdorf’s comments about white people were “at odds with those values”.
It perhaps wasn’t the most balanced or calm way of expressing your point, I say. “Well, would you expect people who are heavily traumatised by racism to be balanced and calm?” she fires back. “The idea that people should speak about the trauma and oppression they have experienced in a way that is digestible for people who don’t experience it ... I mean, I was angry. We were watching one of the most violent displays of racism in recent history. It was horrendous. Of course I was angry, and I think I had a right to be.”
It wouldn’t have had such impact if you’d expressed yourself in a more measured manner, I say. “Well, exactly.” Although Bergdorf’s comments drew widespread criticism, there was huge support for her from those who believed it was outrageous that she had been labelled racist for calling out racism. “I was the fall guy. In retrospect, I’m happy it happened because it did push the conversation forward. It got a lot of people talking. It went all over the world.” But at the time she was terrified by the response. “The amount of death threats and rape threats … I saw a really dark side of humanity.
“When you see the level of hatred directed at you, it makes you fearful for your life. I was scared to go under the water when I was in the bath because I was convinced someone would hold me under. Things go through your head that you would never think of if you hadn’t gone through that.” Because of the threats? “Yeah. People said they knew where I lived, that they were going to attack me with acid, that they would get me when I least expected it. It was endless.” Two years ago, she left Twitter saying it was an unsafe place for transgender people, and that social media companies “won’t, rather than can’t” clamp down on transphobia.
* * *
The L’Oréal incident was a turning point for Bergdorf. It came close to breaking her, but ultimately it proved her salvation. After a lifetime’s self-sabotage, she fought for herself like never before – for her career, her reputation, her life. “Until that point, I was fighting against myself, whether it was the relationships I was in, or how I was treating myself with drink and drugs. Then, when my life moved into the public eye, I was forced to level up and start fighting for myself. I was on my own side for the first time.”
In 2020, after the racist killing of George Floyd in America, Bergdorf criticised L’Oréal Paris for posting on Instagram that it stood in solidarity with the black community. She said she had never received an apology for the way she had been treated by the company. In response, L’Oréal did apologise and invited Bergdorf on to its new Inclusion Advisory Board. She accepted, and is still working with the company today.
Is this an example of the other kinds of transition she refers to in the book? “I think so. It was transitioning out of an experience that didn’t benefit anybody. I don’t want to be at odds with the biggest beauty brand in the world for the rest of my life, and they obviously don’t want to be seen in a bad light. They have offered me a way to move forward, to understand where they went wrong, and to better improve the practices of their company, and I can be part of that. That’s a positive thing all round. Where cancel culture goes wrong is when people don’t really want to find a resolve, they just want to cast people out of the kingdom or demonise people continually even when they have shown they want to make amends.”
While dealing with the L’Oréal fallout, Bergdorf also found herself fighting on another front. The issue of trans women had become the surprising battleground on which the culture war was being fought in Britain. Younger generations have been pitted against older; Westminster against the Scottish parliament. While Bergdorf and her allies argue that trans rights are on a par with previous battles for racial and sexual equality, gender-critical activists argue that trans women threaten the safety of biological women, and the sanctity of single-sex spaces.
Although Bergdorf is appalled by the fact that the trans community has been weaponised by politicians, she’s not surprised. We’ve seen it all before, she says. “Whenever there are gains made from a marginalised community, there is always a pushback. Just before black people gained civil rights, there was a war.” And are we in the middle of a war now? “Definitely. There is definitely a war on trans people. It’s not a civil war, but it’s a war within the media. It’s a war on trans people, and we are fighting literally for our lives.”
As for the government, Bergdorf believes it is targeting trans people as a distraction. “The trans community is too small to pander to but big enough to exploit for the Conservative government, and the Conservative government has always needed an enemy. The Tories function within an environment of fear, especially with the need to deflect from their own shortcomings. This is what we’re seeing from Rishi Sunak in a time of multiple crises focusing on a community that he should be helping. There are so many issues that the trans community is facing, but we are being painted as the issue.”
A week after Bergdorf and I meet, Sunak announces that his government will try to block Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill, which was passed by the Scottish parliament in December. The bill reduces the minimum age for transitioning from 18 to 16, eradicates the need for a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to obtain a gender recognition certificate, and reduces the time people have to live in their acquired gender before applying for a certificate from two years to three months for those over 18 and six months for people aged 16 and 17. It’s the first time Westminster has tried to stop a Scottish bill becoming law since the Scottish parliament was established in 1999.
While we see any number of politicians and commentators discussing trans rights, Bergdorf points out that trans people have been notable for their absence in the debate on their future. The reasons are twofold, she says – the trans community in general doesn’t trust mainstream media, and mainstream media has not prioritised hearing trans voices. The result is unsatisfactory at best. Imagine if the same were true for other minorities, she says. “We’re not looking to white people to be the authority on the black experience.” Meanwhile, Bergdorf says, Britain’s most vulnerable minority are continuing to die at an alarming rate.
A few years ago, Bergdorf was asked in front of a live audience when she had “come out”. She replied she’d done so three times – first as gay, then trans and most recently as pansexual. Back then, the term pansexual was less familiar, so she helped the audience with a definition. “I’ll sleep with anybody – if I find you attractive, and we’ve got a connection, it’s fair game!” she said. It got a big laugh. On public platforms Bergdorf can be po-faced and intense (largely because she is being interrogated), but she can also be very funny.
Set stylist: Killian Fallon. Set stylist assistant: Harriet Thirzah. Seamstress: Su Haines. Hair: Mikai McDermott using L’Oréal Paris. Makeup: Bianca Spencer. Nails: Jessica Thompson. Photograph: Hollie Fernando/The Guardian
In Transitional, she says the first functional, loving relationship she has had was with Ava, a trans woman she dated for three years. Bergdorf has a tiny cross tattooed on her right wrist. She got it on a day trip to Brighton with Ava, who got a matching one. Transitional is dedicated to Ava’s memory. I ask Bergdorf what happened to her, fearing the worst. She seems thrown by the question, and edges her way to an answer. “Erm … erm … she passed away in summer.” How old was she? “She was 33.” Was she ill or did she take her life? Bergdorf looks distraught. She tries to answer, but an anguished noise comes out of her mouth, part groan, part wail. “She took her own life,” she says eventually.
“I’m still processing it,” she says. Now her anger is unmistakable. “I just don’t know what these people think they’re doing. We’re being talked about like we’re a hypothetical, like we’re not real, like it doesn’t affect us, and we’re burying our loved ones because of it. People are losing their lives because of it.” Was that the case with Ava? “I wasn’t there. When someone takes their own life I’m sure there are a number of reasons, but I know the current climate had an impact on her. Just like it’s having an impact on every trans person in the country. She was the first person I ever loved truly. I can’t imagine my life having not met her.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. It’s really fresh. She had so much to live for. How many people are going to die, and how many people are going to end up in situations like I’ve been in where they can’t love themselves, because the environment they are in encourages them to hate themselves? I’m really, really tired of it, because when I have to bury my ex-girlfriend and see her family in pieces, I don’t even really have the words for it. People think there is no consequence for their actions because they don’t even see us as human beings.” She finally comes to a stop, sniffs back more tears and apologises. “There really are no words. I’m heartbroken. The way that it happened is no way that anybody should go.”
We sit in silence for a while. I’m searching for a positive. I ask Bergdorf which of the many transitions she has made that she’s most proud of. She smiles, and says despite everything there have been so many recently.
It’s only a year since she was last hospitalised with anxiety and depression, but she truly believes she’s turned the corner. For the past 18 months, she has been in a relationship with a British chef who works in France. “This is the first relationship I’ve had with a man that feels healthy and wholesome and encouraging. He’s incredible.” She shows me a picture of him, handsome, topless and blond, alongside her miniature Yorkie (a bitch called Teddy). She’s obviously proud of both of them. And then there’s her greatly improved relationship with her parents. Over the past few years her father has opened up about the racism he experienced in Britain. “He told me that a woman who worked in the corner shop would never put money in his hand,” she says. “She refused to touch him. She would always put money on the counter.” They now have a much better understanding of each other.
What about the swimming – has she swum competitively since school? “No! Nonono!” I stopped swimming competitively when I started having gender dysphoria at school.” Does she swim for pleasure now? “Yes.” Fast? “Not fast. My body’s not as hydrodynamic as it used to be because there’s a lot more of it!” She laughs.
She’s still contemplating the transition she’s most proud of. “I think it’s the place that I’m in right now. I’m the most consistently happy I’ve been in my entire life. I’ve got so much love in my life and things to be happy for. I never saw that I would be in this position.” She pauses. “I never really thought I would be alive at this point.” Is she off medication now? “No, I’m on a very low dose of antidepressants. Not that that matters! I never saw this part of my life. I never planned this far. Even though it was really hard year last year with losing Ava and starting the year in a really dark place, ever since those really tough moments I have fallen back in love with life.” Finishing the book, she says, is a relief and a release. Now she doesn’t have to tell anybody her story. It’s there in writing, and she finally believes she knows who she is. What’s more, she likes Munroe Bergdorf and is happy to hang out with her. “I really feel this is my life now,” she says. “And I’m not going to allow it to be dictated to by anybody else.”
• Transitional is published by Bloomsbury on 16 February. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
