A TRANSGENDER woman from Barrhead wants wider society to accept her for who she is.

Michelle Whiteman has spent the last 45 years of her life living as a man - despite being a woman on the inside.

She says that from an early age she knew she was a woman, but has been forced to conceal her true feelings due to the overwhelmingly negative reactions she has received.

In one incident as a teenager in Nottingham, she was taken into the head teacher’s office and ordered to change after coming to school in a skirt.

Struggling with acceptance and being shunned by her peers, the 45-year-old moved to Barrhead from Nottingham after her parents stopped speaking to her.

But Michelle, who used to be known as Matt, is now speaking out in at the height of LGBT awareness month in February in a bid to get people to stop looking at her as an oddity, and as a human being.

Speaking exclusively to The News, Michelle, who works in the town’s Dalmeny Park Hotel as a chef, said: “I have felt this way for a very long time - probably 25 years or more.

“I just want people to understand that this is me, this is who I am and it isn’t going to change.

“I do get a lot of negative comments - it happens - and due to these insecurities I often don’t go out as me.

“The insecurity I feel over it prevents me.”

Michelle recently worked up the courage to start walking to her local shops dressed in her women’s garments.

However she still receives odd looks and negative comments from members of the community.

She continues: “I have lost friends and family over this.

“I no longer speak to my father, and my brother works for the RAF but I have no idea where he is - I don’t speak to him either.”

And while she has had success in convincing some of her friends that she truly feels she is a woman inside, she worries that some friends will find it hard to accept.

“Many of my friends took ten years or more to come around to it and accept me for who I am,” she continued. “I have some friends who I know won’t accept it at all - and I don’t really know how my work will take it either.

“When people shun me, or give me negative comments, it annoys me.”

After undergoing counselling throughout her life, she has given up on trying to hide and is ready to stop being Matt and become Michelle full time.

In the next year, Michelle hopes to begin the gender re-assignment in earnest with facial surgery that will make her appear more feminine, and is currently working towards starting hormone replacement therapy.

However she harbours long term ambitions of having full breast and genital transplants.

“After years of worrying and feeling insecure I’ve finally just said that enough is enough - I am ready for the change.

“I am fed up of coming home after work and all I want to do is get into my women’s clothes and feel like me.

“I want to finally become the girl that I am inside, and I want other people to accept me for it.

“It’s a long process, both the transformation and convincing people.

“It can be ten years to have the work done through the NHS alone, and I have to convince them through interviews and visits to the Sandyford Clinic to prove that this is truly how I feel inside.

“But even then I know this is going to take probably more than ten years."

She has even went as far as seeking advice from other well known transgender women such as Kellie Maloney, who gave her advice and counsel on how to handle the change which the boxing manager underwent last year.

Michelle said: “She was fantastic, very helpful and full of advice.

“But the difference between me and her is that she was able to get it over and done with very quickly - she had money and I am not going to lie it is a very expensive process to do this.

“However I hope that people will be able to accept this - it is not a decision that I have made, it is just something that I feel I simply must do.

“I don’t know how people will react, but hopefully by speaking out it will give people an insight.”