![\"livinglibrary01.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/forum.tgr.net.au\/cms\/media\/kunena\/attachments\/legacy\/livinglibrary01.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThis is extract from an interview by Andrew Denton
\nBroadcast on Monday 30th October 2006
\nSource: http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/tv\/enoughrope\/transcripts\/s1776670.htm<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nANDREW DENTON: And joining me now, the Living Book, Claes Schmidt, aka Sara Lund and her borrower, Camilla Gisslow. Please make them welcome.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: And thank you both for being with us. Sara, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll start with you. How far back does the urge to express your femininity go?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: I know that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been kind of different all my life but when I found out exactly what it was all about, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. When do you start to know things? Five, six, seven years, something.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: When did the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153transvestite\u00e2\u20ac\u009d first come into your life?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: When I could read, somewhere around, eight, ten I saw it in a book. I saw a picture and I saw some guys and a beautiful woman and I read a text that the woman wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a woman, it was a transvestite, so I thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Okay, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I am.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I suddenly found a name of what I was doing, and I looked it up in the book, and that was not a nice experience.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Why was that?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: In the book it says - it said, at that time, transvestite \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a homosexual man who is dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex to get some kind of sexual relief or something, and I thought I was heterosexual, so I was kind of confused. What? Homosexual \u00e2\u20ac\u201d when does that start? Does that come when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 12 or 15 or what? I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dare tell anybody. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dare ask anybody so - and you couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read anything about this in the papers or anything on television or radio or - transvestites didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exist at all, anywhere. So it was kind of lonely.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Very difficult, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure. Did you still, whenever you could, take the opportunity to dress up as a female?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: Yeah, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have so much things. You know, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to hide it somewhere where nobody can find it. Your parents shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find it or anybody else should find it, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a terrible situation to be a secret transvestite, since you have to hide. You even have to wish the one you love out of the house so you can dress sometimes.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Because you became married and you - you kept this a secret until you were 40. When did you come to reveal yourself?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. My wife found out. She was away for some days, and I took the opportunity to dress and I was living out the whole thing and had a real good time, and then that happened, what used to happen - when people go away, they come back. But she came back a little early, a little too early, so I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really ready and I had to go to work and she went to bed and she could feel there was a smell of perfume in the bed and - you know women. She tried - she looked around in the flat everywhere. She looked after tracks - for tracks - what had happened, what was around, and she found some receipt from a shop where I had bought some bra or something and she found a - a box with hosiery, and she confronted me directly, and I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is nobody else, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nobody else, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and at that second I knew my life was over.<\/p>\n
Nobody can understand this. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work. But it did, and she said - she said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if you prefer to dress like the same way half of the population of the world does but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lie to me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It was the lie that was the big thing for her. To me, it was the fact that I was not normal. Now I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m - the problem is not I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not normal. I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little bit different.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: That moment when you had to reveal to your wife your true nature, that must have been absolutely terrifying?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: You bet. You bet it was. I thought my life was over. I thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is the end,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d so I thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can just as well tell the truth. This is the - this is the way it is, this is the way I am.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: What did her acceptance mean to you?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: It meant everything, because it meant that I suddenly could live a life, and, before, it took all my time. It was always on my mind, always, always, always and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a thing we should think about, that it takes a lot of energy to hide something within yourself. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important that we let people talk and let people be who they are, instead of who the society expect us to be. It takes a lot of energy to keep a secret, and you can use that energy to do a lot of other things.<\/p>\n
The biggest adventure that you can achieve is to live the life you dream of, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing right now, thanks to my wife.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: When you were first approached to be a living book what did you think?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Great. Fantastic idea.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I heard about it and I thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they pick me?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d - because people have a lot of strange feelings and strange thoughts about transvestism, mostly because they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know anything about it.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: What sort of people have borrowed you, Sara, and what did they want to know?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: Normal people, ordinary people. There was one transvestite who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been hiding for 72 years and he came up and he looked around and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m like you,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and I thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do you mean, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLike you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122? Are from Malmo, are you from Sweden? Are you from - are you a marketing director? Are you what?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a transvestite.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look at it at all and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the way it is. You can see, you can tell a person - if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a transvestite or not and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been hiding it for 72 years, and it was - I was the first person he told that he was a transvestite.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Camilla, thank you for your patience while we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking to Sara there. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the library with a friend. How\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: Yeah.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Was it that you decided to borrow Sara?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: First when I saw Sara, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never met a transvestite before. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen some transvestites before but I never talked to any one and I thought it could be very exciting to ask her some questions, because I remember a couple of years back I lived in a very small town here in Sweden and - and there was a transvestite but he was always, always on his own and everybody sort of didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to talk to him and they talked behind his back and stuff. And I felt so sorry for him, so when I saw Sara, I felt that I really, really wanted to talk to her and ask things that I was wondering about.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: What was your first impression of Sara when you were sitting opposite her talking to her, what were you thinking?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: The first thing was that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is really a transvestite,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because you can clearly see that it is a man and - but very beautiful - so - very strong, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very strong. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not - she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not scared of being who she is and - and very comfortable talking to also.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: After you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been talking to Sara for a while you came to the decision to introduce your son, Sam, to Sara. Can you tell us Sam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: Well, Sam is actually born a girl, like it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a girl, but ever since she was a very little baby, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been more like a boy, and at first I thought she was more like a tomboy but when she was four, five, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first time when Sam told me that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mum, I am a boy, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a girl.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And first I thought that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, maybe - maybe she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really know but then I saw - we were all like her sisters and me were sort of like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, of course you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a girl and you have braids and dresses.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And she was like, \"But doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t boys have dresses and braids?\" I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when she cut off her hair and she refused wearing dresses and skirts after that and, and slowly I just realised that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sincere. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been difficult because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been scared of what if she will be bullied and what will people say and - and so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a journey with Sam. So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for me as a mother how can I be a more, supportive mum to help Sam to be strong and secure within himself and, and confident, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why - that was really one of the main reasons why I wanted to talk to Sara<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Sara when you first saw Sam, what did you think?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: Nice boy.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: You - you saw Sam directly as a boy?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: No doubt. Yeah, I - he looks like a boy. He acted like a boy, talked like a boy. I mean, I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he was some - anything else.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: And, Camilla, how did Sam react to Sara?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: That was very interesting because when I phoned Sam and asked if he wanted to join us at the library and he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah, yeah I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be there right away,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I was a little bit scared that maybe he would think, as I thought when I saw Sara, that this is really a transvestite - maybe Sam would feel a little bit intimidated or - or scared but the complete opposite really. It was interesting because Sam just completely relaxed and - and became himself and showed another side that he hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really shown me before either. It was like Sam was feeling like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m one of - we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the same,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d even though they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not the same but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like Sara and - and, I guess\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: Transpersons.<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: Yeah. Transpersons feel that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re maybe a group, I guess, and - and so I could see that Sam felt that he was a part of that group, so he felt more - he stretches back and - and was very confident in the way he was talking and the questions he asked Sara was very confident and - and strong. It was very interesting to see.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Sara, transvestism and trans-sexuality are different things. What advice were you able to give Sam?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: He already has the answer, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Be yourself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But the most difficult thing is to find out who you actually are. We have this either of thinking, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re either a man or a woman, and a transsexual is also either a man or a woman. There are people who - who just want to be human - want to be human being. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be looked upon as men or women. They just want to be people. So there are a lot of thoughts you have to go through, who are you really? Are you an either or person or are you a both or an either person or who are you actually?<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Camilla, what did Sam take from his meeting with Sara?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: When we came home and we sat down and talked about the meeting, he felt that he felt more secure of trying to tell his friends about himself, and after that meeting he actually started to tell some of his friends that he felt that he was actually a boy, not a girl, that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s born into the wrong body, so to speak.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Was he accepted by his friends when he told them this?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: At first they were like a little bit peculiar like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But how can you be a boy when you are a girl?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And he was explaining how he was feeling inside and how he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always felt. And they start to have these discussions about when he grows up. He said that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When I grow up I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to have the operation and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to take away my breasts and all these things.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And they were really concerned about that and say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But, well - but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do that. You will go bald.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And they had all these different kind of beliefs that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You will get cancer,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and then they all came and sat down and discussed this with me and asked questions. And I think kids are very open and general but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s - it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our, the parents, the grown-ups that really gives them prejudices and stuff. Because some of the parents didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it, and one of the parents actually forbids Sam to play with one of their sons, because they were afraid that they will make him be a transsexual too, like if he will be a girl.<\/p>\n
So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a lot of conflicts like that, and it goes up and down. Sometimes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s - it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a problem. Sometimes, when they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really understand a thing, they tease him, and he can be very sad and he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to go to school and stuff, but in general I feel that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been positive - but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more the parents, I think, that has a problem with it, not the kids.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Has meeting Sara been a turning point for you?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: Yeah, I feel more positive in my role as a parent, what I can do to help Sam to grow up and be strong and confident in himself.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: Camilla, you would like to be a book yourself now, is that correct?<\/p>\n
CAMILLA GISSLOW: Yeah, that would be fantastic, that would be fantastic.<\/p>\n
ANDREW DENTON: And, Sara, what sort of book would you like to borrow next time?<\/p>\n
SARA\/ CLAES LUND: That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a difficult one. The biggest prejudices we have is the feeling that we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any - so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to be there and see what I find, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something interesting to talk about with everybody. And I would also like to say that the most important thing for everybody is to, as I used to say, and I said to Sam as well, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Be yourself. Everybody else is already taken.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","topic-tag":[],"class_list":["post-384","topic","type-topic","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/topic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"topic-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic-tag?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}