By Khouloud Mahdhaoui. Photo by Dalal M.

I was born on June 3. My gender, which by then became my single identity, was born even before I took my first breath. I was already a female before my birth; I was already a female before having a name. I was a second-class human, I was a female.

Then I existed. I became a little girl but didn’t adopt any sort of codes. Nobody cared, though. Pants or dress, truck or doll… I was at worst a smart and ambitious little girl. I yearned to become a male, but that was only a child’s dream, a female child’s dream.

Then I started my periods, a revolutionary day in my personal development. I changed from girl to woman. I would no longer have the right to childhood dreams, I had to join my team, assimilate the role of a Tunisian woman and blend into the mass of those who venerate the almighty phallus.

At the age of 14 I fell in love with a woman who, apparently, had so far kept her childhood dreams too. At that time I was unable to conceive my existence without the constant comparison to the opposite gender. I found love, but also frustration, hatred, jealousy, fear, loneliness… In short, I had become an adult.

In the course of years and love I denied my femininity. I fought to fulfil my childhood dream, gravitate towards my own levels. In my heart I was a male. I had to become a man.

The equation was simple. One needs to be a man in order to love women, a man that I was not, but perhaps I could become. I understood my manufacturing fault and got to the bottom of it. Only a few small adjustments were needed. I felt happy.

But it did not take too long to get onto the other side of happiness:

“You were born a woman and will always be,” would chant in unison my family, social morality, laws and religion.

“But how am I supposed to love women then?”

“You will not love them, you will just love men.”

“But how could I, they burp (like me), they fart (like me), have hair everywhere (but slightly less), grab between their legs 24/7 (I wanted to), and do not even have breasts (unlike me)!!”

That day, I realized that, as a woman, I love women because of what makes them different. But above all, I was a woman. I immediately shaved my mustache and stopped grabbing my crotch.

Awoken from my childhood dream, I saw myself falling into an adult nightmare, that of being a Tunisian woman who loves women, a criminal.

A criminal of love and desire? Yes!

I questioned everything that society had instilled in me, these poisoned gifts that alienated me, such as the comfort of the cultural heritage, the concept of family, virginity, patriarchy, women’s fragility and men’s strength, paradise, and even Sunday couscous.

Certainly, I would gladly swap all that. I want love, sex, and to just have fun!

So I’ve been a criminal for several years now. I have loved criminals, evolved in criminal spheres, befriended criminals, and finally found a criminal of my own; a criminal whose smile clears up all doubts and fears, whose eyes will be my final home.

But, when I fall asleep at night in the arms of my beloved, I cannot help but think that a child born today, nearly thirty years and a revolution after, shall – like me – be either a female or a criminal.

I then decided to be an activist.