A transgender woman has told how years of psychological torture led her to try and cut off her penis – with a STANLEY KNIFE.
Nurse Kirsty Cass, born Andy Cass, was lucky to survive her desperate act of self-mutilation after living for years in the wrong body.
Kirsty, now 53 and living in Crawley, West Sussex, is writing a novel to tell all about her struggle with gender dysphoria.
After a failed marriage she spiralled into depression and in 2009 tried to dismember herself and nearly bled to death.
Kirsty, who has a child with her ex-wife, said: “I was sitting at my computer desk one night and I had been drinking quite heavily as usual.
“I looked down at my penis and thought ‘that shouldn’t be there’, that’s foreign, it doesn’t belong to me. I had a tool box in the cupboard and got a Stanley knife out.
“I’ve never experienced pain like it. But that was the turning point.”
“A doctor later told me if I had fully severed it, I couldn’t have had the sex change operation, because it is needed during the surgery.”
After psychiatric assessments Kirsty was diagnosed as having gender dysphoria and in 2013 she was operated on to complete her transformation.
Even from a very young age she felt more comfortable dressing in her mum’s clothes and struggled with her feelings but did marry and have a child.
She finally told her wife the way she feels but their relationship ended amicably and they divorced.
Kirsty said: “I was in a state and I needed help. I had been bottling up those feelings for all those years. I was very lucky I didn’t die.”
