For a not-yet-out trans teen, Kate Bush's song 'The Sensual World' felt like an invocation of everything I was feeling. The track, from what Bush described as her 'most female album', was intended as a rejection of masculine influence and an ode to the female experience. Based on Molly Bloom's soliloquy in James Joyce's Ulysses, it celebrates life inside a woman's body and the spiritual and sexual pleasure it brings.
At 17, I was already bullied for my effeminacy. My high voice, camp mannerisms and 'sassy' stride made me a target. I tried to deepen my voice, but failed. It felt safer to be a feminine boy than a boy who wanted to become a woman. I kept my transgender identity secret.
One morning, a girl from my school in Plymouth shared her headphones with me while we walked through the forests. She played Kate Bush. That day, I couldn't stop thinking about Bush's ethereal voice. On my walk home, I listened again under the trees. The words 'to where the water and the earth caress' and 'now I've powers of a woman's body' stood out. I pictured Bush dancing among trees in synaesthetic ecstasy.
Something shifted. Bush's ode to womanhood felt like an invocation of all I could be: euphoric, audacious and free. I began to see my femininity not as a flaw, but as an affirmation of life. It still wasn't safe to come out at school, but I had a place in my mind to escape to – the lush universe Bush created – where I danced in recognition of my own sacred womanhood.
I transitioned a couple of years later, when I moved away for university. But from that day in the forest, I knew I could refuse the voices that told me my reverie would never become reality.
