Book reception: Transman – the long road

Simon has always felt like a boy or a man, even though he was born with a girl’s body. He grew up, was young, and became a parent in a time without treatment options, and where virtually no one knew that trans men also existed.

Transman is a shocking and unique account of a small, overlooked minority group and of massive state discrimination with ramifications into legislation and far into the investigation and treatment system, focusing on the quarter of a century it took Simon to find and fight his way into and through the opaque obstacle course that the restrictive Danish investigation and treatment system for transgender people constituted.

At the same time, as a psychologist, he was met with prejudice and distancing at his workplace when he struggled to get what was then a psychiatric diagnosis – transsexualism – in order to receive treatment and, as only the third Danish trans man, to receive a phalloplasty (penis reconstruction) at Rigshospitalet.

Simon Gjerlov (b.1966) is a clinical psychologist with a degree in adult psychology (1999) with a license (2003) and a teaching qualification (1991). He has worked for 14 years as a psychologist in the field of children, worked as an adult clinician and, as a volunteer in the former LGBT Denmark (2009-19), handled inquiries regarding transgender children and young people, founded the FTM group and was a member of the Transpolitical Committee.