A World War II hero has come out as transgender – at the age of 90!
Patricia Davies, once Peter, says her whole life has been a lie.
The pensioner says she’s known since the age of three that she was girl, but stayed in the closet for fear of being forced to have electric shock treatment, as homosexuality was “treated” back then.
After losing her wife of 63 years, she finally took the brave step of showing her true colours, and started living as a woman.
Patricia now proudly wears women’s clothes and takes the female hormone oestrogen, and hasn’t ruled out surgery, reports the Daily Mail.
The former soldier, from Leicestershire in the UK, said she always loved girls’ toys as a child, and didn’t want soldiers, but an ironing board.
“My mother seemed to go along with it. We went to see Peter Pan and I wanted to be a fairy. She made me a wand. She didn’t say it was strange,” says Patricia, who is attracted to men.
Thirty years ago, she told her wife, who was “very sympathetic”.
“She used to buy me jewellery and she would call me Patricia,” she says.
But they decided to keep it on the down-low after teenagers spotted Patricia wearing women’s shoes and pelted their home with eggs.
It was the 2015 Television programme, Boy Meets Girl, which portrays transgender characters, that encouraged Patricia to make the change.
Last year, she felt safe enough to come out and finally began transitioning and says: “It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I was living a lie.”
Her gender on her medical records has been changed to female.
The retired industrial photographer, who served in the army between April 1945 and 1948, has an auntie who once lived to 104 years old, and hopes she has “similar genes” so she can enjoy life as a woman for a few more years.
There’s even a chance she might get breasts, and she is currently being assessed by a gender identity clinic.
She said: “I’m not ruling it [surgery] out. If they said it was safe, I would talk it over with my surgeon, assuming I live long enough.”