All About Yves: Notes from a Transition

Was I always trans, part boy beneath my skin, or was it that I landed in a place where ‘girl’ was a container so small it could break your bones?

I learn that a ready smile and sympathetic ear are the only props required to impersonate a woman. The performance becomes so familiar I almost forget that it’s staged. What happens when, aged 30, you understand you’re transgender?

This was the question that confronted Yves Rees, a historian whose life was upended by gender transition in 2018. Then known as a woman called Anne, Yves was forced to grapple with the sudden knowledge that they were not, in fact, female at all.

But when you’ve lived a lie for so long, how do you discover who you really are? And how do you re-learn to live in the world as a different gender?

All About Yves tells their moving journey of re-becoming, at the same time laying bare the messiness of bodies, gender and identity. It shares the challenges and joys of being transgender in Australia today, and reveals how trans experiences like Yves’ can teach all of us about what it means to be man or woman.