Toby Harrap first met Lauren Birch working in a café.
Both going through rough patches in their personal lives, they remedied their troubles with after-work drinks and formed a friendship.
Drinks turned quickly to dating.
Back then, though, Toby was Megan: struggling with the knowledge that he didn’t identify with the female gender he’d been assigned to at birth.
Toby and Lauren, along with Toby’s mother Janet, are joining this week’s episode of Insight to discuss the profound impact gender transition can have on relationships with loved ones.
The couple also have a young daughter, Ruby-Rae, who will one day be told that her father is transgender.
Insight guests Lauren Birch and Toby Harrap Source: Insight
For Toby, the experience of transitioning has been, individually, fraught but positive.
But how has his transition affected the generations of family and friends before him, those with him now, and the ones to come after him?
“She had to make that decision: am I going to date a trans man?”
A previous relationship had become somewhat “tortured” when Toby revealed to his then-partner that he was transgender.
With Lauren, it was a different experience.
“The first time we hung out outside of work, he said to me, ‘Look, I actually think I’m transgender’,” says Lauren.
"I was like, oh my god, that’s so exciting, tell me more. I need to know all of the things about it.”
There was an attraction between them, but Toby was hesitant.
“I told her I was transgender before anything happened between us, we were just friends,” he says.
“She had to make that decision: am I going to date a trans man?”
For Lauren, the prospect of dating someone who may, eventually, change genders, was not daunting.
“I was about 16 [when] I came out as bisexual … [but] I don’t particularly have a label,” she says. “I love Toby for who he is, not the gender he is.”
“I love Toby for who he is, not the gender he is.” - Lauren Birch
Her connection to the lesbian community, and the sexual identification that came with it, had been strong.
But she didn’t see it as mutually exclusive with her new relationship; rather, an evolution of her personal sexuality.
“It was fascinating for me,” she says. “I loved watching how the brain works, just watching myself evolve and watching me and Toby evolve as a heterosexual couple.”
Within two years the two were in a steadfast relationship.
Lauren became a catalyst for Toby’s transition, assisting and providing him with the confidence to pursue hormone therapy.
Communication – down to the “nittiest, grittiest details” of sex, cohabitation, parenting and coupledom – has also been crucial in contributing to their now “thriving” relationship and Toby’s fully-realised gender identity.
“If I think of Meg [Megan] I think of an overweight, angry, depressed alcoholic,” says Toby.
“I was a mess of a woman, and now I’m a really well together man.”
"I've basically got the perfect son."
For Toby’s mother, Janet, the transition was also powerful.
“He was heading down a path of destruction, at the time Toby was Meg back then,” she tells Insight’s Jenny Brockie.
“We had got to a point where the little contact that we had was volatile.”
From an early age she’d recognised Toby’s discomfort in his genetically female body, with Toby saying he was never encouraged to be a “girly girl.”
Janet says Lauren was a “saviour” when she came into Toby’s life, and as he began the transition process their relationship repaired.
The birthday before Toby began his hormone treatment, he decided he’d put a dress on one last time, “make-up and hair and the whole nine yards.”
“Mum [had] to say goodbye to her daughter,” Toby explains.
But Janet wasn’t fazed to be ‘losing’ a daughter. The opposite, in fact.
“I don’t feel like I’ve actually lost anything,” she says. “I have got my child back.”
"I have my child back." - Janet Harrap
“Toby was obviously struggling really badly with [his] gender and what that was meaning and the pressures it was putting on him.”
"I’ve basically got the perfect son … I can’t feel bad about that. That’s a good thing.”
Toby Harrap as a child with mother Janet Source: Supplied
"We plan to raise a very open-minded and aware little girl."
The final generation to experience Toby's transition will be his daughter with Lauren, Ruby-Rae.
Born early last year, she was conceived via sperm donation from Toby's brother Nick, which fertilised Lauren's eggs.
Knowing the transition was the right option, it was still hard for Toby to consider he may never have kids as hormone therapy approached.
"I was a bit devastated that I was never going to have children," he says. "I was never going to have a little Harrap running around."
Now, with the sperm donation a success and a baby to raise, the couple are beginning to discuss how they will tell their daughter that her father is transgender.
"We have talked extensively with each other, our parents and my brother, and we all agree that she will grow up knowing the truth," he says.
Toby Harrap and Lauren Birch, with daughter Ruby-Rae Source: Lauren Birch
"The older she gets, the more detailed the information we will give her. She will also know that her uncle is the donor."
"Basically we plan to raise a very open-minded and aware little girl," he says.
[videocard video="629302851567"]
