A transgender woman who knew from the age of eight that she was in the wrong body says she twice attempted to take her own life after feeling frightened and alone.

Dawn Kent, from Gravesend, feels her early years would have been less scary if the subject had been discussed more and people she tried to open up to had been better educated about it.

“There just needs to be a little bit of education so people realise we are not a threat,” Dawn said. “Because we’re not.”

The 56-year-old said she first realised something wasn’t right when at the age of eight, her baby sister was born.

“I’d been an only child and the only grandchild so I didn’t know any different,” she said.

But when she started helping her mum change her sister’s nappy she realised something was wrong.

It made her question her own body, which she said “did not look right or feel right”.

“That was the start of my different outlook on me,” she added.

Recalling those early days trapped in a male body, Dawn said she always felt more comfortable sitting on a toilet rather than standing and hated looking at her body.

“It was my outward appearance that stood out. I did not like to look down there. Bath time was not a pleasant experience for me.”

Around the same time, Dawn remembered buying the paper from the corner shop for her parents every day and seeing an advert about “Transformation” and how you could turn your male body into a female.

“It stuck with me so much. It was something I immediately wished that I could do,” she clearly remembered. “But I didn’t have the money at that age and I couldn’t go to London on my own.”

Being the mid-70s and coming from a family which did not even talk about “the birds and the bees”, Dawn said she never felt she could tell anyone how she was feeling.

“I could never have broached the subject with them,” she said.

Instead, she ended up experimenting in secret and trying on her mum’s and her sister’s clothes.

“When I started to do that, that was when I started to feel the real me,” she remembered.

“Dressing feminine was the real me and the male side of me that I would have to revert to was my alternate world. It was not real life for me.”

She said keeping the secret was torment.

“I wanted to be the real me and I couldn’t be. It tormented me.”

At secondary school, Dawn found she had more in common with her female classmates but carried on her pretence by having a number of relationships with girls.

Fortunately, she wasn’t bullied. “I was good at hiding it,” she said.

But she admitted she did feel lonely and frightened as she didn’t know anyone else who was feeling the same.”

She feels teaching children about the subject of gender identity might be too early at primary school but she wishes it had been on the curriculum in secondary school.

“If things were more open back then it would have helped a lot of people,” she said.

Instead, because of a lack of awareness, Dawn was forced to keep her feelings to herself, which she says led to her twice attempting to take her own life.

“It was a cry for help which never got answered,” she said.

Dawn did try to come out to people but the first did not go well when she had plucked up the courage to tell her aunt at the age of 16.

“She absolutely freaked out. It frightened the life out of me so back into the closest I went.”

She was close to her nan and would have loved to have told her.

“But she was old school,” she said. “I could never have approached the subject with her.”

Her mum even sent her to a psychiatrist when she was 15 years old.

“She knew something was wrong. She said she was sick of all my lying,” Dawn said. “But the discussion never went any further.”

Dawn only attended two sessions and said after her experience with her aunt she did not feel ready to try coming out again, although the psychiatrist could have been the ideal person.

“There was no way I was going to try telling someone again at that time,” she said.

Dawn carried on through life suppressing her true feelings and even got married, but they ended up separating in 2013.

“I just couldn’t hide it anymore,” Dawn said. “I had to do something.

“When I had to go back to being the non-me, as I called it, it was torment. It was harder being the non-me and I just could not take it any longer.”

“We just want to go about our daily lives and be ourselves. And what’s wrong with that?”

After doing some research on the internet and meeting up with some like-minded people, Dawn started the process of transitioning in 2014, at the age of 47.

She was due to have the final operation on March 21, 2020 but the Covid lockdown two weeks earlier but a stop to that and ill health has meant she has still not been able to complete that final stage.

Considering the loneliness she felt as a child and the ignorance she faced when trying to tell a relative her situation, Dawn feels education on the subject is important.

But after The Golden Thread Alliance, which runs nine primary schools and academies in Dartford and Gravesend, was forced to u-turn last week on its pilot scheme to introduce gender identity into the curriculum at Meopham Community Academy in Gravesend, Dawn does think primary school might be too early.

“Not all children have reached puberty then. It’s a traumatic time for children and maybe it is better to wait until secondary school.”

But she thinks it is just as important for parents to be open to discussion with their children.

“Parents should be willing to listen,” she said.

She also feels the recent idea by charity Brooke to suggest teachers wear transgender badges and fly Pride flags in every classroom might be taking it a bit far.

“You don’t want to ram it down people’s throats,” she said.

However, she does want to take away the fear of transgender people, which she feels can only be done through education and talking.

“We don’t have superpowers that we can change people’s minds. We don’t want to stop anyone doing anything.

“We just want to go about our daily lives and be ourselves. And what’s wrong with that?”