At first it was just Claes. Then it became Sara. And since the year 2020 the name is SaraClaes. He was born in 1949 and has been transgender since the age of 5. 2003 was the year he dared to show everyone who he was. OLIKA has interviewed marketing manager, musician and lecturer SaraClaes about his life, pride, gender and daring to be himself.

Tell us a little about yourself, who are you?

– Stop! First I want to talk about Pride. I think it's important to highlight where Pride comes from, because not many people know that. Especially important to highlight in an interview series about Pride.

Go on!

– It arose after an incident at the Stonewall bar in New York in 1969, a bar where transgender people used to meet. The police took great pleasure in raiding there at regular intervals to arrest transgender people. At that time, it was forbidden for men to dress in women's clothing. The police came and picked them up, carried them out and locked them in their "fancy car" and brought the next one. In the middle of such a raid, one of the transgender people shouted to the other guests that they should not just stand there and watch, they had to help. They obeyed. So when the police went back in to get the next one, the guests went and unlocked the doors of the police car and let them out again. They kept going until the police gave up. That is the event that is celebrated at Pride, the liberation of transgender people at Stonewall. After that, it was celebrated in New York every year, and since then Pride, the pride, has spread from there.

So! When I was born in 1949, I was named Claes Schmidt. That's not my name anymore. When I joined the transgender association, I had to get a female name. Then you would be either a man or a woman, this either-or thinking that I'm not so fond of. Then it became Sara Lund. I couldn't be called Sara Malmö so I took Lund instead, because it's not that far from here. But in 2020 I submitted an application that I wanted to change my name from Claes Schmidt to SaraClaes Schmidt. Doesn't SaraClaes sound better than ClaesSara? It swings a little more! It's a cheeky name! And I'm the only one in all of Sweden with that name. It's also very practical. You can call me SaraClaes, Claes, Sara, he, she, anything works! Everything is right. I changed my name so that I would feel good, not so that anyone else would feel bad.

When did you open up about being trans?

– It was 1989, when my wife, Anita, exposed me. I hadn't dared to say anything. We had been together for 15 years at the time. So I had to tell her. She just replied, "I don't have a problem with you dressing like half the world's population," but I still felt I needed to ask if she thought it would be okay if I walked around in a dress at home. She thought it was a stupid question because I don't react when she walks around in jeans and a t-shirt at home. Then I also dared to tell her about my dream of being able to walk on the pedestrian street here in Malmö, in the sunshine, fully dressed as a woman, but that I am prevented by people seeing that I am a man. But that's what you are, she burst out in response. But she didn't think it would stand in the way of my dream. As if it were the simplest thing in the world. It became clear that I had made it so complicated for myself my whole life.

But the first time I was out on the town with Sara was in Örebro in 1998. I was at a trans meetup a few miles outside Örebro. The sun was shining and we were going to go and look at Cajsa Warg's house in Wadköping. There's a lot to see there! Oh, there were a lot of people that day. So I come with my trans friends. Do you know what happens? Nothing! Nothing happens. I remember being so pissed off. Why have I been sitting and hiding in the closet for 40 years? Who has forced me to sit there? Who has made me believe that I can't dress the way I want? Nobody has said that. Yet this little boy Claes has realized that "that's not what a man does". How has it happened? A whole life! Think of how much fun I could have had if only I had known. Well, instead I've been sitting at home feeling bad and thinking about whether I should kill myself because I want to dress like a woman. And then you find out that it's okay? Then you get angry.

How do people react to you being you?

– Something that is fantastic is that since I openly showed myself as a transgender person, I have not received any negative reaction. At least not from anyone that I know of. Maybe they think things about me or talk about me when I am not listening, but that is something I am not going to worry about. If someone has a problem with me being a transgender person, it is not my problem but theirs. Then I think the problems are based on the fact that they do not understand, which is unfortunate.

When I told my colleagues about it, when my wife Anita and I ran Slagthuset here in Malmö, some people said something like “that it was okay, but that I didn’t have to come to work in a dress”. Then I got to talk to them. Eventually they understood that there was no difference between me and me, it was just whether I came to work with or without hair on my head. It’s sad that not everyone can understand it, not everyone gets the opportunity to hang out with a trans person and the chance to understand. They’re probably the ones who say “hen means chicken so we can’t use that”, because they don’t understand. I usually answer that bränn means barn, is that okay then? It’s the same shit if we mix everything with English. What does hen mean in German? I don’t know. You can’t keep going like that. People always find arguments to avoid thinking, or to provoke.

Sometimes the reactions come as questions. Sometimes when I give a lecture someone says “but I can see that you are a man, how can you be a woman?”, then I can only answer that “it is possible that you see that, but you don’t see how I think”. As I said, sometimes I feel like a man and sometimes like a woman, sometimes like something in between and sometimes like nothing and for a period I was convinced that I wanted to kill myself because I couldn’t take it anymore because I couldn’t express what I was feeling. Sometimes people wonder if I have spoken to a psychologist, or if I have had surgery. I have had surgery once, on my knee, but that was a long time ago. I don’t need a psychologist, I talk to my wife and my friends.

Or they ask out of insecurity. They might ask how I want to be treated and called when I dress the way I do. It's so silly that the clocks stop. It's a question that no one else gets! I feel that many people become insecure when they meet a trans person, they don't know how to behave. Then I think you can think about how you treat a person, how you usually do it? I'm a trans person, but first and foremost a human being, actually. They make it too big a deal. Trans people, it's trans and person, the last thing many people forget. I can talk a little about the word too! Trans means "over" or "on the other side" and transvestite, as I used to call myself, means "dressed in the clothes of the other side". I no longer call myself a transvestite because now I think there are more genders, so what are the clothes of the other side? It gets complicated.

How do you think about gender?

– We define multiple genders. We define a biological gender, that's what most people go by. The gender we reproduce with. We have a legal gender that the state goes by when they define us. Then we have a cultural gender, that is, how I want to be perceived or how you perceive me. Then we have what I think is most important, the mental gender, who I think I am. How do I define myself. It is every person's right to be able to define themselves. I believe that all people have both the feminine and the masculine in them. I am somewhere in between, sometimes I feel a little more feminine, sometimes I feel a little more masculine, but I am a biological man.

Something I find funny is that in our culture we reproduce about 1.88 times in our lifetime, the rest is entertainment. That's what we have biological sex for. In other words, it's the entertainment department that decides what you should be paid, how you are expected to behave, dress and what role you should play. It's strange, I think.

How do you think adults should talk about this with children?

– Get to know your children! Find out how they think and feel! Dare to talk to them! I think that's important. That's what many people don't dare to do, because they feel they know too little. I think that's stupid, I believe that you can always open up for conversation. Then you shouldn't tell children how they should be or who they should be. Support the children in who they are. Respect everyone else for who they are, not who you want them to be.

Thank you so much SaraClaes for a fantastic chat!

Text: Augusta Andersson Feldtman
Photo: Jens C. Hillner

Tip!

Journalist Vesna Maldande has written the book From Man to Man , which was published in 2012. The next book, "In the Head of a Man Named Sara," will be published in 2024!
Read more on SaraClaes' website: www.saraclaes.se

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