Kellie Maloney says she has undergone gender confirmation surgery
Kellie Maloney said she struggled with having to conceal her identity (Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)
Kellie Maloney has said she has undergone gender confirmation surgery.
The 64-year-old boxing manager, who began her transition in 2014, has had a number of surgeries.
Speaking to Kent Online, Maloney said, “I’m a fully-fledged female now. I had it cut off and replaced.”
Maloney said had been forced to live a double life when she was known as Frank Maloney, a boxing promoter who managed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis.
At the time, she said she was living as a woman in Worthing, West Sussex.
“When I went there, Frank would be locked away in a cupboard and I would be Kellie because no one knew me and I felt safe,” Maloney said.
Kellie Maloney on Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 5)
“Only I knew the two people existed. People who saw Frank never saw Kellie.
“It was there from a young age, but I didn’t understand it.”
Maloney said she went to “great lengths to manufacture a masculine image” but struggled as a result of having to hide her identity, which led to three suicide attempts.
She added she was now “very relaxed, happy and open about my life.”
Maloney has been outspoken about trans rights and recently called for the removal of the term transgender from the LGBT+ acronym.
She said it was “confusing” to members of the public who did not understand the difference between sexuality and gender.
“The LGB is about your sexuality and the T’s about your gender and I think it’s very confusing to the general public out there to understand it,” Maloney told Robert Peston on ITV.
Kellie Maloney (ITV)
She also criticised the complex and often invasive process trans people go through to change gender legally.
She voiced her support for an update of the Gender Recognition Act, which allows trans people to legally change their gender without medical checks.
Last year, Maloney challenged broadcaster Dame Jenni Murray’s comments in a Sunday Times Magazine article that trans women were not “real women.”
In response, Maloney told the Press Association: “We have lived in a male-privileged world, but not by our choice. Nobody has lived in a more male-dominated world than me, but I was fighting with me, I was battling with me. This wasn’t how I wanted to live.
“You can’t choose but you can correct it if you’re wrong. That’s what a trans male or female does. I see myself as a woman and I believe I’m a woman.
“I may not have gone through everything a woman has, like childbirth, but I’ve gone through other anxiety. I would have given anything to be born a woman.”
