Son of photographer David Bailey claims online chat rooms groomed him into being transgender

Sascha Bailey, the 29-year-old son of the renowned photographer David Bailey, did not spend years thinking he was a woman trapped in a women's body, but instead, it was an idea that grew during a toxic marriage.

"Society has a gun to its head, because if they're not supportive of it, the only choice is to be cancelled. You are either for it, or you're transphobic; there is no middle ground," Bailey, told the Daily Mail in an interview.

"Transitioning was a way of killing myself without dying, because I was so unhappy with my life," he said. "I thought that if I could do this one thing it could change everything, I could reinvent myself as an entirely new person."

Bailey had a vision of becoming something of a "real life Barbie" and frequently contemplated taking his life. He told the outlet that a lot of what caused him this distress was from social media and online chat rooms that he scrolled through while involved in a toxic marriage with a woman, Mimi Nishikawa, who was 20 years older than he was. Bailey was 19 when the two got married.

"She was magnetic and charming, and we just bonded," Bailey told the outlet. "I think we were both a bit lonely, too, and I guess we found each other."

"Loads of people told me it was a bad idea, but when you are in that sort of zone, you have blinkers on," he described dating Nishikawa.

After moving to Japan with Nishikawa, he found that he was in a toxic stage of his life that he wanted to escape. He thought about taking his own life, but that was the time that changing his gender took root in his mind when he was told on internet chatrooms that he could just become a woman. He called it a "solution" to his problem, given where he found himself.

"It's the ultimate way to solve your problems because you're being told everything about you boils down to this one thing that is wrong, and if you can fix this one thing everything will be perfect," Bailey said.

When meeting with a psychiatrist in Japan, Bailey said, "It took ten minutes."

He added, "He referred me to a surgeon, and I was given a box of HRT (hormone replacement therapy) patches and sent on my way."

His parents were "unbelievably supportive" when he confided in them about the change.

"That's wonderful on one level but I feel like that's another issue — it's almost like society has a gun to its head, because if they're not supportive of it, the only choice is to be cancelled. You are either for it, or you're transphobic; there is no middle ground," he continued.

When he struggled to schedule another appointment, he had time to think and realized his mistake. "So I guess you could say that the slowness of the NHS helped to save me."

"One, there was no actual way I can know what it feels like to be a woman because I'd never been one, so the idea of me saying, 'Oh, I feel like a woman' was absurd," he told the outlet.

"And the second thing I came to realize was that I didn't actually need to change my outside because of how I felt on the inside. I just needed to come to terms with it."

Bailey said, "Thank God I didn't do the hormones, because within a few months you're risking infertility and the thought that I could not have children is devastating. But it also shines a light on the uncomfortable reality, which is that we are asking kids aged 15 and 16 to make the choice about whether or not they will want children themselves and that just isn't right."

Speaking on the surge of minors identifying as transgender, Bailey said, "I think we're going to look back on this time and be shocked at how quickly we ran away with all this stuff. We need to allow people space and time to talk and explore their feelings before we rush them down the medical route."