User:Msknight

NOTE - Draft article to seek consensus for acceptance as an auto biography.

Michelle Knight is a transsexual author and photographer born in Bridgend on the 10th of October 1969. She is currently living in Sussex.

Her career has been in Information Technology for most of her life, having leanings that way throughout her school life. She entered Mensa in September 1989 achieving 145 on the Cattell scale, and used her membership to enquire about herself through access to various personality courses. Having gone through therapy and contact with various organisations, she changed her name in Sheffield Magistrates Court on the 29th April 1992 and changed her social life at that point. Her main surgery took place on the 15th of October 2001 and she had breast augmentation and minor rhinoplasty shortly after.

In the early part of her transition she was part of the self-help group, Change, and took on the publication of the monthly support magazine for a few years. Michelle was one of a number of minor contributors to the, "Blue Boox," support series of handbooks. Change was loosely affiliated to Press for Change but closed its own doors when changes in society meant that people were obtaining mainstream support and its membership dropped. Michelle continues to host the static pages.

Michelle also appeared in "GP Medicine" on March 25th 1994, "The Star," a Sheffield local newspaper on the 1st of November 1994, "The guardian," on the 11th June 1994, "Forum," volume 27 number 10 and also the UK's Mensa Magazine in 1994 as part of her attempt to put the discussion on Transsexual people on the public adgenda. She also manned the Change helpline for a number of years, helping anonymous callers from a telephone in her own home. Along with the organisation itself, the helpline has sinced closed.

The other major part of Michelle's life has been her self-identity as a submissive and has taken part in various BDSM scene activities. She has a small number of TV appearances world wide, among which was in one episode of, "Taboo," made by RDF media and broadcast on ITV Central in 2004, another appearance was on, "Sex Shop," in French Canada around 2002/3.

Michelle has written two BDSM fiction books published by Olympia Press International in their New Traveller's Companion Series called, "Broken Spirits," (1996) and, "Genni In A Bottle and other short stories," (2002). Both are currently out of print.

In later life Michelle became an activist with Unison in 2005 and is a negotiator and grievence and disciplinary representative for her work colleagues. This went further and Michelle is an opponent of part 5 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration bill which was enacted in the UK in 2008 also writing to MP's and government calling for a review of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 and the treatment of photographers liberties by the Police and the Home Office.

For pleasure and relaxation Michelle is an amateur photographer but colludes with other photographers on various commercial projects.

Michelle's writing has turned to screen play is working with Ben Slythe on a BDSM film script called, "The Companion," which was started in 2007.

Michelle is the lead programmer behind the open source PHP project, "Michelle's Dropcalc," which supports users and administrators of the L2J game engine. The dropcalc project was started in 2007.

External Links Michelle Knight - Official home page of Michelle Knight. Real Bondage - Michelle's BDSM related web site. Articles - Page containing some of the published articles. Michelle's DropCalc - Forum for dropcalc support. Flickr - Slideshow of Michelle's photography Change - Transsexual self-help group