Renate Stoute wrote an autobiographical novel in the late nineties about her transition from man to woman. Her partner Janis Wagemans also wrote about that beautiful, but often frustrating road to completion. In search of her (bisexual) identity, she mainly embraces her lesbian coming out, in a period when Renate is still 'locked down'.
"In 1997, I started writing about my love's transition. What that meant to me as a boy girl who had just come out of the closet twenty years earlier. When she became physically more and more 'locked', my gaze and desire opened up more. It offered additional challenges in our almost symbiotic relationship, in which there was no place for real cheating."
"About ten years ago I was approached by writer David de Poel, who wanted to write a biography about Renate. David transported my extensive archive back and forth in stages for months to read and view all manuscripts, letters, maps, publications, drawings, and so on. Renate was a transsexual woman, and if she had had time to live, that transition would have slowly faded into the background. Never quite, because she lived without secrets, but less prominently. Renate was a gifted author and a warm personality. She has led a hard but also exciting life. She deserves to be known as a human being, just as anyone who has been given one or more labels is first and foremost human.
David's biography is named after Renate's last nine diaries; "Exercises in Bravery," and appears almost simultaneously with "My wife was never a girl.""
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