A YOUNG non-binary person is fundraising for a surgery that will give them a body they "don't want to die in".

Savahnah Irving, 25, lives in Dunfermline and is fundraising for a procedure that will change their life. Savahnah is non-binary, specifically agender and this means that they don't have a gender. They aren't a man or a woman.

Already on testosterone, Savahnah is ready to take the next step of their journey and have their breast tissue removed but is unable to access treatment on the NHS due to incredibly long wait times.

Now, they have set up a GoFundMe page to raise money in the hope of getting the procedure done.

They were able to begin transitioning through GenderGP, an online transgender clinic and have been taking hormone replacements with them for three years now. Originally, Savahnah was looking to get top surgery through GenderGG referrals or from a private NHS doctor but when things fell through, they were left feeling hopeless.

Savahnah told the Press: "It was incredibly difficult, it took me such a long time to even get around to setting up the GoFundMe because it was just that heartbreak, a loss of hope completely that I’m going to be able to have a body that I don’t want to die in.

"For a lot of us, we wake up in the morning and we avoid looking in the mirror or taking photos because we can’t cope with what is there. It feels wrong, it feels unnatural and I think, for most of us, it’s always felt that way, we just didn’t realise why."

As Savahnah is non-binary, having a chest causes extreme gender dysphoria and has stopped them from leaving the house. Once they have had the top surgery, they will be looking into having a full hysterectomy so that they feel comfortable in their body.

They continued: "It’s just a dysphoria thing, it’s something I can deal with a little bit easier because it’s not a visual. With top surgery, your chest is a very visible thing, it’s something I have to see constantly and its something that other people see but for the hysterectomy, it’s a lot more personal in that sense, its something that doesn’t feel natural to have, for me.

"From my own relationship and experience with gender, I feel more comfortable looking more masculine than feminine. There is the gender that you feel inside and then there is the gender that you portray outwardly and, for a lot of people, the gender being portrayed outwardly is for society.

"When I tend to go out, which it’s very rare that I do because its very difficult to hide my chest, I try and portray outwardly as very masculine because it, in my mind, evens out the feminine features that society might see when looking at me."

Having top surgery will allow them to appear more masculine, while Savahnah is agender this is the aesthetic that they enjoy and helps to align their body with how they feel inside. Not only will this help them to feel more themselves, Savahnah also thinks it will make it safer for them to leave the house.

"At the moment, I would definitely have people look at me and think that I’m a trans person to one way or the other. They might think that I was assigned male at birth and transitioning into a woman but they also might read me as a lesbian because obviously we have wonderful butch lesbians or they might not even consider themselves butch but they might dress more masculine," they said.

"Either way, both of those things are considered in the 'queer sphere' and that might put me in a dangerous situation. Thankfully, in Dunfermline from what I’ve experienced so far, everyone has been really lovely.

"One of my favourite things is that Scottish people tend to say 'pal' as a general greeting which is really nice cause it means there is no gender anywhere!"

Savahnah is from England originally but moved north of the border, they have had a friendly experience in Dunfermline so far, compared to some of the other places they have lived.

They continued: "Where I was before, especially where I was last, was a not very great place. There was a lot of homophobia to the point where if a man was to do something even slightly feminine, then they were gay and would get beaten up. That was definitely somewhere I couldn’t really be out, even remotely."

This hasn't been an easy journey for Savahnah, it took a long time for them to realise who they were. They added: "I spent a very long time thinking, 'I’m not trans because I don’t feel like I’m a man. At the time, I still only understood about there being trans men and women.

"I was still quite young and I didn’t have a wide access to the internet and growing up quite poor I didn’t have much access besides at school. When you're at school, you don’t have the chance to really do much, I was more bothered about goofing off than researching lots of stuff.

"Especially because of where I grew up, there's a lot of homophobia around and so it’s not exactly something you want to openly search on your computer because somebody can see and you have to worry about getting beaten up just for looking at something like that."

It wasn't until Savahnah went to college that they began to discover that they were agender.

They continued: "I started learning then and I think it took up until five years ago, when I was 20, for me to come to terms with the fact that I was non-binary. I realised that I didn’t experience the same feelings as binary people. I wasn’t a woman and I wasn’t a man.

"It’s the closest I have ever felt to being myself and, in a perfect world, I would have been raised and gone to school and learned about trans people to be able to go, ‘Oh that’s who I am’ and known earlier and been myself."

Savahnah is hoping to raise £12,000 for their life-changing top surgery, an amount they would be unable to find without the help of others. So far, they have raised £430.

They added: "If you have anything to spare and you want to help somebody to actually feel like themselves, to be able to have a life again, to be able to go outside and go for a walk, go to the shops or spend time outside with their friends without having this constant feeling of dread about their safety, about not being themselves.

"Anything towards me being able to actually live my life would be great, I would be incredibly grateful to anybody who wanted to donate anything. Any donation or share helps towards me being able to live my life."

To donate to Savahnah's GoFundMe page, visit https://gofund.me/5b7a3a46