CJ

I think it was, it was realising then and sort of, and the internet. You know even at 28 the internet was a huge, huge, it was massive for me, and I, you know I was involved with transmasculine YouTube for a long time, because it was realising that the, they didn’t have, there wasn’t just that one narrative. For me the idea of being born in the wrong body isn’t something that fits. Like I wasn’t born in the wrong body, I was born in my body. I just am not comfortable with certain aspects of it. And so for me it was hearing other people’s stories, and, and I remember it was, I think it was Skyla Kergil who’s a transmasculine YouTuber, and I remember him talking about his experiences and there was something in it that just, and it clicked, and it clicked in that same way that, that the way that I know that an idea is a good idea when I’ve had it, the way that you know that something’s going to be delicious when you eat it. There was something kind of inherent that just went, ‘Oh, okay it’s that.’ And so yeah that, that was, I guess it took me a long, I kind of had to go past it and then double back and be like, ‘Oh hang on a minute. This actually does apply to me.’

My friends were great, as with many things, like most of my friends are queer. I’ve been in very queer spaces which meant there were all kinds of gender expressions and sexualities and people from everywhere and we’re neither predominantly cis or predominantly white, which, which I think made it more comfortable for me just to be like, “Hey, this is who I am,” and it was a very much a “Hey this is who I am,” and, and feeling the genuine sort of rush of people to be like, “Hey we support you,” and “What do you need?” and “What do you need in terms of pronouns?” and “How can we make it easier for you?” Which was fantastic. My family in general don’t really understand it, and they make some effort, but very little.

I have a life that’s very separate from my parents. My family is very much a queer family, a queer unit that I’ve made down in [city], and so I do feel the, I’ve really felt more support than anything else just, and again it’s great to be in a space where I’m just me. And that’s the thing I think that’s most important for me, most of the time, is that I don’t want to have to think about being trans all the time, because that can be hard enough in my head as it is, and on the days where it’s great, it’s great, and on the days when it’s bad, it’s really bad. But I’m a person, my transness doesn’t supersede like the fact that I love dogs, the fact that I am not from [city], the fact that I listen to certain types of music and cook certain types of food. And so the best thing is that I have an incredible support network of people who care far more about whether or not I want go to the movies, or whether or not I want to read this book, or whether or not I want to do something with them, than they do about my gender expression. And that’s very liberating. I personally found it, I know some people, I went and did sort of various groups to be around other trans folk, I found them useful kind of at the beginning. I think for me I’m not very much of a joiner in that way, so it felt, I just wasn’t comfortable. And I felt like I was taking up space that I didn’t need to be in. So for me they didn’t work. I know for other people they, they, people who I made friends with there still go back kind of once a month, whenever they can, because they found it really empowering, just for me it didn’t, it didn’t quite work that way. And then the other thing that’s been sort of funny and ironic and a twist, is the number of people who’ve come out to me since I came out. Because I do think there’s something that happens when you relax about the ideas of gender, and people start to be more comfortable in their skins and who they are, and we are entering a stage at the minute where people in their like, we hear a lot about trans youth, but I think also at late twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, you have people going, “Oh I can do this too.” And that’s really, really magical actually, it’s really magical to be in a space where I feel like I’m being supported, but also that other people feel comfortable enough that they can come out and that we’ll support them too.

The entire issue comes down to transness is something that for some reason people want to fight right now. And the idea of transness is something that people want to have a say on. I maintain always that the, being trans is usually the least interesting thing about a trans person. And it’s an adjective, it describes a state of being, but the person is actually the most interesting thing. And I think we have to get to more story centric trans people telling their own narratives. Ways of, of describing gender and what goes on with them. Because I think at the moment narratives, I think narratives, I’m one of the, I mean I’m a writer, I think stories make the world better or worse depending on how they’re told. And at the moment the narrative of being trans is, does not belong to trans people. And the discrimination comes so much from having to be like, “No, no, no, no, it’s not like that at all,” and then people going, “Oh you’re defensive,” or “You’re hedging,” or “You’re not answering a thing.” And personally I think you know, in my own little microcosm when, when people relax about gender it’s more comfortable for everybody. Not just trans people. I think if you limit gender expectations and those kind of things, it’s very hard to discriminate against people, and it also makes everybody just a lot more comfortable. cisgender, transgender however wherever in between on a spectrum they may fall, I think people relax a lot more so I think this notion of, of transness is this big kind of homogenous blob of yes this is all trans people, are part of the trans agenda. I also sort of maintain that the trans agenda appears to be, “Can we just be nice to people, and leave them alone?” “No, we can’t do that.” Like, “Oh, okay, fair enough.” Yeah I think we just need more about the multiplicity of what it is to be trans, and the ways in which people, and the ways in which people connect to it. For some trans people being trans is very important to them, for others not so much. And you’re, and people are allowed to be in exactly the same way that you’re allowed to you know a blonde or a redhead or have pink hair, or have blue hair or, it needs to get to a place where it’s that level of okay.

We cannot have a white middle class narrative being the thing that drives what it is to be trans. Some of that is access to the history and information about the fact that you know women of colour, transwomen of colour have always been at the heart of the trans right movement, is very important. And I think highlighting people, you know people like Asifa Lahore, and they’re sort of, heard her story of coming from like a Muslim background and the challenges of that as a trans woman, and the intersections of those things. I think these are the narratives that need to be out there more. That’s not to say that obviously there aren’t the, that white people don’t have intersections but I feel like there’s a certain amount of the, I’ll be honest, there’s a certain amount of white people who are like me, where I’m like fine, our narratives are not particularly interesting or particularly driven, and I’m not particularly representative of many people. Whereas I think there are other stories that are more interesting and deserve to be told. And I think it’s the job of trans folk to make sure that we remember that not to take up spaces that belong to other people. That we can amplify the voices of people who are intersections of more than one minority. Because that’s also going to be really important for kids. I think, I think we need, we need some real heroes and I think we need to be able to see that like you can grow up and you can be happy and beautiful and successful, and also have issues with mental health and also be going through medical transition, and you can be imperfect and you can also be an entire person. And I think that’s something that kids should be able to aspire to. You know I think people like Munroe Bergdorf, the way that she handles criticism and the stuff that she’s gone through, and yet somehow managed to do it with, with an incredible amount of grace, I think is a great example if you’re a young black trans woman.

My regular GP, she went on maternity leave, and the doctor who came in and took her place actually came in at quite a difficult moment for me. The gender clinic had said that I could go on testosterone, but that before I went on testosterone I would have to legally change my name, and I refused to have, I was, I’m in my thirties at that point, I was like no-one’s telling me when or how I change my name, and they said that they wouldn’t approve it if I hadn’t done the paperwork. Which to me is ridiculous because there’s no point in me taking, if I, if I get a gender recognition certificate that says that I’m male, as a non-binary person I’m still stranded in the middle of something that I’m not. And so it was not something that I particularly cared to do really. And I, the second GP that I spoke to, I went in with the letter and said, “They’ve done this, they’ve said that you can prescribe the testosterone, but I haven’t changed my name.” And he said, “Well why haven’t you changed your name?” I said, “Cos I don’t want to.” And he was like, “Okay.” He was like, “I’m confident that you’ve thought about this, I can see it’s been a journey, and I’ve got no problems prescribing you testosterone.” And that was really a, it was really an eye opener into how it can be if you have people on your side. It’s not a case, it wasn’t a case of him giving me what I wanted, it was a case of him acknowledging that as a grown-up in the world I may have actually thought about this for longer than he had. And he was, he was very open to having conversations about it, at that point I was on Sustenon, which is the monthly injection, so it meant that I went into my nurses office every month for the injections. And likewise she was fantastic. And so that was the first time that I really felt like I’d had any active support from people who, and it, the difference that it made, the relief that I had from it was, was tangible. Like I could, I could touch it, it was so strong. Because alongside that, you know with the GP’s I also had it where I went into the GP’s cos I had tonsillitis, and I needed some penicillin for it, and she wanted to talk to me about how my transition was going. And I was like, “This is a different problem than the one that I’m here for. My transition right now is fine. My tonsils on the other hand are exploding. “So it’s weird, I think the GP thing of, there is an anxiety there, I tend to believe that someone becomes a GP because they want to do the best for people, and they actively care about helping people. I think there’s so little information that it has always felt like being somebody’s guinea pig. It felt very much, in my GP clinic, like I was the first one that they’d ever encountered, and a lot of it they were going to take their lead off me. And that’s a weird feeling for someone that isn’t a medical professional.

My first appointment was great. My first appointment was with Doctor [name], on, and he was, he was very understanding, for essentially one of the most invasive areas of my life, when you go to the clinic they want to know everything from jump, and that involves talking about your childhood in incredible detail, talking about everything from, from how you felt as a child to how frequently do you masturbate. It was, it was the levels of, of information to give a stranger in a room while also worrying that somehow you were going to give the wrong answer. And I found that really difficult. I thought he did great, I thought that the situation, it was one of those difficult bits of, I didn’t judge him for it, I understood what he had to do, and he was very open and frank about how uncomfortable it was going to be, and he understood that and apologised for it. So, there was a very sort of human interaction there, which was really great, but in general, no. I mean I’d rather have a root canal than go through any of that again.

So, after the first appointment, I then had to wait for my second appointment, and my second appointment was horrendous from start to finish. My second appointment was horrendous from start to finish. I cannot remember the name of the doctor, I feel like I’ve actually blocked out the name of the doctor, he was an older gentleman and it started going wrong when I realised that I’d been in the room for about twenty five minutes and I hadn’t said anything, but he had talked a lot about his theories of genders and names and expressions and how people do things, and it, I remember there being, a, I’m one of those people where I’ll make a lazy joke to make someone laugh in a situation because it’s easier for to me to get through it, that’s just who I am as a person. I am a walking “Dad joke” in most cases. And I remember him asking me why I didn’t use men’s rest rooms. And I said because they smell worse. And he told me that I wasn’t taking it seriously. And there was a minute where I was like, “I don’t think I understand what’s happening here.”

He also had very strong opinions on what trans people should or shouldn’t name themselves, and the names that they should pick and whether or not it outs you as being trans. And I think in a lot of ways, I suspect what he was trying to do was do that like, the notion of passing for a trans person, the idea of being in society and instantly being seen as cisgender, for some people is the absolute aim. I have always been another or some variety, and I’m very comfortable in that way. So, if someone wants to ask questions and, again I’m, I’m, these are not things I have not considered. He was very certain that, you know, calling myself [name] would be inappropriate, I should pick a different version of a name. Here are the names that I should and shouldn’t do. And it just got very, his opinions that I didn’t agree with, and also, I felt like that had very little bearing on me.

The end result, I mean the, the bit that, and of course at this point he is the, the person between me and testosterone, so he is the person between me, and as far as I understood it as well, it was I wasn’t sure if medical transition was going to be the right thing for me. But I knew that I needed to give it a go because nothing else had worked. If it didn’t work, it was then going to have to be further exploring about like what’s going on with me. I never really had the trans identity that the, my trans, knowing about my transness has fixed things. I think partly because I was just so much older when it really occurred to me, and doubt is one of my natural sort of states of being. I doubt everything. So, this is, he was also this person that’s standing between me and testosterone, I mean and being able to work out if this is going to help or not. And so I found it incredibly challenging but at the end he was like, “You can go on testosterone, but I want you to change your name.” And a stipulation for me going on testosterone was the legal name change. Which I refused to do. And I still refuse to do because I’m a grown-up. But also, it’s my name, it’s my, and nobody has the right to tell me where I should feel dysphoric or where I should feel bad about something.

I had to go into therapy and say like, “There are going to be times where you’re going to be tempted to be like, ‘oh tell me about transition’, and it’s not going to be transition related.” Because I think that gets forgotten a lot in mental health. There is this idea that trans people have issues with depression and anxiety, therefore all of the trans person’s depression and anxiety is to do with them being trans, and like cause and effect tend to get a little bit muddled up in that way because sure it can be to do with that, but it can also be separately, in exactly the same way that all people kind of contain myriads. So I found that once I’d done that, and actually straight up had that moment, my therapist was great.

I think the, one of the things that I’m so grateful that my GP knew and I didn’t know going in, was that he could prescribe me testosterone, off the back of the recommendation from the gender clinics. Gender clinics make recommendations, but GP’s can actually make prescriptions. It would be great in general if, and I don’t know how you would even do it, but, if GP’s could particularly, no any GP’s. I was going to say particularly if they know that they’re dealing with a trans person, but there is so little knowledge available there for GP’s, and so much of the time they don’t know what they’re looking for or why they’re looking for it, or why it might be a problem. An example: I got a, I had some blood tests, I got a panicked telephone call from my doctor at the GP, being like we’ve got your blood results back and we need you to come in. And I was like, “Oh okay. This doesn’t sound good.” And I went, “Can I ask why?” And she said, “Your testosterone levels are through the roof.” And I was like, “Yeah.” That’s because I take testosterone daily. And there was a pause on the end of the phone, and she was like, “Well why would you do that?” And I was like, “Because I’m trans.” Those kinds of things I think GP’s need to be aware of before they sort of do the, this is just a normal kind of investigation. It would also be great if GP’s understood that being trans is part of my body, but also my body runs in different ways, like when I say I can’t sleep, or if I have tonsillitis or if I’ve broken my arm, or if I’ve fallen over, there are so many things that I do that are not, they are only trans because it happens to be me that’s doing it. And I think GP’s tend to jump to, “Oh you’ve got the trans flu,” and you’re like, “No, just the regular old kind and it sucks.” So like both information and less reliance on it, all at the same time I think would be great.

Never forget how much power you have over somebody, it may not feel like it, if may feel like you are just a cog in a thing against another cog, you are the most terrifying thing to most trans people, because we’re just terrified that you’re going to say no. And please don’t forget the amount of time that it takes for us to have the run up to say something to you. The amount of conversations that a trans person has had in their own head, playing out conversations with other people, I don’t believe anybody wakes up on a whim and then just decides, “That’s it, I’m going to start medical transition.” And I think GP’s and specialists in particular need to be aware of the fact that in so many ways they are, they are gatekeeping and people just want to be let in.

Education. Information. Even it if means giving NHS staff, you know, like ideas of like pronouns and updating of systems and that kind of thing. I think there needs to be also a slight deviation from the NHS and like the government and legislation. I think the paperwork of one becomes so much the remit of another, so the idea that my medical transition will be held off because of a name change that I do or don’t make, when that has nothing to do with my health, is a bizarre two-step. I think doctors need support and training, particularly GP’s. I think we need more doctors, certainly more specialists, so that the waiting lists can cut down. And investment, there just needs to be an investment in, in understand that this is going to continue to be something that, that if numbers are anything to go by, it’s increasing year on year. Which means you can’t just go with how things are, and it would be great I think to see the UK take gender and things seriously. I think the thing that’s exciting I guess from a medical perspective is that they have the opportunity to be at the top of the field, for showing what it is that standardised state care could do, and how to embrace the challenges of it. It would be great to see more of that rather than the dread of, “Oh no, we’ve got to learn another thing about something that we don’t really care about.” Cos that’s a boring idea.