What would you like to see changed around education?

Just that being queer or trans or however you identify just isn’t, is a like a non-issue if you’re, if we’re teaching kids about like different family make-ups, not even just in sexual education because like being trans or being queer or LGBT or whatever it’s not just about like sexuality it’s about how we live our lives, it’s about – especially queerness – it’s about our beliefs it’s about like our rejection of different aspects of society. And so to just allow that to be a part of like when we think about families, when we think about people like when we think about just anything like ‘That person might be queer, that person might be trans’ and that’s just a part of life as opposed to like this addition or like this thing that’s only apparent in sexual education. So yeah trying to break down an understanding of our identities as like these sexual things it’s just, we’re just living our lives [laughter].

My friends were quite supportive for the most part and have been like as accepting as they can be. Of course like different friends will understand things at different levels, that kind of stuff, so it’s just been a process but so long as that friend, like, the friendship is strong and the love that grounds that friendship is there then that has always been like, a very supportive space for me to go to. And with my family things of course have, aren’t always smooth but again that, that foundation of love has allowed things to like for me to feel like supported and feel able to share my transition, my experience and so on with the people that love me.

How would you like to see healthcare services change in the future?

For them to be actually free fair and equal. To prioritise Trans health but like prioritise Trans healthcare but not prioritise it above anything else because it’s an, it’s a service that should be accessed as much as any other service should be able to be accessed and it just means that NHS needs a whole lot more funding and the ways that we think about Trans people needs to transform it needs to change and the longest you should wait is like a couple of weeks before you like, the process needs to just, the process is built on a basis of like transphobia, it’s built on a basis that like Trans people don’t know themselves, that we need however X amount of time before we can truly decide like once we’ve actually, it’s just built on like a very harmful and toxic structure and so just, for that to just be completely overhauled and just make services accessible to whoever needs them.

I try and stay away from these debates but I know what my view on young people accessing healthcare is and I know that’s not the view of, of everyone but I feel like all we can do is just like try and create spaces where, or like create discourse where young people feel like, young Trans people feel supported and try and keep them, because unfortunately people are always going to be against our community and that’s something I experienced with a lot of communities that I’m in like regardless of why, people always gonna be racist or going be transphobic people always going to be homophobic like everything and right now is popular it’s very popular to be transphobic and it’s very popular to be questioning our community and that kind of stuff. And so I feel like rather than like challenging every discourse we see that’s like transphobic like directly I feel it’s more important to create infrastructure outside of that because if we keep on going in on that like it just means that we’ll stay at the level of like the harm and not really progress to, I hate the word progress but like not really get to a space where we can like create different like infrastructure and so I feel like creating spaces and doing work outside of like harmful media discourse around Trans young people is like the best work that can be done right now.

I really want children and one of the good things that my GP did do which I much respect her for was refer me to the [city] Fertility Clinic and I went there and had a discussion with one of the practitioners about the possibility of having like getting my eggs stored and later on like either putting them in a partner or like looking to give birth myself and like the possibilities. And that kind of stuff which was a really good discussion and I, yeah I really wanna have children, I’d love to have my eggs stored and I don’t ever see myself having a hysterectomy as well even though, and I felt like, it’s more of a like ideological decision not to do that because I feel for so long Trans masculine people were told they have to have hysterectomy’s and I feel like it’s a like form of sterilisation when there’s actually no risk and I know Michael Toze wrote a really powerful paper looking at how Trans masculine people had been told to have hysterectomy’s when they actually found the risk was, was nothing. And so to me that’s like more of an ideological thing about who should have babies, who’s allowed to have children, who’s allowed to like reproduce and all that kind of stuff and like especially with the history of like black women being sterilised in parts of the world still and throughout history that’s not something that I want to do. And so yeah I would love to have a baby either through storing my eggs and then putting those eggs into a partner or into a surrogate and giving birth that way or carrying a baby myself is something that I like before I came out and like transitioned and whatnot I was like I’m not carrying no baby [laughter] I’m not doing none of that, but feeling more in control of my body like I own my body, my body is mine has given me space to think about carrying myself which is something that I’m quite open to now and I’m also open to like adoption and other forms of other routes to like having a family.

Finding services like cliniQ have been like transformative. I remember once I went to a sexual health clinic in [city] and I was like ‘Yo like, can I get screened?’ and then they gave me a form and because I said that I have sex with like the same gender they wouldn’t like let me be screened because, well they wouldn’t give me a take, take home pack to be screened because I’m at higher risk and so I have to go home, rather than having any screening they were like go home and then like you have to come back another time and I was like this makes no sense, first of all, and like when it’s like a, what’s it, AFAB-on-AFAB like there’s no, there’s no high risk it’s actually a lower risk and so I was just like, ‘What on earth is going on here?’. And so after that I tried to not go to like that service again and yeah found somewhere, yeah found cliniQ and that’s the only place that I go to now and it’s been super helpful and they’ve like, yeah they’ve, they’ve been very affirming in everything they’ve done that’s where I got my cervical screening done as well and all that kind of stuff, so yeah it’s been great.

I identify as like queer and I think through transitioning I identified as queer before but I feel it’s been more affirmed like through transitioning and I think I care a lot less about gender than I ever did when, with regards to like who I find attractive or like relationships and that kind of stuff. And I feel when I identified like as a woman I feel there was a lot of pressure or like a lot of there’s a lot of shame in identifying like even as like a kind of masculine woman and like having attraction to like other masculine people or cis men or Trans men or whatever. And through transitioning a lot of that has like alleviated and I just feel yeah free and able to like have attraction to whoever I feel it to towards.

So prior to colonisation there were a number of societies across Africa across the Americas across Asia that didn’t hold gender in the same regard as the European or Westernised ideals did and so a lot of societies had multiple genders or had third genders had people that referred to themselves as like two spirits people were always, have always been complicating gender as soon as gender became a thing to complicate. Because it, it just doesn’t make sense that everybody falls into a category that’s either this or either that and so yeah across those across those places gender has always been something that is very complicated and complex and not binary.

I would email different people that I heard gave therapy in the North and I would just get responses like ahhh we only deal with gay men or we only deal with this kind of person or our waiting list is X amount of time long and it was just like this isn’t really helpful and so even going through my GP like there wasn’t really any, anywhere that I could see that I could get free and accessible healthcare which is what I needed at the time as I didn’t have any money to fund anything privately. And so yeah I was just kind of getting thrown around and it became like a process within itself to be sent to fill out this form and express why I needed the therapy and then have to go through like the process of like what, where, because my mental health was already in a really bad place init, I just became so disheartening I was like I don’t want to open up again to another like online sheet that’s gonna turn me away and I was like I don’t wanna share like what’s going on for me internally in that kind of way and so I just kind of gave up.

The process was like, with the actual surgeon was fine, like, he’d done it a lot of times, it was all pretty quick because obviously you’ve been waiting for this thing for however long and like this, this momentous occasion in your life and then it’s just like, you’re just one of however many are getting done on that day and like they’re just trying to get through it all but it was okay. However I did end up making a complaint to the hospital because as soon as I came out of my surgery one of the nurses, well not as soon as, in the evening one of the nurses came in and misgendered me and I was just like [laughter] I was like ‘Did you not see what I done? Did you just see what I went through? And I was still in pain, I’m on morphine, I was like ‘Oh my God’. And so that was horrible, really horrible and sometime, and it just felt like that particular nurse was just trying to… so the opening hours were like, open so my family and my friends could have stayed for as ever long as they wanted to but it seemed like they was trying to get them out and I was like ‘Why are you treating us like this, what is going on here?’ And so yeah I had to make a complaint to the hospital because I was like ‘They just didn’t show care, they didn’t show like respect for my friends and my family and that just wasn’t cool’ and I was like, ‘I’m in this unfamiliar place, [town] probably like one of the only Black people in this hospital right now like and this is not okay’. They also gave me like a really crap like, lunch and dinner and they didn’t show me the full menu so just gave me a jacket potato [laughter] and then later on I found a full menu and I was like ‘What!?’ And so yeah I made a complaint and yeah it was, it was received [laughter].

Well even before this I was like, ‘Okay I need to, 10 grand, that’s a lot of money’ like, which is the ball park figure that it was gonna cost. The surgery itself costs £7000, the consultations cost about over a £1000, I think altogether and like the transport and whatnot and then with the surgeon that I was going with he wanted me to stay in [town] for like a week and so I had to book like, what’s it, a hotel and like, AirBnB and my whole family, well not my whole family like my mum and some friends came down. So all together it ended up costing about like 10 grand and I was like, ‘Where do I get this money from?’ And so I started a Gofundme and thankfully a lot of people supported me through that and I was able to raise the money that I needed to raise and I was able to go and get my top surgery and that was, that was a blessing.

So why didn’t you like this one of the professionals?

Oh [laughter] he was just, I just didn’t like his attitude he was, he said something weird like, I felt like he said something weird about like, my race and I was just like ‘Yeah you’re, you’re not the one.’ I can’t remember exactly what it was that he said but it was something about like whether I’m gonna keloid scar or not but like the way he said it was like hella unnecessary and like other practitioners spoke to me about like keloid scarring in like Black communities and like in like Irish communities or whatever but the way that this one said it I just felt really uncomfortable and was like you didn’t need to, that was like quite uncalled for. And then like when I took off my top and like for him to do his examination like the first thing he was like, honestly like, a professional, he was like ‘Oh those are big aren’t they?’ I was like ‘You’re fucking kidding me? [Laughter] I can’t believe I still paid the man… But yeah it was, it was horrific, it was horrific, I was ‘Like this guy is something else…’.

And then also like, pregnancy is something that I consider like, within my transition and like, something that I might do like, later on in my life, innit? And so I wanted to know about a procedure called like, ‘button-hole’, where they like, keep whatever the duct that in, that you can chest feed and so I asked him about it and like fair enough if like, whatever you’re like, because of like, the size that they can’t do it like cool – just tell me that, be professional about it, cool – but he said that in like quite a uncomfortable way, and then he went on to be like,  ‘Well I think you really need to consider this because I do think like, breastfeeding is very important for a child and so whether you want to do this now or whether you want to do this later is something I think you really need to consider’. I was like [laughter] ‘You’re actually wild’ [laughter] I was like, ‘This is not okay’, like, ‘How are like, how are you telling me like–’, I was just… I was shocked, honestly.

Yeah I think that there is like a major power imbalance especially given the power imbalance is with people that don’t know anything about trans people or about transition yet they’re allowed to hold the keys and for the most part they’re cis. So yeah I think there is a major power imbalance and I think that that power imbalance forces a lot of trans people into a position where you just have to like, just live on the like, how can I, which one is it the – I can’t remember if it’s defensive or offensive – I don’t know, but it just makes you, it just makes you live in a place where you’re always having to legitimise yourself to a healthcare professional but in their frame of what trans people are, as opposed to like your truth or your understanding of what trans people are or of your experience, and it just creates like this like self-perpetuating cycle where you’re holding trans people in a place that is like immovable and you’re not allowing like, for fuller understandings of trans experiences because we all have to adhere to this one narrative if we’re going to get access to the things that we need access to. And so I think it’s just so harmful on like, so many levels.

So I would say I came to identify as trans because I think at that point in my life I was going through like quite a deep depression, my mental health was probably in the worst place that it’s ever been, and I was really struggling to like, understand why. And I hadn’t really ever engaged in thinking about my own gender or thinking about my own presentation. I kind of felt like I existed in, in like a nowhere kind of space. And at that point in my life I started engaging with those kind of things, I met some trans people as well which definitely helped my progression towards identifying how I identify now. And yeah I kind of took about a year or so to just kind of think through myself, confront a lot of like, deep held feelings about myself internalised transphobia as well within myself, towards myself and on the other side of that I came out as, yeah, non-binary/transmasculine and I haven’t looked back.

What would you say non-binary means to you?

Non-binary means exist. To me means existing in a space that I don’t really care about gender I – well I care about in the sense of like if I’m mis-gendered it’s not a fun experience – but in the sense that I don’t necessarily think that gender as a construct is something that works for me. I don’t necessarily think of gender as a construct is something that is helpful for society, so for me my non-binary identity is both about myself and about how I feel on the gender spectrum, but also about what I envision for society. Like, I think that gender is a very unhelpful and often harmful idea that exists within our society and I believe in a society that doesn’t hold gender as a construct or gender norms as anything important or anything like, anything to base society on. And that’s, that’s my kind of, how do I even put it, how can I put it, that’s how I think a society should function and I know societies have functioned like that in the past but it’s kind of European westernised construct of gender has had massively harmful effects.

As a concept I think that private healthcare is an awful thing. I don’t think anyone should have to have, I don’t think private healthcare should exist in the same that I don’t think private schools should exist. I think things like education and healthcare should be things that are public goods and are able, easily accessible to everyone, money shouldn’t be a barrier on somebody living in their truth, somebody transitioning, like it’s the difference between life and death a lot of the time and so I think that so many trans people have to go private in order to get their basic healthcare, it’s disgusting. However the way the NHS is funded and like I said I’ve been waiting 2 years and haven’t heard a word just means that it’s the last resort for a lot of, a lot of trans people. And so until like they fix the funding model I can’t see any other way of people being able to get their needed like healthcare.

Information related to trans healthcare is difficult you have to be your own healthcare advisor, your own GP, your own everything. So with my GP – she’s lovely, [laughter] however – she had never had like a trans patient so she was erring on the side of caution just quite worried about giving me the things I needed and so when I went to her to, I’d been going to her about my mental health for a little while and then I went to her to kind of explain like I think something that’s quite central in all of this is like my gender so can you refer me to Gender Identity Clinic. And she did, however I’m still waiting and that was two years ago, over two years ago that I was referred to the Gender Identity Clinic in [city] and yeah I’m still waiting to hear a peep from them. So in that kind of wait I decided that I needed to like take things into my own hands and so thank God there’s like a lot of information online, there’s people that run like Tumblrs and stuff that, I never really used Tumblr except for to find like trans information but it’s been so helpful in terms of the healthcare information that they give you, I think like people run it as almost a, like anyone can write a question and then they’re quite trained, they’re either healthcare professionals that are trans or like just trans people that are really committed to helping other trans people with healthcare. And so they write back your response and then you can read through everyone else’s questions everyone else’s responses and people do YouTubes and that kind of stuff and so that has been the main way that I’ve gotten information about trans healthcare and how to go about obtaining the things that you need.

I think I learnt about it as something quite separate to myself before I was able to allow it to be something that I can accept within myself. And so learning about it through like, the internet and seeing a lot of representation especially of Black transfeminine people or trans women and just like, looking at their experience and just thinking like, ‘Yo this is lit! Like how…’ I just was like, ‘You’re, you living in your truth like that’s a really beautiful thing!’

And then making friends as well that were like transfeminine and going to like, their events or like holding events for them to come and speak and that kind of stuff has been like a massive part of me like, learning about gender. And then just having conversations with people that identify outside of cis binary gender has been like massive, and just seeing… I think when I was first able to like, in real life see representations of Black transmasculine people was when I was able to kind of, transfer that learning as something that was outside of me to something that was inside of me. And that was like, that representation – even though I don’t always believe in representation politics as something that is gonna save the world – but it’s something in that sense that really like, helped me and like, allowed me to live in my truth.

Seeing a Black transmasculine person allowed me to see myself in the trans community because I guess the most representation, the main representation of trans people I saw were either white in general, like, transfeminine, or people that were just like right at the end of their transition – well not right the end because it’s a process but – that, I never really see people on the journey of transition. And yeah, I saw a few like, pregnant white men in like newspapers and stuff but I never really understood, and like it was… Because whiteness is often something that I see so divorced from myself it’s like ‘This is…’ like–, as in a lot of cultures, like my, like my own, this is something that is ‘white. Like, ‘transness is white’ like ‘being gay as white’ all that kind of stuff and to be able to break that dichotomy of who is allowed to exist in those spaces was what I needed in order to feel that I could also exist in that space.

And so then following a lot of Black transmasculine people on like Instagram has been like massive and just watching them live their life, it allows you to feel not like an outcast, it allows you to feel like a part of something, it allows you to feel as, not as hard on yourself and as like not as ostracised because it’s so easy to feel ostracised within your community. And to feel like you’re the only one and to feel like only one is to, to feel like an outcast is to feel othered is to feel like, no there’s something wrong about you, about you and so to see that representation both in real life and online has been like, transformative.