I feel like a lot of trans people are recognising or have recognised that this, this narrative, this whole thinking as one narrative and only one narrative is like people, people are recognising that it’s bad but people, cis people are either fixated on there only being one, there only being one trans, trans journey, trans narrative and all trans people being that or, and this is the case kind of the rapid onset gender dysphoria or not, that there is one acceptable trans narrative and anyone who doesn’t fit that exactly isn’t trans and honestly I don’t believe they believe the people who fit that narrative are trans either. They just think, they just hate everyone pretty much laughs]. But, but yeah there’s, I don’t like the idea there’s one singular narrative because there clearly isn’t and anyone who looks at it closely can see that.

I don’t really get affected by it much myself I suppose. I kind of, I probably would be more affected if one of my friends saw it and was like I wouldn’t want them to kind of assume that I’m that sort of, the sort of caricature, caricature that the media’s putting out. But myself, I’ve heard it before I guess, so I just didn’t really take it in. It just doesn’t really matter for me.

Is there any ways that you support yourself at all?

I don’t really find I need it, like, I know it’s all, I know it’s all bullshit, it’s not going to happen. The, all the, just kind of all the fearmongering, it’s all about stuff that’s not going to, that’s never happened, it’s not going to happen and it’s the exact same thing people talking about regarding gay people twenty years ago.

I asked for referral explained to them kind of what I actually wanted and where to look for stuff because I don’t think she’d done it before and she said, Yeah, I’ll do that, come back in a few weeks and we can sort, we can sort out the forms Came back in a few weeks. It was a different GP who did that time. They were both really nice. Went through the form, it was kind of a bit confusing and some stuff that kind of really didn’t need to be asked was asked on this form for the GIC. It got sent off and I got a thing saying, Hey, we’ve got your form,’ so this is from the GIC, We’ve got your form. it’s going to take us millennia to get to you. [laughs] [sighs] So hopefully that will change at some point but until then I’ve still got like at least a year and a half to go if all goes well.

I do worry that the current attitude towards trans people is making that worse for kind of young trans people particularly young trans people all over the country. Like, the, the, like pe-, people in The Times saying, Oh god no, they’re all predators. Even like this 12 year old trans person she was angel faced and has never done anything wrong is a rapist or something like that. I don’t, it’s not, do they not see what they’re doing. it’s, I’m sure they do see what they’re doing. They trying to actively make life worse for trans people and I don’t understand why they even do that. Some people just are bad. it’s, it’s not good. it’s not fun.

I feel like a lot of trans people are recognising or have recognised that this, this narrative, this whole thinking as one narrative and only one narrative is like people, people are recognising that it’s bad but people, cis people are either fixated on there only being one, there only being one trans, trans journey, trans narrative and all trans people being that or, and this is the case kind of the rapid onset gender dysphoria or not, that there is one acceptable trans narrative and anyone who doesn’t fit that exactly isn’t trans and honestly I don’t believe they believe the people who fit that narrative are trans either. They just think, they just hate everyone pretty much laughs]. But, but yeah there’s, I don’t like the idea there’s one singular narrative because there clearly isn’t and anyone who looks at it closely can see that.

I had a meeting with my deputy head and I brought a few other people with me which was cool and he was kind of, he wasn’t great to be honest. Yeah he refused to call me by the name I said I wanted to be called and he kept saying that he thought he knew what gender dysphoria was by calling it gender dysmorphia which just hasn’t be used to refer to it in years if it ever was. But yeah, he kept thinking he was right and he absolutely no idea what was going on and he recommended I kind of keep it, keep it secret for some time so the second I left I came out on the school social media which was fun and people kind of started calling me [name] and then my parents had a meeting with him to go and complain at him as they should have done, [laugh] which was good. And he eventually got rather my head of house helped me out massively. He got he managed to get my name changed on registers. He’s gone now which is really sad; he was awesome. Yeah, he helped me out massively, he was amazing and kind of eventually people started calling me [name] which is, it was good. I have a kind of, so I think I change in the staff, in the staff toilet in the PE department which sucks because, yeah it’s a toilet but it’s like, it’s better than just better than changing in the changing room. But kind of if more trans people come out it’s not and if there is kind of like more than one in the same year, there’s not going to be enough space. So, I think they need to be something, they fix that but I’m not sure what it’s going to be.

I think it’s interesting because like at the, at the beginning I was pretty wary, I didn’t really kind of know what was true and what wasn’t because like as I’m sure you know there’s a ton of bogus stuff, bogus science around so I now have kind of a data, a databank almost of studies that that I used to kind of spot my, spot my viewpoints when I’ve ended up arguing with people which happens quite a lot. That’s but like there’s been just kind of so much kind of bad science going round, so like last year there was the rapid onset gender dysphoria study which I’m sure, you know about it right? You know and everyone knows just kind of how bad it was like.

It might help to describe it.

Oh yeah, yeah sure. There was a study published by, I can’t remember I think she worked for [university].

It was Lisa Littman.

Yes, Lisa Littman, yes, Littman, so she published this study. It was an interview with 256 parents of trans individuals who believed that their children had a condition she invented called rapid onset gender dysphoria and there were numerous flaws in this including kind of, I’d say one of the most significant ones was she interviewed parents about how their children felt rather than the children themselves. She recruited these parents from conspiracy theorists’ websites were dedicated to believing in this conspiracy theory. Like if I say, if I did a study saying the world is flat, flat earth and someone asked me, Who, who are your, who’s your sample base Oh it’s this conspiracy website over here it’s, it’s not gonna, and I used that to say, Oh 99% of the earth believes the world is flat then it’s, it’s going to be bad science. Then we have her saying the vast majority of her the children of the sample, sample she had did not fit any criteria of gender dysphoria diagnosis despite literally all of them fitting at least one, the va-, which is an expression that they are the other gender, another gender sorry. The vast majority fitting two and most of them fitting three, four or five and finally this is meant to be for teenagers but you know how, how old, how old the oldest, the oldest child of one of the participants was who she said was rapid tran-, had rapid onset gender dysphoria? Twenty-seven and like if you’re still trying to control your child’s healthcare at this point then it’s just really not okay. it’s just, there’s probably something wrong with you in my opinion and it was just such a bad study. it’s been criticised by scientists from all over the world and yet there are still people who believe in it but there are still people who think vaccines are bad I guess so some people are just going, never going to look at science [sighs]. Sorry I get angry about it.