Anderson

I feel like being a person of colour and approaching not only your gender but your culture and your heritage and your upbringing is a lot more to think about. Like I mentioned this in the call that you guys had the other day, when they brought up like coming out and stuff that like it’s very easy for white allies and people to come out, because they come out to their Mum and their Dad and their brother and sister, and maybe an auntie and uncle and grandad and grandma, and that’s them done. If I come out, I come out to six hundred people, six hundred people who all know me personally, who held me at birth, who gave me my name, who brought me into the world, that I can’t just discard a name that I was given generations ago. I can’t remove a part of my heritage that, it’s not mine to remove. Because like I said as people of colour, as black people we carry not just our own selves, but like everyone who made you who you are. And I always say like I’m a collection of the experiences that the people that know me, I’m not my own person who stands alone. I just resonate the things that make sense to me the most, from the things that I know of other people. And so if I carry that narrative forward it’s very difficult for me to just be like, “Oh I’m coming out and I’m this whole person.” I’m just like. I can’t come out, the whole family’s come out like, it’s a lot you know.

There’s nothing more valuable than your time. If a child or a young person ever came to you with a problem or an issue where they felt alone, I think they should always have time. They should always have time for that person to just listen to them. Being heard, being acknowledged, it doesn’t even necessarily need advice in a situation like that, you know. It’s just understanding and compassion. Young people are humans who haven’t been here for that long, and it’s really mean to assume that they should know everything about how to navigate it.

We’ve put them in a world where we don’t even know what we’re doing, and we pretend that we do and we tell them that we do, and then when they grow up and get to our age they realise youse was all chatting bare shit, you don’t know anything, and I’ve ruined my whole life in order to get to a place that is arbitrary and kind of random cos it was decided by somebody who is also just making it the fuck up. So telling young people that we’re making it up, but we’re doing our best and we’re not trying to harm people, teaching them in a way that makes sense, like I said to you before the people who are role models to me were the people who empowered me, who gave me a voice, who gave me language in order to speak about this stuff. Like if a kid comes to you with this kind of shit and needs to talk to someone and they don’t have the language themselves, don’t give them terrible language, go away and learn for yourself and come back and speak to them about it. Like give them options in order to think about it.

And be aware of parents, if you are a teacher and you’re in this position, it’s very scary and very daunting to know what to do, so do your research, find out what legally you are allowed to say to people, and if it comes to services, like go and look at services. Like I know Barnardo’s offer good trans healthcare for young people, and like I said Mermaids and stuff do work with parents and teachers and schools. Like kids coming out in schools, getting bullied, it’s, if it’s something that you wouldn’t want to happen to your own kid, and you would fight on behalf of them in order for them to live safely and comfortably, even if you don’t see it fit, you should do it you know, like look out for those people.

There isn’t any other words for that. It’s long as fuck, like it’s disgustingly long. I think I asked my GP to message them the other week, and I got, they got back to me and said I was 30 months away from the end of the list, I don’t even know how long 30 months is, but I’m pretty sure you can gestate an entire child in that space of time. So, I’m good, like that’s a long time. That’s a long time. You can have a baby in that time, that’s a long time. I’m okay. Innit, multiple children, like, I just can’t with these people. It’s really bad. To leave people in that situation, like if this was a spinal injury, if it was a bump on the head, like would they leave it this long? Never. They would have people out there, and I don’t understand why it’s not happening, why trans people are not being trained in this kind of healthcare, like why are we not just working for these people? I could do this job. I could do their job. I could probably do their job. If I, if they tried to train me I could probably do their job, you know, and it would be much nicer for trans people to meet someone like me than whoever the, they have in those services. It’s just such a weird space, like, I dunno. So yeah, their waiting list is long, and they don’t give enough information about where you are on the list, they don’t give you any hope. One of the things I really appreciated about MarketPlace and their counselling is that even though you’re on the waiting list for maybe a year and a half, they offer you Yoga classes, they offer you mindfulness sessions, they offer you support in that interim period before you get the counselling. So that you are being checked in on, like for no-one to have messaged me from May 2018 until now, to check that I’m even still alive is awful. I’ve got to go and find these people and do that. I just worry about all the people who are out there without the support, without the communities that I have, stuck with this crap.

I think if they can make the services and situations easier, like the reason I’ve chosen to go private with medical care and stuff is because I know that I will be sitting waiting for a long time and I know the things that I will have to compromise, and I know the damage that it’ll do to my mental health to go through the way that I’ve seen so many people go through the NHS service. And I’m, it’ll kill me, and I know it will. Like I don’t think I can do that myself, so I appreciate being able to be in a position of internet and communicating with people about this kind of stuff because I can go on websites like Go fund me and yes it’s been sat there for months and months and months, and I’m asking for a few people to engage with me for a little while, but people are, and it means the world, do you know what I mean? Cos I gonna be able to get something that I really didn’t think was gonna happen. That when speaking to my family about this kind of stuff they said it’s not gonna happen. Like it’s nice to be in a place that it’s gonna happen.

When I was a younger teenager and stuff, I guess like I did a lot of like activism and youth projects and work within the City around the betterment of children’s care and health and lives and wellbeing in general. So I was involved with a lot of stuff anyway, but as I got older that got a lot more a part of my life and I guess it led me towards various services I suppose that were highlighting different queer issues or sexual health issues. So like I worked for an organisation called [organisation], when I was a teenager, and they used to do sexual health advice and like GUM clinic response access stuff, so like how well they dealt with trans patients, how well they dealt with couples that were same sex, how well they dealt with stuff in general to do with confidentiality , we did a lot of mystery shopping and stuff like that, and so like being engaged with that was something I was always really interested in and I’m still quite interested in it. I’ve noticed over the years that those kinds of services don’t really exist so much anymore and those like groups are dwindling, and if they are around, they’re not being signposted by young people. So like there were a few projects like the Seek Out project they used to run, provide like condom care and like STI health and safe sex stuff checks and they still exist, but they’re not as widely advertised in places anymore, and it’s like if you know you know, but if you don’t know you’re never going to find out about it. So yeah accessing stuff like that I feel like is quite a strange space, but I remember doing a lot of work towards that and I always felt like that kind of work was very important.

I spent a lot of time in schools and we’d go to youth groups doing things around, just talking about it, like other young people speaking to young people about sexual health was way less freaky than some teacher or an adult talking to them about it, and I feel like it’s kind of the same stuff with trans stuff, that like it’s much easier for us as trans people to be able to speak to other trans people about things that are going on. I find that accessing services that are to do with trans healthcare are really jarring because you often have to be thrust into a situation of dealing with cis people and their cis ideologies about what gender is and especially with like the NHS, like I’ve been through their service before and it’s a lot to be a very specific kind of trans and a very specific kind of person for them to be able to give you access to care, because you’re not able to pay for it yourself. So if you are in a situation where you’re not paying for it yourself, you have to go via the NHS route, there are these certain hoops that they make you jump through that are not fair barriers, I don’t think, when if given the alternative people would, well can just bypass that situation and still claim their identity as their own because nobody is taking it into question at that point. It’s about whether or not you can, you’ve got the money.

There are a number of youth organisations that I thought were really important, I remember accessing a group called [group] when I was a teenager, I was nearly what 14 when I joined this group, and took a number of people from my school and we had quite a good interaction with, they were just council member, like staff, but some of them were LGBT and we covered LGBT conversations and looked at things in the media, things that were happening at the time, things like Prop 8 which was happening at the time. It was like going on in America and Obama getting into power and like things that were happening in the UK based on like toilet bans and young people in school coming out, and how we interacted with the media on that stuff was focussed on that group.

There was like maybe, over the years they had that group for about ten-ish years, five, ten years, and they worked with a lot of young people from 13 to 25. When I was about 16, me and two of the other guys who were in the group were kind of calling out for more trans spaces to exist within that group, so they asked for a trans sub-group to be created and they created a group [group], it was very cool. We had a bi-monthly meeting and we met and chatted about tips like, crazy tips that young people don’t get access to, where you can buy binders that are cheap, like how to put on make-up and I don’t know, pluck your eyebrows and fix your face so that you look nice, and yes thank you, how to wear clothes that are gonna not show your hips, or whatever it is, like all these integral trans informations that you can kind of get off the internet to an extent, but having a face to face interaction, and I felt like a lot of the young people that we were engaging with at that point, were very isolated, like some of them came from very far away, and it was their only chance to come to a youth group and spend time in a space like that. They were very good at confidentiality, any residentials that we had, they was nothing on the consent forms that specified it was a LGBT group, there was nothing to say that your kid’s a big homo, and you need to go out and get them, or anything. Like it was all very genuine basis. I felt like the lack was where the counselling and the link between the services could happen, like the link to trans healthcare, like how could we get involved with trans healthcare.

There were places like Mermaids who worked with under 16’s, there are places like, under 18s sorry. There were places like CAMHS and stuff that do counselling, but like in general it’s very different, and Market Place, but like it’s very difficult for young people to get access to those kind of services, and then you know. So, after the conservatives got into power all of the funding got cut and it no longer was available for 25-year olds, so it then got cut to 18. I lost two of my youth workers it went from being like a group of 30 young people strong, to having one at someone’s meetings, youth workers that we don’t know, people who are not in the community, people who are not LGB, people who we haven’t worked with forever, and I find it very difficult to get my head around the idea that there’s no space for anyone who’s a young person between that age of leaving school, getting to Uni, getting to their new City potentially, like coming out and being alone, and not having a service that they could access. Like I could understand it if it was safeguarding and they needed to separate things, I could understand it if it was space or time-management stuff, but like it just came from budgeting and like we don’t have money to help you and your kids with their crap, so no. But it was a very successful group, and I felt like it was sad to see it go. They set up binder schemes, they set up, you know like, yeah, so many clever ideas came from that space that I think could have been utilised a bit better and maybe could come back again, if people pick up on this kind of stuff, you know.

I have to reassess how I fit into the world now, like it’s not just being able to, like you said for, I feel like if you’re a white counterpart, if I was a white person I would be socially transitioning from being seen as female to being male in society, and your moving up a privilege, you’re getting access to so much more, you have a whole different way of dealing with the world from that standpoint, whereas for me moving from not a disadvantaged perspective but at least a perspective of, it’s not level footing, it’s not equal ground, a woman, a black woman in science is hard enough to exist never mind a black trans man, trying to figure out, or a non-binary person in that space. Like I feel like my masculinity and my narrative as a black person have to constantly be engaged with when I’m out in the world because I’m viewed as a certain thing. Like if I move around with my white friends they move around as white people as individuals, I move around as a representation for all the black masculine people that exist in the world. I have to be a good one, like I’ve got to be a good experience for anyone who comes into contact with me, and that’s a huge weight to carry all of the time on top of the weight of gender and the weight of the binaries and then the weight of my fucking chest itself. You know what I mean? Like it’s so many things.

When approaching places like GUM Clinics and sexual health testing and stuff, like I said I’ve done like work around this kind of, the same stuff, I think there’s a lot to be done. There’s a lot of work to be done, there’s a lot of internal transphobia within those services. I think if you are going to be working with people’s intimate stuff and speaking about things that are private you have to be as sensitive as possible, and be very aware of that kind of stuff, and have the right kind of communications about it. So, yeah. They could do better. I feel like trans testing is high on my priority of things to get moving. I’m very, very interested in looking at having that happen, but like trans friendly testing with people who are safe and in spaces that are non-confrontational. For survivors, for people who are trans, for people who have anything going on, do you know what I mean like you need to be in a space of complete comfortability and solidarity and that just doesn’t exist. Like breast exams, if you’re a trans woman and you want a breast exam, where the fuck do you go? Like what do you do with that?

Be awesome. Be awesome and know stuff and learn stuff and you don’t have to grow up that soon. I’m really old and I’m not trying to grow up any time soon. I’ve still got mostly toys in my bedroom. It’s fun. You know yourself, and no matter how many times people tell you that you’re too young to understand, or you’re too young to get it, you don’t have to be old to be intelligent. And you can be intelligent, you can read anything, you can educate yourself, even if the words are too big and too long, they’re not words that are not accessible to you, you just have to spend a bit more time understanding where those words come from. And that does sometimes come with a life experience, that you learn big words because you spend a lot of time in life, but you can just do that for yourself like, the power is at your fingertips. I think that you’ve got access to crazy stuff now that us folk didn’t have when we were younger, the internet is wild, and you can connect with each other in ways that is so amazing. Use it for good, learn how to do everything. I was told once that to master something you must watch other masters, so if you ever want to master something watch other people who are awesome at it, and you can learn how to do it too. You know, put in the ten thousand hours and become the best at whatever you want to do because why not? Why not? I want to see more bright, colourful, happy, charged, articulate, friendly, well-adjusted, comfortable, fun-loving, adorable trans young people, out on the television and out in the world doing things and playing music and engaging with stuff, and yeah, they should do that. That’s what I say to you. You live your best lives.

Trans stuff in general, they should know about trans healthcare, so like hormones, how to access hormones, services that we can go to. I feel like if you’re a GP that works in the community, especially like mine where they work in quite an, well it’s clearly quite a queer community cos I know of at least five queer people and trans people who use that GP. But to just keep up on that kind of stuff, know about services that they can go to, know about counselling services that are LGBT friendly, [charity] offer trans testing and healthcare stuff like if they’re gonna engage with people just to be clued up on things, and to speak to the community like do community outreach stuff. I would happily do a focus group at my local GP if they put out something, and be like, “Hey are there any trans people who want to talk to us about how we could do better,” I would be on it in like seconds, I have literally nothing else and all the things in my head just to give to them.

I would like to see them, I would like to see them incorporating more outreach work, so like what we talked about, like having one on one sessions or group community outreach projects about things that affect people in the areas. If you’re running a charity or an organisation like contacting other local charities that are doing similar work to you, and finding out how they can, how you can engage with them better. I feel like people often go into stuff thinking that they’re the first ones to think of it, and you’re probably not. And there’s probably someone out there who’s done it before you and either has fucked up a little bit and should tell you about that so that you don’t do the same thing, or has done it really well and you should go and learn from them, as to how to do it well too.

And I feel like trans people speaking to healthcare professionals who are going to go and work with other trans people, who are also medical professionals themselves, cos like more often than not the majority of my trans friends either work in counselling, they’re midwives, they’re nurses, they work in third sector jobs, they’re youth workers, social workers, they work with people, they work one on one, it’s all that similar kind of graft. Or they work as carers or you know housekeepers or whatever. They’re already in that space of like doing that kind of care work, it’s almost not even, not even that hard to just shout out to them and engage with them, bring them in. It’s nice to be able to think about like they maybe communicating with how to make the services not just improved, but maybe like how to make them run smoother, because like I said before there are things that are common place to trans people, or common place to people who aren’t in normal society that aren’t to people who are in normal society. Like I guarantee that it wasn’t an able-bodied person who stood up first and was like, “Hey we should have a ramp at the front of our building.” It was someone sat at the bottom of the stairs in their chair going, “This is a sack of shit. Why haven’t you got a bloody ramp? I can’t get into your building.” So, it’s again like us trans people standing at the door, being like, “Excuse me, we need a ramp into your building. Can you build us,” and deal with our accessibility needs, do you know what I mean? Like have options for titles, have a narrative that engages with people about their hormones and their care, have tenderness around this kind of stuff, cos it’s necessary. Yeah, I don’t know. Help them engage.

They can put funding into community projects that are doing stuff, they can look at like, yeah other young, I don’t know, other groups that are doing things that work with those spaces, counselling spaces, acknowledging the need for healthcare in general, like and holistic healthcare, alternative care for people who are alternative. I feel like if you’re gonna deem us as the most like, “We’ve never seen you before, you’re one in a million, oh my God this is the rarest thing ever,” then treat us like we’re diamonds, like we should be treated like such. You know. And given time and energy and space, and resources, in order to find out what can be done to best incorporate us into the world. Cos, yeah, it matters.