Charke

I think currently I’m still, I think I’m always working things out and, and I think currently right now I just want the most freedom I can have to express myself in whichever way I want independent of any barriers that goes along with the gender abolition in that I’ve decided look, I don’t want to look like a girl but equally that doesn’t mean I want to look like a boy I don’t want to look like either. I want to look like myself and that’s fine and I think in a way and I think this leads to some of my confusion about dysphoria and how legitimate my dysphoria ever was in that I think that’s lead to me feeling so much less dysphoric than I ever have in that I don’t care in a way it feels strangely liberating to say like yeah you know, I don’t care about, it’s not that I don’t care about being a girl or being a boy but I don’t now as much as, you know, if someone called me he or something like that or referred to me like son or lad I probably would have cried in my room for hours back even like a year ago or so whereas I think now I it’s not even like I don’t care that much it’s like I really don’t mind, it doesn’t affect me anymore than someone calling me she and her I don’t have a preference really, yeah.

So what changed?

I think that’s a difficult one I’ve been trying to work that out myself maybe it was that I realised hey being a girl isn’t that dapper anyway, maybe it’s that I realised this isn’t any less restrictive or more freeing than being a boy ever was. And I really do think that that may be part of it is that I felt restricted in the role of being a boy being male I felt oh there’s all these expectations on me and a lot of them are so pointless anyway, all these expectations about how I’m supposed to talk, how, what I’m meant to be into and all this that I felt oh I don’t want this I can’t deal with this. But I think at the same point in time I got to the where I was, I’d passed to everyone as female that I was absolutely accepted as female no-one would know unless I told them and even then they’d be shocked and sort of taken aback. And I think I got to that point and realised, you know, what I, I’m not sure I’m much happier like this than I was like that and equally I don’t know that I will be happy like this forever or for any length of time, you know. I think that’s something to take into account that I, maybe it is that you’ll never found somewhere you are happy with but that doesn’t need to be, you don’t need to feel despair about that or dread that oh you’ll never be happy, I think it may be finding, even if it’s momentary or temporary peace in your identity as it is as you’re feeling at that time. And then moving on and accepting that that’s natural and that it’s okay to change and to not be sure about who you are and to say I, now I don’t feel like this, what I wanted previously is what I still want and that’s fine.

So I spoke to the school before coming out publicly so I’d spoken to my parents and with CAMHS about it for about seven/eight months before speaking to the school and trying to organise a, you know, get them in on it, make them aware and trying to organise coming out as such to try and make it as good as it could be I suppose. So I spoke to the school and they organised it saying yeah we can do our best, they were confused and didn’t know what to do just like everyone else at the time and stuff like that and there weren’t guidelines in place of what schools are supposed to do and stuff like this. But it was very much quite, it wasn’t so much a smooth kind of gradient into transitioning it was very much quite a cliff edge. Which I don’t know, whether that’s better or worse way to do it than a gradient really.

I really wouldn’t know what’s better but it to some extent worked, I think it worked maybe the best it can work but of course it wasn’t a good experience but I don’t think it would be possible to have a good experience transitioning in high school.

So what did you actually do?

So after that cut-off day I just, I was essentially a female student, it would be wearing a female uniform, referred to as she [name] that would be it really yeah just outright transition like I say it was quite a cut off I suppose looking back it may have been jarring I suppose but it wasn’t like I went from this hyper-masculine cis het guy who was out there playing rugby to doing this, I was very much already kind of had that reputation as oh that’s a like camp, gay guy you know, the not masculine and stuff like this so, yeah.

There’s like all sorts of things to consider like going to Uni for example you know, how, how do you want to present going to University that, that I think that’s probably the question that sort of plays on my mind now especially filling out UCAS forms and things like that which are terrible anyway the UCAS forms I, I don’t know if, you know, but there’s this whole thing about gender options that’s limited to male and female and that’s all. They, they’ve got, they’ve got an Mx title but male or female which, which is so unbelievably dumb to me in that just have, male or female doesn’t even describe sex like there, there is a very legitimate probability that there is some percentage of the population out there that that isn’t male or female that they’re intersex as in biologically they have XXY chromosomes or something like that in which case, it doesn’t even apply to them biologically never mind in their social identity. So that, that’s been a grey question I’ve been stressing about in regards to Uni in what gender do I even put on my UCAS because that will affect gendered dorms and stuff like this and it’s been a really big pain [laughter]. So it, it is kind of whenever you are sort of moving onto the like the next thing is kind of hey there’s decisions to be made in that regard. But I suppose that’s, that, that’s why I’m working through it now and that’s the sort of big decision on the horizon about like how, how am I gonna be at Uni and I think a big part of Uni as well is setting up support networks and stuff like this yeah. So, it’s in a way stressful but also I’m really excited to go to Uni so it, it’s stressful in a hopeful way and that I’m excited for it but also worried, yeah.

When I went to high school I think there was quite a big sharp that step up, I mean not like only is it just you’re getting old, but I think it being a larger school and hitting puberty was quite a big kind of cocktail that stormed up into quite a terrible time for me at that age. So it was in Year 8 by the time I was 13 I somewhat sorry, so, so yeah so by the time I was 13 I was in Year 8 I sort of accepted that hey I’m not normal, I’m not regular, I’m not fitting in with all these other people and I had an all-female friend group at the time, I felt like I fitted in with them, I got them and stuff, I was very much kind of, it was strange, I was part of it but not part of it, I felt in that it’s, in a way I felt I was in a way more valued than like some of the other members but in a way that was different as such. I’d always felt uncomfortable about that and with the onset of puberty where you have bodies turning more diverse even just, you know, appearance wise never mind what else is going on I think that set off a lot of dysphoric comfort or at least just discomfort with my body and the change in my body anyway. So I think that very much set off a quite a rough time in my life I became severely depressed self-harmed attempted suicide on two occasions and was hospitalised because of it and so it, I think that made me realise I can’t like ignore this I can’t just act like it’s normal and okay and stuff that there is something sort of deeper going on, some other issue.

So back when you were 13, you get this diagnosis of gender dysphoria what happened next?

Well I was in a pretty bad place so when I was sort of told about this that the doctors think like hey this might be your problem that yeah this might be what’s up with you I remember very specifically thinking to myself well look where am I right now continuing like I am, I’m probably going to end up dead within the next few months certainly within the next year I was in such a bad state. So the thought process was hey go for it I guess try, you know if you’re gonna end up dead anyway then why not, I guess. It, it was very much a kind of yeah screw it YOLO kind of attitude, you know, not in the same like reckless happy go lucky way but in, in much of a way of hey I have nothing to lose really at the time, yeah.

LGBT groups which I attend they’re just really great because not only do you have youth workers who know what they’re talking about if you really need help or advice or something but also you can talk to other people who may be similar to you or even if they’re not similar to you, you tend to have common knowledge and be able to talk about the same issues and understand each other, and that can be nice and it’s, it doesn’t feel official, it doesn’t feel like oh I’m getting help from someone, you know, or it doesn’t feel like oh I’m going to my parents and being a pain, it just feels like hey I can have a friendly conversation with someone who knows what I’m talking about and who can maybe offer me advice because maybe they’ve gone through a similar, so that’s really helpful too.

I think the biggest problem with CAMHS is that they’re really underfunded they’re, I think they do the absolute best they can with what they’ve got and I think they do a great job with what they have available to them. But the problem is they don’t have really anything available compared to what they really do need. So I think my experience has been iffy and it’s changed from time to time, I think it has, I think as mental illness has become more prevalent and you’ve had more referrals to CAMHS I think the service has gotten worse and I think that really is indicative of them being so underfunded and unable to deal with the problems that they face. But I think they do their best with what they’ve got but they’ve just not got enough.

I think it is, it is a problem that there isn’t, I don’t know any sort of information that’s relevant is very much going to cause a sort of dysphoric response, it’s aimed at, you know, the gender that you don’t feel you are and that applies both for trans guys and trans girls of course. And yeah I think maybe getting, I don’t know whether anywhere does it I mean the LGBT youth groups are kind of, they’re good with discussing it, good with discussion, discussing issues around like sexuality and stuff like that but they don’t get into like the more sort of kind of vulgar details of, you know, even the basics I think myself and like other trans people will be the one that would not know that I think a lot of people would assume oh you just know that. you know, like some of the basics like protection and stuff like that or like condom use and stuff like that and like I think it is these things that are, you know, because they’re so gendered, understandably to an extent really I think that’s alienating a lot of trans people so they end up just not having that basic knowledge and, in a way, I think that can later down the line alienate them from their sort of sexuality and having sexual experiences with others too.

There was, I say recently it was probably about a month back now there was a BBC article linking, I say linking, linking hormone blockers to depression which, I mean from the BBC I, I’d expect some kind of better journalism than that was quite disappointing from the BBC in that the most they showed was a correlation but that shouldn’t be surprising considering that most if not everyone on blockers is trans or has dysphoria in fact almost certainly 100% of people on blockers experience dysphoria and there’s also a strong link between dysphoria and depression because who wouldn’t get severely upset feeling like they’re trapped in a body that doesn’t represent them and especially in adolescence when its constantly changing for the worst, I mean what other reaction is there to that than to develop some mental disorder like depression. And I think that’s emblematic of how terrible that even the BBC would publish something like that where, as you see the best can show is a correlation there’s no suggestion of causation there there’s nothing chemically to suggest that decapeptyl will cause depression, decapeptyl was the hormone blocker, or hormone blockers in general will cause depression it just seemed like a scare piece and I think that’s what a lot of these publications do is they create these scare pieces and really if you have a sort of, really any amount of knowledge but especially if you have a good amount of knowledge on the subject then you can dismiss it, it’s a dumb scare piece but to the average person who doesn’t particularly know much if anything on the subject they’re incredibly affective propaganda pieces and I think they really ought to be held accountable for some of the just outright wrong views and the opinions that are built on these wrong views.

Because when you say something that seems harmless like oh well hormone blockers are linked to depression you can claim the whole well what I’m saying is harmless is just a fact which isn’t really, but still. But what you get inspired from this fact is these views of well then we’ve got to stop these children transitioning they’re, they’re all going to be depressed because of these drugs and these crazy trans activists are making our children depressed because they only want to harm them and it, it fosters a sort of quite conspiratorial view which I don’t think is accepted by the media or rather by society in any other sort of area, you know, you dismiss as thinking as conspiratorial whereas when it comes to trans people especially trans children and trans adolescents this sort of fear mongering and lying is allowed to continue and I think that’s a really big problem and really does deserve a lot of the onus for some of, I think certainly for part of the suicide rate and for some of the more horrific views out there on trans people I think the media, though yes they’re not publishing these horrific views they’re certainly inspiring them.

I think I’ve had quite a lot of experience online I’m always online and been quite involved in that I’ve always enjoyed sort of debates and discussions around it even going into like the most toxic communities through it and stuff like that I’ve always been one of those people whose thought that the best way to get acceptance is to have those hard discussions and not alienate those people even who seem outwardly transphobic and I’ve come to accept through those discussions that there are people who’s minds you aren’t going to change because their beliefs aren’t based on fact, they don’t care what the facts are, they don’t care about, they certainly don’t care about appeals through emotion you know, and a lot of them they have sort of dehumanised trans people in their mind.

I love engaging with it, it you know, sometimes you need to kind of not take it in, you know, on these sort of worst platforms but I try to engage with it because I think yeah, you know, it’s not validating or legitimising these people and their bigoted sort of hatred but I, I, I like to think and I like to hope, I like to see the best in people and I can be way too optimistic in giving people the benefit of the doubt in a lot of cases but I like to hope that maybe one of those people I’ll talk to isn’t so far down the line that they’ve just stopped listening to, they don’t care about the facts, they don’t care about reason that you’re not really a person, I like to think that at least some of them I’ve talked to were just, that they just misunderstood, they were confused because I understand it can be confusing, you know, it is not something that’s easy to just know about. So that’s why I think coming at it from the angle of compassion and empathy and saying look this person may be transphobic they may hate me without reason but I still see the best in them and believe that something good can be pulled from this through conversation, I love to engage like that.

I think the biggest thing that needs to change is the Tavistock and it is difficult to even confront that because it feels like it needs such a major overhaul that it feels almost impossible to change it. You know, I’ve listed previously what I’d like to see changed about phone calls instead of meetings and all that but I think that is certainly part of it, the Tavistock shorter waiting times easier accessibility to blockers less of a focus on trans medicalism and more of a focus on there being medical aspects to transition for some people but not all people and acceptance on the validity of maybe not wanting that medical transition so much and maybe being happy just with social transition. But certainly the Tavistock I think just needs a major overhaul and CAMHS is the best, I think the best it can be I think they struggle because they’re under resourced and I’m sure the Tavistock is to an extent but I still think that even within how the Tavistock’s working right now it could do better with its resources so really yeah and overall, an overhaul of the Tavistock in all the ways that I mentioned before would be great to see.