Declan

I was at an all girl’s school, so it was very gendered environment. You would like, there’d be like, “Good morning ladies,” and stuff like, “we don’t want ladette behaviour in our school.” It was very gendered and very not me but the uniform was actually quite good. It was you could wear like trousers, skirt whatever but you had like a jumper and a shirt. There was like no tie or anything, so it was quite nice; I didn’t mind it. They’ve changed it now but before it was really nice so I could wear what I felt comfortable in so the uniform wasn’t really an issue and like P.E. wasn’t obviously wasn’t gendered it was all girls and like all my friends we all came out to each other in Year 9. So we’d been friends since like Year 7 and we all came out to each other in year 9 as like various LGBT identities and I came out as, “Oh I might be feeling like not cis,” and they were like, “Okay,” and I didn’t say anything until Year 11. So, I felt, so the school, I was staying on for Sixth form, like, and I was like bullied throughout school, but it wasn’t like intense. It was kind of just like, we can tell that he’s different so we’ll bully him kind of thing and it didn’t help that I had undiagnosed ASD so I wasn’t getting any pastoral support, academic support. I was just like left to my own defences which and I wasn’t doing very well so.

But I managed to pass all my GCSEs with really good grades so I did that and then I came out in the, to the school just before my A level results, no, my GCSE results came in and they were like, “Well we want a deed poll before we use his name for Sixth form,” which forced me to do my deed poll a bit earlier than I wanted to because I wanted to like wait until I was ready but I was like if I need it now, I need it now. So that made me do my deed poll early and I got my GCSE results in my own name which was really nice and then I came out and most people were actually really nice about it so I came to prom as [name] and that was fine. There was no panic or anything and they talked to me about toilets, and like, “You can use the men’s that’s fine.” There’s only like one men’s toilet in the whole building so, [sigh] so and, so Sixth form was kind of okay, it was fine. I didn’t really have any problems in Sixth form just with like some teachers not, because I got my ASD diagnosis at the same time so they were kind of like and it was kind of a struggle to keep me in school and my attendance up, so yeah, so a lot of teachers weren’t really understanding in that respect but they were understanding in the gender identity respect which I found quite nice and if there was any transphobia it was kind of only from one or two people, there wasn’t anyone that was like overt to me about it so I found that, so I found it on like the whole gender identity kind of side of things fine. Like, there wasn’t any big issues.

Make things a lot easier for trans kids because I know a lot of people who came out during like high school period, they had to stop doing P.E. and sport and stuff which I think’s really bad because I’m a really big advocate for like trans people doing sport and I feel that a lot of the time trans people are just put out of their education a lot when they’re not able to do these things because schools don’t under-, don’t know what to do, don’t know what changing rooms to put them in or they don’t have the guidelines already in place and I feel like, if they have the guidelines in place, even if they don’t have the trans student it makes it a lot easier for when they do have a trans student because they probably will now. People are coming out younger and I feel that it’ll be useful for schools to have these guides just in case like because legally you can, like a school can change your name without a deed poll but a lot of them don’t want to and won’t and it’s not until you actually show them the actual laws and stuff that they actually do something because a lot of the time they’re like, “Oh but we don’t have to.” I was like, “legally you have to.”

To teachers I would say if a child asks to be, to go by a different name in class then even if you can’t change it on the system let them and be mindful of this if they’ve told you to keep doing it and if there’s a substitute inform the substitute teacher because it can be really awkward trying to explain to a substitute teacher that your name on the register isn’t your actual name. But also be mindful about pronouns and also be mindful that trans individuals can be more at risk of bullying and to be on the lookout for like gender based bullying a lot more and to maybe offer like a safe space for them to go at lunch if they’re experiencing it really badly.

I can’t actually remember much but I know in the post that they sent a lot of questionnaires that I had to fill in, I filled in on the train there and it was actually, I think they were just going through the questionnaires and asking me what I wanted and they asked lots of questions to my mum and they wanted to know about my ASD diagnosis because that’s like the link there and generally about my mental health. It was kind of more of a, how my wellbeing was rather than any like transition-related things.

I think at the next appointment it was kind of like transition goals, like what I wanted. I said that I wanted like hormones and then top surgery. Fertility was brought up quite early and I was like, “I’m just like fifteen, I don’t really want to think about it and if I did, I don’t want kids but,” and they talked me through the process of getting hormone blockers if I wanted it and the whole process put me off as well rather as well as the, not just the process of the whole year of being on them but the whole process of getting them was quite invasive what they put you through so I didn’t want to do that and they just asked me how I was doing, generally how I was getting on and really trying to like yeah, I did get a diagnosis at that point as well of gender dysphoria because it was around that time there was the change wasn’t there with the thing, so I was diagnosed at some point. I can’t remember when, but I was and eventually because I didn’t want blockers from them and I was doing okay, they referred me to the adult services.

They give you quite a lot of social support so if you’re having trouble with like CAMHS and school in my experience they were able to intervene and establish meetings with the school and CAMHS. They were even willing to come to my school and get, organise people from CAMHS to come to my school to have like a team to talk about me and my like plan, my mental health plan and stuff like that and how to support me best. So even if you’re not looking to transition or do anything medical, they’re there to help with the social stuff as well.

I had really bad depression/anxiety which started at puberty and I didn’t really know why but I started feeling it a lot when, because I used to do a lot of sport and I’m starting to do more sport now, it was just that I didn’t really, like I started periods at like eight, so I was just like, ‘Uugh.’ So that felt kind of wrong and I would like hide it. It was, I didn’t really understand what it was. I didn’t feel comfortable going to anyone about it. My chest started growing at quite a young age too and I was like, ‘Ooh everyone’s supposed to be excited about this, excited about these things. Like becoming a woman.’ I didn’t really feel comfortable with it and I’d always had like long hair but I’d never look after it and I got it cut off before I came out and I felt so much better and I was like, ‘oh’ or I’d like hide my hair in a hat when it was long, and I’d be like, ‘Oh this feels really good and people would mistake me for like a boy or something even when I wasn’t out and it would just make me feel really good and I was like, if these things are making me feel bad and if I get rid of them or change and I feel good then surely that’s a good thing. So it’d really like get me down and sometimes it does still but when I was a teenager and things were starting to happen, it was really not good.

I’m feeling quite nervous but I feel excited because I know it’s gonna help me a lot especially now that I’m doing a lot of sport because it’s not that, because the binders that I have are like five years old so they’re like very stretchy and roomy so I can kind of play sport in them and they do their job well enough. But what will help me is the fact that I can like change, because when you play rugby you change positions so you change top. At the moment if I have nothing on under my top I can’t change my top in the middle of the field, so it would help with stuff like that so I could just whip it off and like put another one on. I can go swimming without fear because I was like gonna go swimming but I asked the pool if I could wear a t-shirt and they said, “No.” So my mum got angry at them and they still said no, so I haven’t been able to go swimming so that would be nice. It would be nice to be able to go to a really hot country and not sweat to death under a binder. It just, I’m really looking forward to not having to wear a binder; that’s my main motivation for it.

So you go for your first appointment and they weigh you and take you into see him and then usually like with a nurse and then the surgeon comes in and then he tells me, he asks me some questions about my lifestyle and my health. He only takes like non-smokers and people with a specific BMI, but I’m over that BMI now so he’s gonna delay my surgery but it’ll be fine and then he asks me to go behind a curtain and take off my, everything from the top up and he looks at my chest and he prods and pokes and measures and stuff because and then he’ll then I put my stuff back on and he’ll explain the surgery and he’ll like drew me diagrams about the procedure he’s gonna do because he doesn’t decide on the procedure he’s going to do until he’s like seen my chest and he explains like recovery times and like drains and stuff like that.

So when I started Uni initially my mental health was quite good and I was, people didn’t know my previous name which was quite nice because at my home town everyone did. So it was a constant battle, so I didn’t really have to battle with that here and even if people misgendered me [name]’s like a gender neutral name so people will just roll with it, it’ll be fine. And then like, and then like I gradually don’t think of my gender identity as being something I’ll never have because I have it now. Like, on my passport, my name, like my hormones, I have all of that. Like I have all that I wanted, that I thought I would never have and now I have it so it’s not like a thing that gets me down. Like I do have hope about my gender.

So I cycled through three people who were the LGBT specialist therapists and there’s some issues at CAMHS, especially surrounding like confidentiality and stuff but I was quite lucky that I tell my mum like everything so that wasn’t an issue but a lot of the time, I also had like family therapy with them so that was like, that was like a kind of side specialism of one of my therapists where and she came in to my house and tried to explain my gender identity to my family but it was completely wrong. She got it completely wrong because she was also a therapist to my friend who is a very masculine trans guy and at that time like my hair was bright blue and I was kind of like, I didn’t Pass very well, my friend passed really well at that time [coughs] and she was like, “Well [name] feels non-binary and stuff,” and I was like, ‘there’s no problem with being non binary, but I’m not,’ and she explained that to my whole family and that was my last meeting with her before she left. So I was a bit let down by that because I felt that she didn’t really see me as, my identity as a man as valid at that point so that was kind of a let-down.