Experiences of trans and gender diverse young people

So the first ever start of it, I kind of, well I started to look on, online but without having any information you know you just put in you know “Want to be a woman,” or whatever, and its, it’s such a wide variety of stories and information that it was hard to kind of try and pinpoint how I was feeling. So what I started to do was kind of reach out to trans women, I only ever reached out to two, and one of them actually became one of my really good friends who I met through working on, on the scene, so she came in and I, I knew of her anyway but didn’t know her at all but I knew she was transitioning, so as soon as she came into the bar, which was freaky really because I’d only been back at work for a couple of months, so I’d only just started to realise that this was what I wanted to do. And she doesn’t go out that often at all, so the fact that we kind of met and it was, it was kind of perfect timing.

And she is a very incredible open, you know, flamboyant person, she was very confident in, in what she was doing so I outright asked her, I was sitting on the door taking her money to get into the club and I just said, “I would love to just sit down and just ask you a few questions really.” “Just really get an insight on what you were feeling so I can identify whether I’m feeling the same.” Or even if it’s just a few things you know, everybody’s different. So, you can’t go on completely with somebody else’s, but it’s a great way for, you know, for some information and insights. So that night we ended up going to a bar after I’d worked. We got stupidly drunk and then we went back to my apartment in town and she, we sat up till six, seven o’clock in the morning just talking about everything, literally everything that she ever felt and you know her story kind of was very different to mine, her family wasn’t, I mean they support it, and she goes around and sees them often, but nothing like what my family were like, you know my family gave me the wings and just let me fly, whereas for a long time they still called her, her male name which I felt didn’t support her as much as what she should have been. But a lot of the things that we spoke about were very similar, and I noticed that our stories even though they were so different, our feelings were very similar. So that was my first, my first kind of information. And then I found a girl on, like on Facebook, we became like, you know alright friends as well. I don’t see her that often, but she was a friend of a friend. So yeah, she gave me some insight too. She was younger than me, whereas you know my other friend was older than me, and it was just again, it was just, it was almost like you know get through and see you know if, if it is continual and it was, so after that I really just knew that I was gonna, you know grab, grab the wheel and, and take it off straightaway.

I found that there is some, there is a lot of misinformation in the trans community. That’s one like main bug bear I’d say. Of course, the other main bug bear is the waiting lists and the fact that trans healthcare isn’t a priority of the NHS. If you go private, you know, exorbitant cost of it. It’s pretty bad. And the struggle to get on hormones in this country is quite disgraceful. Like finding out about trans healthcare, I think well I went to the first trans reach out and there was some people talking about the GIC and I found out about that. And so, I feel like, yeah, going to trans groups and stuff, the information has been readily available. There are always people who know stuff. The problem is that they are also the people who don’t know stuff, but talk anyway. That’s how misinformation happens and kind of, because my experience with the hearing about trans healthcare, yeah. I think it’s been what’s been quite difficult for me is, finding out about all the options there are and then which one to go for because I have this kind of selection anxiety. You know, like if you have all these options, for example, moving in here, oh we have to choose like an energy provider now. Well, fuck. You know, what do I do? Who do I choose? What are the differences? You know, and then you end up just picking something even though it’s not the best option just because to pick something. And that’s kind of been my experience of trans healthcare like this. I found out about, you know, Gender GP which is a much quicker and cheaper way of getting on to healthcare, but then someone said, ‘They’re a bit dodgy.’ Which is bollocks. And that’s part of the misinformation, but then that set me back because I was like, oh, well, I’m not gonna go with this dodgy thing, you know, I’m gonna go via the correct pathway, which of course, turned out to be the expensive pathway. I’m gonna to go to this clinic, they have a nice website and everything. There’s a lot of and then there’s a lot of misinformation about hormones once you get them. And, I mean, I suppose it’s finding out about—and also trying to find out about where you can get the hormones for self-medding is really a difficult—‘cos people are quite prejudice against that and so it’s difficult to meet someone whose actually gonna say to you, okay, this is a really useful site. This is how much the hormones are. It’s safe. It’s a pharmacy. This is what you can do. And like, I try to be that person to people that I meet who are starting on their transition as much as possible like, you know? These are your options. This one is good for this reason. This one is good for that reason, you know? And yeah, because that’s been my—

What was useful to you at that time?

What was useful? What was useful was when I would meet a person who knew what they were talking about. A trans person and a trans group, usually. And you would say, okay, you should do this because this is quick and it’s cheap and it’s easy and this and this. There was, there was a non-binary trans woman I met who I am still friends with who has been so helpful with that. She really knows her stuff. She kind of just told me yeah, just everything I needed to know.

I feel like it’s something that is, on the one hand very easy to get lots of information online about different healthcare options and different procedures, different treatments, all that kind of thing. Well on the one hand there’s a lot out there and on the other hand it’s all a bit, it doesn’t seem, it’s never seemed very clear to me, it’s all a lot of, just going on what other people have said about their experiences, or what they’ve, you know. And a lot of contradicting information at times. Yeah I know that you get sort of the basic stuff on, on an NHS website or on a private clinic’s website, or something like that but I feel like a lot of it is forums and people, people sharing their experiences, and then you know trying to, trying to patch things together from different places, and that that doesn’t really, it never really felt to me like okay this is the place I’m going to go to find out what I need to know. Which I would imagine is probably quite similar for a lot of health related things but yeah, in terms of having a clear idea of, okay this is how the process is going to work if I decide to take this, if I decide to pursue medical transition and if, or aspects of medical transition, and if I decide to get a referral to a GIC, and all that kind of thing, what is this process going to look like? Yeah, it, I guess, in one, on one hand there is information there but on the other hand for me it felt like a lot of trying to, and still does feel like a lot of trying to you know scroll through Google and find different bits of information to put together to really get any clear idea of what the process might look like.

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.

Information sharing and everything else. The problem with it often is it’s unfiltered or unregulated and you know, one reputable source might be drowned in ten unreputable, histrionic or whatever else and there is a lot of misinformation out there. But, you know, I’m also part of like a trans DIY discord that has, you know, biochemists and pharmacologists and you know, other people and people having quite high level sort of academic discussion around how to best go about self-medding you know, and sharing links and resources and you know, okay, do this, you know, giving people access stuff, which I think is really important and you know, quite encouraging as an academic and as a scientist that people are that willing to go out of their way into and devote their time to these things and you know, and sometimes, you know, I’m very fortunate in that I have a IRL support community. But like, few people on the discord killed themselves over the last couple of months, you know, and it’s because it’s, you know, and that does affect you and also it’s just a realisation of like it’s tough out there, you know, it was tough for me and it is tough for me and like I’ve said, I’ve got it pretty good. You know, so I think those spaces are really important and like you know, that they’re curated and managed in a way that is responsible and sensitive and reactive to the needs of the community I think is really important.

Google and the internet and stuff is obviously a huge resource. But, from actual governmental sources there’s always been this kind of unclear language used. There has never been a definitive set of like, these are the terms that you use. This is what they mean and so there’s no uniform advice almost. It’s like you could just hear different things from different people and it all depends on what GP you have. Whether they’re even gonna give you any help like my GP wasn’t particularly supportive when we went to speak with him. I had to kind of circumvent that. I couldn’t get a shared agreement with [Private Provider] and my GP for instance. So, there’s a lot of like I had to circumvent all that and luckily thanks to the internet there was places where I could get information about healthcare and stuff and resources and learn about like here’s what HRT is and here is what it’s gonna do to you. That was all great. But on the governmental side, I guess there wasn’t much help at all, really.

What resources were most useful to you? Or most helpful?

I’d say definitely like, but like social media of having friends who are knowledgeable about this stuff. [Private healthcare provider] has been a big resource also. Throughout this process of going through getting hormones with them, they’ve always been there to give advice and support and be very definitive about things and like this is what you need to look out for. These are like this is the changes you are gonna have in your body. Do you consent to all this. They’ve been very clear in language and stuff about that and that’s how to do it. I fully understood the ramifications what I was doing when I was obtaining hormones and be like yeah, awesome.

A lot of it was just me reading through whatever medical journals I could find, online. The most useful stuff that I found was other people’s first hand experiences. More so than anything on the NHS website or anything that I heard from a doctor was just, you know, reading what other people had to say and what it’s like to be on hormones, physically and mentally, that sort of thing. That was helpful for me because, you know, no doctor has really known a lot about it that I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I think that the biggest and best resource out there is just other people at the moment.

I think it kind of just gives you a window in rather than reading something that is a medical journal and its very sort of scientific and impersonal. If you can actually read what other people have to say, it really helps you understand and know what to expect, really. Yeah, I think a lot of the actual medical stuff is just very vague and impersonal. It’s quite often hard to use as a resource.