In the period of time when I was pursuing healthcare like it was quite a useful tool, in terms of like trying to get things that you need. As in like the kind of like more classical trans narratives, you know, with the whole born in the wrong body’ crap, I do think that like there’s, it’s really exciting/good to see this like proliferation of, a multiplicity of trans narratives, particularly around, around like non-binary and gender queer, to be non-binary specifically, yeah, I think there’s something about the like demand to narrate trans in a certain way which is like not necessarily helpful. I find it quite funny where it was like, oh there’s this idea of the trans narrative and like your story and like the merits of like that as a mode of understanding yourself, but then I’m like actually, you know it’s like not like I feel like as life emerges or goes on it’s just like it, that’s the thing that people will try to use to define you in a way, that’s maybe unhelpful, and a bit reductive. Maybe it’s the narratives themselves that are reductive and unhelpful, but it does also, yeah it feels like there’s more that we can do than just narrate ourselves. Be that like you know, it’s like the, like don’t just write your memoirs, you can do, there’s more you can do than just that. Yeah, yeah, so it’s quite mixed feelings about it. I feel that like I think obviously like stories are really helpful for people who are, trying to come to terms with, or trying to assign themselves, or to find ways forward, but yeah, there’s loads of stuff that’s complicated and difficult that I don’t think gets talked about, either about some of the, about micro aggressions, be that about the like other ways that like trans misogyny, and trans phobia and all of the other like forms of oppression that manifest structurally. Like that they impact and influence our lives, like I think that stuff doesn’t necessarily get talked about in terms of like narratives, and that’s maybe like a bit of a, oh what do I want to say? That’s, yeah, we could do with more on, more robust narratives around a more like critical narratives around things.

Oh my god. Oh my god. There’s, this was so bad for me. This and the toxic masculinity was so, so bad for me. And I’m so glad that I’m out of it now. Because, when I was younger, my idea of the trans narrative was like, okay, come out, get a binder, get referred, top no, shit, the other way round. Start hormones. Top surgery. Bottom surgery. Happiness. It is not like that. It is so not like that. Oh my god.

It like I’m sorry, like if people do follow that narrative and they end up happy, that I’m more than happy for them. To immediately like box someone into this narrative of like, this is how your transition is going to go. This is and I know that some people, people usually follow this like a lot of trans people who happily transition will follow this. But, for people who are uncertain of their gender and people who are unsure of whether or not they’re even trans at all to immediately like be told, okay, so when you’re trans this, this, this, this is gonna happen. Have fun with that. Like, it can give you a sense of like, it gives you a sense of direction, but if you’re uncertain of whether or not you even want to transition or even uncertain in what your gender is at all, it is really, really bad and damaging, because for a while I wasn’t even sure about, for a while I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to take hormones. So, I was like, okay, the time for hormones is growing closer and I don’t know what’s going on and so it was really bad for me. So it was bad for me at least. But it did give you a sense of direction though. You know, some parts of it are good, some parts of it are bad. So, yeah.

I think when I started exploring things, and even though, you know in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t that long ago. I’m aware that I was presented with a specific kind of narrative, which even by today’s standards has been changed and transformed so I think, you know particularly other trans people that I was speaking to at University, I was only just starting to meet people that were non-binary, and to come across people who were transitioning in different ways.

And I guess, I think for me I think I fit, I think I fit a model of transitioning and a narrative that the rest of the world understands, and of just, well some of the world understands and have got to grips with. So you know, I used to describe myself as FTM, and I’ve stopped using that but I used to say FTM because the one to the other, the binary kind of switch I guess is something that people can get their heads around. And I think at the start of my transition as well, even though I was exploring things, when I realised that that’s how I identified, that just, I’m conscious of saying it wasn’t easier, but it, actually it was easier than how, than a lot of people I think and their experiences of their transition.

You know I think that that’s quite a powerful thing really, and actually as trans people we need to be doing more to challenge that. I guess like you were saying about passing earlier, and about the weight that sometimes that people attribute to that’s, that was my goal at the start, if I’m brutally honest.

Now that’s something that I think about in a more critical way. And I’ve come to appreciate kind of as time has gone on that there are lots of people that, that transition differently. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the way I’ve transitioned is wrong, I think, and I don’t think that I, yeah I don’t think that my transition is any less valid, but I’ve certainly, had I kind of, if I was to think, if I was at the start of my transition now, it may have looked different because I don’t think my goal would have been to pass, and I think I’d have been more aware of other trans people that that have different narratives to mine. And I guess have different experiences.

I didn’t, I, probably from my own ignorance I wasn’t in contact with people that did have those different experiences of transitioning when I started, but now I do, and that’s changed the way that I think about things. So yeah, I, sometimes I give myself a bit of a hard time I think, about, about fitting the narrative, and about being that trans person that, that does fit the world’s newly developed opinion of trans people, and that gives me a certain amount of privilege as well, so I think I need to play a part in saying to the people that question me, or question the existence of non-binary people, particularly in my place of work I’m thinking of a couple of examples, I need to be challenging that and saying, Well this is how I transitioned, and I know that makes sense to you cos this is not the only valid way and this is not the only valid narrative

Being in a body is always kind of fraught with so many decisions and feelings and kind of things can either be great, or things can be not, kind of, kind of failing you in some way, or whatever, but mostly I’ve kind of reached a place in the last few years where I’m generally quite comfortable in my skin, and I’m just like, Well this is, this is me as I am at the minute, and you know my body doesn’t define me So and I think, I don’t know as well, cos of my area of research being menstruation and people tend to think that the materiality and essen- like essentialist notions of the body are kind of at the forefront of that, but actually kind of, I suppose my, well the way I articulate is that you know we have to recognise that bodies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and belong to all sorts of different peoples genders. So, having you know this body doesn’t mean anything, like doesn’t change the way that I feel about my gender, necessarily, apart from the days when it does, but that’s not every day. Yeah it’s a fluctuating thing I think and I guess, though sometimes like on the days where it’s worse, and I feel more uncomfortable or I don’t know it feels like being a teenager again, you know when you’re like oh what’s happened here? I don’t know what this new bump is, or why have I got, yeah? So that’s kind of how I, I guess it is, it’s of, so now I feel like I swing between being quite happy and comfortable, and then being like, Oh God, does this make me look awkward But or sometimes like, Oh if I wear this to this event, will I look too feminine slash masculine slash, and then I might go hang on I don’t owe anyone a portrayal of being non-binary. I should just do what I want. So yeah, I guess it’s complicated.

So yeah I don’t know, sometimes I have that are you trans enoug voice in your head, like am I non-binary enough and I’m like, I don’t know what that means. But I guess because I don’t fit into a narrative and I’m not you know, I’m not kind of at the point where I’m considering any kind of more medicalised intervention, and I’m kind of just sitting where I am and figuring it out and being, you know trying to be me as I exist, that that’s not like the, the big switch, the big switcherroo that people expect people to do when they’re transitioning. You know it’s like I was already you know, I already looked like this, I already did these things so there’s no change, it’s just that I’m, so I guess that maybe makes people struggle to grasp my gender identity somewhat, because it’s like I haven’t, it’s not actually any different to how I was before, it’s just that I’m like, you know all these things that I did, they were because of this, and I’ve only just figured that out.

There is the whole emphasis on childhood and everything that you have to try and fit into which I imagine probably didn’t help with the whole thing at GIDS since neither me or my mum ever really bothered trying to play into it because it just wasn’t accurate and it was trying to conform to a particular narrative was mostly just me not mentioning whatsoever that I’m not a binary trans person because it just complicated it in a way that I didn’t want it to because ooh do you know? Do you know if you definitely want these hormones if you’re not entirely a woman. Ooh are you completely sure that you’re trans all that sort of stuff. So he sort of just wanted to try it since that was stuff that I was already going to have from having to through the process not mentioning that aspect of my identity seemed like a thing that would just make it easier. And then there was another massive pressure to dress a certain way and to use make-up in a certain way and to all this sort of stuff. But just doesn’t fit with like my reality, really.

I think there is a kind of, there is a huge, I guess, even if it’s not implied there is a kind of like, even if it’s not directly stated there is an implied kind of like requirement to have that kind of narrative within society. For instance, like if you want to go get healthcare from the NHS or change anything legally or anything, they will often ask you or so I’ve heard, they ask you questions about like when did you first realise this and you supposed to have this kind of picture perfect like Princess and the Frog story about like, oh, I realised, I realised this when I was five and it’s doesn’t work out for everyone. it’s not how most people’s lives are. And so, there is this kind of, you’ve got to be a good trans or else we will not give you healthcare whereas it should actually be accessible to all. I think that almost kind of dilutes the waters in terms of trans culture because since many people have to pretend to have these kind of stories and perfect narratives in society in a way just to get by and like survive in the legal sense. It kind of, it kind of homogenises the trans experience when in fact it’s a very diverse thing and no two experiences are alike and that’s why it’s important to get those voices out there and get stories told and stuff. And even if mine is a bit more like the cultural expectation for being trans I’ve always known and I’m binary and everything else, there is such a wide range of trans experiences even speaking to people like I have friends who are cis, but still have like elements of like gender dysphoria to their lives and there is a story that needs to be told, stories of non-binary people and stuff that often get buried underneath this kind of narrative of you are a good trans or we are not gonna tell your story, like those stories need to get out there and be told to kind of combat that, that main like narrative linear, narrative structure of like I realised I was trans when I was five and then I’ve got on hormones when I was twenty and it doesn’t work out for everyone like that and it’s not fair that people should be expected to because not everyone has the resources or the courage or just even the environmental circumstances. They may not have realised at a certain time or anything like that. it’s not fair for them.

How did you come to that decision then, that you weren’t going to follow a medical, medicalised pathway or that you weren’t going to get a referral for example?

I think, I think so I think there’s different, there’s different routes into this, cos there’s the kind of like surgery and then there’s the hormones. And they’re overlapping but they’re slightly different. So with the surgery I think there’s probably some hangover of the breast reduction surgery that I had, and feeling like I wasn’t going to be heard and listened to and it was going to be traumatic. Alongside having friends who’ve like been on the pathway for two years, and then been told because they’re non-binary they’re not going to get anything. And having lots of trans friends who’ve had kind of humiliating at best, or intrusive and violating at worst, experiences and so being in community long enough to know enough of those stories to know that that’s a real risk. And then my friends saying that they would fundraise for me, I think just gave me a different option. And I think going through the medicalised pathway is part of why it took me so, or like the fear of doing that is why it took me so long, and having a different option made it not feel like a wrestle, because it felt like choosing between my safety or one, one form of safety for a different form of safety, and having to like make a decision about which one I wanted to feel safe about.

I’ve often found it a bit of a stumbling block that my trans narrative isn’t standard. That my desired transition pathway isn’t standard. So one of the reasons my parents don’t believe me is because they claim that I never showed any signs of being trans when I was little. And when I point out, you know, ‘What about this, and this, and this, and this?’ they go, ‘Oh that’s just normal.’ Okay, cool. So, I found it frustrating that a lot of trans people are expected to be held to this model, this idea of a model trans person with the most palatable story that is most understandable to people who aren’t trans. Because it harms trans people not just in the sense that if they internalise that they think, ‘Oh, I can’t be trans because I don’t conform to this narrative’, but also because it can impact not just people around you, but healthcare professionals as well. In that if you don’t fit the pattern they expect, that can radically change your access to, to things like healthcare.

I think yeah I think there’s a lot of pressure and I felt like for me there especially was there was like a moment where I was out with somebody’s family and we were going to use like these public toilets and I think my mum asked me at the time she sort of knew that I was sort of fluctuating between using the toilet and she said Are you going in the men or the women’s?’ and I was about to say oh well I might, because they were like scabby toilets so I was like I might go in the women’s because that will be nicer and somebody was like Well he’s clearly gonna go in the men’s why would you go in the women’s?’ And I was like okay so I guess the decisions been made for me. So there is like yeah I think there is this expectation that you will go on hormones, you will get surgery and there’s this whole thing about like oh fully transitioned kind of thing which isn’t really a thing, there’s not really such a thing as fully transitioned I now people like to think it’s having all the surgeries, having all the hormones but I mean a lot of people don’t even realise that you have to be on hormones for the rest of your life, my mum didn’t even realise that you know, there are a lot of things she had to sort of pick up. And I think there is a lot of pressure to conform to this standard of Transness of how, you know, you have to go in this journey, and it’s difficult as well because I know that for me that I would probably be doing a lot more if, you know, I was more male presenting, you know, I feel like I’m probably more comfortable doing more things but at the same time is that just because of how society views me like I always thought I don’t wanna transition for other people and if I do transition it will be for myself. And yeah I think it’s really difficult figuring out, you know, what you want to get out of your own transition and not be forced into, you know, having to go on hormones and stuff.

The only pressure I’ve felt from that has been from other trans people. There are a few. And when I say, it’s a few, it’s a minority of people who, of trans people who seem to gatekeep the term ‘trans’. Gatekeep what you can and can’t do as a trans guy or whatever. And I’m like, it’s different for everyone.

I’ve mentioned my friend who’s a bit of a knob. And he insists that, you know, if a, that you know, I “wouldn’t like singing” being a trans guy, because when I sing my voice is kind of higher and it doesn’t, it doesn’t sound “like a man’s voice”, it can’t yet. And I “wouldn’t be singing all these years up until now if I was-“, you know, if… Most trans guys would kind of be judging me. And like, yes, I don’t like my singing voice, currently. [But] I’m not gonna stop, because I love singing. I don’t want to not sing for 3 years and then try and start singing again while my voice is breaking. That’s not a good way to go. So, you know… And me singing has helped me lower my voice a bit and whatever. But you know, people gatekeeping…

“You wouldn’t paint your nails if you were trans, wouldn’t do this”. And “you have to go a certain way”. You know, “If you were really trans, you wouldn’t want to start with gel, you’d want to have shots”. I’m like, ‘Well firstly, I’m terrified of needles…!’ And secondly, I want to go through the best transition, not the fastest transition. I think that’s important. I mean, yes, I’d love to clap my hands and everything happened overnight, don’t get me wrong. But given how I need my, I want my voice to break and remain and keep my singing voice. I need to start with gel so it happens more gradually. Otherwise if it suddenly, you are getting shots and getting a lot of testosterone quite quickly and it’s all that. You know, you can end up ruining your voice. You can end up having changes that have happened too quickly, you know, cramming puberty very quickly. It is a full puberty I’m going to go through. I don’t wanna cram that in. I don’t wanna have spikes of testosterone like that when I’m having shots. Gel keeps it at a constant level and allows it to change a natural rate. I’ve had people telling me, “Oh no, you know, you, if you were really trans you would want to, you would want to have shots. You’d be rushing to get it done as quickly as possible. If you were really trans, you wouldn’t have been so patient for so long”. I was like, it’s not that I’m not trans – it’s that I’m a patient person and I wanted to show that I was grateful, you know, I feel like sometimes people think that all trans people must have this personality, this idea. I’m like but I’m not. You know, “If you were really trans you would have a problem with this too”. I’m like, no mate, you have a problem with it [laughs].

I mean I feel like I am like, quite… I do sense and I do know that I’m aware of that sort of peer pressure because there’s a lot of like, there’s a lot of drama actually within the kind of young trans male YouTube community, ‘cos there is one certain YouTuber and I cant remember his name, but he is this YouTuber and sort of he’s like a TERF almost. Ive forgot what TERF means. Trans ex… He kind of excludes non-binary people and he says if you’re non-binary then you’re not really trans or whatever. Like if you don’t have gender dysphoria or like whatever you’re not really trans.

Yeah, so people like him sort of there is a lot of trans people who push forward the narrative that you can only be trans if you have body dysphoria and if you dress like the, the stereotypical man or woman and if you’re, you identify as non-binary and if you dress like you’re not a binary gender and you are not trans and you’re making, you know, you are making trans people seem like snowflakes and you’re giving other trans people a bad name, which is such like a toxic mindset for anyone to have and there’s so much sort of segregation and really sort of horrible behaviour within the trans community.

And I feel like I kind of like I’m, I go through the very mainstream trans experience of having body dysphoria of feeling like, like, you know, I hate my body and I want to have surgery. But I am a very, very feminine guy and so it’s like, you know, I understand that like you know, some trans people, some non-binary people, I understand what they’re going through. I am not as villainised by the rest of the trans community as they are. So, I guess, I guess it’s just a feeling of like my narrative, any person who believes they are trans like their narrative is valid enough just because they say so and that it’s so toxic and it’s very, very, very much like what the oppressors would say to be like [pointing gesture] you’re not trans, you’re trans, you’re not trans, and to kind of have like a body of authority to dictate who’s allowed to be trans when it’s, when we’re literally meant to be the community that’s meant to be embracing people and loving people for who they are. Yeah, then you get these toxic people who try to dictate other people’s stories.

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’.

I think that as with many things, I think it, I think our language around it needs to change basically. I think that, I think that there’s a lot of, what’s the word? I think there’s a lot more like debate and conversation, even like, not – and not just for once between like trans people and transphobes – but like, even just amongst trans people, right, and I think there’s, I think the pitfall of like essentially saying you know, ‘Are you trans enough?’ right, or like, ‘Can you rely on being trans?’ That kind of thing. These aren’t really conversations that are worth having. I think, but I think we’re having them because the language hasn’t yet caught up to maybe the reality of many people’s experiences, which is that instead of seeing it as a detransition, seeing it as a retransition, and just that you’re going to have many transitions throughout your life, or none at all, and that doesn’t have to be a measure of your ‘transness’ in any way, right? And especially like, you know from my own experience, you know I, as I’ve said like these days I don’t, my gender expression doesn’t change as much as it used it, right like I, generally speaking, I’m much more on the femme side of things than the masc side of things, and that didn’t used to be the case. That’s okay.

Right? It’s okay to experiment, it’s okay to have different phases, right, and it’s okay as long as it’s happening safely, which can only happen when you have professionals helping to guide young people, you know, as well as adults through these processes, you know whether it’s hormones, whether it’s you know even just things like wearing binders or like, like experimenting with your expression. Like all of these things I think it’s important just to trust individuals like capacity, like their agency right, and their capacity to know themselves.

You know, I’ve never heard of anyone who you know if they are, for example like undergoing some gender affirmation surgery, I’ve never heard of anybody who’s like regretted that, you know. Because I think once, if you’re making a decision like that, which you know as, again being informed like, these are the changes to expect, you know, this is a commitment that is being made, like if you are ready to make that commitment and you really want to make that commitment, then it’s going to be the right choice for you, even if later your identity changes. You know I don’t know, like you know again because like I, you know, I’m not going through like a medical pathway with my gender identity, but for me like something I could use as an example is like I have lots of tattoos, and I’ve always, always been questioned like, How are you sure though? Aren’t you going to regret it in x-years and blah, blah, blah, and it’s like, but I, I haven’t, and I don’t, and like that’s because like obviously it’s a different thing, of course.

But like my identity has changed since I got my first tattoo, you know, when I got my first tattoo I didn’t identify genderqueer, I didn’t identify as femme, I used different pronouns, I didn’t look this way, like all of this stuff, but I don’t regret that first tattoo because to me all, all of my tattoos are just a piece of like, a piece of my history, right, I’m carrying my history with me and it changes over time. You know, and I knew that from the beginning and I’ve always told people if you’re considering a tattoo but you’re not sure, then don’t get a tattoo, like maybe another time. You know but I’ve, I have always known, I don’t regret this. I have no second thoughts ever and it’s really important to just recognise that like, you know, people have agency, young people have agency, you know and like supporting them through this can really help them make decisions that they know are right for themselves, you know.

The entire issue comes down to transness is something that for some reason people want to fight right now. And the idea of transness is something that people want to have a say on. I maintain always that the, being trans is usually the least interesting thing about a trans person. And it’s an adjective, it describes a state of being, but the person is actually the most interesting thing. And I think we have to get to more story centric trans people telling their own narratives. Ways of, of describing gender and what goes on with them. Because I think at the moment narratives, I think narratives, I’m one of the, I mean I’m a writer, I think stories make the world better or worse depending on how they’re told. And at the moment the narrative of being trans is, does not belong to trans people. And the discrimination comes so much from having to be like, No, no, no, no, it’s not like that at all and then people going, Oh you’re defensive or You’re hedging or You’re not answering a thing And personally I think you know, in my own little microcosm when, when people relax about gender it’s more comfortable for everybody. Not just trans people. I think if you limit gender expectations and those kind of things, it’s very hard to discriminate against people, and it also makes everybody just a lot more comfortable. cisgender, transgender however wherever in between on a spectrum they may fall, I think people relax a lot more so I think this notion of, of transness is this big kind of homogenous blob of yes this is all trans people, are part of the trans agenda. I also sort of maintain that the trans agenda appears to be, Can we just be nice to people, and leave them alone No, we can’t do that Like, Oh, okay, fair enough Yeah I think we just need more about the multiplicity of what it is to be trans, and the ways in which people, and the ways in which people connect to it. For some trans people being trans is very important to them, for others not so much. And you’re, and people are allowed to be in exactly the same way that you’re allowed to you know a blonde or a redhead or have pink hair, or have blue hair or, it needs to get to a place where it’s that level of okay.

I think the real problem is that there doesn’t feel like there’s a precedent for feminine Trans masculinity especially as a person of colour. And I think there is a problem where black Trans men for example are read as more masculine that’s a whole thing in itself they’re presume to be like, you know, more masculine, it’s projected onto them by the white gaze. it’s imposed, they don’t have a choice in the matter they’re going to be read as masculine. Then for me as a, as, so from my particular experience the gaze that’s cast onto Asian men is like good at STEM and effeminate or like, you know, emasculated and like not good at sex for example small penis, like just certain things these like scripts are like imposed on us like on Asian Trans men and there’s not much narrative in terms of what queer Asian masculinity looks like I only really know of one queer out Asian like celebrity for example like and he committed suicide in like the early thousands, the one sort of like the one sort of reference point I, just one reference point and so I didn’t grow up with media role models of what queer Asian masculinity looks like and then to add the sort of like extra sort of like dimension of being Trans onto that and being bisexual onto that. Did not really grow up with the conception that someone like me could exist with all of my intersections like I think, felt kind of impossible that like someone could have all those intersections and still have, yeah and exist because it’s just I’ve not seen anybody out there with this kind of experience and I know that we exist [laughter] yeah. But even if I was cis and a queer effeminate sort of like Trans man like oh sorry a cis man that’s Asian like that, that in itself is already like, you know, really hard to find any representation of in the media. So you just yeah I guess like I don’t feel, like I never felt like a freak I think I just, it really stopped me from coming out into myself and transitioning because I didn’t really understand how I could like have all the, be all those things and also like be real.

I think I learnt about it as something quite separate to myself before I was able to allow it to be something that I can accept within myself. And so learning about it through like, the internet and seeing a lot of representation especially of Black transfeminine people or trans women and just like, looking at their experience and just thinking like, ‘Yo this is lit! Like how…’ I just was like, ‘You’re, you living in your truth like that’s a really beautiful thing!’

And then making friends as well that were like transfeminine and going to like, their events or like holding events for them to come and speak and that kind of stuff has been like a massive part of me like, learning about gender. And then just having conversations with people that identify outside of cis binary gender has been like massive, and just seeing… I think when I was first able to like, in real life see representations of Black transmasculine people was when I was able to kind of, transfer that learning as something that was outside of me to something that was inside of me. And that was like, that representation – even though I don’t always believe in representation politics as something that is gonna save the world – but it’s something in that sense that really like, helped me and like, allowed me to live in my truth.

Seeing a Black transmasculine person allowed me to see myself in the trans community because I guess the most representation, the main representation of trans people I saw were either white in general, like, transfeminine, or people that were just like right at the end of their transition – well not right the end because it’s a process but – that, I never really see people on the journey of transition. And yeah, I saw a few like, pregnant white men in like newspapers and stuff but I never really understood, and like it was… Because whiteness is often something that I see so divorced from myself it’s like ‘This is…’ like–, as in a lot of cultures, like my, like my own, this is something that is ‘white. Like, ‘transness is white’ like ‘being gay as white’ all that kind of stuff and to be able to break that dichotomy of who is allowed to exist in those spaces was what I needed in order to feel that I could also exist in that space.

And so then following a lot of Black transmasculine people on like Instagram has been like massive and just watching them live their life, it allows you to feel not like an outcast, it allows you to feel like a part of something, it allows you to feel as, not as hard on yourself and as like not as ostracised because it’s so easy to feel ostracised within your community. And to feel like you’re the only one and to feel like only one is to, to feel like an outcast is to feel othered is to feel like, no there’s something wrong about you, about you and so to see that representation both in real life and online has been like, transformative.

We cannot have a white middle class narrative being the thing that drives what it is to be trans. Some of that is access to the history and information about the fact that, you know, women of colour, trans women of colour have always been at the heart of the trans, right, movement, is very important.

And I think highlighting people, you know people like Asifa Lahore, and they’re sort of, heard her story of coming from like a Muslim background and the challenges of that as a trans woman, and the intersections of those things. I think these are the narratives that need to be out there more. That’s not to say that obviously there aren’t the, that white people don’t have intersections, but I feel like there’s a certain amount of the, I’ll be honest, there’s a certain amount of white people who are like me, where I’m like fine, our narratives are not particularly interesting or particularly driven, and I’m not particularly representative of many people. Whereas I think there are other stories that are more interesting and deserve to be told. And I think it’s the job of trans folk to make sure that we remember that not to take up spaces that belong to other people. That we can amplify the voices of people who are intersections of more than one minority. Because that’s also going to be really important for kids. I think, I think we need, we need some real heroes and I think we need to be able to see that like you can grow up and you can be happy and beautiful and successful, and also have issues with mental health and also be going through medical transition, and you can be imperfect and you can also be an entire person. And I think that’s something that kids should be able to aspire to. You know I think people like Munroe Bergdorf, the way that she handles criticism and the stuff that she’s gone through, and yet somehow managed to do it with, with an incredible amount of grace, I think is a great example if you’re a young Black trans woman.