I think more recently, it’s difficult. On the one hand, I feel very comfortable having like penetrative like PIV sex with people. But it also makes me feel like a power dynamic is being generated. That probably it’s just like a lot of me projecting onto the situation, but that means that mythis is where I get to a really interesting point in like my identity where I don’t know whether to call myself just like a non-binary person whose attracted to feminine people or a lesbian, basically. it’s hard to pick it apart because those things have such strong signifiers in terms of like lesbian culture. Like non-binary people, particularly non-binary like AMAB people for lack of a better word being like erased from like those spaces. And I feel likelike when I have sex, I sort of dissociate a little bit. Just a little bit. Just enough to make me feel kind of weird when it stops. And I often sometimes like, obviously, I will really rarely do this. I often try and avoid it, but like if I am having sex like often I’ve found myself sleeping with someone who I’m genuinely not attracted to. And like it will make my gender dysphoria like a lot worse and I’m not sure why. I think that’s quite a common trans experience though from what I’ve heard. If there’s like some damage to your like sexual relationship with a person if you, if you just aren’t communicating as well as you were beforehand I feel like that can make you feel like other things you feel secure in are like vulnerable and one of those things like gender I think. Again, this goes back to the whole thing you were asking about masculinities and femininities and stuff. I think I often find myself more attracted to trans men, not only because I’ve had such positive experiences with them. This isn’t a fetishistic thing at all. Just because there is more of a variety of kinds of man going on there. Men with communication skills. Men who, yeah, yeah. I find myself really comfortable and attracted to trans men and I find myself really comfortable and attracted to a lot of men, cis men who are like sort of a step away from traditional gender roles and signifiers generally. I lot of really effeminate men. I lot of really butch girls. Just all women, basically as well. Yeah, it’s difficult, gender is a big one. Sexuality is like a big part of how you explore that.

I hate it when TERFS talk about kids being given like hormones and stuff as though they don’t already have them in their bodies. As though like blockers are not entirely reversible or something. Like these things are safe and they’re proven safe and they want them to appear unsafe in order to denigrate trans people, overall. I think any like consideration and caution and gentleness shown towards young trans people is now seen as something of capitulation to that horrific transphobic narrative. It means there’s no space for trans people to just talk about themselves and come to an informed decision because like you’ve got these two like seismic forces. You’ve got like transphobes functioning from one side and then like just generalised anxiety coming from the other side. They are so like what is there to do other than just sort of shrink and not make a decision. That’s really like immobilising. Ive watched a lot of young people, young trans people like unable to come to a decision, myself included because of the way that that narrative is constructed, I think.

I don’t want anything else after hormones. Maybe one day, I want FFS (facial feminising surgeries) maybe like theoretically plausibly. It depends on how much my face changes because of hormones and whether I feel like I’m still dysphoric. The truth is, I just want…

I’m just tired of having this combative relationship with my body and hormones and I feel like that’s becoming the very obvious solution for that. I don’t have, I don’t have bottom dysphoria. I like my penis. it’s done me right. So, I think I wanna keep that. I also wanna keep like—I want to change as little about myself as possible whilst still alleviating my dysphoria. I just feel like that’s a really strange thing. it’s a really odd trans narrative, it’s not a very common one. You get a lot of people saying like, wanna go from here to here or if they’re non-binary, they’ll just like roll the dice and then they’ll just end up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and that’s fine. That will make me happier. I just wanna get rid of dysphoria, like get off my plate, I have like a life to live. I have like family members to hang out with. I have, you know, jobs that I know even know about that I wanna apply for now. I just wanna, I just wanna be myself and dysphoria is getting in the way. So, get this thing out the way and I’ll be fine, basically.

And there’s something about accessing one service that makes you massively enquire and question the way that you interact with the world, for better or worse because there are massive problems with the way that neurodiverse people and neurodivergent people are treated. But simultaneously, what that means in terms of like, when that self-enquiry opens you up to at the same time. I think when people point towards like neurodiversion and say, oh, that classic TERF line of you’re not trans, you’re X you are just depressed. Your autistic. You’re a tomboy. it’s the, it’s the notion of these things are mutually exclusive because they both require the same amount of self-inspection is, I think, a hugely detrimental thing. Because it means that people who are autistic like my friend, [name] or people who are trans, again like him, but like other people, never want to find out the other thing because they are worried that one will negate the other. That there’ll be some inauthenticity, I think. Which is again, another reason why people don’t wanna access healthcare one way or the other. I agree with you like being able to like, being able to support people in your own proximity like that whole, trans communities are ephemeral. they’re about holding each other up. And that sounds like really goofy, but it’s true.

I became really aware of how, how terrified I was of being a boy, basically. How boring I found it. How I didn’t find the aesthetics of masculinity, the socialisation of masculinity in any way appealing. There is some parts of it that I admire and enjoy and there are definitely some parts that I benefit from if I want to pass as masculine and move through society, as such. it’s just more that I, it’s this existential dread that isn’t necessarily connected to the idea of, being in the wrong body. It’s more that the trajectory of my body is a concern and I once, umm… It was just very odd, I think. I guess I’m getting more towards like transition stuff then I’m talking about how I figured out I was, I was trans.

I think I came out as trans at the end of a long relationship where I assumed it was a heterosexual relationship between cis people and it ending meant that I was placed in this space where I could be slightly more honest about these things and develop a vocabulary to describe what I was experiencing slightly better. At the same time, I was making friends with other trans people and I just applied to go and study at uni for a year. When I was there, I moved into like a queer commune and realised, ‘Oh there a spaces where people specifically can develop their lives a bit better’. It gives you an image of like potential futures – the whole idea of ‘imagined futures’ is really important I think for queer people. But I just felt, I don’t know, even in spaces like that it’s really difficult. I’m 6ft 3″ and I feel like I just physically and emotionally take up a huge amount of space.

I think the earliest signs that I was trans or non-binary were probably when I was around 13, 14, 15 and I’d like, I’d like ask people to do my makeup or I’d like I don’t know, I’d purposefully sort of like, this sounds stupid now, but sort of like ‘twink up’ my clothing and just try and be the most effeminate boy possible. And looking back now, I really wish I’d acted on seeking some help medically then as opposed to doing it now, cos now like I’m out of puberty, there are some things that like I’m dysphoric about that I know aren’t gonna change. Or if they do change, they’ll change in a way that I, I don’t know I want to.

The reason I feel like ‘non-binary’ is more specific is cos like I don’t want to try and pass as a trans woman, I don’t think, I don’t think that would make me happy. I think there is a degree of social ambiguity of sexual ambiguity that I find quite uncomfortable as well. And I don’t know, just saying the word out loud, just like saying, “I don’t feel like a boy”, but realising that I felt comfortable with they/them pronouns was a big thing as well. Just sitting thinking like, ‘This is, oh, like I can choose to do this’, it’s exciting that I can choose to do this. Which sounds silly now, because like it’s such a small thing and I was worried that it was performative or annoying, but it’s not, like, if it feels right, it’s probably a signifier. That there’s something you want to change. So, when I did, I do feel a lot better. So that’s where I came to where I am now.

For a long time I started to like, I was hanging out with a lot of trans masc people. So, started to adopt the more like sort of like a lot of trans masc folk who are really comfortable in expressing femininity when they wanted to and wear like girl’s clothes as part of a broader like trail of their own gender identity and like I started hanging out with them and like copying, like socialising myself in a way that meant like I’ve shared a lot of fashion with them. That made me really comfortable. But, as my body is just getting bigger and bigger, I find myself sort of looking at myself and sort of the things that made me comfortable to begin with when I came out, don’t necessarily make me comfortable now. Because I look at myself and think, oh like, you know, looks kind of, kind of weird to be wearing like dungaree shorts and a baseball cap when you’re twenty-three, in the street and I’m like, no that’s not, it’s not a nice thing to like, you shouldn’t like you know shouldn’t like shut yourself down to like what you wanna wear, but at the same time, I don’t know, like I’ve become much more self-critical than I used to be. So, like a lot of things that used to make me comfortable like playing with make-up, playing with like clothing and expression and just little things like getting my eyebrows done, every couple of weeks. Getting my like hair done by like open barbers the trans barbers up in [city]. Like just doing things that let me externalise just in little bits without tackling the big things was which was like physical dysphoria through HRT and stuff. That’s yeah, that’s how I felt.

I wanna know what’s gonna happen to me. I think there’s this narrative that trans people need to educate their medical staff, which is great. it’s fantastic. It’s like yeah, yeah, like they need to learn. They don’t know what they’re doing. Often, I find myself doing that like I’ll be telling my doctor what’s up. I want like my doctor to just not assume that I’m an expert on my own body. Like I want a doctor to do some doctoring. You know to be like, this is what’s going to happen. Do you understand? It sounds pathetic, but like I kind of want to be shown some yeah. It’s like, you know, someone, who just has confidence. I don’t think GPs have enough confidence. That isn’t me empathising with their ignorance, that’s me empathising with their genuine inability to have been educated about it [Laughs]. It’s very strange that there aren’t trans GPs doing this. You would think that more trans people would have gotten out of medical school and started practicing by now. But no and that’s what’s really strange as well is it’s so disparate.

And I also think that, you know, the first informed consent clinic in London is about to be set up. Which is gonna absolutely change the game in terms of access. But what’s that gonna do in terms of like GPs feeling like they have the impetus to learn things. They’ll be like oh well that’s fine, they can get it wherever they need to now. Like as opposed to being like, wait, this is gonna to increase precarity and it’s going to reduce the amount of people applying to GIC which will overall effect statistics in the way the government isn’t taking it seriously enough and they won’t get any funding. The whole thing is going to collapse, like putting a band aid on the problem. GPs need to have the power to like examine people and help people and diagnose people with dysphoria if that’s what they need. And prescribe hormones if that’s what they need. It just feels, it feels like the whole thing about like you need to educate your GPs. It’s like, well, I shouldn’t. They should be good enough doctors to know [Laughs] I am sorry. It feels a bit like I don’t take much joy in having to construct my own transition. I want there to be a framework. I want there to be people who have some expertise. I feel like trans people, the whole thing about like trans people being experts of their own bodies. It’s like, ‘Well yes, but I’m not an expert of my own liver function. I’m not an expert of my own like my own spermatozoa production. I’m not an expert of my sleep cycle and my muscle to body mass ratio’, and these things are things that I want, I want an endocrinologist to talk to me about or a GP who knows something about endocrinology and trans people to talk to me about it.

It costs £50 every time you call them. I try not to call them, which means that I email them. They never reply to their emails. And so, [sighs]… I need a face to face discussion with the doctor. I don’t have the money to just keep paying them for half an hour discussions with… Yeah, it’s difficult. They are doing a great job and they’re treating loads and loads of people, but I don’t think they quite appreciate how expensive it is. You know like I get that they’ve got like a medical practice business like medical industrial complex thing to navigate and run. It still feels there’s only so much money you can give to someone before you began to feel like you’re like pissing it away kind of a bit. It’s not even that I’ve spent so much. I’ve probably spent like £350 over the course of two years. And I stopped paying the subscription fee because I don’t know if they’re going to like, just ‘cos I’m so unsure in myself as to whether I wanna be taking them at a specific dose. I’m like trying to negotiate that with them and talk about like what would work. Which means that they’re not, because I’m not paying them the money and they’re not replying to me emails as fast because they’re not replying to my emails as fast, I can’t make any decisions about what I want to take, because I can’t make any decisions about what I want to take, I can’t pay them and so they won’t email me fast. It’s this whole, it’s this whole thing, where like… Yeah, where like I still haven’t had any advice, really. Not, not like a sit down talk. I think there’s a difference between signing a consent form and having informed consent. Like signing a consent form is a legal process, having informed consent is the thing where you have come to terms with the knowledge that someone else has given you about whether you want to make a decision for yourself. There’s like a fundamental difference. And I think they sort of amalgamated that into just like a consent form. They’ve gotten rid of the informed consent component. It’s kind of stressful to navigate that. And I’m still waiting for the GIC. I’ve been on the GIC waiting list for 2 years and I’ve heard nothing.