Experiences of trans and gender diverse young people

The reporting on the issue of trans kids specifically has been abysmal. Genuinely awful. Because one day one publication will say that trans kids are being rushed into surgeries which, from what I’ve seen is hilariously untrue. And then the next day they’ll do a story about how like some trans kid has been waiting for five years, and [pause 3 secs] they are stoking up a debate on this issue in people who aren’t experiencing it, they will never, they aren’t trans themselves, or they aren’t any kind of experts on this issue in any real way. They aren’t going to those people.

Well, absolute, absolute bull shit. It’s a load of crap. It's just, it’s mainly anti-trans propaganda or even, even if they try and do something positive, most of the time, well from what  I’ve seen. Ok here and there, there has been really positive coverage about it and they have you know picked, you know good people to cover that. But in the early days they were not, you know they wasn't putting out the best interviews. So they wasn't really covering the reality of it, just one portion and you know exaggerated versions of things.  When we look on say digital media, if you look on the internet and look on digital media outlets, things on Facebook you've got a more real version of how trans people are and different subjects that they cover and things like that. So it's a bit more, you can get a bit more detail on it and that's in today's sort of times. But if you're looking at newspapers or if you're looking at BBC news or something like that, you're not going to get, you're not going to get the reality of it. They always get something and twist it or they interview someone and they twist their words or they edit it to follow the narrative. And you know it's not good and it's so dangerous, it's so so dangerous. As I said, I was speaking to some girl from a dating website, she didn't even, bearing in mind she's from [city] so you would think that she would have been fully clued up with it, nope she had never ever met a trans person before and she was asking me questions regarding it and obviously I've never heard back since. But it's a case of, if I hadn’t met that person in face-to-face then I know for a fact it would have been completely different experience for her.  So it's a case of, from what, and some of the things that she was saying she obviously had just got that from the media etc. so it is very dangerous, it's a very dangerous game but they play. And you know with me, I'm all about spreading the knowledge that's why I'm so open about it. I mean I've done an interview for Sky news and I had quite a few messages about it saying saying that I came across well I had like a producer messaged me and asked me to get involved with a drama series they wanted to produce as a consultant. So obviously I feel like I've done my part. I've done some of us justice in my interview. And you know people too often say to me like “oh my god, I wouldn't ever think that you was trans” or “I didn't believe in it before, but meeting you it's like this is real” etc. So it's kind of like that just goes to show what people are being fed in the media. That whole Always sanitary towels situation where they wanted to take off the logo to be more inclusive, the whole world went nuts about that, over the internet. Even people who was meant to be my friends, they were saying transphobic things because obviously the education is not there. And you know some people, don’t get me wrong, some people are ignorant anyway but it's the main root cause, is because the education is not there for a lot of people. And even myself I'm still learning about things and I've learnt from my experience and other people's experience. But obviously, you know, I was never taught about this at school and I think if people were taught about this as part of education then you know I feel like people would be, feel more comfortable and safe being themselves so yeah.

It’s a fucking disgrace. This is the thing that I really get angry about is the way that trans people are talked about in the media. It actually makes my blood boil how TERF-ism is seen as a valid point of view in all of the mainstream papers and how they focus, they focus on entirely the wrong aspects of the discussion, which so they’ll, newspapers will focus on the one story of someone who detransitioned, the one story of a trans woman who was a rapist. The one, you know, and all of these other things and they’ll be like oh, you know, so they’re not discussing the suicide rate for trans people. They’re not discussing how actually what the conversation is do people deserve their human rights. You know, do people deserve to be recognised for who they are? That question has been put on the back burner because it is considered more important for people to air their whimsical little concerns about maybe someone will feel uncomfortable if someone with a bit of a five o'clock shadow goes into the women’s toilets. You know, like, that isn’t important.

It’s good and bad, ‘cos obviously it’s important to highlight trans issues. But at the same time I think a lot of the media representation is just allowing everyone to make it into a debate, ‘it’s like everyone gets a say, but everyone doesn't get a say because a lot of people don’t even know what the fuck they are talking about. This woman, at my work was telling me how it’s horrible that they are forcing people to take drugs and I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she was talking about hormone treatments for 12 year olds, which it’s not a thing that exists. There is a lot of misinformation out there, which is just fuelling like transphobia and I think that in some cases it’s a very deliberate move to print headlines or to write articles in a way that if you just skim them and if you don’t read them people that are transphobic or have transphobic or even don’t have opinions they read it as abuse or read it as yeah, harm to kids or young impressionable people.

A lot of it is stemming from misinformation and it’s like no-one is trying to give like 11 year olds hormones like we’re not gonna be, like that’s not happening like there is no point fighting over it because it’s just not happening. Like that’s not even part of the argument, we’re not saying you should be giving 11 year olds hormones, like that’s not anything, like it’s just not true. And so much of it is from misinformation but then they put in bits of stuff that are, like that is true and it just is so, like they’re so awful and the stuff that people are saying is just so vile. And I find it really hard knowing, so working with like the under 12’s group knowing that there are really little kids who are seeing this stuff about themselves and it’s like that’s, like you shouldn’t, like know, like it’s just wrong and people posting this stuff like they’re talking about real children, like this isn’t some like hypothetical these are real children who are living, who like are living their lives and hearing this stuff being said about them and I don’t understand how they can possibly sit and say this stuff and be okay with themselves. But I think there is still a lot of progress happening and it’s the voice of, although more than there should be it’s still the voice of a few who are like spreading these negative messages, there are a lot of people in support of it and I think it’s just rather than necessarily challenging the negatives about raising the voice of the positives.

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. I‘ve 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.

Say if there was someone watching or someone out there who was critical about hormone blockers…

Yeah.

…or concerned, didn’t have enough information what would you say to them?

What about just the whole of?

Yeah

I’d probably ask them why and what their kind of concerned and worried about, or don’t know enough about, cos it’s, it’s not a permanent thing, and I think obviously I get that some people like some religious people, and obviously not all of them, but I had a guy in my school, in my old school as well like, “God makes you perfect,” and stuff like that, and I’m totally respectful, I’m an atheist myself, but I’m not like critical of anything and I think everyone should have the right to a religion and stuff like that, but I think it’s, it’s up to them, and it’s up to their decision, and it’s not permanent so they can change it, it’s not a life-changing decision.

And what would you say to people that might actually want to try and stop young kids getting blockers?

Again I’d ask them why, because it’s, it’s, well it helped my mental health, which helped every other thing, which helped my education, get my grades up. It helped my friendships again, it helped me just getting back in the swing of things, and me not having as much anxiety and not falling into, I know a lot of people who have fallen into depression and stuff because they’re just not, they can’t handle it, and they’re just going down and down and down. So, I’d kind of ask them why do you think this is okay then? And this could be resolved by that. And so why wouldn’t you have that, wouldn’t that be the sensible option?

A lot of sensationalism. A lot of just incorrect stuff. It, you know the, the, the discussions around the discussions around treatment of trans youth and trans children I find very frustrating because although I appreciate that it is a incredibly complex topic, and incredibly complex issue and, and you know it, there are a lot of different factors to consider in that, those discussions in the media are often filled with stuff that isn’t true. So those discussions cannot be had in a, you know in a productive way because people are reading things and, that aren’t true, and then the discussions haven’t, you know you, you read through a conversation that’s gone on on Twitter, in response to an article in a paper or something, and the whole conversation has developed around one sentence that is, you know that you know isn’t true, so you know that, those conversations are incredibly frustrating to read. You know around what age people can access hormones, and you know the confusion between hormone treatment and puberty blockers, and the stuff like that. Yeah it, so I guess my, yeah. A lot of it’s sensationalist, a lot of it’s just incorrect. And therefore all the discussions that happen off the back of it are based around incorrect things.

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.

Honestly it’s terrible, it’s misinformed, it’s dangerous I don’t think there’s really, I think maybe the [national newspaper] have okay coverage, that’s the only newspaper I would vaguely trust but even then I’m very sceptical because of how bad the rest of the media is. The figures are wrong the, the way it’s put towards people is completely wrong it’s disgusting I think these journalists the media and people putting this through are doing real damage to people I mean, you know, there’s been a huge surge in Transphobic hate crime recorded and I think a lot of that is to do with the negative media attention that’s been going on. You know, and like the current kind of cases in the high court questioning gillick competence stuff in terms to whether under 18’s can take puberty blockers I think it’s irresponsible and dangerous and I think if that case does end up being ruled that trans people, that under 18’s can’t take puberty blockers which I really don’t think it will and I hope it doesn’t, touch wood you know, that’s trying to pave the way for people to roll back the rights of under 18’s to take stuff like contraception rights, plus abortions and I think that people are really, the hype around it and the data is being, as I saw just dangerous I think coverage is irresponsible and dangerous. And I think that people who have been pushing us towards, journalists that have been pushing for this angle should be ashamed of themselves, really should be ashamed of themselves and should really, really just, they owe a lot of people apologies apart from anything else and they should acknowledge that they were wrong and they have been wrong and are printing misinformation and have been printing misinformation deliberately I won’t wanna say deliberately because, you know, but I think a lot of the oops we made a mistake is not really a mistake more of a we can push this through then do a small correction in a few weeks’ time and no-one will notice.

I’ve found them endlessly infuriating, and in the kind of the way that it’s filtered into different spaces, and debates that I’ve kind of been engaged with, at various points it’s been really, really annoying, which is to put it like as an understatement, where just the constant flow of misinformation, and kind of vitriolic hateful, hurtful kind of discourse, that people, that because the media, and social media, and they’re kind of so intertwined now it’s hard to pull it apart, but you know the, the way that trans healthcare particularly for young people is represented in the media, which then spirals into social media, and spirals into people’s every day conversations, is just so filled with like dog whistles, and factual inaccuracies that I just, I find it so, that they put in enough words that sound, it’s the classic kind of populist tactic isn’t it, putting in nothing, something that sounds like it has a kernel of being reasonable, which it doesn’t, but you know as soon as you go, “We have to protect women,” then it’s like, [gasp] “Do we? Why?” And even though the things that they actually say around that, it’s like of course, no-one wants women to be actually you know in danger, but they’re not.

I think it’s a political vehicle to try and generate fear and sympathy for a political position against trans people it’s not based in actual fact about the process. You know we often hear, the rhetoric that’s often spouted is we have to stop 11 year olds getting, having their breasts removed or like, there’s kind of like these very hyperbolic statements that of course people are like, “What the hell?” to, which are nonsense because no 11 year old can access that surgery. It’s hard enough as an adult to access that surgery. And so I think they’re wild, they’re wildly uninformed and I think sometimes it’s about literally not knowing, and sometimes it’s about intentional, often it’s about intentional storytelling and manipulation of the truth to win political points against trans people.