Coming out

My friends were quite supportive for the most part and have been like as accepting as they can be. Of course like different friends will understand things at different levels, that kind of stuff, so it’s just been a process but so long as that friend, like, the friendship is strong and the love that grounds that friendship is there then that has always been like, a very supportive space for me to go to. And with my family things of course have, aren’t always smooth but again that, that foundation of love has allowed things to like for me to feel like supported and feel able to share my transition, my experience and so on with the people that love me.

I think my mum, like offhandedly mentioned like, “being a transsexual”, or “changing your sex”, and I was like ‘I want to do that’. And she was like, very seriously, like very, very earnestly and seriously, “Well if that’s what you want to do, I will support you doing that.” And then there was like a whole conversation where I was like, ‘Yeah I know I want it; I want to do that.’ So, yeah in that case it was, it was very easy. My Mum has been like… If I did not have my Mum I probably wouldn’t have transitioned, if we’re being honest. If she had been not supportive, I don’t think I would have had the, the courage and the strength to continue.

It was slow initially, I guess, I guess we’re what just over five years on since that first realisation, that there was something going on with my gender for me. Initially it was just all too scary to face I guess, so I sort of had a couple of days of delving into all these stories and experiences and then just kind of shut it into a box again, and was like Well we’re not going to deal with that, just yet And I guess because, because there were parts of trans men’s experiences at that point that just didn’t really seem right for me, I, it was, that was kind of my hook to say oh no it’s probably not that, I’m probably reading too much into it. So sort of tucked it back away again, didn’t really think about it. Or tried not to think about it for a good few months. Perhaps almost the majority of that year really. And then I guess towards, sort of towards the end of that year, the next year I started to sort of just perhaps voice my thoughts to some close friends some people I’d known for a while who’d known how confused I’d been for a long time, and I just sort of thought oh maybe it’s this, I was just trying to start sort of talking it through with other people. And it wasn’t until, when would it have been? It wasn’t until a good two years from that initial point, between two and three years that I actually started to, that I was, that I was certain enough in myself that, that I wanted to tell other people that that was what was going on for me. And yeah I guess late 2017 was when I came out to my family, and I’d already come out to the majority of my friends before that, it was I guess 2017 was the big year where I, where I came out at work, changed my preferred name, and things like that on the systems at work. And yeah, I guess, overall it’s, it’s been a pretty positive experience for me. I haven’t had too much negativity from anyone, I think, I think it was always going to be most difficult to tell my family, and they’ve been great, I guess, like anything there’s a process of adjustment, a process of trying to understand, non-binary wasn’t a word that was familiar to anyone in my family, so just as much as I needed time to process it, they did too. But ultimately it hasn’t changed our relationship or anything like that, I’m still really close with them. . So yeah, I guess it’s been a, it’s been a very gradual process. I’d say I’m not at a point where there’s no-one significant in my life that doesn’t know. So, but I guess yeah, I guess as most of us are aware there’s you know that coming out process never really ends, it’s everywhere you go, it’s every time you meet new people, it’s how much you choose to tell them or not tell them. Yeah, so that’s on, ongoing, I guess.

I was acutely aware that this was always the second time I’d be coming out, and my first time didn’t go so well, so my, when I came out as gay I, I didn’t really come out so I, I had a secret, I had a secret girlfriend that I called a lot, and clocked up a phone bill, and then my parents confronted me about that, and oh it was a mess, so got off on a bad foot to start with, you know with a £250.00 phone bill, that was not the best way to go about it.

So I was conscious that I wanted to be more in control this time, I think that had given me, I almost saw this as an opportunity to do it right, but again I was aware that I might face a lot of negative responses I think, as much as, you know I was in a, I was in a bit of bubble at university and then you know me coming out to my friends at university wasn’t a surprise, cos they’d already kind of seen me exploring things already, and everybody, for the most part, was incredibly supportive and genuine in kind of being supportive. But it was the wider world and you know outside of that bubble that I was, I was afraid of.

And I almost, so I toyed with the idea of writing something to my parents but just, I felt like there was so much opportunity for miscommunication if I wrote something down, that I, as much as I know it’s such a valid way for some people to use to come out I, I chose instead to just sort my head out and speak to them about it and I’m glad I did, and I did that, I did that over the phone, but I’m, again yeah I’m glad I did it that way cos I kind of told them over the phone and then kind of just left it with them for a bit.

And immediately when I said that again they, they weren’t really surprised when they heard it, but it, me kind of giving that information to them they were supportive of me from the offset, and then the questions came. So I think I almost gave them that information and then they started to question it and to they, I mean since my parents have, so my parents have gone through a greater transition than I have to be honest cos now they’re almost too supportive, they, you know go to Pride marches and they’re better than I am.

But they, they did have a lot of questions at the start and I think some of those questions weren’t always phrased in the best way. So I almost again trying to do it at, at my own pace rather than feeling rushed like the first time, I was, they would, they would ask me questions, I’d then have time to process and I’d get back to them and it was, it was a very that distance helped I think.

And then I, so I remember posting a status on, on Facebook I think, about 6 months after I’d told my parents and that’s when I guess the wider world were informed, and if the, if there were negative responses I can’t, I can’t remember them if I’m honest, and I think the positivity that I got outweighed whatever the negative was. And again it was almost like I posted it and then I left it, and I didn’t go on Facebook for a week, and I just, yeah I think I, as I’ve grown I’ve gotten to know that I much prefer to do things at a slower pace, where I feel more in control, and it says a lot about me I think, but yeah, that’s kind of how I did it.

And to be honest around that time; so I entered, so when I graduated from university I did kind of a social work grad scheme, so I went into social work, and starting that grad scheme was an absolute baptism of fire because I, it was the first time I’d started something as [name], with he/him pronouns, so that, that was kind of the start of the limbo stage, what I call the limbo stage which was a little bit horrendous because everybody knew me as [name], and you know for the most part used he/him pronouns, but I wasn’t, so I still had a high voice and I, you know I was basically waiting for the access to the hormones that I knew were kind of the natural next step for me so that was the, that was the part when I found myself having to come out every day, and that was where it got a bit more difficult.

My family were very different. I came out to my little sister first and this is actually kind of a funny story. I went to Pride in [city] I think the year after I come out. I wasn’t on hormones yet or anything else. Waiting for Gender Clinic in [city], but I was back in [city] for Pride and I didn’t mean to do join the parade, but me and my friends saw one of our pals walking in it. We joined in. That evening I was on the six oclock news. Just framed like this two-shot of me and my pal screaming along to YMCA, Pride flags on our cheeks. A full zoom in like a close-up of me and there was it lasted like, it lasted four or five seconds, but that’s a very long time on the screen. So, obviously, at that point I knew that the shit was gonna hit the fan. I called my sister and she didn’t know anything about it and turned out that my parents hadn’t seen the news that night. That meant I still did have to come out to my sister and she was very confused. She didn’t take it very well. She wasn’t, she didn’t make any comments in the beginning. She just made the comment that if I didn’t come out to my parents within a specific time period then she would out me because it was on the like main news channel of Denmark so it meant that someone from our Mosque definitely would have seen it. It was gonna come back to them anyway and she didn’t want people talking behind my parent’s backs, which I understood, I guess. That kind of gave me a deadline and my parents again were very they had strange reactions to it. My mum didn’t really take me seriously at first. She thought I was kidding on. And then, just seemed like a bit pissed off that I was coming out to her. She did also have a very funny comment though, which maybe isn’t that funny, but in context it’s funny. She was basically asking me about my sexual preference but she is very private and so she didn’t directly ask me. She asked me who I was gonna marry. I told her I didn’t know who I was gonna marry [laughs] cos I was 21. She said well, are you gonna marry a guy or a girl? And I am bisexual and so I told her, either. She took that as meaning both. She was like, both? Both? And I was like either or either a guy or a girl. She was quiet for a while and she said, if you marry a woman you are gonna be two women. If you marry a guy you are gonna be two guys. She was just like, it was just turning in her head. It was just coming out homosexual either way and she just couldnt really, but like now my dad actually was, reacted in a very different way. He was mostly upset that I hadn’t felt safe enough to talk with him about it. So, he did still say that he was gonna pray for me for Allah to show me the right way. His main concern was that he was sad that I had felt like I had to keep this to myself or be alone in this.

I mean like I said I was never really a boy anyway. So I don’t, you know even my Dad… When I first started to transition in the early, early stages, when I’d got a little bit more information from friends, and, and even the internet, and knew that actually this was something that I could, you know, I could go through. So I just started, I mean I first got a job as a drag queen, where I was obviously a ‘door whore’, and I was you know it was almost, I mean don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the way I wanted to look. I didn’t want to wear you know awful wigs and well, I still wear the tiny dresses sometimes, but you know it wasn’t kind of the full feminine feel that I wanted to be, but it was an edge into what I could have a taste of, and just kind of, see how I felt with it more than anything, I guess. So as it got more and more and more, I progressed to become more feminine, I started to grow my hair and my Dad kind of just started to notice from a very early age, I mean he knew anyway, you know but he was waiting for me to find my own, my own path. And he noticed that I was working as a drag queen and knew that what drag queens are, you know he knew that they don’t, they don’t necessarily become women full-time, and they’re not transgender always, you know, so it wasn’t until he started to notice me outside of work, I was becoming a lot more effeminate and in touch with more my feminine side, and he turned round to me, and just said, “Look, you know I get the feeling that you probably want to spend the rest of your life as a woman, I just want you to know that I’d be, you know, just as proud to call you my little boy as I would my little girl. You know you are, you…” He loves me either way, so, I was very blessed to have the, the good family that you know and the support that they gave me. My Mum, the first time my mum found out she rang me and asked me what name I’m gonna pick. She was like, “You’d better pick a good one!”

So I, in both elements of queerness and transness I didn’t tell them until I had moved out, and it wasn’t so much that I thought they would react badly, it just felt like I should have my own space in case something did go terribly wrong, and I think that’s true of a lot of queer and trans people, and even though I’m quite open with my parents and we have quite at times like a friendship instead of like parent and child relationship, I think that having my own space meant that I was like less afraid of being rejected because even though it would be terrible if my parents had said, We don’t want to interact with you anymore I already had my own life that was separate from them, but they have been I would say supportive, but also they don’t really get it.

So they kind of, I make a lot of art about transness and queerness and my Mum follows me on Instagram so there’s, like when I came out to her as non-binary it was because someone had said something horrendous about trans people on Facebook or something, and she was like one of my Mum’s friends but she was not really her friend anymore. And I was like, Right, I’m gonna come out to my Mum so that I can explain to her why I feel terrible right now And she took that all on board, she was like, You know that, that doesn’t make any difference to me which is not the ideal thing to say but like you know when people say, Oh it doesn’t matter but it does matter, that’s why I’m telling you, but I know what you’re trying to say is It doesn’t make me not like you and so sometimes you have to just be like, Okay that’s not what they meant, let’s just move on

Yeah so they kind of always filters through my Mum as well, so like I’ll tell my Mum something, and she tells my Dad even though, even though I have a good relationship with my Dad, he just, like he’s the one who’s kind of like, So what’s gone on in the kids lives and then my Mum’s like, Here’s the newslette rather than me like talking to both of them individually.

Yeah, but they took it quite well, and the, when my girlfriend came out to like the big extended family rather than just me and our friends, they were like, Oh well this might take us a while to you know change names and pronouns and stuff but they did really well, they didn’t mess it up once. And I think that having me as like a first experience helped, I’m glad that that’s the case, but I also think they still don’t use my pronouns, and that’s not because they don’t know them, but again it’s with the whole like not having a, a reference point for what non-binary is. But they, like they definitely get a binary trans woman and therefore will use her pronouns and her name, but there are less, they don’t understand it as much with me.

Ok so coming out story, ok what happened, so why has my mind gone blank. Ok so coming out, so yeah, it started basically when I was at uni, so this is around 2014 time, I was basically seeing this girl and at that time had bought a chest binder. So I remember one night we got like really drunk and I basically told her, I told her by lifting my, lifting up my top to reveal the binder. I remember I was crying a little bit. And yeah she was really supportive and she, the one thing she said to me was “I think that you should tell your friends because at this point, obviously I was away from home so obviously I felt comfortable telling her because she didn’t really know like my friends. So anyways, I then told my best, my bestest friend from school, who I was still in contact with, cause like, sort of, that was, when did that happen so the next, so there was a little bit of a gap there before I told my friend. Because at this point in time, I think I was in a new, I was in a relationship with someone else, so I didn’t kind of know what to say. But yeah I told my mate and yeah she was fine with it. And then I said about “how am I gonna tell my girlfriend at the time and she was kind of like, like sort of “go for it”. So yeah basically I told, I told my girlfriend and that time I think I built it up so much that when I told her she was like, “oh is that it?” Because I swear it was literally I was like “I need to tell you something” and I started this whole speech and then she started crying, I was like “why are you crying?” and then obviously after I told her she was like “oh, I thought you was going to say you cheated on me!” (laughs) so she, I think it was a bit of relief there but yeah she was fine with it and then she was the one who told me to tell my other, my other close friends. So yeah basically a few months later on one of my birthday’s, I got all my close friends together, people that I trusted and I basically gave a speech and (laughs) me and my speeches it was so long-winded. I basically, you know built up to it. I think it was recorded at the time. There is, there is a video somewhere. Yeah basically, I told them the situation an yeah I was crying and everything and then they were like “oh is that it?” but then they were like “oh really proud of you” and things like they never saw me as a girl, they always saw me as a guy anyway so they were kind of like “it’s not shocking at all”. But I just remember the nerves, literally I was shaking everything and my mate, one of my friends was looking directly at me, really putting me off and she was kind of like “yeah what is it? What is it?” But no yeah it was such a relief when I got that out and obviously at that point I wasn’t on the hormones or anything so I just said to them, “can you, obviously for now, can we keep it to ourselves? Obviously if you’re gonna tell, share it with people, please share it with people that we, that you know we all trust”. So yeah I think it was, it took about a year or so for me to get on the hormones and then I, what did I do? I then yeah, the following year when I finally decided on a name, I then had a name change ceremony, had like a couple of my closest friends signed the deed poll thing. And then I put it on, basically I put it on social media which got quite a lot of support, it was like maybe over 1000 likes. And people were sharing it saying they was proud of me and everything. So yeah that was, that was really really nice. But yeah, I told my family, basically told my mum, that didn’t go well. But yeah that’s my coming out story.

So, bizarrely I got, I got fairly intoxicated one evening as one tends to do in first year. And I don’t remember it happening. But a friend of mine came to me the next day and said, “Hey just so you know you talked a lot about wanting to bind your chest and stuff last night. Obviously, you were away and so wouldn’t know if you would remember but there’s that piece of information for you”. And I panicked for 2 or 3 days, I think because that was something that I’d always kept on lock. So realising that I’d kind of ish spilled the beans already was, once I got over the panic was a relief, because I knew that if he hadn’t been accepting in any way, he wouldn’t have told me. He would just let me brush it aside and let it go. But the fact that he came to me and was like, “Look, okay, I can see that you’re, you’ve got some gender incongruence stuff going on”. And I think he also said, “Like I’m here if you wanna talk about it”. And that sort of thing. And so, knowing that some people around me inadvertently already knew and especially having a lot of LGBT+ people in my life and made it a lot easier. So, I came out to the people around me fairly quickly just in terms of saying that I was figuring stuff out more than anything. And they were so supportive, more supportive than I ever could have hoped for in terms of being willing to test out various pronouns sets and all that sort of stuff for me which was fantastic.

I’ve just done a bout of therapy in 12 weeks and my sort of like aim was wanting to sort of come out to my parents because they live in [country] so there’s nothing sort of pushing me to engage with them like sort of interface with them really like so I’ve been able to sort of get away with not really talking about my transness which I wouldn’t be able to do if we were living in the same city. Which has been good but, so we communicate, but I’ve actually come to realise that I don’t think I actually, I never came out as queer to them either, I just mention my girlfriend and I don’t really believe that trans people have to come out because I think that’s very you know, I believe in like sort of cis gender privilege and I think it’s sort of seems deferential to come out to cis people when we’re just existing the same as them, they don’t have to come out as cis, we don’t have to come out, you know, I don’t, I never, I never felt the need to come out as queer, or bisexual I always just felt like oh I’m just like, you know, existing the same as everyone else I, you know, I definitely [laughter] I don’t owe it to you to have to justify my who I am, or explain it to you, you know, if they want an explanation then they can have a conversation about that I think that’s a different thing. So that was intention, that, that was the original intention of, of doing the therapy but I’ve kind of come to realise that I haven’t really been hiding it from them at all actually and I mean I like I have my pronouns on my WhatsApp signature. And I have my pronouns on my Facebook and if you click into my Facebook in my about it says I’m male and I have pictures of myself and I also post a lot of stuff about trans rights and trans advocacy and yeah I also recently started like sort of an East Asian Trans Support Group that like, you know, it’s just all really quite public. So I don’t really think I’m doing anything to hide my, do you know what I mean I, I actually think they probably know already because, I mean and one of my sisters lives at home and she follows me on like all of my social media platforms and they, they’re connected with me on WhatsApp and Facebook not Instagram but, you know, the other two where I yeah post really regularly about trans issues and my own experiences about healthcare.

So after I’d come out to everyone else in my life I started by saying that at university people were calling me [name] as a nickname and that I would prefer to be called that and they reacted kind of ‘But that’s not your name’ and all kind of like ‘Oh I struggle’, [because] one of my cousins changed their name for non-trans reasons a couple of years back, and they said ‘Oh well, you know, we struggle enough with your cousins name changing, we don’t know if we’ll be able to do you’. So I was kind of like ‘Okay’ and I kind of took that as not a good thing and so left it a couple of months.

And then I think it would have been… Yeah so a few months later I kind of just I got quite drunk with some friends and stuff and I messaged my younger brother who’s probably the person in my family that I felt most comfortable to come out to and I just said to him ‘Hey I’m transgender, you know, I, from now on if you could call me [name] and think of me as your brother that would be important to me, thank you’ and I got a reply in the morning that was basically ‘Okay, cool.’ Which was… my brother he’s younger than me, at the time he would have been 16 or 17 so that was basically as near to ‘Woo! Great, that’s amazing, good job! Like, I love you!’ as my 16/17 year old brother was kind of like telling me. Was like ‘Okay, cool can I just get back to whatever I was doing?’

And then my parents were less accepting, my mum’s kind of reaction was “Well why can’t you just be a masculine woman?” and I kind of pointed out that I’d tried that for several years and it wasn’t right and I didn’t feel right and, you know, it just didn’t suit me, it wasn’t me. And then she tried bargaining with me almost to be “gender non-specific” which I think was her way of saying ‘non-binary’ which is weird, and is actually I think that a few other trans, trans men or transmasculine people I’ve met or sort of run into, I think it’s kind of the perception, it’s kind of, kind of tied into like a lot of enbyphobia [discrimination towards ‘envy’ i.e. NB, non-binary people] and the kind of idea that non-binary people aren’t really trans or aren’t really, you know, so I guess my mum thought that I could just in my head say that I was non-binary and then in life or real life nothing would change and she wouldn’t have to change anything which is like just really enbyphobic, kind of transphobic.

But, you know, I don’t know exactly what was going through her mind but having talked to other people who have had similar experiences it seems to be that sort of like idea that it’s ‘trans lite’ and so would be less like hard I guess or, hard for her to like have to, you know, she wouldn’t have to change anything basically I think. And I said, you know, that’s not me, you know, it’s not, I’m, not “gender non-specific” I am male, I am me, I am [name] and you can either acknowledge that and accept that or you know, we’ll have to, I will be in, you know, you will not be in my life as much.

And my dad didn’t really say much on the matter he was kind of just passively like ‘Yeah’, so that’s that, but my mum we had a bit of, quite a bit of, kind of several months extended sort of argument/discussion, though while this was going on, I did a refer-, I got a referral to Gender Care and I had managed to go through that and then after a couple of months after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria by Gender Care I was given again a referral to get testosterone and then I was seen, had my appointment and went on testosterone and I kind of let my mum know ‘I’m going on testosterone now’ and she kind of pleaded with me not to and asked me to have more therapy beforehand and stuff like that and I said ‘Actually mum, I have had a lot of therapy and I have thought this through a lot with people and I have really thought about this and I’m really sure about this, you know, I understand that this is coming from a place of care you know, your actions but it is actually hurting me a lot, I think that perhaps you need to go to therapy to talk this out with someone who doesn’t, you know, so that you can get all of your emotions out and figure out your worries and concerns with someone who isn’t me, because I’m not the person that can do this for you and it’s just gonna harm both of us and our relationship.’

So that kind of happened and yes a few months after that was quite quiet we didn’t really talk much and then I think she talked with a family friend who is very kind of, is a good ally to LGBTQ people and I think kind of that, I think she did go to therapy with a sort of, or some sort of group talk with parents in similar situations and talked it through and then a few months after that it kind of like, she kind of accepted, you know, that I’d started testosterone, this is what I wanted, this is me and that it wasn’t whatever concern she did have about it. Again I’m not a 100% sure it was kind of like settled and now she’s really supportive of me actually, which is good.

My friends were great, as with many things, like most of my friends are queer. I’ve been in very queer spaces which meant there were all kinds of gender expressions and sexualities and people from everywhere and we’re neither predominantly cis or predominantly white, which, which I think made it more comfortable for me just to be like, ‘Hey, this is who I am,’ and it was a very much a ‘Hey this is who I am’ and, and feeling the genuine sort of rush of people to be like, ‘Hey we support you’ and ‘What do you need?’ and ‘What do you need in terms of pronouns?’ and ‘How can we make it easier for you?’, which was fantastic. My family in general don’t really understand it, and they make some effort, but very little.

I have a life that’s very separate from my parents. My family is very much a queer family, a queer unit that I’ve made down in [city], and so I do feel the, I’ve really felt more support than anything else just, and again it’s great to be in a space where I’m just me. And that’s the thing I think that’s most important for me, most of the time, is that I don’t want to have to think about being trans all the time, because that can be hard enough in my head as it is, and on the days where it’s great, it’s great, and on the days when it’s bad, it’s really bad. But I’m a person, my transness doesn’t supersede like the fact that I love dogs, the fact that I am not from [city], the fact that I listen to certain types of music and cook certain types of food. And so the best thing is that I have an incredible support network of people who care far more about whether or not I want go to the movies, or whether or not I want to read this book, or whether or not I want to do something with them, than they do about my gender expression. And that’s very liberating. I personally found it, I know some people, I went and did sort of various groups to be around other trans folk, I found them useful kind of at the beginning. I think for me I’m not very much of a joiner in that way, so it felt, I just wasn’t comfortable. And I felt like I was taking up space that I didn’t need to be in. So for me they didn’t work. I know for other people they, they, people who I made friends with there still go back kind of once a month, whenever they can, because they found it really empowering, just for me it didn’t, it didn’t quite work that way. And then the other thing that’s been sort of funny and ironic and a twist, is the number of people who’ve come out to me since I came out. Because I do think there’s something that happens when you relax about the ideas of gender, and people start to be more comfortable in their skins and who they are, and we are entering a stage at the minute where people in their like, we hear a lot about trans youth, but I think also at late twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, you have people going, Oh I can do this too And that’s really, really magical actually, it’s really magical to be in a space where I feel like I’m being supported, but also that other people feel comfortable enough that they can come out and that we’ll support them too.

I mean like growing up, and stuff like obviously I’m from India so a lot of the time the Hijra Community and that kind of, like there’s a slur that that they use in Tamil which is ombothu, which literally means the number nine, and it’s like it’s meant, it’s meant to be demeaning and derogatory and like showing like, and it’s specifically for AMAB trans folk who present trans feminine. And it’s, yeah and there there’s a lot of like stigma associated and there’s, because in India a lot of those, a lot of trans people live in poverty, like extreme poverty, and obviously for like even a man there’s a worry that like you know I’d end up in that kind of situation, my biggest worry was also in India at the time when I was trapped, like if I came out like where would I go? Cos there was no real, like I know the UK support’s not great either, but like in comparison it’s miles better. Like there’s no legal, real legal protection until recently and you know like there’s just, it was scarier, like the only idea of trans people existing I had in India at the time, was like you know trans people in poverty. So that was just a genuinely frightening thing.

And then, yeah, and like a lot of the time it’d be like obviously exposure to trans people in general in media and stuff was always kind of negative or the butt of a joke, even in, and I know that, it wasn’t like I was just consuming Western media either, I was also consuming the media from like, from mother tongue and that stuff. So even then it’d be played off as a joke and stuff like that.

And so yeah it was just, it was tricky and that was one of the biggest worries I had, like coming out, was like I’d be seen as a joke, or a caricature of like, well just I’d be seen as like a mockery of the, of a woman I guess. And that was just kind of like, it was demoralising, it was a large part of the reason like I struggled so much to tell my family, and I struggled so much to even like think about transitioning, because there was such a road block of, what if I’d look hideous I guess, like you know, and it sounds weirdly superficial, but in, it really did mean like, I meant like I don’t want to, like I, I didn’t want to hate myself more than I already did, if that makes sense, like, you know. And that’s just like, like you become accustomed and you’d be like oh yeah, I can get by with this, with this body and look, I guess, for now.

I was brought up in a mixed-race household. My dad is from the north, well, not the north but—he’s English, basically. My mum is Chinese. And there were very big differences in culture. And I can’t speak with the views of every single person who was brought up mixed race or brought up in a mixed household or brought up maybe with ethnic parents. I mean, not ethnic. People of different ethnic backgrounds. I can’t speak for them. So, but from my—I know that some people share my experiences of there is very big differences in what’s socially acceptable and what isn’t. I think it’s just different cultures have different ideas of what’s appropriate. I know that for my mum it was really confusing, because she didn’t see it as like a mental health thing, because she just thought, oh my goodness, my child, it’s trying to, it’s becoming a man. What do I do? This is abnormal and it’s like my mum immediately thought, okay, I’m being influenced by the people around me and I think to a degree I was. But I was being influenced and I was not hanging out with the right people and I needed to be like taught what was right and what was wrong, because, you know, it was abnormal and it wasn’t right.

For my dad it was just like, bloody hell, oh no, what’s this? Like kind of, you know, but to be fair, I think both of them thought, okay, when it was first was broached in conversation it was like, oh, it’s like I’m 13 and it will grow out of it. This child will grow out of this and here I am, a couple of years later still just exactly the same, but you know, a bit older now. But definitely culture means that there’s different ways of trying to tackle it and deal with it in conversation. I know, one of my friends is a Muslim and when they found out, when they figured out and not found out like, surprise, I’m trans. No, when they slowly came to terms with like who they were. I’m not speaking to them anymore, but their parents I think absolutely lost it. Like I think they thought they were gonna be kicked out, but their parents just blew a fuse. They were very, very angry and I’m not in contact with them anymore, cos I stopped being friends with them a while ago. it’s just, you know, different directions in life.

We just didn’t really talk very much. Over time and I think their parents did make the effort to try find information online and try find support for it, because [coughs] there are resources available and their parents were actually very lovely in the sense that they tried to accommodate and they tried looking at resources and the last thing I heard was their parents were trying to apologise for how they reacted and they were trying to help, to a degree and figure out how to figure it out, if that makes sense. And, I don’t know, it’s because everyone is brought up differently. I found that western culture is much quicker to accept immediately, no questions asked, oh my goodness, okay, are we gonna like refer you to—at least from what I’ve heard. I know that that’s not the same case for everyone. But from my experience like a lot of the western like parents will almost immediately like, they’ll either accept it or they’ll take a few weeks, but they’ll come round to it a lot quicker than other cultures would.