PODCAST [TRANSCRIBED] – Prides & Prejudices

CONTENT WARNING: Our first story this week deals with suicide. Please skip from 07.18 to 14.00 to avoid this, if necessary. This week, Alyx, Ashleigh and Flint go over: 

  • The new Equal Treatment Bench Book for the UK’s legal profession.
  • A Glasgow council member cleared of wrongdoing after comments on a Let Women Speak event.
  • Elon Musk getting thoroughly read by his daughter.
  • The British Medical Association voting to peer review the Cass review.
  • And a debrief of all the Pride events the team have attended over the past few months.

References

Review of Waiting List Suicides

Review of Suicides and gender dysphoria at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation trust

New Equal Treatment Bench Book

Equal Treatment Bench Book – Courts and Tribunals Judiciary

Glasgow Councillor

Glasgow councillor cleared after probe into comments on gender-critical rally

Nepal Supreme Court

SC rules in favour of gender change

Elon Musk’s Daughter is Amazing

There’s a lot of stuff I need to debunk which I will get to don’t worry, but I want to start with what I find the funniest which is the notorious “slightly autistic” tweet. This is gonna be a bit so just bare with me

Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, in first interview, says he berated her for being queer as a child

Kenny McBride

Gender row civil servant loses unfair dismissal claim (archive.ph link)

BMA Votes to Undertake a Review of the Cass Review

BMA to undertake an evaluation of the Cass Review on gender identity services for children and young people

Twitter thread laying out the criticisms

NHS Publish Plan for Cass review Implementation

NHS Announce first Detransition Service

NHS Scotland Stops Self-referring

Transcript

Ashleigh Talbot: Hello, hello! Greetings to you whatever time of day you’re listening to this and welcome to What the Trans?!

Alyx Bedwell: What the Traaaaaans?!

Flint: What the Traaaaaans?!

Ashleigh: Yes, indeed it’s us. We are back. How are you both doing?

Flint: I’m so happy to just see my dog again. Ohh, apparently he’s been a miserable old sod while I’ve been away. Which is standard craic for him. Yeah, no. But yeah, I’ve just been vibing at home, doing not that much because we’ve been doing a lot!

Ashleigh: Yes, we sure have.

Alyx: Yeah, I think me and Ashleigh now agree that for the well-being of your dog, you’re now banned from going on assignments for What the Trans?! to keep your dog happy.

Flint: Oh my God. I’ll just bring him with me. Y’all can meet him. It’s fine.

Alyx: Ohh. That sounds great!

Ashleigh:  Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s do that. It’s all been good. So we’ve all been kind of off on our jollies over the last few weekends. More on that later, but it did involve all of us… well, almost all of us in terms of the people who present and whose voices you’ve heard, assembling in sunny Manchester last weekend! Wasn’t that fun!

Flint: It was so fun. It was really good!

Alyx: Oh, in fact it was brilliant.

Ashleigh: But we will do a bit more of a debrief after the actual segment. Has anyone been up to anything else?

Flint: A friend of mine, just after I got home was like “do you want to go and see one of your favourite bands as an early Christmas present?” I went “Well does the Pope shit in the woods? Yes.” So one of my favourite bands, I’m going to be seeing Fat Freddy’s Drop. They’re sick and because I’m going to be in that area at the time, I’m going to go to a counter protest and prevent the fash from taking over Newcastle. Because the bastards are out in force, so we’re going to have to be out in force too.

Ashleigh: Yes, they are.

Alyx: Exactly. Or in the case of Wednesday, lack of being out there. From what we saw.

Ashleigh: That was pretty great, wasn’t it? So there was, as we record this, a couple of days ago there was going to be, allegedly, there was supposed to be fascist meetings happening in many, many cities nationwide and there kind of just… wasn’t?

Alyx: I was expecting something, but I was just surprised at just how little there was?

Flint: Well, I think it’s because they quickly realised that the success that they had had previously was a fluke, and that with the slightest bit of warning people will mobilise en masse and will just simply take up space and say “refugees are welcome here” and say “nationalism…” or, shall we say, “fascism is not welcome here” and “racism is not welcome here”. And that’s good. I saw so many places where it was just the whole community coming together and either no one from the fash showed up or like 3 or 4 did and they got wonderfully cornered into this little corner. Where they just have to sit there and be ashamed.

[Laughter 00:03:29]

Alyx: Shame corner!

[The Price is Right losing horn sounds 00:03:31]

Flint: It is still… as much as a lot of people are very understandably elated with the lack of turnout on the following fascist rallies that were attempted. We can’t deny that it is still an incredibly scary and fearful time.

Ashleigh: Oh yes.

Flint: Those fascists have not disappeared into the ether. They didn’t de-spawn from this planet when we held up a sign saying “fascists out”. If only it was that simple. Those people are still out. There are still organisations that will be planning the next one and I think that, especially if you’re a white person that’s turning up to counter-protests, bear in mind that this is not about you and what those fascists are attempting is something that would benefit you. So you have to ensure that you’re doing your best to prevent them, but also that means listening to the people that are more affected. Because we talk a lot as trans people about making sure that people are listening to us about things that matter to us.

Flint: And I think that when you can very obviously see the wrong that is happening by white nationalists, it’s really easy to know that you don’t hold those views and then assume that that’s kind of the work done; and you get to just turn up to a place, say, “Yay we don’t like fascists, we don’t want racism” and then have a party and go home. And it’s not that, right? You’re still there to protect, primarily. You’re there to…

Ashleigh: Oppose.

Flint: Oppose! And you’re there to disrupt, because you’re disrupting a system. We can’t let it pretend that this fascism hasn’t come out of nowhere and hasn’t been stoked by the fires of the political sphere for the last, however long now. Anyway, I’m going to get off my soapbox.

Alyx: Feel that’s sort of dominated the headlines for the past few days and..

Ashleigh: I mean, if there’s a group of people in your country who want to kind of, fundamentally, change your country to the extent that these people do I think it should be in the news, really. Although it must have been an interesting bit of, would you call it, “cognitive dissonance” with all of the people at publications like the Telegraph and the Mail, who do kind of agree with what the protesters are going out for… but also they have to appear semi-neutral and then immediately resort to calling them “thugs”. It’s like “Well I agree with you, but you’re doing it wrong!”

Flint: It’s the calling them protesters, that’s the thing that’s really bothering me. They aren’t protesting, to be honest. What they are doing is organising with the aim to terrorise people. That is not a protest. A protest is the aims of changing a system that is harmful and I would argue that if you’re protesting to create more harm, that’s not a protest, that’s a rally.

Ashleigh: Unfortunately, it’s that time again…

[drumroll plays 06:51 -06:54]

Ashleigh: …the news.

Alyx: Oh no…

[Sad trombone and jeering plays 06:56-06:59]

Ashleigh: But we brought this on ourselves, really. We knew what we were getting into.

Alyx: This is our fault, yeah. So I would say it starts off nicely, but unfortunately to start with, we are going to  need to give a content warning to mentions of suicide. So if you are affected by mentions of this, please skip past by a few minutes.

[Transcriber’s note: CTRL+F search or jump to 13:56]

Alyx: So when we reported on the Cass Review, we ended the episode on the note that after the Bell v. Tavistock ruling there was a ruling that the use of puberty blockers were to be banned. But following that ban, 16 trans young people died by suicide. Whilst the year prior to it there was only one death by suicide. Now, following this being leaked by Susie Green and Jo Maugham, there was a review into these claims by the NHS led by Prof Louis Appleby, and it then claimed that Susie and Jo were wrong. And according to the report, its summary of conclusions said this. Firstly:

“The data do not support the claim that there had been a large rise in suicide in young gender dysphoria patients at the Tavistock. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide. The claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence. There is a need to move away from perception that puberty-blocking drugs are the main marker of non-judgmental acceptance in this area of healthcare. We need to ensure high quality data in which everyone has confidence as the basis of improved safety for this at-risk group of young people.

Alyx: So following that, the report then also claimed that:

“In the three years leading up to 2021, there were five suicides, compared to seven in the three years after. This is essentially no difference, taking account of expected fluctuations in small numbers and would not reach statistical significance. In the Under-18s specifically, there were three suicides before and three after 2020-21.”

Alyx: However, following this report, there have been concerns with its methods of collecting and analysing the data, especially considering the word trans does not appear once in that report. Alongside this, according to Trans Safety Now, it doesn’t seem to take into account the FOI’s and information from board minutes and other sources of a number of other deaths of children and young people seen by or known to GIDS. With this too, it uses terms like “Patients at the Tavistock” and “current and recent patients of GIDS”, and it’s unclear on if this includes patients on the waiting lists. So by the sounds of it, they looked at the people who had been seen by GIDS, but not those waiting. And there’s like 10,000 people you haven’t looked at there. There are other criticisms out there, but as seen, there’s been accusations that this report is just a shoddily and hastily put together cover-up to hide the neglect that the NHS Is responsible for.

Ashleigh: So you say that the NHS is responsible for…but I think it’s a number of political decisions that are really responsible for it. Like a Tory government that’s refused to have anything to do with trans healthcare. Waiting lists have got longer and funding has not increased, which I think is a large part of the problem. I think a lot of the people on the waiting list who committed suicide before they were even seen by GIDS…I think those people were failed by more than the NHS. I think those people were failed politically, essentially, don’t you think?

Flint: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And a death like this, when someone completes suicide, it is very rarely simply a factor of that individual’s singular mental health. There are always going to be the other factors of where were they able to get help, what were they needing help with, and was there support there for that? And we’re talking about the kind of structural support. It’s very different being able to talk to, for example, a family member or a friend about, you know, struggling with debt or having dysphoria and having no option to be able to get treatment.

Flint: The toss could be argued with statistical relevance or statistically significant this, that or the other, but…I don’t like the methodology. I don’t like the way that they have thinned out the data set to then extrapolate a smaller number. I’m sorry, but if you want me to see that it’s not statistically significant, then I need to see you look over the larger data set as well, and then explain to me why. You know what I mean? Talk us through that data, then. If it’s statistically significant when you include all of these other people who are trapped in the system of trying to get the healthcare, even if they haven’t been seen yet…which by the way, I’m one. So I would argue I’m not “not trans”, not “not part of that community”.

But uh yeah, this really does seem to have…sorry, to complete the thought. So if it’s statistically significant on that large scale or it looks to be, but it isn’t on this small scale, then you need to explain to me why you’re picking one number over the other. And they haven’t really done that here. Regardless of where these people were at in the point of their treatment or accessing treatment, every death is still a failure of the state.

Ashleigh: Yeah, yeah.

Flint: Personally, in my opinion. It is exactly a failure of this state, of its callousness and its disregard for the people that it has a responsibility for.

Alyx: Because even if it is a case of  “oh, it’s not as many people dying”, there’s still people dying.

Flint: Yeah, like, why is three not still a big enough number for you to go? “We need to figure this out.”

Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely.

Flint: That’s still three people. That’s three lives. That’s three communities that will be grieving those people. So why is that less?

Ashleigh: As far as they’re concerned, how many is too many? And the answer to that question is not something I’d actually like to know. So it kind of seems like this is a political do over, isn’t it?

Flint: Yeah.

Alyx: And the blatant lack of transparency is just blatantly outrageous.

Ashleigh: Yeah, it’s definitely a problem, isn’t it? The fact that they’ve not been very open about how they’ve arrived at that number.

Flint: Yeah, it’s the kind of thing that I think in however many years’ time there are going to be freedom of information requests and it probably isn’t going to look good for them when those information requests are done.

[Transcriber’s note: 13:56 end of the content warning-y bit]

Flint: But speaking of political changes, speaking of accessing equal treatment and the ways in which the government may not sometimes act in our best interest for it. I say the government, the institutions of our country. The “Equal Treatment Bench Book” has been updated and the changes that have been made are concerning. But it’s likely that a lot of you right now are asking “What is that and why is that important?” So here is a brief rundown.

The equal treatment benchmark is a resource for those at the bars or judges, magistrates and the like to better understand how to treat people, yes, you guessed it, equally. The aim of it is to encourage better communication between the various kinds of people that end up in a courtroom and those in the court. It covers everything from legalese and jargon and social exclusion through to race, religion, disability. You know, the various protected characteristics of the Equalities Act. While you may never have heard of it, this book is a key piece of literature that the judiciary looks up for how to treat us. In particular, how to treat marginalised people. So now the answer to the second question of “Why is this important?” is becoming worryingly clear, I’ll presume. If the advice in this text is not good, then it can cause widespread harm. This document is something that can be amended and it is publicly available so you can look at it now. But be warned it is over 350 pages, so you’ve got to really love bureaucracy or be the kind of masochist like us that is willing to look through hundreds and hundreds of pages of this sort of thing.

Alyx: What have I done to myself?

Flint: Well thankfully @ReactiveAshley on Twitter made a thread going through the changes that have been made, which is a pretty condensed list. So we’re going to go through that now. Now I’m quoting from Ashley on Twitter. We’ll have the link to that thread if you want it.

Alyx: Not the Ashleigh here, but another Ashley.

Ashleigh: Different, different Ashley.

Flint: Yes, this is not this is not the Ashleigh at What the Trans!? This is a different Ashley who honestly is always posting very good and helpful things. @ReactiveAshley says:

“The topic of gender equality, or women’s rights, has been renamed to “sex”. This change is part of an anti-gender hate campaign targeting feminism.“assigned gender at birth” has been eliminated for no apparent reason but muffled hatred. It was portrayed by hate groups as ideological but it is in fact a precise term accepted by trans and medical communities. It promotes the questionable idea that everyone has a “legal sex” attribute, but for trans people this attribute is only legal.

In the previous edition, the section “Treatment of trans people in court” addressed their treatment in general. It has now shifted to predominantly portraying trans people as criminals.Each paragraph portrays trans women in a negative light, depicting them as violent, sexual predators, rapists, previously known as male by victims, incomprehensible, dignity subject to competing rights, and an affront to public decency. The paragraphs discussing the vulnerability of trans asylum seekers in detention has been removed.

The GRA provides that a GRC affects recognition for all purposes, with some exceptions. It was correctly explained in the previous edition. The new edition, however, describes it as providing recognition “for most legal purposes”.”

Flint: Which is a small difference, but it means a lot!

“The discussion on ICD, gender incongruence and WPATH SOC 7 has been removed.”

Flint: And I’m just going to interrupt here, because that’s a lot of words. This part of the document spoke about the way in which trans people are oft pathologised. The ongoing push to have transness recognised as diversity as opposed to an illness, and whether formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria are helpful or not. Including information on trans healthcare to better inform people of what being trans can mean medically. So that has been removed. The advice [against] the use of “transgendered” as a word, is removed. This is a quote that’s also been removed:

“It may not be necessary or appropriate to refer to the person’s transgender status at all. Following transition, many people may wish to be identified simply as a woman or as a man (as applicable).”

Flint: That’s been removed.

“The term “cis” is now deemed to be used less frequently. Often becomes sometimes. And includes the phrase “assumed to be”, meaning they are not cis. The new edition also adds a statement: “Many people feel strongly that they do not wish to be described as cis.” There is questionable commentary on non-binary and gender fluidity scattered throughout the chapter.”

Flint: That’s the end of the thread. So, these changes are a lot, aren’t they?

[Laughs]

Ashleigh: Yes, they are. Just a couple of subtle little removals of things, mostly, which uh…

Flint: Yes. So these changes are going to leave those who use it less informed than the previous edition. Which is kind of odd for a revision? Unless you’re of my personal opinion, which is that these changes are clearly driven by the changes that have occurred in the EHRC, and current and former governments pushes to lessen the capacity for trans people to be recognised as human in public spaces. What do we think about that as a hypothesis? Because that’s kind of what I felt after seeing it.

Alyx: Instantly, you mentioned the whole part about “it leaves the people less informed, uninformed” but it also instantly integrates a sense of prejudice towards trans people as well. They’re then forced to be viewed less favourably in court just because of who we are.

Flint:  Yeah. When it comes to the transness I was looking through it, and it is the kind of thing where unless you are clued into the specifics surrounding this whole thing, right? Basically if you’re in the community and you’re paying attention, then you will recognise the fuckery going on. But I can imagine a cishet person who possibly doesn’t even know exactly when Pride Month is, reading it and going “well, that’s fair, that’s fine enough” which is the worst part about it. Also it’s the way that it encourages you to see “cis” as a problematic term. Whilst also removing the advice to not refer to people as “transgendered” and to use correct terminology – you can’t tell me that this is not deliberate, and with the design of dehumanisation, and with the design of having judges confused why any trans people in their courtrooms would be getting upset, stressed out, when they are as far as they see it following the Equal Treatment Bench Book.

Alyx: Yeah exactly.

Ashleigh: Yeah, it’s dragging it backwards, isn’t it? And I don’t think the Equal Treatment Bench Book, although calling it an “equal treatment” book is… that’s a whole thing to which we can and will object… but I don’t think the start of this process has been made under the new government. This is an artefact of the previous one, I suspect, and I think whoever’s written the Equal Treatment Bench Book, whoever they’ve been talking to in government has “held some views”, let’s say.

Flint: It wouldn’t surprise me if the people… I mean the people definitely would have been working on this behemoth of a document before the new government that’s barely even two months old. That’s just good logics. It would make a lot of sense to me that they would be reaching out to people like the EHRC to have a quick round-table and…I mean if the EHRC is currently saying “well, you should just take out gender entirely from the Equalities Act and by the way, we’re working on ways to prevent them from being able to access employment or public spaces or bathrooms” then this feels gentle in comparison, but it is just as violent.

Alyx: Yeah.

Ashleigh: Yes. It’s pernicious, isn’t it? In the sense that it’s just a few little tweaks here and there, a couple of removals here and one there, and it’s going to make such a difference now to the way people, as you say, they’re gonna feel like they’re following the rules, but the rules are fundamentally coming from a damaged, infiltrated place, essentially.

Alyx: I definitely think the way they made the changes to this document does give a sense of malice.

Ashleigh: Mm-hmm.

Flint: Yes. There is definitely someone that has been involved in the creation of this document, either in advising, typing… you can’t make any kind of claims as to who in any specific capacity but there has been a very clear influence with the aims of dehumanising trans people and of viewing them as lesser and not actually upholding them to the same equal treatment that we would expect of a cis person. That’s just patently obvious. Now, whether that’s due to deliberate malicious intent or, you know, incompetence… I think it’s kind of neither here nor there, but I feel like it’s the former because there are so many direct dog whistles. An incompetent person wouldn’t see why you would need to remove a bit that’s just talking about trans people getting healthcare.

Alyx: The bit about “people feel strongly for they do not wish to be described as cis” just falls out of one of those alt-right play-books that they noticed  from Elon Musk and decided “oh yeah. I’m just gonna pop that into that”.

Ashleigh: Does feel like it’s definitely been done deliberately. “With malice aforethought”, as they would say in the legal profession. And speaking with people acting with malice aforethought, let’s talk… well, let’s talk about Nazis.

[Laughter]

Ashleigh: So a story from those super-Northerners up in Scotland where the absolutely based and seemingly pretty awesome Glasgow Councillor Bailie Elaine Gallagher was recently cleared of wrongdoing after she made some comments about a Posey Parker “Let Women Speak” rally. Gallagher correctly pointed out that literal Nazis had attended the rally in February 2023. She made the comments shortly after the rally when she said “When an anti-trans speaker had a rally in George Square this year, it was attended by Nazis.” She also described some of the rally attendees as “would-be fascists” and said accusations made against LGBTQ+ people leads to threats of violence, and the language used at the rally can be described as “genocidal”. All of which seems pretty reasonable to us, but it resulted in several complaints about Gallagher to the Ethical Standards Commissioner.

The people who complained claimed that “the councillor’s comments could amount to bullying or harassment” and were “disrespectful and discourteous”. The case was referred to the Standards Commission, which held a hearing in Glasgow on July 29th this year. Now I’m not going to read out every single little bit of the hearing, but suffice to say that Gallagher was cleared of wrongdoing on the basis that other rallies organised by Let Women Speak have indeed had attendees throwing Nazi salutes. They got this conclusion due to the quote, “apparently reliable evidence to the effect that similar rallies organised by the same person in other cities have been attended by individuals who had displayed clear support of the Nazis or their ideology”.

So supporters of Posie Parker/Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull are kinda officially fascists now, kind of. Which reminds me of the time Marie Le Pen sued someone who called her a fascist but lost the case when the court found that actually she is a fascist so there was no wrongdoing.

Alyx: Nazis getting offended over being called Nazis.

Flint: [Sarcastic] Awwww.

Ashleigh: [Sarcastic] Yeah, I know.

Flint: What a shame.

[Awwww sound effect plays 25:57-25:58]

Flint: What a shame, it must be so hurtful to have someone say that you are who you are.

Ashleigh: Yes, how dare would they be so accurately insulted in this way?

Flint: Alright, I was actually in Newcastle the same week that they were holding one of these Let Women Speak rallies in 2023 and there was a clip that went viral from that.

Alex: Oh that one!

 Flint: Yeah. The one where the woman starts reading from Mein Kamp. Yeah, definitely not Nazis.

Ashleigh: Absolutely not!

Flint: Nothing says “not a Nazi” like reading the Nazi-in-chief’s book that, you know, evidently we’re in the wrong for thinking that someone reading a Nazi’s book at a rally attended by some Nazis is an indicator that there’s Nazis there.

Ashleigh: Yeah, how dare we.

Flint: If you want a really good succinct way to understand how perennial Nazism is, and that it doesn’t just pop out of a vacuum, maybe check out the song “Nazis” by Chumbawamba. It literally is two minutes of your time and it’s a good little ditty and I’ve been listening to it a lot recently because it just gives me a bit of strength in these times.

Ashleigh: Yeah, and it just keeps being relevant somehow.

Flint: It does! It doesn’t stop being relevant.

Ashleigh: There’s actually some good news, right? Yeah. In terms of not, not in terms of the Nazis being a thing again, which is just definitely bad news anywhere it happens. But the fact that people have complained saying “this woman said some stuff hat’s true!” and the body that they’ve complained to have said “Nah, shut up, completely cleared of wrongdoing”.

Flint: Yeah, people online, you can now freely call Kellie-Jay Keen and her associates fascists and Nazis and they cannot legally… I mean, unless they want to just be told after paying a lot more money, the same conclusion again, they’re not. You know what I mean? Like we’ve, we’ve got this down, we’ve got this down. They’re officially Nazis.

Alyx: Oh God, I won’t be saying…

Ashleigh: Well, in Scotland, in Glasgow.

Flint: In Scotland, yeah.

Alyx: Yeah, exactly. Maybe if things happen, we’ll just move What The Trans?! ownership up to Scotland and work from [inaudible] as a bonus.

Ashleigh: Up to Scotland? Yeah, I’m. I’m very on board for this, to be honest.

[“The Day The Nazi Died” by Chumbawamba playing 28:24-28:44]

“The world is riddled with maggots, the maggots are getting fat
They’re making a tasty meal of all the bosses and bureaucrats
They’re taking over the boardrooms and they’re fat and full of pride
And they all came out of the woodwork on the day the Nazi died
So if you meet with these historians…”

Alyx: Yeah so moving on from Nazi tantrums, we’ve got another happy story, this time in the Himalayas! So in other areas of the world there is also good news though, as the supreme court in Kathmandu has ruled for a person should be able to change their gender on grounds of self-realisation. A writ petition against the government was submitted by Rukshana Kapali after she was refused registration at a university due to her name and gender on previous paperwork not matching her current gender identity. She was also denied the ability to take any tests and have documents changed. The court found that preventing people from identifying on the basis of “self-realisation” would be a violation of the Constitution, specifically Article 16, the right to live with dignity. They also found out that the Nepal Citizen Act allowed for people to get citizenship with regards to gender identity also. As such, the Tribhuvan University violated Rukshana’s right to education.

An extra nice surprise was that due to the constitution and current Nepali law regarding the right to have personal information protected for Supreme Court also ordered for the authorities in this case to protect such information and not to reveal previous gender identities of Kapali without a court order and her written consent. Now she, and hopefully with this precedent set, others, can change their documentation, even academic certificates; and have data protected with those institutions who hold old information.

Ashleigh: Nice!

Flint: Yeah, just a good time. Well done, Nepal!

Alyx: Now they’re ahead of us.

Flint: Fuckin’ as is most of the rest of the world at this rate.

Alyx: Yeah it’s starting to feel like that!

Flint: Yeah, but no I was really happy to see this. It was really nice to read the extra bit of like “oh, you’re also protecting her data, and you’re protecting her right to privacy of not having to explain her history of gender”, which I feel like a lot of trans people have to do in institutional settings, even when it’s meant to be equal. And it’s just… ah, good on you Kathmandu!

Alyx: Good on ya, yeah! Where is Nepal on the… ah, it’s there!

Ashleigh: Yeah, it’s miles away.

Alyx: A little bit of a trek.

Flint: Yeah, you’ll not be able to get a bus. At least not direct.

Ashleigh: Yeah, yeah, indeed. You’d probably have to change at Wolverhampton. I’m always cheered up by this, you know, hearing somewhere in the rest of the world, getting it right, you know. And now you can even point to all sorts of places, dozens of countries all over the world now, and say “they are doing better than the UK” and kind of shame it into action.

Flint: Yeah.

Ashleigh: Not that that’s worked so far, because shaming somebody into doing something relies on your opponent having a conscience which hasn’t been the case for the last 14 years, but..

Flint: Yeah. How can you get someone to care about something when they haven’t developed the skill of empathy yet? And speaking of people that are lacking in empathy.  Let’s get into Loser’s Corner, baby.

[Loser’s Corner singing and sound effects – 32:00]

So our first loser of the day is the mean old Mr Musk. Content warning. This first story covers parental abuse, while there are no graphic descriptions and multiple deeply satisfying claps back, there is a gentle heads up if you struggle with this topic. Our first loser of the day. Is the mean old Mr Musk. Yeah, you heard that right. Evil Elon just cannot get his daughter’s dead name out of his mouth. After a particularly unhinged and cruel interview from the wannabe supervillain, where he essentially disowned and misgendered his trans daughter, Vivian, throwing around words like woke mind virus and born gay and slightly autistic. And claiming to have been tricked into consenting to her gender affirming care, she decided he shouldn’t get the last word, releasing this on Threads and I’m going to read it for you now.

Alyx: Also love how it’s on Threads and not Twitter.

Flint: Yeah, right. She’s really taking the pain straight to the core and I live for this.

[Reading from Threads]: “There’s a lot of stuff I need to debunk, which I will get to, don’t worry, but I want to start with what I find the funniest, which is the notorious “slightly autistic” tweet. This is going to be a bit, so just bear with me. This is entirely fake, like literally none of this ever happened, ever. I don’t know where he got this from. My best guess is that he went to the Milo Yiannopoulos School of gay stereotypes, just picks them at random and went, eh, good enough in a last ditch attempt to garner sympathy points when he is so obviously in the wrong, even in his own fucking story. I did not have a love of musicals and theatre when I was four because, you know, I was fucking four! I did not know what these things were. My earliest real experience with musicals was when my twin brother had a Hamilton phase in 8th / 9th grade and overplayed it so much in the car to the point where for a long time I swore off the entire genre. I never picked out jackets for him to wear and I was most certainly not calling them fabulous because literally, what the fuck I did not use the word fabulous when I was four because again, I would like to reiterate I was four! Like this is so obvious, I don’t even think it warrants explanation, but apparently people believe this nonsense. So here I am. This entire thing is completely made-up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he simply wasn’t there. And in the little time that he was, I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness. Obviously he can’t say that, so I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype [beeped out, 34:33] to use at his discretion. I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and his children in general. As for if I’m not a woman, sure, Elon. Whatever you say. I’m legally recognised as a woman in the State of California and I don’t concern myself with the opinions of those who are below me. Obviously, Elon can’t say the same because in a ketamine fuelled haze he is desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red pilled incels and pygmies who are quick to give it to him. Go touch some fucking grass. Sparkle emoji.”

Alyx: That’s the best public statement ever.

Ashleigh: I know. Isn’t it like particularly that last uh thread, I guess.

Flint: Yeah. Now as satisfying as that is, it’s not even the end.

Alyx: More public statements!

Flint: Since he wanted the world to know about his parental skills, she thought it only fair to provide her own account and followed up her statements in an interview that went through some details of her time with him. This is a brief condensation of the full things that you can check out in the interview. She claimed he was rarely present. That he had half custody and was there 10% at the time and when he was, he would be cold and narcissistic. That’s a quote. Recalling a road trip she was taken on that was actually just done as part of a car advert where he verbally harassed her the whole time. She would consistently be berated for her evident queerness and by the time that she came out as trans at 16, their relationship was already strained, however, on the point of gender affirming care, she says he knew exactly what he was agreeing to as Californian law requires parental consent for gender affirming care for a teenager, he had to. Vivian explains that while her mother was immediately supportive, evil Elon wasn’t. As such, her and her father texted about it for months, even met in person to discuss it at his request and when she gave him the forms, he read them through with her once and then again alone, before signing off on them. Quote: he was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects, she said. The treatment in question was puberty blockers, which she advocated for really strongly, saying: They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted. They definitely allowed me to thrive. And if you think that it’s about to end here. No, it isn’t because this man is just desperate to take [inaudible]?

Still trying to appear the family man, despite his fathering skills being more akin to Doctor Evil’s the more and more that we learn, he decided to reply snidely to an old picture of him and his children, misgendering Vivian again, so she yet again puts him in his place, posting this on Threads [reading]: 

“Look. I don’t know if you genuinely believe this, or if you live in your own delusional fantasy land. And frankly, I don’t care. It seems to me like you’re trying to rebuild your brand image as the caring paternal father, which I will not let go unchallenged. I’m going to be honest, this is absolutely pathetic. You just won’t stop lying about me in interviews, books, social media, etcetera. Thank God you’re absolutely terrible at it, because otherwise this would be significantly more difficult. Like “Neo Marxist slash communist who was brainwashed at high school to be trans, and to think being rich is evil” is the best you could go with, really? Like really, if you’re going to lie about me, then why would you choose a method so obnoxious in its stupidity? It’s beyond stupid. It’s desperate. The fact anyone would believe this for even 5 seconds is beyond me, not to mention going out of your way to misgender me, which is both completely transparent and honestly, just sad. I understand your new angle is this Western values Christian family man thing. But it’s just such a weird choice. You’re not a family man, you’re a serial adulterer who won’t stop fucking lying about your own children. You’re not a Christian. And as far as I’m aware, you’ve never stepped foot in a church. You’re not some bastion for equality and progress. You called Arabic the language of the enemy when I was 6. Have been sued for discrimination multiple times and are from apartheid South Africa. You are not saving the planet. You do not give a fuck about climate change and you’re lying about multi planetary civilization as both an excuse and because you want to seem like the CEO from Ready Player One. I would have mentioned the birthright stuff, but I am not touching that weird 14 words breeder ship with a 10 foot pole. You single handedly disillusion me with how gullible we are as a species because somehow people keep believing you for reasons that continue to evade me.”

Alyx: What a fucking legend.

Ashleigh: I know, right? Yass, Queen.

Alyx: If Vivian ever wants to chat with us on the podcast, get in touch.

Flint: And there we have it, folks. The library is now closed until Vivian decides to open it again. And honestly, I hope she doesn’t have to, but if she does, I will be cheering from the sidelines whilst quietly, of course, because I do know my library etiquette. She is a child that has been raised not just by a father. Seems wholly incapable for the job, just like every other job he has had, but also as a commodity to be referenced or used for whatever advert, biography, think piece that that man dictated for her entire life. Good on her for taking back that power and using her voice. It’s needed. After this, she is, as she put it herself, your favourite nepo baby’s favourite nepo baby. Honestly, I love Vivian so much.

Ashleigh: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Alyx: I think we’ve become stans. Is that the term? That what the K-pop people use, right?

Ashleigh: I think it used to be. I think we might be a few years late for that one. But yeah, fantastic. Just and as you say, the fact that she’s put it on Threads rather than on Twitter is just such a – I don’t know, is that a sub tweet or we still saying sub tweet?

Flint: It’s like an extra level of petty of like, fuck you. I’m not even going to give you the engagement on your own platform. I know that my views would do better there, but you don’t deserve my energy on there which, like so valid. Sure. Absolutely correct.

Ashleigh: Yes. Definitely.

Alyx: For those on Threads, we are all on Threads ourselves.

Ashleigh: We’re on Threads, yes indeed.

Flint: Yeah. If you don’t like if you don’t like Twitter either, then go to Threads.

Ashleigh: Yeah, I think people who are still committed to Twitter, it’s kind of like a sunk cost fallacy thing now where it’s like –

Alyx: Yeah, it’s sort of – I think the only reason we’re still on there is cause it’s still somewhat, it’s one of our bigger platforms so far. Unfortunately it’s sort of like if Twitter goes down and it’s never ever used again, we’ve got the other platforms now. But Twitter’s there still. It’s quite big. We might as well just post and ignore what comes on the…

Flint: Yeah. Like I’ve got to say, like, this is so cathartic to see.

Ashleigh: Yes, yes, I can imagine.

Flint: It’s also exactly what you expect. It is exactly what you expect. Like I’ve thought for many years, he looks like a super villain, speaks like a super villain, acts like a super villain, has the incompetence of one. I bet he is going to be like a super villain as a father as well. And well, look at that.

Ashleigh: Yes. Yeah. Lo and behold, yeah.

Flint: So yeah. Vivian, if you ever want to come and chat, feel free. I don’t think you’re going to be listening to this, but you know.

Alyx: We’re here.

Flint: Shy bairns get nowt. We have a second loser of the day. If you want to take it away, Ashleigh.

Ashleigh: Yes, we do, and we’re going back to Scotland for our second loser, the loser of the day and the sad, hilarious tale of Kenny McBride. Kenny works for Transport Scotland. I say works for really. I mean, worked, definitely past tense, because he got his arse fired in 2023 after some extremely ill advised posting on Yammer, which is the Scottish Government social networking site. Now, Kenny claims he was sacked because of his views on biological sex and he went on to raise over ÂŁ17,000 to pay for his legal fees. But during the legal proceedings, the panel heard from Transport Scotland that Kenny had gone much further than just some shitposting in that he’d privately and persistently messaged other civil service colleagues he’d interacted with to the extent that those people felt “harassed, intimidated and unsafe”. Now there’s quite a lot of stuff in the judgement documents so I’ll give you a few choice excerpts from the conclusion. 

“On occasion, the tribunal found the claimant to be evasive, seeking to focus the issues solely on relation to his beliefs rather than upon the impact his behaviour had upon others. Overall, the tribunal found the claimant to be disingenuous in places and lacking in objectivity. This was in part because the claimant was keen to find evidence to support his erroneous belief that the respondent had a belief and that it was contrary to his.” 

So basically, the guy wanted an argument and was keen to impose one on all of his interactions. Convinced that other people (a) thought differently to him, and (b) needed to be talked around to his side. In the judgement, we also had, “it was regrettable that the claimant was unable to see matters from any other perspective”. And similarly, from the conclusion, “the Tribunal had no doubt that the claimant’s belief was genuinely and firmly held, but the claimant had poor self-awareness and was unable to view matters objectively”. Ooh, lack of self-awareness burn, those are rare. And it kind of reminds me of Graham Linehan, especially the seeking to focus the issue solely on, especially the seeking to focus the issue solely in relation to his beliefs rather than, rather than upon the impact his behaviour had upon others, part. Just that complete lack of self-awareness and being so completely single issue as to lose everything basically.

Flint: Yeah. I mean, they kind of – isn’t that a really, succinctly distilled way to signify what the fundamental headspace of like, someone that does conversion therapy or like is like a truly bought and transformed [inaudible] like that’s what people that enact conversion therapy on their loved ones are doing. They are not considering the impact of their actions. They are focusing on what they believe and that others should have to act in accordance with those beliefs.

Oh actually there’s one thing I want to add to the Elon Musk bit which is, aside from all of the like, haha, like get him, you know, clap back Internet stuff of it, which you know, catharsis and everything aside, from what Elon Musk has been doing, according to what Vivian has been saying, I would argue is tantamount to conversion therapy, conversion, abuse.

And let’s not just let that be written off as being just a bad parent. Let’s also highlight that that is a form of conversion abuse that’s being done when he deliberately does things to try and elicit masculinity from his child.

Ashleigh: Yeah. Yeah, neg until desistance.

Flint: Yes, and with this case here. Yeah, it’s the way this person was entirely focused upon his beliefs, on his argument. It seems like he viewed every conversation as a battle where he should win ground the, you know, the removal of trans people from society. And it’s just disgusting.

Alyx: And seriously, the whole thing about the, the only reason I did a road trip with my dad was because he wanted it as an advert for his car. It’s just stupid. Anyway, let’s cut back. Back to Kenny. Kenny because that case reminded me. It just makes me think he was clearly trying to do the Alison Bailey argument. But then she still lost on the fact that, on the impact of, Alison Bailey’s actions still made her lose the case against her own employers.

Flint: I feel like we’re going to see this again, cause obviously Graham Linehan’s case has gone. It’s going to take a while a long while before anything comes of that. But you know the losers keep on queuing up.

Ashleigh: Yes, they do. It’s the lack of self-awareness, isn’t it? It’s the kind of – no I must win. I will definitely win and kind of spaffing all their supporters’ money up the wall.

Alyx: Just imagine what we’d be able to do with 17 grand.

Flint: Listen, if there’s any sugar daddy angel investor that wants to just wants to just really engage in some findom and send us everything they have in their savings account as long as they still have enough to feed themselves. You know, we’ve got a Patreon. We can figure something out.

Alyx: Finnster fans, if you know [inaudible] we’d love your money. On the note of employees and unions and employment law and such. In our latest instalment of join a union! – the British Medical Association has announced that its membership voted for the BMA to publicly criticise the Cass Review. In a press release released on its website. BMA also said that it would be putting together a task and finish group, also saying it will be established by the BMA’s chair of Council, Professor Phillip Banfield, who will also appoint the group’s chairperson and will pay particular attention to the methodology used to underpin the report’s recommendations. Alongside this it has also called for a pause in implementing the Cass Review’s recommendations, stating that the BMA believes transgender and gender diverse patients should continue to receive specialist health care regardless of their age. In the sea of shit that we are seeing and what we will talk about in the next couple of stories, it’s good to see a group such as the BMA provide some form of resistance.

Ashleigh: I love the BMA because we did speak about this, that they were going to vote on it and I’m glad the vote’s gone the way it should have done, although not everybody in the British medical establishment is particularly happy about that because the British Medical Journal, BMJ, rather than the BMA…

Alyx: Has released, yes. So what they’ve done is they’ve released a letter opposing the idea of a critique being made. Now it is on their website, but it’s behind a paywall. But about two minutes before we were meant to go and record this one of our –

Ashleigh: One of our sources sent it to us.

Alyx: Yeah. One of our sources just sent it to us in the best timed email I’ve ever seen.

Ashleigh: Yes, it was perfect, wasn’t it? But even that though, this article does say that nearly 900 doctors signed this letter and that’s not that many. You know, we’ve got more listeners than that.

Alyx: Yeah. Oh gosh yeah. But God, we do have a lot of listeners.

Flint: That’s a very good point. Like how? How is that meant to be a mainstream – like enough of a – what am I trying to say here? If it’s such a small proportion of the incredibly wide amount of people that are involved in healthcare that have like, signed on to this then? I don’t know it, it sounds a bit like –

Alyx: Yeah. So they said there’s 900 doctors signing it, but according to the BMA, they have about 190,000 colleagues.

Flint: Right. So you know I think that’s actually, proportionately, possibly less than the amount of trans people there are in the UK. I don’t know the maths on that, but I feel like the maths could easily line up that that is less than 1% of the population and we’re at least 1% of the population.

Alyx: We are the 1%.

Ashleigh: So the Census suggested it was nought point nought five, percent of the population, so half a percent. And all this fuss, all this transphobia, all of this hate and fear mongering. For nought point nought five per cent of the population so.

Alyx: Yeah. So the letter, it was calling on BMA to abandon its plan to do this criticism and retract its demand to allow puberty blockers to be given to children in gender related distress [reads letter] By lobbying against the best evidence available the BMA is going against the principles of evidence based medicine and against ethical practises.

Oh, that’s not, that’s not factually true. Isn’t science meant to be making sure you’re able to make different opposing views and yeah.

Ashleigh: Yeah. And back and back them up with evidence which the Cass review is not, has definitely not done. Yeah.

Flint: It is actually kind of genuinely, deeply upsetting and concerning, in all seriousness, to see the British Medical Journal be so staunchly against peer review.

That’s the thing that really concerns me. The BMJ should not be saying to a such a big thing as the BMA that you shouldn’t test the mettle of this document that is going to soon be used as the basis of treating everyone that’s part of a certain  community that’s in the UK. How? How on earth do you get to swing that? I mean, I know that there have been whatever reasons, justifications put in the letter, but the fact of the the fact of the matter is, it’s twaddle because you’re arguing against peer review? Yeah.

Alyx: You’re arguing against making a good, stringent debate.

Flint: Yeah, you should be welcoming an opportunity to further prove the efficacy of the review, because if they’re undertaking something critically, that means that they are going to examine everything from the basis of it may be true or may be not true, which means that anything that is true would be verified. Now that’s only a problem if you know that most of the shit that is in there –

Alyx: It absolutely is absolute dog shit and you can read about how dog shit it is in our deep dive episode. God we are really ticking off the –

Ashleigh: Yeah. Ticking the boxes and although I mean, if you haven’t listened to the Cass review episodes by now like there’s a lot in there, isn’t there? All sorts of fun stuff.

Alyx: I don’t want to read that review ever again.

Ashleigh: No, me neither, and ideally I don’t want to ever have to talk about it again, but here we are. This article that’s come in the BMJ does do the penultimate paragraph syndrome thing where it says, but on the other hand, the person who would be, the person who has been pushing for the review of the review said this to us. And so that’s been a little more uh, you know, the idea that any review even on such a sensitive topic should not be critiqued is, I believe, very contrary is, I believe, contrary to the very principles of the scientific process.

Flint: It is scientism.

Ashleigh: Making it sound scientific without actually being scientific. Yes indeed.

Flint: Yeah. For those who don’t know, scientism is not scientific autism. It is the practise of treating science as like a set religion with very clear doctrines of what is right and what is wrong. So you aren’t engaging in the scientific practice, you are simply deifying science as an authoritative power.

Alyx: Oh thank you for explaining that I was. I didn’t know what you meant by scientism.

Flint: It’s basically, yeah, it’s basically, treating science as a religion.

Ashleigh: Fun times. So we’ll keep you updated on this particular story, obviously. I mean, the review of the Cass review is going to go ahead essentially. So 900 doctors, as you say, literally a drop in a bucket kind of thing, a drop in the ocean really but hopefully, the review of the review will produce some excellent points to continue with a robust discussion, let’s say.

Alyx: Yeah. And we’ll have to see what the review of the review of the review is.

Ashleigh: Yeah. Oh don’t, just don’t.

Alyx: There’ll be a review on that one.

Ashleigh: So, on the subject of doctors and the NHS and the Cass review. There are plans to roll out six new services in England and Wales for trans children and young people that will follow and implement the Cass recommendations and a review of adult care which is planned. Which is planned and has been published on the NHS website, so we’re working on a thorough examination of the proposed plans and we’ll bring you more details soon, but we do have links provided in the description if you wish to find out a little more right now. So yes, definitely not looking forward to this Cass style review of adult care.

Flint: No, no, not at all. My hope is that the BMA comes out staunchly enough that it can get enough of a ball rolling to mitigate the damage that such a review could do and sort of galvanise the medical community to really start moving on this.

Because in further updates about the NHS and their. continued actions – In an article by The Daily Telegraph published this week, it was written that the NHS is about to launch its first ever service for de-transitioners. So according to the Telegraph, so bear in mind, it’s the Telegraph, they want to make a defined clinical pathway in the NHS for individuals who are considering detransition. And that NHS England will establish a programme of work to explore the issues around a detransition pathway by October 2024. Now, I’m personally really against this. A detransition is still a transition. You’re still transitioning from one place to another. Your goal may have changed over whatever period of time. But the kind of treatments that you’ll be getting, they’ll still be in that same area of medical care. To me, this seems like a way to encourage people to detransition, by setting up this service as if it’s a separate thing.

Alyx: Yes. And then you can’t transition back to the transition service if you decide to switch around again.

Flint: Yes, that’s exactly another point I was just about to bring up. That it also doesn’t respect the fact that like a detransition isn’t often going straight back to, you know, whatever you thought and felt as a cis person. The amount of times that I’ve, you know, listened to de-transitioners talk about the fact of like – It’s not that they’re going back to who they were before, but it’s like a whole other area of the gender experience, and it’s often connected to not receiving a lot of support or to not receiving support around other factors.

And because every de-transitioner that I’ve heard or sought out like their thoughts and feelings on or trans people that I followed, who have decided to detransition, they always advocate for better access to trans healthcare. Always, consistently, because if they had better access to trans healthcare, that would have helped them more. It would have meant that it didn’t take quite so long for them to reach whatever conclusion, you know. There’s so much of the current trans healthcare system that is actively harmful to the people that go through that process. That it sometimes makes it really hard for people to figure out where exactly they want to go and what they want to do, so this feels like division to me. And if someone wants to retransition, does that mean that they then have to face the kind of onslaught of the transition pathway and the way that that’s currently being treated and basically criminalised, like you’re going to be valuing one person in one way.

Alyx: Like the waiting list as well. To like go, yeah. You want do retransition again now?

Ashleigh: You’re back at the start of the list.

Flint: Yeah. So what are y’all’s thoughts on this?

Ashleigh: Well, yeah, definitely. It should be dealt with as part of the kind of gender service that exists. It does not need – there are not going to be enough people to sustain a whole separate service.

Alyx: Yeah, people already say, people at the gender identity clinics already did that work anyway. They already had the experience and knowledge on how to handle detransition and to help people in figuring out that pathway.

And adding another barrier then creates an unnecessary extra step that can then cause a less, I would even say holistic approach to their treatment cause instead their mindset is focused around then saying, making them not trans again rather than thinking, make them best make them most comfortable than in the gender identity they feel closest to.

Ashleigh: My real concern here is that anybody that shows the slightest bit of, you know, can I pause here? Do I have to go through with everything? – is going to get railroaded down a detransition service and that is not what we want to see, and that’s my fear for this.

Flint: Yeah, I have a feeling that this will be weaponised against non-binary people as well. I have a feeling that those who say would want to keep certain attributes or have an expression of their gender that’s, you know, visibly when you see it is not particularly aligned to male or female, I don’t like to say androgynous because a lot of people then assume androgynous is, like completely sexless and agender, which is not really the thing.

That could be seen as ohh, so you don’t actually want to transition, you know, and things like that. And I worry for people being unfairly discharged and put into detransition spaces for perhaps wanting to be on HRT but not wanting top surgery or vice versa.

Ashleigh: Not great at all. And speaking of things that are definitely not great at all.

Alyx: So the crap from the NHS doesn’t stop there. It gets worse for our Scottish comrades and as of the 12th of August, the Scottish NHS will stop self referrals to Gender Identity Clinics. Instead, the only way to get access to these clinics will be to have your GP refer you to mental health services and they’ll get you access to the GIC if they think you’re trans enough. A letter sent by the director of NHS Scotland that we got leaked to us said that it was a step forward and it enables us to triage, care and minimise risk to patient harm. By what? Making it harder to get access to the treatment we need and making it take longer.

Ashleigh: So this is going back to what this process used to be like several years ago. So what I had to do when I was first, you know, going through gender services is I had to get referred to the community mental health team. I had to go and have a chat with them and it took a year to get an appointment with them. And then from there, I was then on a like a two and a bit year waiting list to talk to the gender clinic. So it’s just immediately just going to take longer and there doesn’t really seem to be a valid reason for them doing this to me.

Flint: There’s no valid reason outside of transphobia. Because even if you made the argument of, oh well, the waiting lists are growing bigger and bigger and bigger, we want to make sure that we then get some fucking funding onto those services. Then get some people actually fucking seen.

Ashleigh: Yeah, funny that.

Flint: Stop making it harder through continual bit of legislation, guidelines, recommendations to just view people as fucking human and and let them be treated in the way that they need to be.

Alyx: Or just make it primary care so the GPs can just deal with it.

Flint: Yeah, you don’t get to deliberately fuck up this area of healthcare alongside every other area of healthcare, but specifically with the aims of transphobia regarding this section. But you don’t get to deliberately fuck up the NHS and then say, well, we’re going to remove your access to healthcare because the NHS is really bungled up right now and it’s because too many of you have been trying to access healthcare. Fuck off, yeah.

Ashleigh: So yes, it’s all a bit of a mess really, isn’t it?

Flint: No. Yeah, Scotland’s been having a lot happen, yeah.

Alyx: And it’s bound to, might even get worse when the MSPs get elected again under the Scottish elections and the Scottish Parliament. The devolution there because when Scottish Labour start to have landslides there, they might have more transphobic MSPs. Hope not, but it feels like it could go that way.

Ashleigh: Yeah. And we’ve just got rid of Joanna Cherry.

Flint: There is hope. There is always. There is always going to be a better day. Statistically, if you have a really shit day the next day is bound to be a better one. Probability dictates it as such. It’s a dark time right now and it’s a tough time right now and don’t let it hold you down and prevent you from living your life as you want to live it.

Ashleigh: Now is the time to embrace community and mutual aid is the phrase, isn’t it? Like kind of look, look after each other? Yeah.Because we’re going to have to, you know, because – so with this having happened in Scotland, I think it’s going to happen in England as well. Yeah, to be perfectly honest.

Alyx: Honest. I suppose we’ll have to keep looking to our community and making sure that we fight with our community and and quite frankly, over this past week we have been seeing the community come out in force for Pride season.

Ashleigh: Hell yeah, we have.

Alyx: Bigger and better than ever.

Ashleigh: On that subject. So we recently were all together in Manchester and we recorded in my studio, which is my bedroom, but we recently recorded and we talked about all the various prides that we’ve all been to over the last couple of months and so, uh. We’re now going to just play that tape, so take it away, us in the past.

Alyx: Flashback music, you know.

Ashleigh: Flashback. Flashback. Flashback. [01:06:55 – music] All right, welcome to. Well, this section of the show where I am recording it from my usual studio here in Manchester, but I have some guests.

Flint: Hello.

Alyx: Hello there.

Ashleigh: Yeah. Coming to you from the same room for literally the first time. It’s lovely to meet you all in the flesh. Well, lovely to meet you in the flesh, Flint. I’ve met these two reprobates before by misfortune? Yes, unfortunately.

Fun times. And we’re here to talk about the various prides that we’ve been to over the course of the last few months from the start of June onwards, I mean I say we, I mostly mean you guys because the only part I’ve been to is the one that we all went to was yesterday. But more on that later. So yeah, to kick it off, I’ll hand over to you Flint.

Flint: Yeah, the first one, one of the first ones we really got to for the What The Trans coverage was actually one that’s pretty close to home. It was Bishop Auckland pride. It was the first one for Bishop Auckland to ever do, which is really cool and it’s sort of in my backyard area, you know, like I’m from the northeast. I’ve lived here for many years now and it was great to see another little community show up and show out for us. There was a lot of really good performers as well. So there wasn’t a parade, but there was an area that was free for everyone, a community stage, and then there was an area that was ticketed, but the tickets were only ÂŁ20 for a whole night of entertainment and then a whole day of entertainment the next day and you could move about freely. The accessibility was really good. There were some really good performers that I really, really enjoyed, in particular, Lady Bushra did a really great bit called Sashay that Sari, where contestants had to put on a sari as quick as possible within a minute and then lip sync to a song. The winner got a protein bar, I believe. Also shout out to Jamir Broadhead, who plays in the band Incapacity, she was doing on the community a song called Trans Exclusionary Reactionary Fascists, and she was singing it so loudly that I heard it from the other end of the site and went hang on, what are those words. I need to see what this is about and actually got all the way over to her. There were also some fun talks. There was one on North Eastern LGBT history, which is really cool. The most interesting thing really about it to me, was actually to do with one of the stalls that was there, the Labour candidate’s stall. It was the only political party there, which, honestly the less political parties at pride, the better for me. But I understand, you know, if Labour are there then they have an opportunity to show their support for the communities, that’s what I thought. When I saw the stall, obviously, I go up and I’m there with multiple friends and there’s a little activity that’s there to take a sticker and put it on the area of policy that you think Labour should focus on, bearing in mind obviously they are at a Pride. When I look through the options and I don’t see any queer policies or LGBT policies bearing in mind that’s been a big part of Labour’s history and a big part of the conversation during the election. I gently brought up to them and I just noticed that there wasn’t this option on there and that’s where I’d put my sticker. And they said, oh, well, you know, that’s a good point that you bring up. The candidate will be here himself later today and you can speak to him. Okay well, that’s interesting. When he turns out me and some friends and, I’m purely speaking honestly as a like person that’s in the local area at this point, I don’t really want to do a whole “hi, I’m here from What the Trans?!” interview, I wanted to just naturally gauge how he is showing up for his community, right? So the first question I asked him which was pretty easy one was what are your opinions and feelings on the policies that are in the Labour manifesto about trans people and about LGBT rights and queer rights in general? Bless him, he was honest, he said. Well, to be fair, I haven’t seen them. Yes, so this man turned up at a pride. This political party and this candidate chose to turn up to a pride without having even looked at a single LGBT policy for their area, also trying to then get support from the various queer people and allies there, whilst not including a single thing about queerness in what they were delivering to that space. We had a very interesting conversation. It wasn’t just me, it was me and my friends, as I said, it gently solidified to me. Well, no, it didn’t gently. It heavily solidified for me why I don’t really like political parties at pride because it was otherwise a phenomenal weekend, a great, great time and it was just a bit of a shame that that level of respect hadn’t been shown by those people turning up there to the space that’s been so carefully and beautifully made.

Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely. You’d think that at least do a bit of reading and I guess you were busy, so this was before –

Flint: The election, this was when the election had been announced. But it was before the actual voting, yeah.

Ashleigh: Yeah, before the election took place, you’d think you’d kind of read the room a little. Yeah, but plus the other thing that’s just made me nostalgic, really, is the cost, ÂŁ20 for more or less the entire week. That’s fantastic. That like Manchester Pride just gone extortionate, now it cost ÂŁ20 for the whole weekend 10 years ago, closer to 15 probably, but now it’s gone all corporate and it’s much more expensive.

Flint: Yeah. Yeah. And I had a quick look at the sponsors, I couldn’t see, to be fair, I didn’t do a deep deep dive. There were no sponsors that immediately stood out to me as problematic either, which was good to see.

Alyx: Well, on the topic of Prides at home, I happen to have one in my own local area as well. It’s quite similar to yours. We did have a parade which was slightly different and it was one of those more party rather than protest prides, which was kind of nice. I sort of had a small glance of the inner area. I didn’t have a look, but there were also political parties at mine. Apparently, the Tories hadn’t turned up in over two years.

Flint: Good.

Alyx: Nice, simple and easy.

Ashleigh: So the fact that it’s a party rather than a protest, does that, how do you feel about that for your hometown.

Alyx: To be honest, I’m just surprised there are enough queer people to come together from my local area.

Ashleigh: Yeah, fair enough. Well, you because you live in a, you know, reasonably large city in your county, don’t you? Unspecified-shire. So it’s obviously going to pull in everybody from around the local area, people that maybe live in smaller towns that don’t have prides themselves.

Alyx: And it’s good that that happens. But I miss the protest vibe. Yeah. You know, I think that should be there and I think that’s a criticism for the Big Manchester Pride that happens, well, it will be happening in a few weeks from as we record this that because that’s corporate as hell, so it’s not a protest anymore and it should be.

Flint: So on that topic, I want to a really interesting Pride in Southampton, which is called People’s Pride, in Southampton because of this very issue, there’s actually two prides. Well, actually there’s more than two, but the sort of main ones that are not just like specifically like trans people.

There’s Southampton Pride, which is the big corporate one and there’s Peoples Pride, which is sort of like a response to that because some people didn’t like, that Southampton Pride takes unethical sponsors like last year, one of the sponsors was Exxon Mobil of all things. And then lots of people bullied them into taking it down, but they still take other bad sponsors like the local cruise ship companies that are really bad for the environment. They do march and everything, but it’s quite corporatised from personal experience. The accessibility, like autism advice is not the best. People’s Pride is like a charity that some local people started as a response to that to make a pride that is ethical. And I went to their party in the park event, which was on the 8th of June. It wasn’t actually too different from Southampton Pride itself, but the nice thing is that it was outside. So already the noise level was less and it was a really nice day, which helped a lot. That was like different local businesses and like stalls and artisans and things. And there was live music and even some attractions like I went on this spinny thing. It was fun. But I guess the point of it is to have the same fun of pride without the destructive funding sources, the previous events that they’ve done also did include more radical protest things. But this time, it was just a party. And yeah, it was quite chill. And nice and family friendly.

Alyx: Because whenever you talk about the sponsoring over here, Exxon Mobil, like for a moment now I think oh, is it a mobile phone provider? No, it’s fossil fuels, yeah.

Flint: It was a similar sort of party vibe at Bishop, but I was a bit more forgiving on that because was the first one. I can understand it being a little bit nerve wracking trying to organise a march for the first ever time. So I’m hoping that next year that seems to be planned for next year. So I’m hoping that we’ll get more of that.

Speaker 4: On that point, I don’t tend to go to these kinds of events for the whole day unless I’m volunteering because I just get kind of aimless and bored, unless I’m actually doing something. So like here, I’m with all of you, you know, like handing out stickers and networking. At this event, I was doing some Extinction Rebellion volunteering, running a stall together with Greenpeace because it was just before the election. We were ramping up our Greenpeace climate voter campaign. But there’s also a campaign called Fossil Free Pride, which is trying to get prides to agree to not take on unethical sponsors. And we at What the Trans?! actually have had dealings with them before when we get nominated for Pink News Awards and then they got in touch with us and were like, hey, did you know the Pink News Awards has evil banks for sponsors. And we’re like oh. And then we publicly were like, no, we don’t want this award. Yeah. And then everyone clapped.

Ashleigh: Yeah, it was. It was a very satisfying statement to write, wasn’t it.

Flint: Going to like what you brought up about struggling to be there at a full Pride day, there’s a lot going on, it reminds me a lot of about the second lot of pride stuff that I went to, which actually, yes, it was happening in Pride season, but it’s run by a husband-husband duo who own a book shop in Durham, shout out to Bookworm. Gorgeous little stall in in the Market Hall in Durham there and they set up perennial queer events. So there are events for queer people throughout the year, but the Pride season, and they obviously do a little bit more and they do a thing called big Gay Picnic, which is a sober pride and. It’s deliberately kind of designed to be a little bit different from the immediate things that you associate with Pride – loud noises, bright lights, lots of, you know, fanfare, lots of walking around energy. And, you know, lots of spoon usage. And instead they hire out a small field area and they bring some snacks. They encourage people to bring blankets, picnicking things, and they will have just a beautiful, lovely little time for us quieter queers. I say us quieter queers and I’m not necessarily one of them, but I need both. I love all different kinds of events, and I have many friends who wouldn’t be able to hack doing a full day out and about, doing a London Trans Pride, doing a big thing like that, but this means that they can still enjoy that community and it means that families can be there. They recently celebrated their 2nd birthday as Bookworm, where they had readings by a really, really good author called Dean Atta. Who is award nominated has been in the public life for years. He’s done amazing poems, spoken word, and has written a book you probably know of called the Black Flamingo, and he was reading from his personal memoir that he’s recently released called Person Unlimited: an ode to my black queer body. And it’s really beautiful to see that there are these places and that it is a case of just finding them. It’s a case of us, when I say us, I mean people that are in media and people that are in the community as well to kind of search them out, uplift them and ensure that we are giving them the same level of – this needs to be here as we do for the big protest prides, as we do for the big party prides.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree. And we’ll talk about those quieter spaces a little bit more later. But as a quiet – as a queer that has sensory issues. That’s part of the reason why I didn’t go to London Trans Pride, also because I had just gotten back from another event and I was completely just like out of spoons. But I wouldn’t be able to do it. So it’s really good. You know, like sometimes I wish they were more like queer cafes rather than like queer bars. Yeah, that makes sense because that’s much more my vibe.

Flint: You know, I struggle with straight up bars. I prefer an event or a cafe.

Alyx: Because speaking of those events and uplifting them, you’ve written a piece about this, didn’t you?

Flint: I did, one of my friends had brought up, oh, there’s a big gay picnic happening. Would we all like to go, you know? And they had already been going to Bookworm a fair bit. It was how they came across the event. When I was there, it was just seeing such a different vibe. Seeing such a, you know, a thing that I knew would not get spoken about in the wider coverage of pride stuff. Not only. Because it’s a small indie thing you know with less than 100 people there, but because it’s not the immediate, oh, exciting spectacle of Pride that you expect, and that is easier to report on. Right. So I felt like a real need to, yeah, get the word out. So there is a full article, there is actually, for Bishop Pride as well. I decided to get as much rep for the North East as possible in this Pride season. So there is actually an article about Bishop’s Pride. If you want to check that on the What the Trans?! website. There is also an article about Bookworm and the Pride events that they’re setting up, the queer events they’re setting up and also a review of the book that Dean Atta was reading from, because there I ended up reading the whole thing afterwards and it was just too good not to at least put a little bit out there and be like check this out. It’s sick.

Alyx: Cool. And we’ll put that link in the description.

Ashleigh: There you go. Tick that one off on the bingo cards.

Flint: All three of them.

Ashleigh: So staying in Southampton, what else was there?

Speaker 4: Well, there was also a Southampton Trans Pride on June 29th, which was a lovely event. It had both a march and an indoors event. Yeah, the march was really nice, kind of just through the city centre. And there was a lovely show of solidarity as well because at the same time at that, a protest against Barclays was taking place because of Barclays involvement in the Palestine genocide and it was actually, it’s kind of difficult for some of the people because there’s quite a few people who are involved in both of those things. And so, some of them didn’t know which one should I go to. But we decided that we would just kind of support each other and like so when Trans Pride passed by the pro-Palestine people we were all like whoa, free Palestine and they were also like whoa, Pride, Trans Rights. So it was really nice. This isn’t really pride, but something similar happened when I went to Restore Nature Now in London again months ago, which was this huge nature march, because at the same time there was I think, Dyke March also coming through London and both of the marches were kind of going in like the opposite directions from each other. And the same thing happened. Everybody was just supporting the other side of the road.

Ashleigh: Yeah, supporting each other’s causes, solidarity forever.

Speaker 4: Yes. And then for Trans Pride Southampton, there was also an indoor event at a local place called Edmund Kell Unitarian Church, which is actually a really lovely space that hosts lots of different social justice events. So there’s been like Palestine fundraisers, Just Stop Oil meetups, and eviction support groups. And lots of good things like that.

And there were also a few stalls, I was doing XR stuff again, and there was also an open mic event at the end, which is dangerous for me because I ran out of spoons. It was really good.

Flint: Talking about solidarity between movements, this is a notable mention. To be honest, this is an honourable mention because it’s something that I often don’t see spoken about, something that I would love to write a bit more of, an in-depth piece on or something, but so I’m a festival goer. I’m not usually a big Leeds, Reading, Download kind of person. I prefer the smaller indie festivals. Because I find that they have a really good grasp on that very thing on solidarity between movements. So my favourite festival is Balter. At Balter they have a drag competition. Every year. I’m not sure I didn’t actually catch the one from this last year. If it was on because it was the 1st and ever only boggy Balter where rain came down and it was walking through quicksand. But every year they will do a drag competition. They’ll decide on who is Miss Balter and they’ll have drag queens that are the judges. And you’re encouraged, as ever, at festivals, but particularly at Balter, you’re encouraged to dress as weirdly and wonderful as you want. You are encouraged to play around with gender. If you decide to go in a standard tshirt, standard shorts, standard trainers, you can absolutely, your right. But I tell you what, you’ll have a much more fun time if you decide to play around with the gender of it. If you decide to. Dress up in some weird and wonderful ways. And so many of the acts that are at Balter are queer or are queer aligned and are outspoken politically. 

Biggest notable mention would be to Mandidexterous, who is an incredibly vocal advocate for trans rights, being non-binary themselves and has been one of my favourite DJs for years, is part of the reason why I decided to go to Balter was because them and because of other crews and people that I know go there, another one is Scottish Gabba Punks who are a sickening band. Absolutely go and check them out. These are people that will dress in the colours of Irn Bru wearing fishnets they will chant for a free Palestine and trans rights waving the two flags together tandem over screaming metal gabba. It’s gorgeous, it is gorgeous, and when, at Balter, it’s another thing. Like even this isn’t just the individual acts. This is having a on the big main stage of Balter, the MC of that stage. He will make a point, and this is the third time I’ve been to Balter now. Now he’s made a point every single time, for a really big headliner, that know everyone in the place is going to be absolutely there for. He’ll make a point to say when we collect like this, when we come together, that is part of direct action, that is revolutionary. This is deliberately moving away from the societal constructs of what is fun of what is art. And it’s something that other festivals I would be immediately much more critical of. But when you see how frequently, like this is a festival that has a whole stage called Pin the Dildo on the Tory and there was a clip of that stage that I managed to get on to Have I Got News For You, like they are so consistently actively in the sort of sense of getting you to think about the politics as you are participating in what otherwise would just be an event with some DJs. Yeah. And that’s something that I love. It’s something that I see in free parties and I regularly go to free parties. There’s always going to be queer people that are there. And yeah, just shout out to that. Because it’s sick.

Ashleigh: So you’re talking about festivals that aren’t themselves specifically queer. But we’ll have, like, a queer event slash space slash stage for like an afternoon and it’ll be a queer section in it.

Flint: So there’s not a specific queer space. Hmm. The whole space itself just queers reality. Of the stages at Balter, this is another reason why I love it, is that all of the stages you can see from the bottom to the top has different sort of reflections of different areas of the UK. So you’ve got the Off Me Nut stage that’s representing the Northwest, you’ve got the Northern MC representing the NE, you’ve got the Devon Rave Massive at the bottom. So the whole thing is like a little mini map of all the counterculture that’s happening in the UK at the time, which is why it makes it feel so inherently political as much as you want it to be. You can decide to engage with it.

Speaker 4: That sounds sick.

Alyx: I remember I was watching Have I Got News for You. And then I saw the Pin the Dildo on the Tory and I just realised oh that was there.

Flint: How was Buddhafield?

Speaker 4: Felt it was good. I have to say I think I’ve not been to that many festivals, but I think it was my favourite that I’ve been to because it’s very chilled out, it’s drug and alcohol free so there’s not as many weird people as usual. I mean, okay, no, people are still pretty weird, but not in like a drug way. Just in the hippie, Buddhist way. And I was volunteering with a group called Disabled People Against Cuts, this time helping out with an art installation and then also during a bunch of outreach about the horrors of PiP, Universal Credit and basically encouraging people to take action. But outside of that, in my free time, when I wasn’t dying from the heat and all my health issues, I wasn’t having the best time. Yeah, a lot of the time I will, I just want to lie down on the floor, which is also what I’m doing now. Well, on Ashleigh’s bed, but yes, I’m doing this lying down because my body is awful. However, when I was able to, I hung out in the queer space a lot. Because yes. There was a whole queer bit of the festival where basically a bunch of queer people could come together. And it was a very welcoming space. So it’s not like everybody that knew each other know, you just walk in and everybody just instantly is like, hi, do you want to come with us? Do you want to hang out? Do you want a cup of tea? Like it’s really sweet. So Buddhafield provides there’s like different affinity spaces for different groups. So there’s like men, space, women’s space, queer space, the three genders. I think there was some other ones as well. But I can think of those three. We floated the idea of potentially a disabled affinity space. Next time, who knows, maybe it will happen. God knows it means that the physical accessibility was not ideal, but for autism, accessibility was pretty good. I think a lot of people in the green space are radical faeries, which is this kind of movement of queer people who want to be closer to nature. Some radical faeries are more spiritual and witchy, and some of them are less so. It’s kind of a very diverse group, and it would be actually really interesting to maybe have some of them on the board sometime. I did make some connections. Yeah. So I went to a few workshops in the queer space. There was a queer wellbeing workshop that gave me a whole future podcast idea about how we can all look after each other. There was a story share workshop where we talked about our queer superpowers. Mine is making people trans. That’s right. I’m the trans person the media warned you about. I’m going to trans everybody in my vicinity by releasing my spores into the atmosphere.

And then there was also a life drawing workshop which basically – life drawing is like usually nude people posing. And then you draw them like for a set amount of time. So like 20 minutes, 10 minutes. And it was an interesting life drawing worship because it was kind of like had this, like mindfulness-y vibe because the host of the workshop was also like saying like as you draw it like think about the significance of doing this in the queer space, you know like celebrating queer bodies. Think about what the form, what the pose expresses, like the gentleness or like the passion or whatever. And yeah, it was really nice. It’s nice to have a space when you’re not a minority, I think. And in that sense, I feel like it’s not too different from pride. Like, you know, most of the time, we as queer people, and especially trans people, are kind of a minority in society and even in spaces when we are included, we’re still different from most other people. And it’s kind of like, we’re like an afterthought, and that’s why it’s really nice to have spaces where that’s not the case and where it’s more like the cishets are an afterthought, you know, kind of like What the Trans?!.

Alyx: Oh yeah, exactly, and then Sophie probably had that bit of fun with Northern Pride as well.

Flint: Yeah. And so Northern Pride is the really, really big pride, the one that everyone knows about in the North East, it’s in Newcastle and there’s a big parade, a big march and then there is, I think 3 days of festivities. I only went to the march, it was a massive march. The overall amount of people that were, I think, involved in the march and then also involved in the full days of festivities and everything came to round about 82,000, which is more than it was last year, last year it was about 75,000. On the one hand, it’s lovely to be in a space where you are always around other queer people. You’re just consistently around other queer people. However, the thing with Northern Pride, which was interesting for me being there, was the amount of corporate sponsorship they have now. As far as I remember and recall, they don’t have any horrendously glaring sponsors. I think there may have been at one point, but, I think there was a successful removal of those.

The interesting thing with the parade is that it feels more like a parade than a march, let me put it that way. You have groups there like BT you have, you know, various charities and whatnot that are good, but that you do have a fair few, you like you know, companies that have given a lot of money so they get to march in the parade. My favourite thing about the march, aside from all the wonderful signs, the amazing outfits people were wearing, the chants and all that – and me and my friend, because we both have pretty loud voices, were happy to lead the chants in our area, because in our part of the parade, because we were far enough back, we couldn’t hear the first round, so we were just having to kind of infer and keep it going through the back. There was a group of people that had recognised this that had recognised the level of corporate involvement and decided to turn up with a corporate banner of their own saying “Pride. It’s a marketing campaign” and they had lots of little printed pictures of the various sponsors that were for Northern Pride there and they were before the corporate section. They were before all the, so they were there ahead of everyone, and they were doing this, like “Hi, Yeah, let’s come collab” and all of this kind of stuff that was great and they were handing out these pink wash bank notes. Yeah, they were like, oh, come take some fun money and it would be like pink hued and things.

And just in general, being, like, gleefully sarcastic in a way where if you had an issue with it, it showed much more about your allegiance to Pride and to queer people than it does about your company’s right to be there. It shows a certain level of internalising, the notion that companies have a right to be at Pride, because people will want to be a part of their company and be there. And yeah, it’s interesting because for some people that work in those companies, they either would have to spend the day at work and be paid to ignore the biggest Pride that’s happening in the area or for some of them they can decide to go to work and get a longer break in the middle of the day to then go to Pride. Which is interesting as a choice, because that means that you know, for a queer person that can kind of put you in an awkward bind. You either avoid it or you get a chance to go and vibe it out, but you have to then be there with the people of your company. But if you’re a straight person, if you’re a cis-het person, I wonder if then for certain scenarios what that then would mean about, you know, how many of those companies are perhaps actually making sure that it’s the queer people from their companies that are there to represent as opposed to just the people that want to be there for a bit of a break and that sort of thing. It feels quite hollow sometimes.

Ashleigh: Yes, absolutely it does. I just, I quite like the sarcasm of Pride: It’s a marketing opportunity! I think that’s probably going to have gone over a lot of people’s heads. Yes, like oh, I don’t get it. But I think it has always annoyed me. Certainly, when I was like the queer person marching in a corporate parade and there were several straight people there, who were just there for the party, and it’s like this ain’t for you, chief. It’s not your day.

Flint: Yeah, well, part of the reason why I know about the ability to go to Pride or be paid or not or whatever is because I had a friend that was going to Northern Pride who was put in exactly that position, and they are a queer person. But the unfortunate thing is that because they were marching with their company, the other people that they were marching with really took offence to this group of people.

And they really, bless them, they tried their best to explain to their co-workers that actually those people are correct and let’s take a moment to think about why you’re here. Let’s take a moment to think about what we are doing here as representatives of a corporation. They really, really tried to sort of get them to understand that it’s not about you, it’s not attacking you as a person. It’s pointing out a hypocrisy in the way that capitalism will, sort of put you in this awkward double bind situation where you have to choose between a day’s wage or like your ability to be a part of it. And the whole hollowness of it all, a lot of them really weren’t getting it. And it kind of at the end, my friend ended up saying I’m not doing that again. Like next time, I’m just going to book the day off well in advance so that they can’t do that, because it ended up being quite an uncomfortable experience because it was essentially doing a lot of emotional labour for not – they weren’t all straight people, but a lot of emotional labour for the kind of LGBT trademark people that are quite able to exist in cishet society without much of a second thought to those of us that don’t get that ability and have to go to these protests to have a moment where we are with others like us.

Ashleigh: And speaking, I guess, of Prides that don’t accept corporate sponsorship at all, let’s talk about Brighton.

Alyx: Yeah, because I was just about to feel like, oh, I know the perfect segue to talk about, Brighton Trans Pride and bam, you beat me to it! Brighton Trans Pride was the next protest we went to. I think it was actually the day before.

Alyx: We sort of did a Tweet thread at the same time.

Flint: I think it must have been on the same day, because we were tweeting on the same day the events that were happening. So yeah, I’m pretty sure it was the exact same day and there was, if you were following our Twitter that it would have been quite – we had it nicely set up. So it was two separate threads, but if you were scrolling through whatever you’d have seen Pride happening in two very separate parts of the country at the same time, just you know. Two for one.

Speaker 4: I did see that and I was like, well, What the Trans?! really is – I feel like with Pride, there’s like so much stuff going on. That’s why sometimes I struggle to actually find the time to post things on socials. I still need to post pictures from Southampton Trans Pride, I think I will at some point because of the signs.

Alyx: Well, thanks. You have to say about that one as well. It’s quite nice when doing those tweet threads as wellbeing like oh, look how professional we are. We can report in two places at the same time, although sorry for everyone on the timelines who was like thinking what else is there apart from Brighton? And Northern Pride at the same time. A massive march because we were reporting on the massive march that was going on at the same time so, Brighton Trans Pride. It was massive last year. It was gigantic this year, unfortunately, I couldn’t really go up and down the marches like I usually do for every single pride, because London Trans Pride, I could go up and down all the time. Essex pride, I was going up there four or five times. Between the crowds. But this year I fucked my foot.

Flint: Not literally.

Alyx: I’ll leave that to the audience’s imagination, I think. [1:38:55 sound effects]

Alyx: I couldn’t walk properly on it, but at the same time, I had to then go out and do a live tweet thread. While also taking photos, I was going to take some nice photos with my big camera. But then I couldn’t because I was like I can’t do three things at once, so instead I’ll do two things at once, which is walking and reporting with a phone. It was a gigantic parade and going up and down it was a pain in the neck. And there was some – the day before, that’s when some of the interesting side stories I have about the Brighton Trans Pride as well, so, on the on the day I commuted to Brighton, if those people who remember, there was the big IT outage of 2024, where I took the day off from work in IT, I mocked my colleagues on the group WhatsApp, for my work WhatsApp and then went on my jolly way blogging my way to Brighton Trans Pride and killed my foot because train travel was disrupted that day as well. Once I arrived at Pride and pre-bugged my foot, I learned went to because last year I went to a pub called The Actors where Ashleigh was doing a wonderful performance with Saint Lucifer – buy their albums! They’re really cool. I knew that pub was really nice, so I went there for a drink the night before the pub. I spoke to some trans folk in the pub as well, but then, as you saw last episode, Susie Green then walked in the room, being the biggest news story of that day. After unveiling Anne Trans Healthcare, which was crazy, I hadn’t had any – and all of a sudden we had that off the cuff interview, which you can check out.

Ashleigh: Yeah, yeah, you can check out. Next episode, in the last episode.

Alyx: I was like, what the fuck is my luck? Apart from that, the march went really well. As always, it was great to see no sponsors at a Pride. Because the main big thing is about Brighton Pride, the one before it, then having some issues.

Flint: Yeah, it is. It’s something that got me as well with Northern Pride was seeing the giant No Pride in Genocide flag there and lots of lots of again, that solidarity between different movements and I think that really ramped up once the election had sort of finished, it seemed to be real a difference in the fervour and the level of ferocity that people were bringing. Because we recognise that really for trans people and for many queer people, we were sitting in a situation of here’s the new boss, same as the old boss and the biggest example of this, I think, is London Trans Pride, which is also funnily enough the the first one that I’ve got to meet some of these lovely people here in this room for the first time, which is great.

Well, the really cool thing about London Trans Pride was firstly, that there was none of the really big corporate sponsorships and whatnot, which when you compare it to London Pride in general, which I didn’t go to, I don’t go to London Pride overall because it’s so big and they always have sponsors I’m not fond of.

Alyx: I’ve been there twice now. I don’t think I need to go again. Yeah, it’s sort of one of those where if you’ve done it twice. I’ve seen the Pride March up and down. One of the main big things, which I think as you said about Brighton Pride, is there’s the whole thing about sponsorships and the ethical situations with taking money from corporations complicit in genocide. And there were a fair share of, a few there as well.

Ashleigh: Yeah. Yeah. So that was London Pride and Big Brighton Pride. And it’s almost certainly going to be the case at the Big Manchester Pride at the end of this month.

Flint: Didn’t Palestinian protesters stop the march?

Alyx: There was a Pride in Toronto in Canada that did sit in and stop the march, and then I think Pride had to get cancelled or something.

Flint: So yeah, like comparing the issues with London Pride compared to Trans Pride in London was just night and day. First of all, I think the biggest, most glowing thing about London Trans Pride was the accessibility at the very front of the march was the accessibility block and that was specifically for people who needed mobility aids, people who, for whatever reason, would not be able to stand in a sea of people going at whatever pace the sea of people were setting. And, you know, having the people that we really should have to adjust our rhythm of movement forward to accommodate them at the front, just naturally resolved so many of those issues. And also puts that intersection between disability and medical care and access to trans healthcare and trans rights, you know, it highlights it importantly and necessarily so and so many marches this year were chanting free Palestine and that’s yes, so fucking great to see. And London Trans Pride, it was overwhelming. There was so many amazing signs, so many amazing people. Different groups and communities there, Queer AF was there. I remember actually at one point at the front where I was just trying to, you know, get pictures of things I turned and looked up and suddenly there was Yasmin Finney from Doctor Who and Bimini just stood there.

Flint: So yeah. And you know, obviously I was not about to turn that into a, oh, my God, hey, you know any of that stuff, I just took note and went that’s very cool. And then I carried on.

Speaker 4: Nice. And we can give them a What the Trans?! business card.

Flint: Well, I mean, if they aren’t already busy. They were leading chants and things.

Alyx: Hey Babes. And this is What the Trans.

Flint: But yeah, they have like. So many the speakers there, they had Vanessa Thompson. They had Sarah Jane Baker, Olivia Campbell. Cavendish as well, speaking. And yeah, there’s a massive, massive Palestine bloc as well. And just so many groups just showing up. And it was, it was great. It was double the amount, nearly 60,000 people, which is double the amount of what it was last year from what we can estimate and it really went off without a hitch, considering the blistering heat. We only had a few stoppages for pretty understandable reasons, and when we got there to the – I keep going to call it the [inaudible], but it’s not, it’s the Arch of Wellington, as we all sat there they had free water to give out as well. Just free water for people and you could sit and you could vibe and it was a nice and easy time. And you know, I feel like that same energy was then transplanted. Well, I think that same energy carried to Manchester Trans Pride, which I think is your fault, really.

Ashleigh: Manchester Pride happens in the August bank holiday weekend. Always has, but this was grassroots. No sponsors, no corporate sponsors, no sponsors of any kind. I think you know more along the lines of Trans Pride Brighton and Trans Pride London. And it too, was considerably larger than what it was last year. Last year it was the very first one it had ever done. And this year the size of the march was at least double. They had a lot of events, you know, booked around the march, the march was obviously the main thing. But there was also a stand up comedy night over at the Feel Good club. There were two different talks in the art gallery in Manchester Art Gallery along Moseley St and they had like a, you know, trans pride after party over at Freight Island. Anybody who’s listening to this from Manchester is probably like oh, I know that place. The main thing that was a bit of a hindrance both for us like physically reaching the spot where the march was to start from and just a general problem in Manchester yesterday was the fascists. So people who, a few years ago before it, like, officially stopped, people who would have been in the EDL. People who would have been in the BNP, all those people, they were gathered in Manchester. Obviously a lot of them had got the train in from out of town, but there were quite a lot of cities yesterday where some of these people who had their distorted misinformation narrative about what happened in Southport.

Because those fascist people were giving the police a hard time on Piccadilly Gardens, which is the route we would have taken, we would have just gone straight across the Gardens from here where we are and down to the where the march was starting from in Castlefield. But we couldn’t do that. We couldn’t cut straight across. We had to take this real arse about tit way to get to the start of the march so we would avoid the fascists.

And on the march itself, we had to kind of you, we saw a few times the march kind of turned back on itself and went down a different street. It’s because the police directed us to go down a different street and, you know, had we ignored them there would have been a problem, I suspect. But ultimately we got turned around like twice, you know, by the police saying don’t go up there because of the fascists, which essentially means because they weren’t letting large groups up towards Piccadilly Gardens, that the fascists essentially went unopposed. The counter protesters didn’t get anywhere near them because the police wouldn’t let them. So the fash just had the city yesterday.

Flint: Yeah. Yeah, it was a horrible thing because obviously this is a very recent rise in in these kinds of disgusting gatherings of people who have a complete detachment to reality at this point. And there is a lot of it. It was also difficult getting back, we had to stop because we had to consider route plans and whatnot. We just saw that there was, there was a lot of police on the streets trying to direct people about, stopping people for any little thing, and it seemed that their focus was much more on the counter protesters and on the people in Trans Pride, of managing us, as opposed to managing the fascists, and at the end me and Kai were sort of split off a bit, just to grab some stuff and make sure things were chill and when we came back. We came up to near the bus stop that we needed and we saw all of the fash, all of the icky white and red glory. We were trying to figure out the best way to not get any nearer to that. We ended up chatting to a lovely woman who noticed the shirts that we were wearing. And wanted to speak to us for a little bit about that. So we engaged in some conversation and then they started to dissipate, they had been, basically the sort of event that they’d been holding, the gathering started to dissipate and people started to shoot off, and then we suddenly realised, ah, now they’re all going to be on the buses and the trains. So we had to get an Uber back and – now listen, small price to pay. Literally. It was a very small fee. But the fact that we had to do that.

Because the police wouldn’t do what is, frankly, their job, was not just shitty. It was just a real big sign of the times and for other people and other scenarios, they wouldn’t be able to just hop into a taxi with no pre planning or regard for whatever accessibility needs and so really it was down to a position of privilege that we were able to get out there as quickly and easily as we were.

Speaker 4: I was actually a little bit scared as well in the evening when I was going back to my hotel for the same reason because I was kind of worried. I was still wearing my What the Trans?! T-shirt. I was like oh, what if some of them are still like out there in the streets? But I was okay. Nothing happened. But it just, even the fact that I have to worry about it and feel unsafe in, like such a major city, literally. Like I’m not doing anything. I’m literally just a trans person being open in a public space. I shouldn’t fear getting attacked by some fascist. It should just not be a thing.

Flint: And seeing the violence that has been caught on camera of the fascists for those people that did end up, you know too close to them. And they ended up like attacking people and destroying important community places like libraries and things like that. It’s hard to put into words the level of anger and disgust at the fact that this has just been allowed a sort of free roam. When we know the level of continual constant issues that there are. We’re trying to organise protests trying to prevent that kind of hate speech, actual incitement of violence and hate speech it takes a shit tonne, a shit tonne of organisation to figure that stuff out. Seeing the difference in how it is treated is just not. It’s just so much.

Ashleigh: Yeah, it’s annoying, isn’t it? Yes, definitely.

Alyx: So much. Yeah. Yeah. I was really fancying a Greggs at one point, and there were three riot vans outside of one of the Greggs. And I think they saw me coming their way and ran away. They’re like, I’m not doing with this shit. Alyx is too powerful. Give her her food.

Ashleigh: To bring things up a little, just as we finish up this segment, what was your favourite protest sign? Cause I’ve got mine. I know what mine is and everybody’s quickly scrambling to look through the What the Trans?! Instagram and it’s OK to all have the same one. I’m going to start though, which is one of the ones from yesterday and it’s got this really joyful person with a sign saying I transitioned and all I got was this lousy gender euphoria. Fantastic. Excellent sign work.

Alyx: Oh yeah, that was such a brilliant one. The person who was holding it was really cool, I had another really good one. It was saying every fascist’s doorstep is a gender neutral toilet.

Ashleigh: Nice. Nice.

Speaker 4: I have a few and I’ll just speed around through mine, so one of my favourites was actually a very simple sign. It didn’t have any artwork, it just had words on it and it was a teacher, a non-binary teacher in Southampton that had a sign saying if teaching about trans people loses me my job then fire me, I dare you.

Simple to the point and, I don’t know, big dick energy or whatever genitalia they like to have and I also made a sign. We made our own signs the night before the Pride. I made the sign specifically for Manchester Trans Pride and it says – Manchester: Noun a person who has undergone top surgery.

Flint: Awesome, man, when I saw I was like oh. That’s so good. It’s so funny.

Ashleigh: Yes, well, you had some comments on it on the day, didn’t you people? Yes, yes.

Speaker 4: Yeah, it made people smile which has made me happy.

Ashleigh: Better than mine, which said time for some gay space communism.

Speaker 4: It was very good, especially that picture of us when the What from What the Trans?! got cut off.

Ashleigh: Oh yeah, So what, time for some gay space communism.

Speaker 4: And then said –

Ashleigh: What time is it? Time for gay space communism! I wish I could just make that time happen anyway, but Flint.

Flint: The one that I made since we’re talking about the ones that we made was, I made one using a stencil that Ashleigh had and that said Trans Punks Smash the Cis-Tem. But Cis and Cis-Tem, right, which was really cool and I love that. But it’s so hard to pick quickly, but I will say probably – so one of my favourite ones was you wouldn’t steal a cis person’s hormones, because they aren’t. There was also cis isn’t a slur, but the way you wear it is offensive.

There was a really gorgeous one, like there were two really uplifting ones that I loved which said queer joy is an act of resistance. And then this beautiful one that I saw, which was the only choice I’ve ever made, was to be myself. And if there is not a quicker, easier way to sum up what we are doing when we’re fighting for these rights. It’s that indeed.

Alyx: Yeah. Hell yeah. I really like the [inaudible] too.

Speaker 4: That is the answer to the question of What the Trans?

Ashleigh: [inaudible].

Speaker 4: No, I mean, yeah. I mean, yes, but I meant the choice thing.

[1:55:55 sound effects]

Ashleigh: What’s your takeaway from Pride Season 2024?

Alyx: I’ve stopped calling summer summer. I just call it Pride Season. Fuck summer. Call it. Yeah, it’s just Pride. Yeah. All day. Warm weather and gayness, what can be better.

Flint: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, yeah. Like solidarity forever. Like, so I’ve often, I’ve often not been able to get to Prides or to sort of, you know, big events and protests and stuff. I’d had to be very careful about what accessibility wise, I’d be able to do and being so much more involved this year has been. So good for my mental health. It’s been so good to, to quote Vivian, go touch some fucking grass. This has been that for me. It’s been a… like, it’s so easy, especially when now we’re doing like media stuff or now that I’m doing like media stuff this much, to get lost in the doom scrolling and part of the thing that I love about What the Trans?! is that that doom scrolling has a reason and a purpose and a place.

But being able to just get you know, feet on the ground. In touch with real humans, real communities doing real shit it’s what we’re here for. And if you’re feeling a lot and if you’re feeling isolated, maybe go and check out one of the I’m sure local queer events that will be about and yeah. Because that that power of community has been the thing that I just keep coming back to, and it’s made all of the continual hits that have happened be easier to take and also the power of the difference in protests because Pride is very much a happy, we’re going to sing, we’re going to dance, we’re going to cheer and there are other protests that aren’t like that. And I think that’s something that does set apart Pride, at least within our cultural sphere, like.

Alyx: I do like the good mix.

Flint: Yeah, like I like a good mix, but I think that with Pride, with Pride parades in particular and Pride marches in particular, there’s protest, obviously. But there is the joy and the the revolt of rebellion, of being who you are authentically. That is something that is quite nicely unique to Pride stuff, because obviously the lens and the perspective of any community when they’re protesting is going to be different, even if that thing of actually, no, I’m a good human and I deserve respect is a cause that you will find at almost every single protest.

Ashleigh: Absolutely. Well, that’s pretty solid and a cheerful ish note to end on. So thank you for that.

Alyx: No, exactly. I think at the end of Manchester Trans Pride we also got to show off some pride about What the Trans?! as well.

Ashleigh: Yes, because we have merch. We got some T-shirts done as a kind of proof of concept as some kind of test runs. And there’s some pretty great stuff that we’ve got, you know that we’ve got coming, so we’ve got patches. We’re talking about badges. We’ve got T-shirts, some of which we’re talking about making for Patreons and some of which we’re talking about just putting in a shop. So let us know if you’d have a T-shirt and, but otherwise you can find us on our shiny website, which has yet to be a victim of enshittification, so at whatthetrans.com you obviously can find us on Twitter. We’re on Threads. We’re on, what’s the other one that’s not Threads, BlueSky.

Alyx: Instagram. Ohh hold on. I’ll give you a proper list here. So we’ve got Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Threads. We also posted on Transgender UK on Reddit, BlueSky. And if I’ve missed any out, you can find our contact page where we have all our social medias linked in there.

Ashleigh: Yeah, super duper, but yeah, that’s it. That’s the episode. Thanks everyone for listening and we’ll be back in a couple of weeks.

[end credit music plays]

Alyx: This episode was written, produced and presented by Ashleigh Talbot, Alyx Bedwell and Leigh Flint, edited by Amber Devereaux and Oliver Morris with music composed by Waritsara Yui Karlberg. Episode transcription produced by Sam Wyman, Rowan B and Georgia Griffiths. And we would especially like to thank our Patreon producers:

Alyx, Ashleigh and Leigh: Brooke Rayburn Findlay, Stefan Blakehall, [inaudible], [all the crazzee reverb] CRAZZEE RICHARD, needles and threads, Flaming Dathne, Dr McGee, Genevieve Dickson, Rachel Harrison, Katie Reynolds, Georgia Holden-Burnett, Grabilicious, Alex T, Rootminusone, Grey, Elisabeth Anderson, Bernice Roust, Ellen Mellor, Jay Hoskins, Trowan, Ashley, Matty B, Setcab, Jane, Roberto de Prunk, Rose Absolute, Sarah, Sena, Kiki T, Dee, Skye Kilaen, Eric Widman, Bee, Jude, monsieur squirrel, Fergus Evans, anubisajackal, Camina, Brandon Craig, braykthasistim, Sian Phillips, Heidi Rearden, Ezra, Lentil, clara vulliamy, Amelia, Corvina Ravenheart the trans metal DJ from Twitch and VR chat will play St Lucifer for props, Tabitha Jo Cox aka Candy, Fiona Macdonell, Torikuso H, Murgatroid, ontologicallyunjust, Stella, Cyndergosa, Rebecca Prentice, [all the crazzee reverb] CRAZZEE RICHARD, danoblivion, Florence Stanley, Helen_, Elle Hollingsworth, Melody Nyx, Nick Ross, Fiona Punchard, John, Nick Duffy, CB Bailey, Ted Delphos, Gordon Cameron, Patreon User, Melissa Brooks, Vic Parsons, Vic Kelly, Katherine, Sabrina McVeigh, Sofie Lewis, Cassius Adair, Karaken12, April Heller, Alexandra Lilly, Claire Scott, Ariadne Pena, Laynos, Lauren O’Nions, Bernard’s Pink Jellybean, and Chris Hubley.

Thank you all for watching! Thank you so much, bye!