On this extremely chonky episode of What the Trans?! Flint, Ashleigh and Alyx rake over the coals on:
- A multitude of stories from the USA.
- The ‘Sullivan Review’ and why it’s not worth the pixels you’ll use to read it.
- Stories from within the NHS, Metropolitan Police and International Olympic Committee.
- Stories from Hungary, Namibia and Russia.
- A visit to a double-trouble Loser’s Corner
- An interview with Chay from TransActual.
References
Action Alley
Postcode Lottery Research Study
The author of the study is on BlueSky
Nottingham Against Transphobia on Instagram
Texas
Texas AG Paxton Declares Court Orders “Void,” Orders Gender Markers Reverted For Trans People
Germany, Interpride Issue Travel Advisories
Germany, InterPride Issue LGBTQ Travel Advisories About United States
Canadian LGBTQ group cancels WorldPride participation over Trump policies
LGBTQ+ rights group urges WorldPride boycott, calling US government a ‘fascist regime’
Self vs. Keating
“Have You No Decency?”: Republican Calls Sarah McBride “Mister,” Dems Erupt And End Hearing
Lightning-round Stories
A trans sex worker called 911 to report being kidnapped. LAPD officers shot and killed her
Moderate Dems message to progressives: We’re not backing down – POLITICO
9th Circuit Upholds Bathroom Ban, Says Trans Students Violate Cis People’s Privacy
Appeals court blocks Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | AP News
US judge blocks Trump’s ban on trans people serving in the military
Sullivan Review
Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender – GOV.UK
Biological sex erased from official data on health, crime and education – The Times (Archive Link)
Statement on the Sullivan Review: Biased, inadequate and potentially harmful to all – TransActual
NHS Deletes Website Information About Trans People
https://bsky.app/profile/foxdie.bsky.social/post/3lkv6j64lus2k
https://web.archive.org/web/20250201015026/https://pcse.england.nhs.uk/help/patient-registrations/adoption-and-gender-reassignment-processes (Old version of site, archive copy)
Met Police Tribunal
Met Police training officer ‘called women a bunch of lesbians’ over transgender views
IOC
Vote for Olympic head could be key for trans, intersex athletes | Context
Candidates for IOC president on transgender athletes in women’s sport – CNA
‘Time for female IOC president’ – Coventry eyes historic role – BBC
Open Play by Sheree Bekker, Stephen Mumford | Waterstones
NHS BDD and the SEGM
Are trans teens safe in NHS BDD services? | Trans Safety Network
Hungary
Hungary bans LGBT Pride marches sparking protests – BBC News
Thousands protest in Budapest against law banning Pride | Reuters
Namibia
President blocks anti-gay bills – News – The Namibian
Russia
Loser’s Corner
Christian teacher loses court case over LGBT+ ‘sin’ comments
New German, Swiss, And Austrian Guidelines Recommend Trans Youth Care, Slam Cass Review
S2k-Leitlinie Geschlechtsinkongruenz und Geschlechtsdysphorie im Kindes- und Jugendalter – Diagnostik und Behandlung (See, we told you the title was even longer in German)
Trans Joy
Transcript
[sample] Ah, bollocks. [intro music]Alyx: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of What The Trans?
Flint: What the Trans?
Ashleigh: What the Trans? No, no. Yeah, can’t be trusted to do a fancy musical theatre style harmony. We’ll do it one day.
Alyx: Too early in the morning.
Ashleigh: Too early in the morning. Far too early in the morning.
Flint: It is too early in the morning. We’re up in the AM. That’s already a sign.
Ashleigh: Unprecedented.
[Samle: Black Books] Wait a second. What time is it? Um, half ten. Half ten? Half ten? I’ve never been up in half ten. What happens?Ashleigh: And if we, you know, get our skates on and don’t whitter on too much, we might even be done by lunchtime. That’s how early it is.
Flint: Whoopie!
Alyx: Yay! I’ve got, like a film I’m watching at around three and I’ve got to head off to London for it. It’s one of the big IMAXs as well, so…
Flint: If we aren’t done by three o’clock then I think we need to have a word with ourselves. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Oh yes.
Flint: It is currently 10.41. I pray for, if nothing or not more, our editors that we are done before 12.
Ashleigh: Can you imagine? They quite justifiably resigned in protest.
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: Turned in…
Flint: Fucking valid unionisation at that point. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely. Here we go. Here’s five hours of audio. What? So how are we both?
Flint: Been up and down. This week has been a rough one. The… The current disability changes have been fucking horrific. And me and my friends have been scrabbling around really trying to figure out A, what that means, B, what it means for us, C. Like, you know, I mean, us as in, our each different places within sort of the space of disability. And yeah, it’s been a scary, not fun, stressful time. Like, as if we didn’t have enough battles to fucking fight already. Adding in another one. So that’s great. Wonderful. Cheers. Thanks, Gov. Um, fuck you. Fuck you so much. Cheers.
Ashleigh: Oh, yeah. Fuck you very much. Honestly, something similar for me. Obviously, I’m a wheelchair user and I’m worried that they will look at the podcast and say, well, you’re perfectly capable of doing something so you have to get a job. Um, you know, I’m desperately concerned because this, working at this pace and getting something out once every two weeks is about the limit of what I can manage, really. Because each podcast episode, despite what you might think, does take some effort to put together and all the writing and organizing and stuff. We all do that. But my part in that is kind of as much as I can manage. Because it is pretty tiring to do, to just spend a day bashing out the script on a keyboard.
Alyx: And all the studying and all the researching as well. And also trying to chase sources as well. Because if you want a nice meet, managing all that, it’s a frickin’ mess. I don’t know how I manage it some days.
Flint: Well, it’s not awful. It can be awfully taxing when it’s happening really quickly. The reason why I am able to be here and have been here sort of kind of consistently is because of how flexible you can be with it. If I need a day off, that’s not pay that’s lost. That’s not, you know, like, we don’t have to commute every single day to do eight hours. There is so much flexibility within how much we’re able to do. I mean, not everything is super flexible. You know, obviously we have set recording days and things like that.
But there’s enough manoeuvrability that this is the closest to a continual working job I’ve had because every time I had gotten a job until I like, went on long term sick, my back would go out on me. I’d have a big disc slip. And I would get incredibly burnt out and overwhelmed because autism, ADHD. And then on top of that, you know, I need months of recovery, which means I have to then give up the job. They can try and weaponise it but like, I mean, yeah, it is scary that they may try and weaponize it. And that is something that is not lost on me either because there is so much to the ways in which any and every part of your life that is not pain and suffering is weaponized against you as a disabled person when you’re in these situations like PIP like limited capability for work.
I think that there’s this kind of thing of, well, like if you’re seen as having too happy of a time that seems to be a problem. Instead of it being recognized as ah, you’re getting the opportunity to live a life that is fulfilling. And that is something that people deserve regardless of what their fucking contribution to capitalism is recognised as. Which by the way, we also fucking do because like disabled people get taxed so hard like informally through the fact that accessibility is considered luxury as far as the market is concerned. And, you know, the amount of times that that means that you’re paying for, you know, more taxis than the average, or you’re having to buy furniture that has specifications in it and accessibility put into it. And, you know, so many of these things. Even, like, dietary requirements can be a whole thing. It means that you can end up having to buy food that’s labeled as health food at a premium, instead of being able to get like the 60p loaves of bread. It’s just that on top of being given less for it on top of then having a sense of suspicion placed upon you for daring to then enjoy life outside of that.
Ashleigh: Yes.
Flint: I’ve had a lot of feelings. I’ve had a lot of feelings about all this.
Ashleigh: Yeah. So I’m honestly a bit lost for words that a Labour government would consider this. And obviously something else that’s been mentioned that they might do is kind of pushing young people to, you know, go into the armed forces as a way of tackling unemployment. That’s something else that’s been brought up. So disability cuts and national service by the back door. Isn’t it great that we voted for Labour who are almost indistinguishable from the Tories we were so delighted to get rid of? But let’s talk about resistance to it, right? Because there’s a group called Crips Against Cuts. There’s also disabled people against the cuts who’ve existed for a long time. Both those organisations have planned quite a lot of protests. I’ve just got the Crips Against Cuts planned actions on the screen in front of me now. And it would, honestly, it’s everywhere. It’s happening everywhere. It’s Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Coventry, Bristol, Bournemouth, Exeter, Truro, Portsmouth, Brighton, London, Sheffield, Leeds, Darlington, Newcastle and Edinburgh. So there might be one near you and by the time this episode goes out, there may even be more planned. So, you know, fight back. You raise your voice. Go to a protest.
Flint: Yep. Even if you’re not disabled, please turn up, listen, engage. Do not consider this to be, you know, in the same way, it’s likely that the people listening to this are trans, right? Like, that’s a 99.9% probability. You’re going to understand the need for people who are not immediately within your community to still stand up and be vocal on issues. And so if you haven’t engaged in much activism for disability rights, for disability justice, then please do so. Like, get involved. It’s very much a similar kind of thing of like, we need more than just us to be vocal on this. But we do need the people who aren’t, you know, directly impacted by this to also recognise that they’re there to support and they’re there to help further share our voice, further share our needs for decent, liveable human standards. And yeah, don’t let the fear shrink you and remove you from the ability to engage and fight back. That’s what they want. They want us to sit down, shut up and take it. And if you think I fucking will, oh, you’ve got another thing coming.
Ashleigh: And in fact, just basically I’m looking at the page for the planned action for Manchester and it’s today. So once we finish recording, I’ve got to get somewhere for three o’clock as well.
Flint: Fucking rights on. Brilliant.
Ashleigh: Damn right. So since we’ve both got– since two of us have plans.
Flint Yeah, Alex, how are you doing? [laughs]
Ashleigh: Yeah, how are you darling?
Alyx: I’m doing well. I mean, I could complain about Labour tax as well, but that’s because I’m buying a new home and stamp duty’s an arsehole. But that’s a whole other story whatsoever. But I’ve sort of, I’ve been chilling. I’ve been watching way too many home decoration videos for what’s healthy, I reckon.
Flint: Have you been, have you been playing house flipper in preparation?
Alyx: I probably should, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. I’ve been sort of trying to play some Borderlands with my coworkers recently. So that’s my extent of gaming at the moment. Because I’ve never really played it before. And everyone says, oh, you should play, it’s such a good game.
Flint: Yeah, I’ve meant to get around to that one because I’ve had people not just recommend it to me, but also be like, no, you in particular would like, like this character in this thing. So I meant to get around to it. But recently I’ve actually been mainly playing the Dark Pictures anthology. I’ve completed Man of Medan. I’m now on Little Hope and I’ve also started playing House of Ashes because I don’t know when to stop. And then I’ve been playing Coffee Talk, which… Coffee Talk 2. I’m not going to go on a rant about how much I love that game. I just, I love, I love, I love Coffee Talk. It’s such a beautiful, sweet, unique little game. And I just, it makes my heart happy.
Alyx: Indeed. You’ve been doing some Avowed recently, haven’t you?
Ashleigh: I have indeed. Yeah, good fun. Just a good solid game. It’s got good combat mechanics. There’s several different ways of going about it. It’s an Obsidian game. So there’s lots of different ways of resolving at any given quest. You don’t have to go in and do a violence. You can usually talk people down or whatever. It’s great. It’s just, you know, good solid RPG. It’s not going to set the world on fire, but it doesn’t need to. It’s just a good game where like you’ll play it and then maybe a couple of years later, you’ll remember, oh yeah, Avowed, I enjoyed that. And you’ll, you’ll go back to it. It’s that sort of game, I think. And it reminded me of the Outer Worlds, not the Outer Wilds, in a good way. And I mean, again, Obsidian who made Fallout New Vegas, which is the transiest game that ever transed.
Flint: Yes.
Alyx: Hell yeah.
Flint: It’s one of Owen’s favorite games and I’ll often be like, yes, egg, of course. [laughs]
Amber: At this point in the recording, there was some weird little technical glitch that happened. I don’t really know. But Flint’s microphone then switched to a different one. So that’s why Flint is going to sound different for the rest of the episode. OK.
Ashleigh: Since two of us have plans this very afternoon happening at three o’clock, let’s crack on, shall we?
Alyx: Oh, indeed. And we might as well jump to Action Alley. But this one’s not an action that is going to take place, but an action that has taken place and has really blown away, blown us away. Because this week, What The Trans joined forces of the trans journalists over at Assigned Media and together we put together a fundraiser for improving our respective websites. We spent months going back and forth for Assigned Media, talking about our needs for the site and getting quotes, then discussing how we’d word the fundraiser, what the image would look like. But eventually, once we had all of that sorted out, we launched the fundraiser and settled in for the long haul, which was a bit preemptive because we reached that target amount in a little under 90 minutes, which is terrific.
Flint: Yeah. Yeah. It is so gobsmacking. Like, I cannot. I couldn’t comprehend. It’s it– to get a like, I don’t know. It was crazy. The idea that you could just put on like a feature length film and it was already funded by the time that that was over. Like that is, I cannot. I just thank you. Oh my God. Thank you. That’s beyond what kind of support we ever thought we were going to get. We all thought this was going to be a much longer haul. And instead, it was like, wait, really already? Oh, oh, and another milestone? Really? All right. Oh, oh my God. Oh my God. And I don’t know, that’s that’s very cool.
Alyx: And when we went to close the fundraiser before it went over the 2,500 mark, people were just donating so quickly that we couldn’t even close it before people kept chucking money at us. And it’s like, stop, we got what we want.
Ashleigh: We got what we needed. And, you know, and any extra there’s not like the stretch goals on a Kickstarter or something. It’s like we’ve got the amount we needed. That’s it. But I mean, yeah, as Flint has already said, if you were part of that, if you donated or even if you just shared it. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was amazing. Wasn’t it just?
Alyx: Oh, yeah, mind blowing.
Ashleigh: So we’ll keep you posted on updates to the site as we make them happen. We’re hoping to make the website more accessible, bit easier to use and you know, a few other things like that. We’re hoping to have the option to enable dark mode on there and a few other little quality of life improvements. But as I said, we’ll let you know how it all goes. And again, if you’re one of the people that chipped in for this, thank you so much.
Alyx: Thank you.
Flint: Thank you so much.
Alyx: Moving on from that. Awesomeness.
Ashleigh: Mm hmm.
Flint: Yes.
Ashleigh: So there is a new trans-led research study into regional equalities when accessing trans health care in England. It’s a relatively short survey. It estimates that it’ll take 15 to 30 minutes to complete. And the survey will be available until the 6th of April, 2025. So more information and the survey itself are available on its website, which we will of course link in the show notes. So yeah, go go and fill that out. So the survey is actually called the postcode lottery survey, right, which seems accurate because that’s very much what trans health care feels like, you know, depending on where you live, you might have a very, very different experience. So I think it’s worth collecting that data and kind of using it to say, hey, look, we need to stop doing this regional center thing. So it’s time to move away from the gender clinic model and maybe start putting some of this stuff out to primary care. So it’s more available there on the ground. Wouldn’t that be nice? Hmm. But yeah, let’s gather some data first. So please do fill that out.
Alyx: Before they make the data dodgy to take.
Flint: And next up, we have the charity football versus homophobia, having their annual football V transphobia week of action. So from March 25th through to trans day visibility on March 31st, they’re encouraging you or anyone really to promote trans inclusion in football, amplify trans voices and just generally make trans people feel safe and heard in the sport, which is wonderful. As someone who was petrified every time PE came around as, you know, for multiple reasons, this is very cool and very nice and it’s good to see. And resources for that are on the football v homophobia website and doubtless they’ll be posting cool stuff on socials during the week as well. So go check it out.
Alyx: Hell yeah, bring more positivity to trans people in sports because talking of the football, that’s that really cool documentary by the trans UK football team, wasn’t there?
Flint: Yeah.
Alyx: I need to fully watch it. I almost did it last night, but I had to go to bed pretty early to get to do the recording in the morning. So I couldn’t get around to seeing it, but it seems also Trans Kids Deserve Better have got one. So, you know.
Ashleigh: All the cool kids are making documentaries.
Flint: Indeed, they seem to be.
Alyx: Yeah.
Ashleigh: Foreshadowing is a narrative device.
[laughter]Flint: And speaking of Trans Day Of Visibility, on the 30th of March there is going to be an event in Newcastle on One Strawberry Lane that is, well, for Trans Day Of Visibility. So if you’re in the area, get down there. It’s being done with the people at Bookworm in Durham who do a few events in the northeast area, particularly Durham. I know it’s not really protest related, but in the interest of, you know, community connection and all that, then, you know, there’s also trans craft events that you can go to. I think they’re at the People’s Bookshop. And yeah, I think I was speaking to someone that’s involved in that recently, and they were telling me about their zine called Wolfpack that’s really cool. And I’m pretty sure it featured one of the poems that I’d had at a vigil. So anyway, that’s northeast stuff. Yeah.
Alyx: The group Nottingham Against Transphobia is organizing a counter protest in response to a certain grifting Nazi who has a history with soup, who has a scheduled appearance in the city on the 28th of March. So if you’re able to volunteer your support as a marshal, first aid or observer, or just to provide your support, you can contact Nottingham Against Transphobia via their Instagram.
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: Yep. That’s it for Action Alley. Sorry, it’s a bit of a shorter one this week, but some weeks are better than others. We’re going to have to get on with the news.
[sound effect: disappointed crowd]Ashleigh: Aw. Oh no. Very sad, very sad. But first, we’re going to take a nice, jaunty little hop across the pond. What we’ve started doing when we’re looking at the American stories is kind of front loading them so that we’ll deal with the slightly more negative stories first. And then we’ll do the slightly more positive ones towards the end. We’ve got quite a few stories to get to. So we’ve done three, kind of in depth, and six more as a kind of, you know…
Alyx: Lightning round.
Ashleigh: Lightning round. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good phrasing. And in each case, we’re going to start with the ropey news first. So with that said, to Texas, where the state attorney general Kenneth Paxton has declared that any previously issued changes of gender markers on state documents like birth certificates and driver’s licenses are now to be reverted, saying that all court orders to change them are null and void. Here’s a quote from a letter that Paxton wrote to Texas Department of Public Safety Director, Colonel Freeman F. Martin. There’s some Latin legalese in this letter that I’ll translate once we get to the end. And I promise I won’t do my comedy Texas accent because this story is kind of serious. “The judicial power in doubt to district courts does not countenance ex parte orders directing state agencies to amend a person’s biological sex on driver’s licenses or birth certificates. The underlying proceedings are coram non judice and the resulting orders are void. State agencies must immediately correct any unlawfully altered driver’s licenses or birth certificates that were changed pursuant to such orders”. So ex parte means quote a legal proceeding brought by one party in the absence of and without representation of or notification to the other party. And coram non judice means not before a judge and is another legal term which is usually used quote: to indicate a legal proceeding that is outside the presence of a judge. Thanks Wikipedia.
Alyx: Thank you Wikipedia.
Flint; Cheers.
Ashleigh: So basically Paxton’s letter is saying that trans people’s changes of gender markers are null and void because the court doesn’t have the authority to make those changes in his opinion. He’s also made a point of referring to any changes as unlawful, which is more a statement about what he wishes was the case than something that accurately reflects current law. Paxton’s interpretation hinges on a Texas law from 1936 with his letter saying it is unreasonable to suggest that the original public meaning of sex in 1936 somehow included a psychosocial concept that had not yet been invented, which is ahistorical as well as being just plain wrong. The OG Nazis had already smashed and burned the Berlin Institute for sexual vissenschaft by 1936 because shocker, trans people existed back then too. I could spend ages talking about just this one case but I’m going to move us on. However, if you are interested, there is an excellent write up of this by Aaron Reed of Aaron in the morning. So we’ll link that in the usual place. So did you catch this one?
Flint: Yeah, I don’t think he has the immediate authority to decide if the court doesn’t have the authority because a lot of his argument here is stuff that is not actually correct. It is just what he wants and it’s basically him posturing quite intimidatingly, I would say in my opinion. It is a kind of grandstanding posturing, look big and mean and authoritative enough and then people will just fall in line without going, actually we need to test the mettle of that legality first because I don’t know this looks inherently unconstitutional to me, a non lawyer who’s not American.
Alyx: It just screams you have no authority here Jackie Weaver.
Flint: Yeah, yeah, it’s very much– it is deliberate, like they know that they’re bullshitting here in my opinion. I think they know that they’re bullshitting. They just are giving license to the people who want to do this shit anyway and intimidating the people who don’t want to do this shit to do it.
Ashleigh: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think quite a lot of the stuff that the Trump administration and its flunkies are doing is hoping and kind of being intimidating to try and get organizations to comply in advance. Yeah, yeah, without specifically being told because they’ll read the writing on the wall and say, oh, we need to do this now and then everybody starts doing that.
Flint: And also to treat all of these moves as legitimate and in good faith. Yes, which they are fundamentally not.
Ashleigh: So that’s Texas out of the way.
Alyx: Now to Germany. Well, technically. So the next one is more about another country’s reaction to the US now being even more of a hellscape for LGBTQ plus people. Germany has now issued travel advisers for LGBTQ plus people who plan to visit the United States alongside an organization called Interpride, which is a worldwide association of more than 400 pride organizations from over 70 countries. Interpride put out a statement over social media which said, quote, due to an executive order issued by the US president on January 20, all travelers must select either male or female when applying for entry or visas. The gender listed at birth will be considered valid. If your passport has X as a gender marker or differs from your birth assigned gender, we strongly recommend contacting the US diplomatic mission before traveling to confirm entry requirements. This is especially concerning given that Washington DC was selected as the host city for this year’s World Pride and it’s due to take place in June and one Canadian LGBTQ plus group, EGAL Canada, has already canceled its planned participation in World Pride. They said, quote, this decision is foremost based on the need to safeguard our trans and non-binary staff who would face questionable treatment at land and aviation borders to attend such convenings and to stand with solidarity with global colleagues who are experiencing the similar fear around the entry to the United States. And a phrase questionable treatment is doing some real heavy lifting here.
Another group, the African Human Rights Coalition, have called on other LGBTQ plus groups to boycott world pride this year. Describing the US as being governed by an antagonist fascist regime, a spokesman said. Although probably impossible to hold elsewhere at such late notice, world pride must consider withdrawing the event from the USA and come out with a strong statement condemning the US for the dangerous environment it presents to LGBTQI+ people entering the country. Tara Demant, the National Director of Programs at Amnesty International USA, spoke to the aforementioned Erin in the morning and said that there is a real threat of profiling and targeting trans, non-binary and genderqueer travelers with real implications for their safety and security. The US government has instructed consular officers to deny applications made by transgender athletes which opens the door to block visas for people who have quote unquote misrepresented their sex with their application. And Demant also points out that the Border Patrol Authority looks at your passport, looks at you and thinks, that’s not what I think a woman looks like and what does that mean for someone who’s travelling with them? Now they have to prove that their gender identity aligns with their sex, they’re assigned a birth which is a non-scientific and very discriminatory way of understanding sex and gender. So if you’re due to travel to the US sometime soon then we suggest at the very least to contact the US Consulate here in the UK and get their advice about your travel plans. We’ll include contact details for them on our website page for this episode.
Flint: Horrifying. And I mean it’s understandable that there are calls for a boycott considering I think that the heightened level of danger that anyone going to that event would be taking on is obviously something to consider. When I think about that, that’s realistically not really in line with the fact of it’s World Pride, it is a very big event that is, not to therefore say it’s worse for anything but like the idea that if World Pride isn’t there, that community has nothing is very black and white thinking. It feels like this location with this current scenario happening, it feels like a trap. And it’s not, that’s not to say it is obviously it’s just it’s that thing of like you know, okay there is some fresh water in the lion’s den but I’m still going to have to get past the lions.
Alyx: Yeah and World Pride I mean it’s more of an event than a pride as a protest in this sense as well. If it was one where they’d make it more of a protest sort of thing then it would be something but because of the nature of it being a World Pride and could be used as a pink washing opportunity, if it does continue they’d need to keep– take a key eye look at that as well.
Ashleigh: So sticking with Washington DC.
Flint: Yeah. I know that we’ve all been pretty frustrated about, you know, looking through all of the news from the USA and the like pretty clearly perceived lack of pushback from the Democratic Party who largely seem to be rolling over and letting the Republicans completely fuck the entire future. And in particular they seem happy for the Republicans to straight up bully their newly elected House representative from Delaware Sarah McBride. As we’ve mentioned on the show before, McBride is a trans woman. She was the catalyst behind the representative Nancy Mace to slam through a rule that said House representatives have to use the toilet that aligns with their assigned sex at birth rather than their actual gender. Given that McBride is the only trans person currently in the House and the rule was put only through after her election, this was obviously an extremely targeted act. The Democrats and it must be said McBride herself didn’t really put up much of a fight to stop this from happening.
But maybe, just maybe we’ve seen some signs that this might be about to change. This is because in a meeting of the House Foreign Relations Subcommittee on March 11, the chair of the meeting Texas Republican Keith Self deliberately misgendered McBride, referring to her as the gentleman from Delaware, and McBride instantly shot back calling Self Madame chair. Her Democratic colleague, however, Bill Keating from Maryland then took up the mantle and asked Self, have you no decency? This next bit we will be doing is a short play with Alex as Keith self and Ashley is Bill Keating.
Ashleigh: Mr Chairman, could you repeat your instruction again please?
Alyx: Yes, yes, we’ve set the standard of a floor of a house and I’m simply…
Ashleigh: What is that standard Mr Chairman? Could you repeat what you just said when you introduced a duly elected representative from the United States of America? Please?
Alyx: I will… the representative from Delaware, Mr McBride.
Ashleigh: Mr Chairman, you are out of order. Have you no decency? I’ve come to know you a little bit but this is not decent.
Alyx: We’ll continue this hearing.
Ashleigh: You will not continue it with me unless you introduce a duly elected representative the right way.
[sound effect: applause]Flint: At which point Self adjourned the meeting, ending the session. Right afterwards, Self started posting about it on Twitter saying it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female, echoing the executive order signed by Trump back in January. We’re also pretty sure that Keating’s use of the phrase, have you no decency, is itself a callback to the 1950s session of the House Un-American Activities Committee, where Senator Joseph McCarthy was asked this question after his relentless pursuit of perceived communists was widely having seen as overreached. The question has become part of the political lexicon in the US, usually used when someone is viewed as having gone much too far. We hope that this is only the beginning of the Democrats long overdue fight against the fascists who have overtaken the US government. Yeah, so I was glad to see this. Glad to see this. It does feel like quite a little. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, I don’t know if the amount of action that we would want to see from McBride is going to match up with the amount of action she would actually be able to take before she is just like, sentured or found in contempt or something like that. But something akin to that, right? But I do feel as though this energy we need more of, we need much more of, and we do need it. We’ve needed it from before this point.
Ashleigh: Yeah, we needed it yesterday.
Flint: Yeah, and so I’m glad that this happened, but I feel uncomfortable letting my happiness from that turn to a reassurance that now they’re fighting back fully and totally. Pick up momentum, please. And yeah, more, more energy like that from people like Keating as well, because that is what will enable Sarah McBride and any closeted trans members of Congress or whatever to be able to vocally support and vocally assert their rights, their right to decency.
Alyx: I saw a post recently where when you saw the Democrat leader Chuck Schumer capitulate to the budget that Trump had put out, their polling ratings went down, but when they like dramatically fell, but then when you got to, well, they voted against the bill for a sports ban, there was a nice little peek upwards. Being an ally is still something that shows you’ve got some gumption.
Flint: Yeah. And realistically, you know, in America, it seems, you know, we’re at the point where the fascists are in the room. They’re running the meetings, right? Fascism is what is happening in America. What is now being built, what is now being attempted is the authoritarianism. That is what is being constructed next, because you’ve got the foundation of fascism. Now it’s the authoritarianism that’s being built on top of that to, you know, prevent any fight back to the fascism. And that’s where Trump’s heading in, at least in my eyes.
And that you need to stop that at every single fucking turn. You need to like, state clearly and openly that this is not legitimate. It is not constitutional. It is not, you know, this is this is and this is a very small example because it’s a very, very basic form of everyday decency. But if you recognize it in these situations, you need to be stepping up in the big ones. You need to be denying these meetings their legitimacy when they are regarding things that are going to bring in authoritarian fuckery. Please, please, please.
Ashleigh: Yeah, please, please do a bit more. Just quickly before we move on, there has been an article in Notice about Sarah McBride and the kind of quote that she’s given to them is that, you know, we need to make a bigger tent. But a lot of people have interpreted that as as McBride saying, you know, we need to try and build common cause with some fascists and fascist adjacent people. Yeah, like so we need to kind of make the tent bigger is saying, you know, are you saying that we should try and bring some more Republicans across?
Because that has been her intention and she says that she’s had a number of conversations with Republicans and they’ve, you know, they’ve come away from the meeting seeing things more from her perspective, whether they vote based on those principles, who the hell knows. So yeah, there is a lot of the discourse around McBride at the moment and we will include a link to that notice article in the description. As we’ve said, we’re going to approach some more US stories in a lightning round kind of way because as ever, there is a lot going on.
Some of these are much heavier than the others. So we’ll start with those and work our way through to some more positive stories. And unfortunately, this first story comes with a content warning for police violence and the death of a trans woman. If you can’t listen to this right now, please skip ahead to the time code Amber is about to give you.
Amber: 37 minutes and four seconds.
Ashleigh: Thanks Amber. More details have now emerged in the death of trans sex worker Linda Becerra Moran. She made a call to 911 on the morning of February 7th and told the operator that she had been kidnapped, restrained, physically abused and was scared of being trafficked. Once the officers arrived at the hotel room she was in, they shot her. She died on February 27th after being taken off life support. The LAPD did not even acknowledge her death for over a week. So, you know, ACAB.
Flint: Yep. Fuck em.
Ashleigh: Yep. Fuck em.
Alyx: Absolutely horrid. So, for the next story, despite what we’ve seen with Sarah McBride and Bill Keating, some quote unquote moderate Democrats are still taking what you’d expect to be the quiet part and saying it really loud. Like John Fennott, the former senior advisor to equally former centrist senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Moderates are having their moment, said not. I think people are realising that there are many reasons we lost in 2024, but acquiescence to all of the liberal groups and fighting and dying on hills about one and two and three percent of the voting population seemed to be really dumb.
Flint: That’s such a stupid take.
Ashleigh: It is.
Flint: That’s just not actually, oh my god, whatever dude, fuck em, whatever dude. So, because a lot of the back and forth over trans rights in America takes place in the courtroom, that’s where we’re going for the next few stories. Unfortunately, this first one sets a troubling precedent. The Ninth Circuit Court, which is a federal court that hears cases from Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana and Nevada, Oregon and Washington, is considered a fairly liberal and progressive court. But not this time, because they have ruled to uphold a bathroom ban and to quote Erin Reid once again, that the rights of cisgender people to not have a transgender person in the same bathroom are more important than the equal protection of trans students. The ruling explicitly categorizes trans students as being to the opposite sex of the changing room, with sex specifically defined as their sex assigned at birth. This means that trans girls students will be forced to use the boys changing room and vice versa. And I guess just fuck you to anyone that’s non-binary, right? So this is a pretty grim precedent to set, and could pave the way for further repression of trans people in the US.
Ashleigh: Next, let’s go to Ohio, where the state’s Court of Appeals ruled that a ban on gender-affirming care for the under-18s is unconstitutional, reversing the legislation that was put in place last summer. But the same ruling also apparently banned trans women and girls from playing female sports, so it’s a little bit like a gentle caress with one hand to getting punched in the dick with the other. Is it still progress if a ruling does both of those things?
Flint: It’s a deeply confused ruling, regardless.
Alyx: Sticking with the courts, going federal this time to US District Judge Anna Reyes, who struck down Trump’s executive order ban on transgender people in the military. Again, on the basis that it’s probably unconstitutional and violates trans service members’ rights. And in her ruling, the out gay judge said, quote, If the court knows that this opinion will lead to a heated public debate and appeals, and in a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes. We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.
Flint: And finally, in every accusation is a confession news, let’s talk about Republican State Senator for Minnesota, Justin Eichorn. In the past, he’s gone on record as saying he wants to quote unquote protect women and girls from those evil trans people and made headlines on Monday 17th for including a bill to make Trump derangement syndrome into an actual mental illness. Now, hearing all of that, why don’t you have a guess at what he was arrested for a few hours after introducing his bill? I’ll wait. That’s right. He was arrested at night on Monday 17th of March for allegedly soliciting prostitution from a 17 year old girl. According to a statement from the Bloomington Police Department, police officers were in contact with Eichornn, who believed quote, He was talking to a 17 year old female, so they arranged to meet on Monday evening and arrested him. Gross, horrifying, get in the bin.
Alyx: They project more than the IMAX projector I’m going to later.
Ashleigh: Yeah. Let’s bring it home. Let’s come on back to the UK.
[sound effect: Obi Wan] No!Ashleigh: Because there’s a fair bit of stuff to get through for us this week as well.
Alyx: Yes. What a mess this is.
Ashleigh: It very much is. So, you’ve probably heard about this one. Let’s talk about the Sullivan Review, which was an [coughs] Independent report into sex and gender data commissioned under the Tories and it was published on the government’s website, and it was the same amount of independent as the Cass Review was. The report is from UCL’s Social Research Institute and was led by Professor Alice Sullivan. Sullivan is a member of Sex Matters Advisory Group. The review also makes extensive use of completely unbiased data from the Scottish anti-trans group, Murray Blackburn Mackenzie. Now, we don’t know what recommendations, if any, the government will take seriously, but it has been circulated to all government departments, and Wes Streeting has already tweeted or xed or twixed whatever about the review and the importance of biological sex.
The full report is over 200 pages long and includes dozens of recommendations. It takes an explicitly binary view of sex throughout. It even goes so far as to complain about the acronym LGBTQI+, considering intersex to be an unhelpful error. Many of the Sullivan Review’s recommendations centre on reducing confusion or ambiguity, although I’m sure we’ve all seen confusing forms and surveys, there’s got to be better options than what the Sullivan Review puts forward. The review recommends questions on sex and gender identity should be separate, and that it’s always preferable to record biological sex rather than legal sex, even if someone has a gender recognition certificate. On that basis, it also recommends that the NHS stop allowing trans people to change their gender marker in the system. Another example of how the Sullivan Review suggests reducing confusion is for research questions to use the phrase, males who identify as women rather than trans women. Sullivan suggests the phrase, sex assigned at birth is inaccurate, because sex is determined at conception, which it isn’t, and it’s an idea that rather sounds like one of Trump’s executive orders.
Flint: It’s just not true, sorry.
Ashleigh: It is not true, not even slightly. Go back and do your biology homework, poor, two out of ten, see me. And although Sex Matters is one of four charities that were consulted by the review, the paper does not mention Sullivan’s connection to Sex Matters. Trans Actual and the feminist gender equality network have already come together and issued a statement against the Sullivan Review, and the charity Mermaids has also issued a response. Both of these responses take, you know, a principled approach. The review is bigger than any single phrase we might pluck from it, and even where it purports to use the language of inclusion, the agenda of Sex Matters and groups like them is still present. We know that there are other independent reports on the way, and we will look at those as they release. So this was big news, wasn’t it?
Flint: Yeah, and first of all, that’s not how conception works.
Ashleigh: Nope, not even slightly.
Flint: Like at all, and that’s not even some specialist knowledge. That’s literally the shit that you get told when you’re like 12 years old in school. There’s so many issues with this. Secondly, of course, that’s a conflict of interest, of course. Like this review, quote unquote review, is about as independent as my fucking toes are from my feet. There’s not, you just…
Alyx: Exactly, like the Cass Review. Like it was like the Cass Review, but Cass was actually good at hiding the evidence about anti-transness, but for the Sullivan Review, the fingerprints are on the gun.
Flint: It reads like propaganda. It just straight up reads like propaganda. And at least with the Cass Review, it still read like propaganda, but it read like propaganda that was feigning social science. This is just… Here’s some opinions, and I’m going to say that they’re facts, because I’ve got letters by my name, and that is not how that fucking works.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Alyx: Oh, you say? I think I saw from the Trans Actual statement. The review is providing an academic gloss on what is a political call to strip trans people of a hard one, rights to privacy, dignity and respect.
Ashleigh: Yep. Which it is. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. And just to say, it was so kind of propagandised, and it hadn’t even bothered trying to bury the bodies. The Cass Review took a few days to analyse. The Sullivan Review took like a few hours. So there’s the difference. Relatedly to this, where it’s kind of a review that’s been put out with the intention of influencing the NHS in particular, really quickly, because this thing that we’re about to talk about happened literally yesterday. The NHS has deleted all guidance information about changing gender and NHS number, among other trans-related questions, like a mismatch between a patient’s gender and title, and how to process a name change. Stuff like that. The page that was previously titled Adoption and Gender Reassignment that used to contain this information is now simply titled Adoption. There have, at time of recording, been no statements or announcements about this. It’s just gone. I’d call this Orwellian, but we have a new word for that now, Trumpian. On social media, the person who brought this to attention, FoxDi over on Blue Sky, pointed out, the guidance explaining the process to ensure no records were lost in transfer and telling GPs there was no requirement for any set level of transition and could happen at any time, and patients were entitled to this, was so valuable, and said that there were a number of well-meaning but confused GPs who thought that maybe even some kind of surgery would have to take place in order to process a name change. The form to submit the appropriate information is still up, but now asks GPs to click on a box to confirm that they’ve read guidance, which no longer exists on the NHS website. Although, of course, it’s on the Internet Archive because the Internet Archive is brilliant and should be protected.
Flint: Absolutely. I don’t see a universe where in which it is likely that this was an accident. That shit came out and then this immediately happens. Oh, no, you knew you were primed, you were waiting, as far as my personal opinion on this matter goes. I just… It’s very deliberate because it’s not even the case of like, oh, this page is down, it’s edited, it’s erasure. It’s straight up erasure.
Ashleigh: It is, yeah. And like, particularly with them not having announced it, you know, it’s just disappeared. And they’ve not said anything about it, like, oh, this was a mistake, or we’re kind of reworking this, there’s been no announcement whatsoever, no information about why it’s just gone. Who prompted that and what’s… I mean, if I could take a guess who prompted it and what their end game was. Fun times in the NHS, let’s move on.
Flint: To the Metropolitan Police. Woo.
[music: The Bill theme]Alyx: So, you may know all about the tribunals about trans people existing in changing spaces, but just for a change, how about a tribunal and people just celebrating their existence? So, on the 10th of March, a tribunal’s heard in which the claimant, Melanie Newman, claimed that the Lomet police were allegedly hostile to people with anti-trans views and the main reason cited for this was an event organised for Trans Visibility Day inside of the Met by a trans officer. They claim that the invitation of activist Eva Echo left her with no choice but to launch complaints. And whilst the case is due to finish this week as of time of release, we’ll still wait for when a verdict has been reached.
Ashleigh: Yeah, I like… So, we covered a story in, I forget which episode number it was, it was in the teens, 115 or 16, I think. And there was… So, some people in the Metropolitan Police had tried to put together a scene group, you know, a sex equality and equity, you know, the new way of saying gender critical, so it sounds a little bit more respectable.
Flint: I remember that. Yeah.
Ashleigh: But the Metropolitan Police said no.
Alyx: I’ve heard from an inside source, I think there’s not been any big announcement about either, but I have heard that there has been some recognition of this scene.
Flint: Hmm. Right, well… I mean, listen, like, do I really expect cops, the fucking Met Police of all, to actually like stand up for us and be good allies? No, you can paint as many pride flags on top of cars as much as you fucking want, I’m not gonna trust you, that’s just my personal stance. But regardless, this shit shouldn’t be fucking happening. At the end of the day, you know, I can have vehement consistent disagreements with this workplace, but this is still a workplace where the workers should be able to express and to share support for marginalized communities, especially because these are meant to be the people that actually do the protecting of the law that protects us.
Ashleigh: I think this has definitely been, you know what we said about complying in advance.
Flint: Yes.
Ashleigh: I think this is one of those complaints that’s kind of gone in and gone in loudly, you know, the person’s submitted a complaint and also gone to the press about it, saying that, well, if you run a trans event of any kind, there will be pushback from it now. You know, we’re not even gonna let you talk about Trans Visibility Day or talk about the importance of being aware that trans people exist.
Flint: Yes. No, it’s going for the argument that trans recognition, acknowledgement even of trans people being a thing that exists within this world is inherently discriminatory. And that is so insidiously evil of a stance to take, but nonetheless, it is the one being taken and debated in our courts. And so I feel like, you know, there’s, there’s, I feel like there’s so many possibilities for this case to end up, even if it’s not a total win for the transphobe in question. I’m still concerned that this is going to have some really shitty, not even chips away chunks out of our ability to vocally show up, be ourselves, express ourselves and for allies to do the same thing to make sure that we’re not going to be discriminated. And so I think that we should make workspaces, you know, appreciate the trans people and the workspaces.
Alyx: And also, like we’ve seen this case has also outed the officer who’s done the organizing as well and it’s continued that terrifying precedent of if you’ve got a workplace grievance with your trans colleague, you can out them in public the moment you bring it to a court.
Flint: Yes. Yes. It’s a tactic of humiliation by the legal system and shaming. In my opinion, it is to send the message that if you are vocal and if you also raise, if you raise too much of a stink about transphobia, then you will be put in the stocks, you will be shamed, you’ll be humiliated. You will have a target put on your fucking back and you will have the entire force of the mainstream media machine put against you. And it is gross and it is dehumanizing and it is intrusive. And I’m also concerned about the way in which these now consistent tribunals and cases civilly about people trans people at work. I am worried that it is going to make some employers, you know, not exactly decide to just not follow the law and not hire trans people or exclude trans people, but I feel like they’re going to, they’re going to be many people who are within that sphere. So they listen to a lot of those media sources because they have millions of readership, right? And they’re going to view trans people in the workplace as a liability inherently and it’s going to make them less likely to hire trans people. It’s going to make them less likely to support trans people if they bring up anything or if they try to, you know, encourage the same kind of community spirit of, hey, this is an event that’s happening. And it’s a thing that’s important to my community and I want to be able to share that. And that’s, I’m concerned because we all knew that this was really about getting trans people pushed out of public spaces.
Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely.
Flint: So speaking of people with exclusionary views and aims, the International Olympic Committee, the IOC, has this week voted for its new president. And of the seven candidates, the winner was the only woman, Kirsty Coventry, which, you know, should be good, right? No, unfortunately, Coventry has previously stated that she intends to quote, protect women’s sport, and it has previously been suggested that she’s in favour of banning transgender participants from the Olympics. So we’ll have to wait and see what policies are enacted ahead of the 2028 LA Games, who gets excluded, and on what grounds. And this is horrifying, obviously, for trans people, but I really have to mention how deeply racialised the implementation and enforcement of these policies often tends to be. And it is going to be cis women as well that bear the brunt of that and cis women that aren’t white that bear the brunt of that level of intrusion. And that’s that is deeply fucking fucked. Sorry I’m swearing so much on this pod.
Alyx: That’s ok. I mean, it’s deeply fucked. And also, I recently read a book from a cool academic, Shari Becker, who’s written this book called Open Sports, who sort of goes over like, how the sex testing that they go through is not is like, deeply inaccurate. It’s just unnecessarily arbitrary. They don’t do it for the men’s sport. They just do it for the women’s. And it does make some interesting points about that would be a whole other tangent about sports. But maybe that’ll be something I explore another time.
Flint: Yeah, it’s in part because like the kind of science that’s being done here. And I say science with big quotation marks around it. But the kind of, you know, feigned attempts at science that’s happening here is because it ultimately boils down to phrenology, which if anyone doesn’t know, it’s the study of features of the body to determine essentially its worth. It actually dates back hundreds of years. And it is a deeply racist prejudice form of, again, not science. Whenever I see the ways in which people are trying to create these policies to, you know, quote unquote safeguard and this that the other, it just comes across like phrenology. It just comes across to me like when I was having to learn about how people would decide that big is and a heavy brow meant that you’re more likely to steal or beat. And that’s, you know, again, deeply racist, deeply, deeply predatory way of viewing humans and human bodies. And I hate it.
Alyx: And also Sebastian Coe lost.
Ashleigh: Yeah, well, which was the main thing really. But unfortunately, what we’ve ended up with is is hardly better. So moving on then. So this story is a bit of a breakdown of a story from Trans Safety Network who are awesome and deserve your support. So go and check them out if you haven’t already. Every time we talk about Trans Safety Network, I say, hey, go check them out because they are excellent. So let’s talk about the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine or SEGM, SEGM.
[sample: Brooklyn Nine-Nine] And you don’t think the acronym is just a little clunky? I dunno; it’s quite catchy.Ashleigh: If that name sounds familiar, it might be because we have spoken about them before late last year. There seem to be a number of NHS gender clinicians involved with them, including Michael Absuit, who is now the Deputy Chief Investigator for the upcoming Pathways Puberty Blocker Trial, which I’m sure is absolutely fine and will not result in any bullshit science coming out of pathways. Now, though, there seems to be somebody else on the roster of SEGM. Back in October, Amit Jassi, the head of the NHS’s only specialist service that deals with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or BDD, gave a talk at the same SEGM event we briefly mentioned in Episode 115. Jassi’s talk was called Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Gender Dysphoria. After her talk, she participated in a Q&A session on body image and control alongside Anastasis Spiliardis, who’s the inventor of so-called Gender Exploratory Therapy, which is rebranded conversion therapy, and Alexander Korte, author of the snappily titled Elective Affinities, Trans Identification and Anorexia Nervosa as maladaptive attempts to solve developmental conflicts in female adolescents.
Alyx: Rolls off the tongue.
Ashleigh: Just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Helpfully, we don’t know what was said at this event because there is no public record of it, as Trans Safety Network described it, Jassi didn’t appear on a panel that reflected the current state of the field, which is wayyyyyy more diplomatic than what we’d have said, and they pointed out that even the moderator of this Q&A session was an anti-transition radical referring to Leslie Elliot Boyce, who was described as a counsellor specialising in gender confusion, de-transition and DEI discrimination. Wholesome Stuff.
Flint: Yeah, it’s your actual specialties are a gaslight. That’s your job title. It’s a gaslight
Ashleigh: As you might imagine if there’s somebody who’s happy to participate in an event like this with people like this They may not have the best interests of their trans patients at heart .So what does a BDD specialist have to say about gender dysphoria that appealed so much to the SEGM? They got her in for a talk. So cast your mind back a whole goddamn year to when the Cass review was fresh news. Because according to paragraph 5.38 of that accursed document after undergoing treatment for BDD Some young people say they no longer feel ill at ease with their birth registered gender. After a freedom of information request Trans Safety Network got this summary of a clinical expert group meeting back. This was acknowledged to be a complex area with wide-ranging views Members brought to the discussion their professional experiences of gender dysphoria as well as other areas such as body dysmorphic disorder As they discussed the patient cohort. Treatment to manage distress were discussed e.g. cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy as were considerations in relation to the changing epidemiology and the unknown surrounding the medical pathway. So I’m just gonna do what we probably should have been doing all along and quote directly from the TSN article. Perhaps this is coincidence or perhaps there are a group of clinicians working within NHS BDD services who believe that some young people expressing trans identities are actually suffering from BDD and that CBT and medication will resolve their desire to transition. Which is worrying as shit.
Alyx: Yeah, the medication we need is HRT.
Flint: It’s just becoming very clear the pathways you know, is purely about the ways to pathologize trans people. That’s what that name means fuck the annoying anagram that we all had to remember for that one article we did that is what the point of this is the ways to pathologize trans people the ways to deny us a right to exist as we are and instead, you know, give us any other acronyms in the books that you can and to also manipulate and to, you know weaponize any other mental health issues that a trans person may have to go: that’s the problem. It’s not that you’re trans It’s that. It’s not that you’re feeling. It’s this. You need CBT. You need this you need that and then you’ll stop wanting to be trans and babes if only it were that fucking simple. Do you not think that if that was possible it would have happened by now?
Ashleigh: Yeah, we’ve tried.
Flint: The amount of things that people usually go through When when at least if you recognize it later on in life. The amount of ways that you will try to understand yourself before finally realizing what it is.
Alyx: Yeah, it’s like the pathway is turning out to be rather than a nice pathway, a highway to hell.
Ashleigh: Yeah, I think I That’s such high hopes and I don’t know why I don’t know why I keep being optimistic about these things because, you know, the Cass review was announced as an quote independent review and it wasn’t and unfortunately I was hoping that they would do this study properly, you know with like science and everything, and get the results that say hey It turns out gender affirming care is helpful. Crazy stuff, right? But I think They’re gonna be looking for all of the ways to try and distort it. So that sucks and should be fought and will be so that’s good. Onward we go.
Alyx: So Hungry for some more news. There seems to be a lot of news coming out of Hungary. And in this case, one positive and one that is utterly shit. Now we would ask you if you’d like the good news first or the bad news first, but this isn’t live so we’ll pick for you. So the bad news: a law has been passed which now bans Pride events. It’s due to come into effect on the 15th And if anyone attends any of these events hungry has threatened to fine €500. The Hungarian government has also claimed that facial recognition tools will also be used in such cases. During the parliamentary session when the law was passed liberal lawmakers had protested by firing off smoke grenades inside of the chamber. Perhaps certain democratic lawmakers in other countries can learn some lessons from this. Just a thought.
Anyway on to slightly better news a trans man from Iran known to look cool as VP was seeking asylum in Hungary in 2014. Despite VP providing medical records as evidence of his gender identity, the asylum authority logged him as female. In 2022 VP tried to correct this, but the Hungarian asylum authority rejected his request on the basis that VP had not provided proof of surgery. In Hungary Several policies have led to legal gender recognition being effectively non-existent in the country. So VP challenged this using the general data protection regulation, the GDPR, which is a EU wide law. GDPR does several things, but Importantly it empowers regular people to know what data is kept about them and the right to rectify Incorrect data. The ECJ found that Hungary or any other EU state has to comply with GDPR and give trans people the right to rectify their data. The absence of national laws to recognise trans identity is not an excuse to deny people their rights. The ECJ also found that if the purpose of the data is to identify a person, then their gender identity is the relevant information, not their sex assigned a birth. And finally, the ECJ stated that if any evidence is needed to prove gender identity, a medical certificate should be enough. The court reaffirmed that legal gender change cannot under any circumstances require surgery. On the whole, a pretty good outcome. And although UK GDPR and EU GDPR split thanks to Brexit, They’re still largely cross compatible and governed by the same principles
Ashleigh: Yeah, so a bit of a mixed bag from Hungary this week.
Flint: Yeah. Yeah, really pretty mixed bag
Ashleigh: Like, how are they getting away with being so authoritarian as banning pride marches, which is openly and obviously discriminatory, right? In… as part of the EU which has rules about human rights and about freedom of expression. How is the EU kind of allowing this to take place? I mean, what could they really do about it? I guess sanctions and censures and whatever. But nevertheless, if they’re–
Alyx: Kicking them out.
Ashleigh: Yeah, quite. If they’re part of that block but they’re not abiding by the terms of that block, why are they still involved?
Flint: Yeah, yeah.
Alyx: They should just Brexit themselves out of the EU honestly.
Ashleigh: Yeah, Huexit.
Alyx: I suppose on the front of the ruling, it’s good to see stuff like this. And if we’re lucky someone might bring it up in discussion of the UK’s data use.
Ashleigh: Yeah. With regards to VP rather than regards to pride marches. Yeah.
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Flint: Absolutely.
Ashleigh: Being able to interact with and change your data is like a fundamental right as guaranteed by GDPR. So if it works there, it might work here. But someone would need to go to court and challenge it, which is an expensive headache as it is. But you know, that’s not for us to do because we’re far too poor to go to the high court.
Alyx: Though it could be of some use to Ryan Castellucci’s case as well for the X marker.
Flint: Yeah, pretty true .I mean, it is good that the ECJ found this. I just hope that it’s actually going to lead to change.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Alyx: And the use of data with the Sullivan review and how that talks about the sex assigned at birth and this court case shows otherwise. It’s come at a very interesting time to, in essence, almost basically contradict it.
Ashleigh: Yeah I mean, we’ll see I don’t think Victor Orban, the leader of Hungary, is going to be inclined to listen to the EU really, which again makes me wonder why they even bothered joining. Anyway… So, let’s stay international.
Flint: Next up we’ve got news coming in from Namibia. We have a story in which the country’s president Nangolo Mumba has rejected signing a bill brought by the National Assembly which has sought to ban same-sex marriage and to criminalize homosexuality, including fines of up to 100,000 Namibian dollars, which is around about 4,250 quid, or six years imprisonment. Now in this move it appears that the president has rejected it by claiming it was unconstitutional, and that the bill was not passed by two-thirds of the assembly. And alongside that was also concerned as to whether the bill had gone through the proper lawmaking processes. Now where the bill goes from hare we aren’t really sure. However, it appears that this came at the end of the latest parliamentary session, which had ended on the 19th of March. But looking ahead to the next parliamentary session, the lawmaker who brought this forward was not elected to that session. So this was their last chance to pass it and it was roundly rejected by the president. Yeah, some good news.
Ashleigh: Yeah, you love to see it.
Flint: Love to see it. Good on your president. Like that’s that’s a vibe. It’s a kind of a shame that it got to this final final final step, and it had to be on this one dude to be like excuse you? No. But I’m glad it’s happened and I’m glad that the person who brought it forward isn’t able to do so again. That’s good.
Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely.
Alyx: No, exactly. I think it’s one where you have to sort of keep an eye on it. Because when I was sort of writing this up, I was sort of trying to– I might not be too correct on how this is how I’m saying whether this is right, but it’s sort of, but the party that proposed the bill had managed to get 51 seats out of 104 In that assembly. So it’s sort of, we’ve got to see how much they might try something like this again.
Ashleigh: Indeed, but I mean, as has been pointed out before in situations like this, the reverse is true. So if they try and put something through even if all 51 of them vote for it, you’re gonna have 53 people potentially voting against it. So fingers crossed. Democracy shall prevail. But in a good way. So we’re staying international and heading over to Russia for some kind of not good news. On the 12th of March the Russian supreme court upheld the decision to imprison a transgender anti-war activist. Mark Kislitzin is a trans man and a Russian anti-war activist who is accused of transferring approximately ten dollars, United States dollars, to a Ukrainian bank account. This was deemed as treason and resulted in a sentence of 12 years at a women’s prison in Siberia. Kislitzin has been held at the prison since november 2024. During this time he’s been denied hrt forced to shave and wear women’s clothing, and he’s spent upwards of 70 days in solitary confinement.
Flint: The circumstances as to why he has been put in prison are extremely, extremely concerning. But I also have to point out that the treatment that he’s undergoing Is not too dissimilar from the treatment of some trans prisoners within prisons in this country and in other countries.
Ashleigh: Indeed.
Flint: And yeah, this is a horrifying, horrifying thing. You shouldn’t be in prison for this. And you certainly shouldn’t be going through that treatment in prison.
Ashleigh: Sucks. Right. However… Let’s lighten things up shall we? Let’s talk about some people who were very unsuccessful.
Flint: Yes, you might almost want to say that they’re a loser.
[sample: Losers Corner]Flint: So Losers Corner this time round is a teacher feature. That’s right, this week’s “are you smarter than a 10 year old” contestant made a challenge in the high court against a professional conduct panel that dismissed her for saying that being queer is a sin, trans people are confused and that students should put god before LGBT ideology No, really. She somehow, for some ungodly reason– well, maybe too godly reason– thought that she could win this. And like listen, I know that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but that is beyond asking for a miracle. Now obviously the court rejected her claims that the PCP took her comments out of context. But how do we know that she said this stuff at all? Well a fantastic anti-fascist sleeper agent by which we mean a normal child with a good head on their shoulders and kindness in their heart, was writing down her comments after being encouraged to by parents to get evidence of any transphobic comments that she makes. So credit to this kid’s mam for showing them the dangers of letting people provide sermons within classrooms and teaching them how to fight back when people are using their authority to inappropriately radicalise children to dehumanize living people. More of that energy, please. Turns out you weren’t smarter than a 10 year old after all, which means you definitely don’t deserve to be teaching any. And a final point to consider here the fact that the kid was encouraged to do this makes me wonder If the teacher had been saying things like this for some time, but that this was simply the first time that there was evidence of it to be able to take it to disciplinary action. Which, you know, is concerning, because we don’t really know how much damage has been done. And also, just going to say, not going to lie: when I first opened this link and I skimmed through the article I saw the acronym for professional conduct panel and thought that she got fired for having a transphobic rant while on PCP In the classroom. And I’m glad that that’s not the case because that sounds like the script for an It’s Always Sunny episode. So, you know, silver linings I guess. Silver linings for my reading comprehension.
Ashleigh: Yeah, it’s always good when a teacher is not on drugs when they’re teaching. Although this one might as well have been, given she was spouting some bullshit.
Flint: Yeah. Some pretty extreme bullshit, and also quite confidently too. And hold up. If you thought that we were done, oh, no, no, no, my sweet cherubs. Never. We’ve got to hop to Europe quickly for the next loser, because updated guidelines were released for care of trans youth in Switzerland Austria and Germany. And it has the lengthy title S2K guidelines for gender incongruence and gender dysphoria in children and young adults, diagnosis and treatment. A name which is even longer in the original German. The S2K guidelines recommended the use of puberty blockers and getting them to patients swiftly, where the onset of puberty adds time pressure, which is great. But of course this is losers corner and we’re talking guidance. So shots were fired at the Cass stitch up as they should be, and this German language guidance also took aim, describing Cass review’s recommendations as restrictive and questionable. In fact the S2K guidelines suggest clinical experts were not present in the development of the reviews recommendations, or at least not transparently so. Immediately after this the German document boasts that the creation of its own guidelines Involved delegating to experts with many years experience, and that they intend to explain how the S2K guidelines were developed. Oof. The lack of transparency in the Cass Review, including the still mysterious composition of its advisory board and assurance group, are things that the S2K guidelines are wholly right to question. The S2K guidance also calls out the Cass Review for its misuse of the word exponential when describing the increase in trans patients, a criticism I find delightfully petty. Conveniently, the S2K guidelines have appendices with commentary on the major literature it cites, Including Cass and others. Here, among other things, it questions the Cass Review’s opposition to social transition, the discrepancies between the Cass Review’s data and recommendations, and the fact that the Cass Review doesn’t declare whether it has any conflicts of interest or not. So slam dunk, get wrecked bros, like… [laughs]
Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely. No messing about. They’re just, shots fired, done. Like…
Alyx: No exactly. And this is like a review that I’ve found out is bigger than the Cass Review and has been going on for even longer than the Cass Review, before 202. So its scope is bigger than the Cass Review, if you’re going to talk about reviews in this sense.
Flint: Amazing.
Alyx: And it’s smashed the shit out of the Cass Review.
Ashleigh: Yeah. More things smashing the shit out of the Cass Review, please. Because that’s kind of my favorite genre of document to read.
Flint: It is yeah
Alyx: Destroy it as much as we destroyed the Cass Review bell.
Ashleigh: Alright, so moving on then. Let’s conclude this delicious meal with some meat.
Alyx: Yes, so this time we’ve sat down with some of the fantastic people at Trans Actual. in this case, Chay. So we talked about some stuff like the Levy review, some of the cool stuff they’re working on, about their Meet Us Hear Us campaign. And just a thing: this was recorded before the Sullivan Review came out and their little statement. Might as well roll a clip. All right, so I’m with Chay from Trans Actual, pronouns he/him. Thank you for joining us today.
Chay: Thanks for having me. As always, always a pleasure to speak to What The Trans.
Alyx: Oh no, definitely. It’s great to chat with you and I think we’ve always been enjoying mentioning the See Us Hear Us campaign every single episode on the Action Alley segment. And I suppose we might as well jump right into it and see how things have been going with that campaign.
Chay: Absolutely. So I think I’ve spoken before about how we had our day of action in Parliament and some people came to Westminster on the day and spoke to their MP and we had a drop-in session for MPs to come along to, which we were happy with how many people attended. And now what we’re wanting to do is to keep encouraging people, if you’ve not met your MP yet, like try and get some time in with them and and talk to them about the things that matter to you, and the things that are going on for you in your life, you know. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, all of that. And when you’ve met with them, let us know how it went. And don’t just stop with your MP. If you’re in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, speak to your devolved representative, speak to your local councillors, speak to your local integrated care board or health board. You know, to find out what they’re up to and sort of offer your support in talking to them about trans people’s needs. Because these people are making decisions that impact our lives every single day. And they need to have met us.
Alyx: I suppose it’s been a little while since that’s happened. So have you had many responses from people? You know, submitting their answers on the portal for that?
Chay: We’ve been having the study flow, but we’d love more people to be taking part. And we know sometimes it’s taking a while for MPs to get back to people, because they, you know, the relatively new MPs, it takes them an awful amount of time to set up your office and things like that. But we’re hoping that getting on top of things now and they really ought to be meeting with us.
Alyx: I think the last time we spoke as well, we chatted a bit about the Trans Healthcare Alliance and I’m sure we’ve got lots of updates on what’s happening with the Levy Review.
Chay: Yeah, so the Trans Healthcare Coalition is working hard. I’ve been in three coalition meetings over the past couple of days and we’ve got a lot going on. In terms of where we’re up to with the review into services, I’ve got a few things that I can update people on in terms of what’s happening, and there is now info on it on Trans Aactual’s website as well. If you go on our homepage you’ll find it. But a few things that we’re expecting quite soon. So to catch people up, before Christmas we had a consultation into the existing service specification for English gender clinics, for the non-surgical parts of our transition. This is the document that says how gender clinics should run, what model of care they’re running, to assessment appointments they should more or less be giving and who should be working there, what types of professionals and all of that. And how referrals should work. And what discharge looks like at the end as well. And how they work with GPs. So there’s a lot in there and we gave, as a coalition, members gave feedback on that through the stakeholder consultation and we provided guidance to other orgs in giving feedback as well.
NHS England are due to be reporting on that consultation soon. So we’re waiting for that to be published. We know that Dr. Levy and his team have visited all the English gender clinics apart from the pilot clinics. They weren’t involved. So a couple of gender clinics were sort of exempted from it, but most of the gender clinics were visited. We know that we’re expecting his report very soon onto that. And we know there was a survey into trans people’s experiences, if they’re currently under the care of a gender clinic or they have been in the past. I think it was in the past five years. And bizarrely, a survey of friends and family members. We’ll be looking very carefully at all of that when it comes out as a coalition, and also within Trans Actual.
And then we’ve got sort of those two documents as they are again to feed into NHS England, developing an updated service specification, non-surgical service specification for English gender clinics. So again that those changes are going to reflect how NHS gender clinics are going to be expected to work in the future. We are expecting that there will be a public consultation on an updated service specification. We have fears about what could be taken out. We’ve got fears about what could be put in. But also we’ve got hopes for how things could potentially improve and things being removed that aren’t needed in the service specification. So It’s a bit, it’s hard to know which direction it’s going to go in. But it’s important to wait and see what’s in that specification when it comes out. The Trans Healthcare Coalition, which is a coalition of different regulations, they work around this and individuals as well: academics, researchers, health professionals and just people. We, you know, as a coalition are going to be looking very carefully at these documents and we’re going to be able to let the community know what’s good about them, what’s bad about them, and everything. And give some guidance on responding to the consultation. We don’t know when they’re going to be published. But what we’ll say to the community is bear with us on responding. We’ll be able to give a quick temperature check. But bear with us while we take time to properly understand what’s in there.
Alyx: There’s always going to be concerns and it sounds like you’re going to be keeping a close eye on things. I heard you mentioning earlier about the pilot clinics, like I think the one in Manchester being exempt from the Levy Review, despite them having some more different ways of running a service. Wouldn’t that be an important thing to mention in the Levy Review?
Chay: Ah, well so Manchester… So the Indigo service in Manchester and Trans Plus are no longer pilot services, so they were reviewed. East of England gender service and think C Magic in Sussex gender service were not included because they’re not yet operating on the rolling full contract. So yeah, um, we’re really pleased that Indigo and Trans Plus were included because yes, that gave an opportunity for comparison. Yeah.
Alyx: Ah, perfect. So I was… yeah. For a moment there my brain was going to that, but it turns out you had a bit more up to the infothere, which is good. So I didn’t say something out of the blue there. Exactly. So you’ve got the service specifications. I’ve just got hope that goes well. I think we’ve been seeing some interesting information about Levy and I suppose we’ve got to see how that unfolds really, by the sounds of it. And I think earlier today I saw a post about the conversion therapy ban, and the fact the government would have started putting in some draft bill on this. Have you seen anything from the government on that?
Chay: I’ve not seen anything. We’re hoping that there won’t be any loopholes and will be having a look at any draft bill very closely and as part of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition as well. And will be certainly talking to MPs about it. And coming back to sort of NHS England service specification For gender clinics at the moment. It makes it very clear that conversion practices are unacceptable and won’t be, there’s no place for them in NHS Gender clinics and we’re hoping to see that remain in the service specification as well.
Alyx: No, definitely and hopefully that also make sure they don’t get the weediness with the exploratory therapies added as well. But fair play. Hopefully you get a copy of the draft soon on that one. Certainly be interested. Oh yeah and that’s a good point as well. Exactly. We’ll have to see how that goes and, you know, healthcare has always been a pain in the neck with the Cass Review and everything. And we’ve seen– I think I saw recently on a– I recently saw a news article about the Cass Review being used in America and I think one of the parts you were looking at were the 18 to 25 follow-up services the Cass Review was mentioning. But then you were going to be having a look at as well.
Chay: Yeah, so we were in a meeting with others from the trans and LGBTQ+ sector on… well last week. And we were asking them about this 18 to 25s follow-up service, because there’d been a lot of concerns around it. So what they’ve said to us is that they’re going to look at a few different models of what a follow-through service would look like. It wouldn’t be the brand new service standing on its own. It would be hopefully attached to the children and young people’s gender service or to an adult gender service, and that they’d be close working with– for example if it’s attached to a children and young people’s gender service [cuts out] with the adult gender services as well. I’d had some questions about “hang on, who’s this service for?”
Apparently it’s for, well they told us it’s for [cuts out] it’s already been under the care of a children and young people’s gender service, and people that have been on the waiting list for children and young people’s gender service. If it is, you know, an 18 year old being newly referred for transition related services or transition related care, they’d go straight into the adult service, because what this pathway is about, and it’s in line with what the CQC report said all those years ago about GIDs, is it’s about smoothing that transition from children and young people’s to adult services. What there is a bit of a lack of clarity about Is, what service specification will that service work to?
For because, you know, it is you know 18 to 25 year olds are young adults and in its Trans Actual’s view that they or any service 18 to 25 should be working to an adult gender service specification. And that the service specification for adult services ought to be suitable for adults of all ages. You know, so that’s that’s something and talk of a separate service specification is something that we’re keeping a Close eye on and when we’re given more information from NHS England we’ll of course share it.
Alyx: No definitely. Hopefully they put together some kind of plan because if NHS England have sort of leaving 18 to 25 year olds into some kind of limbo or either waiting eight years for a waiting list and having no care at all after being discharged from GIDs, it would be a bit of a mess. So hopefully the NHS people get their butts in gear on that one, and you’ll be continuously checking out that one by the sounds of things. And speaking of the NHS as well and their courses about trans young people as well, recently on a previous episode we were speaking about the Mind Ed Training Course and the materials to the CYP Service, and we found some really concerning things regarding some of the material. Have you seen some stuff on that, the Mind Ed Course?
Chay: Yeah, we’d reviewed it when we first became aware of it. We’d reviewed the Mind Ed materials and there’s very little in there that tells you how to actually support the trans young person. We found it was coming from a very ableist lens. It was never coming from, you know, all the case studies with particularly complex cases and never talking about well, what about trans young people, who for sure know who they are. They’re not questioning who they are. So we had a lot of concerns about the suitability and we’re, you know, we were signatories on the letter to NHS England that there’s still, believe it or not, a couple of years later back and forth over. But Trans Actual do have concerns about what training’s been provided to children and young people’s mental health services. Because now, you know, they’re part of the care pathway, the referral pathway for the children and young people’s gender services. But you know, I’ve been very [cuts out] to, in sort of general trans inclusion to mental health, NHS mental health services and the children and young people’s and practitioners. We’re saying, well, hang on a minute, this care pathway involves us. What training is that for us? So there’s still a big question mark about, you know, what training’s being done.
Alyx: And this particular Mind Ed being endorsed by the NHS is particularly concerning. Especially when we’ve heard about some really bad information about Tilly Langtons involvement, who’s been known for conversion therapy.
Chay: Yeah, I think I can’t be drawn to talk on the work of any particular individual, but what we can say is that we’ve got concerns about the content and the lens that it’s viewing transness through, and it’s in being trans is a bad outcome.
Alyx: One of the main topics we were speaking about last time, because the big topic we were talking about was the whole big story about the GPs withholding people’s HRT. We’ve had some positive developments and you’ve probably got some more detailed information on guidance being sent out on a more national level.
Chay: Yeah, I mean this is an ongoing issue and we know that the Royal College of GPs have amended their guidance a little bit. And that’s something we’re in ongoing conversations with them about. And also, you know, where NHS England have said that their review of the creation of a policy for hormone prescribing, a national policy, goes some way to helping the matter. Actually, you know, we’ve been in touch with them and said this is something that’s happening. People are being refused their medication now. What are you doing about it? And we’re hearing created care boards coming up with different stopgap solutions, which is better than nothing. So NHS England have sort of responded to my email and said they are working on a solution that is going to be something that works in the interim. We’ll have to wait and see what that is, but they are aware it’s an issue, the Royal College of GPs is aware it’s an issue, the British Medical Association are aware it’s an issue. And it is widespread.
It’s, well, we’ll get spikes of reporting In particular areas is widespread, and I know in Nottingham there was progress with you know, the integrated care board had said something to GP practice about it. So there’s patches of progress, but we’re hoping for something that’s going to work on a national level to, you know, sort out this issue, because, you know, some GPs see it as “well, we’re not paid to hold these shared care agreements and to prescribe”. Others see it as part of the general GP contract. So we need to make sure GPs are all on the same page on this. And yes, it’s quite surprising that, you know, looking at our data from people kindly filling in our tracking tool. It was quite surprising that a GP that was previously willing to subscribe is suddenly now deciding they don’t feel competent to. But there’s an issue there of “well, why don’t they feel competent doing so?” And we’re trying to address that issue.
Alyx: Sorry you cut out there for a sec.
Chhay: …a sensible way forward.
Alyx: Oh, so I think you cut out a little bit. But I think we’ve got the gist: a sensible way forward probably is the best way. No exactly. I mean, yeah, it’s good to see there’s some there’s some moves towards getting things fixed on a national avenue and people are being really good at filling in that when they’re being denied the HRT. And yeah, so it’s annoying when you see the GPs say, like “oh, it’s not enough funding” or “oh, I’m not competent” when they previously thought they were competent enough previously. It’s good you yeah, it’s uh, really impressive and hopefully we can keep an eye on that in the future. I suppose, was there anything else you wanted to bring up as well that would be– If you want to let our audience know?
Chay: Good question. Well, there’s been some good news. So people might remember that the previous government made some changes to the NHS constitution and that there had been some trans hostile changes. The evidence around single sex wards and around trans staff and personal care. And around language use as well. When asked, the, you know, the Department Of Health And Social Care had said there wasn’t any particular evidence that the changes were needed, but that it was a priority of the government at the time. Well, the current government have announced that the proposed changes are being scrapped. The NHS consultation will be reviewed with a view to update, but it will be after the NHS have published the– after the Department For Health And Social Care have published the 10 year plan for the NHS. So that is to their credit quite logical.
And whilst we don’t know what’s going to be in any future changes to the NHS constitution we do know that there were a lot of consultation respondents who were outspoken about the attack on trans people within the previous proposed change. And so we’re hoping that the current government will pay due regard to that. That any changes made are changes that are needed and that there’s evidence that those changes are needed.
Alyx: I’ve completely forgot about it. But that is a really big relief. Because now I’ve re-remembered it and them trying to exclude trans women, you know, trans people from the wards of, you know, their gender. And oh my gosh, that’s brilliant. Yeah. Oh, there’s some good news. Well, uh, thank you for the trans joy.
Chay: Yeah, absolutely. And another thing to look out for as well is the CEO of NHS England, Amanda, former leader of Ofstead. But Amanda the CEO of NHS England has stepped down. There’s currently an interim period and there’s going to be a new interim CEO of NHS England to take them through sort of the change associated with the 10 year plan. We don’t know what that’s going to mean in terms of policy making for trans people, but it’s just one to know and one to be aware of. In the end of course Trans Actual will be seeking opportunities to chat to any new CEO to help them to understand what the issues have been around trans healthcare and the need to come back to, or to move towards a sensible expert led approach, evidence based approach, and moving to evidence based policy making and not policy based evidence making, which is what we’ve seen with Cass Review and Is is is what we worried about with the the puberty blocker trial as well.
Alyx: No, definitely. Yeah. And an especially lovely study of it recently from King’s College, which sounds like I’ve got to keep a very close eye on that one. But yeah, it’s sort of the, yeah because Amanda left her as a CEO and she was there presiding over when things just slow– just continued to get worse and worse. So hopefully we can get someone who’s not as– who prevents, who… Well, we’ll have to see how they do.
Chay: Yeah, exactly. We’ll have to see how they do. You know, never again please. So attributing anything to one specific person in this case, but obviously a CEO of NHS England that understands trans people’s fears would be a good step in the right direction.
Alyx: Great stuff. In that case, thank you for joining us this evening and… Yeah, thank you for joining us and yeah, check out Trans Actual and some of their cool stuff that we’ll keep sharing about the See Us Hear Us campaign. And anything you send our way, we’ll make sure to get people’s eyes on.
Chay: It’s been great. Thanks ever so much.
Alyx: It was lovely chatting with Chay. It’s always great to keep up to date with Trans Actual. Always fun to work with them.
Ashleigh: Yeah, good conversation. Well done.
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: And speaking of things that are good and nice, it’s trans joy time.
Flint: Yeah! Woo. So this is, to start off trans joy right, we’ll go for something that I actually missed from last week, which is a CBB’s web page that highlights inspirational mothers for International Women’s Day listed both Marsha P Johnson And Sylvia Rivera, explaining how they were drag mothers and protected their community. Because motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes. And that’s So beautiful so beautiful. That’s really cool.
Ashleigh: That’s lovely. It really is.
Flint: Fuck yeah.
Ashleigh: So that’s the only bit of trans joy we’ve got, isn’t it?
Alyx: Discord’s been lovely. I’ve, you know that whole thing about the pond of tadpoles that’s been adorable to watch recently. They’ve started making bubbles with how much they move
Ashleigh: I see.
Alyx: They’re really growing up.
Flint: Nice.
Alyx: It’s been one of my favourites. And someone’s also had a little chick that was hatching. They’ve been hatching eggs. They’ve been keeping us up to date on that. I love the pets and cute animals section of this Discord. Another one of the members finally got their T. So now they’re waiting for their first injection day.
Flint: Oh, fuck yeah. Congrats.
Ashleigh: Awesome. Congratulations.
Alyx: Congrats. Yeah, and Natalie’s also ordered her first DIY progesterone. So she’s excited to see if that works for her.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Alyx: Yeah, congratulations everyone.
Ashleigh: Yeah, well done. I’ve got a bit of trans joy, sort of.
Flint: Yeah?
Ashleigh: Yeah. So well, it’s trans musician joy. I’ve ordered myself a new cheap fretless bass. So I can do lots of lovely [makes slidey noises] lots of slidey noises and yeah. As I say, it was only a cheap one and I saw it and I thought “okay, I can just about afford that with the money I had from a thing I do”. So yeah, I’m gonna treat myself.
Flint: Yes.
Alyx: So you look a little uh, so you look at the guitar board and you say that’s not a fret.
Ashleigh: Thank you all for listening.
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: Yeah Cheers. If you’re interested in more of the rambling nonsense that we put out, you are of course quite welcome and encouraged to follow us on social media. We’re on Blue Sky, we’re on the Facebook, we’re on Instagram. And you can find our website, which the enshitification of the Internet hasn’t reached yet. And that’s the website that’s shortly to undergo a bit of a–
Alyx: Glow up.
Ashleigh: Glow up. Good phrase.
Flint: Yeah. A transition, if you will.
[chuckles]Ashleigh: But yeah, all of the stuff that we put out including lots of articles and things, that’s all there. And if you feel like this is something that you want to support, to support us in our work, in our journalism, then you can drop us a few quid on Patreon, which is patreon.com/whatth trans. Thank you all for listening, and we will speak to you again in a couple of weeks.
Flint: Bye.
Ashleigh: Bye bye.
Ashleigh: This episode of What The Trans was produced and presented by Alyx, Ashleigh and Flint, and written by Ashleigh, Alyx, Flint and Sammy. It was edited by Amber Roberts and Amber Devereux, and our opening theme music was composed by Waritsara Yui Karlberg, with our episode thumbnail by Uppoa Piers, and transcription performed by Sam Wyman, Rowan B, Rachel Aldred, Georgia Griffiths and Becky. And we would especially like to thank our producer-level Patreons. Who are:
Susan Kaye Quinn, Undeadnarfa, Ellie s, Bex the Mermaid, Brian Goss, HazelDust, Laura Queen of Seagulls, Becky Cheatle, MX Spectrum, Jordyn Star, Leigh Downes, Lyndsey Cannon, George Simmons, Carly Silvers, B Squared, Smiley, friend of Candy from across the pond, The Socialist Party of Great Britian 1904, Sara, Eris, tin roof, Naesstrom, LexPhoenix, SebastianSingsSoprano, Jo has stopped using patron shoutouts for therapy, Andrea Brookes, Jack Edwards, Stefan Blakemore, naoarte, NeedlesAndThreads, Flaming Dathne, Dr McG, Gen, Katie Reynolds, Georgia Holden-Burnett, Grabilicious, Rootminusone, Grey, Beth Anderson, Bernice Roust, Ellen Mellor, Jay Hoskins, Trowan, Ashley, Setcab, Jane, Roberto de Prunk, Rose Absolute, Sarah, Sina, Kiki T, Dee, Skye Kilaen, Eric Widman, Bee, Jude, monsieur squirrel, Fergus Evans, anubisajackal, Brandon Craig, braykthacistem, Sian Phillips, Heidi Rearden, Lentil, clara vulliamy, Amelia, Samantha Raven, Fiona Macdonell, Murgatroid, ontologicallyunjust, Stella, Cyndergosa, Rebecca Prentice, CRAZZEE RICHARD, danoblivion, Florence Stanley, Helen_, Elle Gray, Melody Nyx, Fiona Punchard, John, CB Bailey, Gordon Camero,, Ted, Delphos, Kai Lewen, Vic ParsonsvPatreon User, Vic KellyvKatherine, Sabrina McVeigh, Cassius Adair, Melissa Brooks, Karaken12, April Heller, Sofie Lewis, Alexandra Lilly, Claire Scott, Ariadne Pena, Lauren O’Nions, Bernard’s Pink Jellybean, Leynos
Ashleigh: Thank you to you all.
Alyx: Thank you for watching, bye.
Flint; thank you. Byeeeeeee.
Ashleigh Toodle-oo.
Alyx: bye.
[laughter]
