8

A Different Approach

The factor that has the biggest positive impact on the mental health and well-being of trans people is the genuine support of friends and family. As with much of the official data on trans populations we currently possess, the majority of research is North American–based, but what that research shows ties strongly with community knowledge from across the world.

A 2012 report prepared for Children’s Aid Society of Toronto found that trans kids with supportive parents had an attempted suicide rate of 4 percent, compared with a 57 percent rate for trans children without that support. Another new study, this time from the University of Washington, has found that trans kids with supportive parents have the same mental health outcomes as any other group of young people. For trans adults, it is not only having the support of others, but being able to support others in turn. Having a sense of purpose within a broader trans community and the two-way street of mutual care are powerful ways of combating the depression and anxiety that so often follows on from prejudice and discrimination.

What I have learned from research I had already experienced firsthand.

My family moved around a lot when I was a child, and I believe that is one of the reasons why my brother Jonathan and I were so close. When we had nobody else we always had each other; besides that, he was so easy to like. Our tastes ran close, and it was always more fun to be a team than to be apart. We had other friends—good friends—but none of them could match the ways that he and I could see inside each other’s heads and know exactly what to say to make the other laugh or reach out to help when something was wrong.

As far as experiences of bullying go, I’ve been lucky, compared to many trans people. I was never physically attacked, never sexually abused, and, later, I did make friends. It was hard, but it could have been much harder.

It began when I moved schools, again, at the age of nine, and found myself marked as an outsider in more ways than one. The way I talked—my voice too deep and my accent unplaceable—and the way I looked, being so much taller and more developed than the other children. It’s a familiar story: notes that called me a freak; a chorus of mooing whenever I walked past the popular girls in the playground; comments about my body, specifically how it was too large, and my face, which was too ugly; and all the usual insults of bitch, pig, and the like. There were the ongoing, relentless, personal attacks, and the impersonal cruelty from kids hoping to avoid the bullies’ attention. There were a few nights when I believed that I didn’t deserve to live, made phone calls to ChildLine, had attacks of panic and hysteria. But at least I always had my sanctuary of my home, my family, my brother: a place to be safe.

My parents certainly hoped that things would get better as I got older, and they did—to some degree. I found friends, I found teachers I liked and, with all the music practice rooms, I could lock myself away every lunchtime, hide from the other pupils, and escape into the piano. The bullying from the other students ebbed and flowed.

Sometimes it was overt, with my name and the words “weirdo” or “freak” scrawled on blackboards in enormous letters; loud public imitations of my voice, my mannerisms; upfront questions about why I was queer, why I had to be so masculine. Most of the time it was just that low-grade level of disapproval and mockery many teenagers would recognize: the sudden silence when you enter a room, the public lack of invitation to a party that everyone else is invited to, quiet laughter when you raise your voice in class. I learned how to hate as a reflexive, protective gesture and how to turn my self-loathing into a spur to ambition, two common responses.

The hardest part, though, the part that will be so familiar to other trans people, was the fact that it wasn’t just my peers who rejected and judged me—it was some adults also. It can be easy, as adults ourselves, to forget or diminish the impact our stated beliefs and actions can have on teenagers. But those feelings of being disbelieved, disregarded, and—sometimes—hated by those in positions of authority wore me down. I started doing more public activism: writing for an international LGBT website, campaigning against Section 28 (legislation which prevented discussion of LGBT issues in schools), meeting with the London Assembly. At every point where I tried to stand up for myself, it felt like there was someone older than me ready to smack me back down. I wanted so badly to be immune to what was said to me and said about me, but between the mixed states, the lows, the panic attacks, the OCD attacks, and the constant, nagging dysphoria, I just didn’t have the strength.

Jonathan was my anchor when it would have been so easy to be washed away. It was a struggle to wake up every morning, to learn how to deal with conditions my doctors had told me would be lifelong, to learn how to bear the ridicule and disgust that seemed the inevitable reactions to being myself. I had ambitions, I had things that I loved but, against that constant pain, it was often hard to hold on to something as nebulous as a hope that it would get better, or a daydream about my future career. Sometimes, I couldn’t imagine how things could be different, and sometimes I felt as though I didn’t deserve to live.

Instead of the possibility of a better life one day, my brother gave me a better life now. He was the noisy, insistent reminder that I was not without ties to the world around me, that I was more than just an unwilling passenger in a life I didn’t choose. He made me laugh despite myself, joke despite myself, gave me a space to unload my anger, gave me a chance to be frivolous and playful when everything else was gray and cold. He knew when to ask, and when to listen, and sensed when I couldn’t talk but needed to be heard, silently.

More than that, he made demands on me. Not rudely or obviously, but in constant little ways. Could I, who found English easy, help him, who was dyslexic, with his homework? Could we write a screenplay together, to see if we could, and then make our millions? Could we go out for coffee, could I make that cake that he liked so much for his birthday, could he borrow a CD of a band we listened to together on MTV? Some of my happiest memories are of the evenings we spent, him lying in bed, me on the floor by the door, reading him the latest book in our favorite series, doing all of the voices. We were much too old for bedtime stories, but it became one of our rituals. It is a very powerful thing, when you feel at your lowest point, to know that someone else depends upon you. Not in a way that burdens you with expectations, or makes you feel ashamed for not being perfect, but in a way that says “your life makes my life better—thank you for being here.” No matter how terrible, how disposable I felt, he gave me constant reassurance that who I was had value. In that mutual exchange of care, I felt the proof that his world, at least, was better for the fact that I was fighting to stay alive.

I SUSPECT IT was our relationship that primed me for wanting to do something to help other people, to do something, no matter how small, to be useful. I don’t claim to be any kind of saint—I fuck up, and will keep fucking up, despite my best efforts and a great deal of guilt—but I believe I have done some little good along the way as well.

It has certainly taken me full circle in a way I never expected it would, and given me an idea for something else that might make things a little better for trans people like me.

When I got an email from my old school last year, I felt as though I’d stepped into a fictionalized version of my own life. In careful, respectful words, it asked me if I might have the time to prepare and give an assembly to the students and teachers about how best to support trans students, and to combat bullying and prejudice in general. The student body was setting up an LGBT association, and the teachers wanted to bring in an outside speaker as a show of support. They had no idea I had been a pupil; they had found my contact details through my work in educational outreach. Nearly all of the old staff were long gone. When I explained how bad it had been for me they sympathized and apologized, and said they were trying to make things better for the next generation of pupils. There was clearly a new approach in play.

I had my first panic attack in several years on my way back to school. Walking through the gates, up to the main hall, was an exercise in confusion; I’d had regular nightmares about being trapped in my old school at least once a week for the twelve years since I left. In those dreams, every detail was perfect, every physical sensation hyper-real. Actually being there left me feeling as exposed, as vulnerable, as if I’d just woken up from one of those dreams. By the time I was ready to get onstage I had sweated through the shirt I’d worn, was very grateful for the blazer above it, and felt far more nervous than I would before performing a show. I gave my speech; to my astonishment, the teenagers in front of me actually knew a great deal about trans people already. They were friendly, attentive, and had some wonderful things to say of their own. Further adding to my sense of unreality, the head teacher apologized for the bad time I’d had as a student, and gave a short speech about how much they wanted to support their current pupils. Most importantly, for me, was what happened as I was leaving. One of the younger students, ducking out of a group on their way back to class, came over to thank me; one of her friends, she explained, was trans, and it was brilliant that people were talking more openly about it, and learning more. On my way home I kept coming back to that fact: that in a place where I had been an outcast for being trans, there were teenagers proud of their trans friends, fighting their corner, willing to take a stand. There were even teachers ready to do the same.

I didn’t know how much pain I had still dragging around behind me until it was set free. It was only with that apology, that experience of making good, that I could feel healing in the places that had scabbed over but never healed. It was somewhat embarrassing—I still expect myself to be invulnerable, in many ways—but I’m so glad that it happened. The nightmares have stopped; after so many years of psychotherapy, my dreams are often obligingly obvious.

It made me realize that those two crucial factors in the happiness or misery of trans people—the support of others, and a sense of engagement in a wider world—are never fixed in place, and the opportunities for both are never over. We try to laugh it off, or decry it bitterly, but we so often think of the pain we’ve been dealt as a done deal: others have attacked, and we are left with the scars and the necessity to heal ourselves. There is the tendency for some of us trans activists to look at ourselves and say, “We’re already damaged goods—we should focus on young people, because at least there’s still hope for them.”

I no longer believe that to be true. I don’t think it is ever too late for those around us—those who aren’t trans—to reach out and offer their support, to make right on where they stumbled and failed. It is incredible what being needed—in both ways—can do. And this is a part of trans liberation that anyone can make good on.