This interview was recorded on 25/08/2024 outside the Department of Education during a trans liberation demonstration and occupation. It was being run by under-18-year-old trans people. The atmosphere was jovial if tense. Trans children huddled around the four grates, each with a banner collectively reading out the Trans Kids Deserve Better (TKDB) action network name.
One of the central grates was dominated by a big pile of bags of food, drinks, and other supplies. The walls were adorned with posters, trans zines, and placards sporting various slogans. Behind the first railing there were various paper cut-out coffins with messages of solidarity, grief, and hope written on them alongside doodles.
On the other side of the pavement, a huddle of trans adult supporters, joined by the occasional cisgender ally or parent, would help distribute the TKDB leaflets to interested passersby. They often conversed about the action, its reasons and goals, usually finding people in London to be receptive and curious.
While the TKDB crowd was overwhelmingly trans masc, a topic that came up in the interview, the supporters were chiefly (although not exclusively) trans fems during the day time. (Although I was later told there were more trans mascs during some of the nights.) The supporters also talked among ourselves, with topics ranging from the difficulties older trans people experience (with hate crime, medical access, discrimination), the connections to the challenges experienced by trans youth, and our hopes and fears about the next generation.
When I got to speak to the designated media person from TKDB, I crouched by a less busy grate and held up my phone to catch there replies as much as possible over traffic, conversation and the occasional buzz of the radios they used to communicate between grates and with other trans children operating behind the scenes.
Q: How did the group form?
I read the news on trans people for the first time in four years, and I got so angry I texted my friend and said, “We have to do a banner drop on NHS England.” That developed into an occupation of a ledge on their central offices. On a whim, we did a workshop at a local youth group, and ten people from that group decided to join us spontaneously. From there, it just snowballed and exploded beyond what we had planned.
Q: How have you found building the organisation?
We are focusing heavily on the trans youth and trying to hold on to the trans adults and cis allies, at least for now. Much of it has happened through word-of-mouth and small organisations like youth groups. The Trans Solidarity Alliance (TSA) and many other groups like Gendered Intelligence (GI) have supported us, sometimes by reposting social media content.
We’re planning on a big push to visit every school youth group in London and, as much as we can, every queer youth group in England or the UK. That personal connection is more powerful than email lists.
Also, we noticed that the people we found through youth groups included people of colour and a diverse range of genders and had diverse backgrounds, but that the people we found through social media and emailing lists were almost exclusively white trans mascs.
Q: Have you experienced challenges in developing democratic systems within TKDB?
This is something we’ve been consciously working on. Initially, the action was me and a friend I’ve known for a long time; we were on the same wavelengths on everything we wanted to do, and we had loads of practice communicating and working together. We knew each other very well. Going from that, for this action on the grates, we have a team of 12 people working behind the scenes, and making that adjustment was quite a lot.
We got 800 people on the website signing up to help us. Trying to find a way to onboard the 80 or so new trans youth out of that 800 is a significant difficulty.
We are an action network, we are not an organisation, which means that not all of the actions that we take have to be centrally organised, and in fact, we’re going to make sure they aren’t because organising efficiency slows down when you go past 60 people. Even 12 pushed things beyond what we could quickly and efficiently work on.
This is particularly true in a field like trans liberation, where everything is constantly changing. The night before the action, we were all up late, and somebody on my phone contacted us to say Wes Streeting had extended the puberty blocker ban. We were planning an action around that but didn’t think we would start it until mid-September, and suddenly, we have to start it on the same day as an occupation.
We just have to say, “Two or three people, you do that; don’t worry about this occupation. Split off and do this separate action yourselves.” They managed to make it work. So we now find 6 to 8 people within a group with diverse skills who can take a project away, and they’ve got us for funding, they’ve got us for support, they’ve got us for any skills they might be missing.
We support each other as a network rather than colleagues in the same organisation.
Q: Have you experienced solidarity from the more organised left groups?
We’ve had interest from some leftist groups; rs21 has been a big supporter; they showed up and gave us many zines. Trans Strikeback has also been quite powerful. But there has not been much named involvement with other leftist groups, but lots and lots of small queer outlets.
For example, Fort London, which is a group of two who ran a whole t-shirt campaign for us and gave us the profits, which is incredible. Seeing people wearing the t-shirts with the banner design I and a friend created was special. There is also stuff like the Outside Project. But not so many leftist groups have gotten involved.
Q: What about the media’s engagement?
For the first action on the NHS ledge, we sent out our press release to 120 journalists from mainstream media, and not one decided to run a story. One told us if it were the same protest for any other cause, they would have run the story, but they weren’t going to because of the subject matter.
It’s the sort of protest that should have been picked up on, and it’s not as if we didn’t push it, but it doesn’t fit the narrative the mainstream media likes about trans youth and trans kids. We are being empowered, representing ourselves as individuals and being angry rather than sad.
We did get a hell of a lot of interest from, again, small queer groups, who we are also much more keen to talk to because none of us have media training or experience with journalists, and the few interactions we’ve had have been negative. We had an LBC journalist stick us on air basically to ask if we’re a sex cult. That was stressful, and it made us quite hesitant.
But we’re currently not as interested in reaching cis people as we are reaching trans people. The original point of the action on the NHS offices was to galvanise trans people and let trans people realise that we can take action for our causes.
We know trans people are overrepresented in climate, Palestine and anti-racist activist spaces; we’re overrepresented across activism because we’re used to the idea that what major institutions tell us is wrong but we’re trying to reach people to let them know we can do this for ourselves, and that trans liberation is a cause worth fighting for. We can win if we stick up for ourselves and keep going over the direct action.
Q: How have you found interactions with older trans people, and do you have a specific message you want to send out to them?
I enjoy engaging with older trans people and find their perspectives interesting. We’re deliberate about holding adult supporters slightly at arm’s length regarding how we need this to stay youth-led and youth-run. We need to make the decisions on this because that’s what is powerful about what we’ve got here.
But the sort of thing we are after right now is just company on the actions; I’ve been sitting in these grates for two or three days, and many people have shown up in the last two hours. But we would like to hear all the learning in the trans community from before our arrival.
I’ve been around 17 years, and I’ve been out as trans for five. My knowledge is limited, particularly in terms of experience in trans history. So, coming and sharing that is important. Also, supporting us with skills is essential. We struggle with some legal bits like GDPR, and if you have other specific skills, stick your name in the email box, and we’ll send you an email.
There’s always a lot to be done, though; a lot of it is just being here for us and spreading the joy that younger people particularly need. It’s pretty depressing if you’re 13 or 14 and you can’t see any happy adults whose life experience is similar to yours.
Q: How are you managing burnout?
The 12 behind this specifically are good at working as colleagues but also good friends. So it’s been the summer holidays, and we’ve been spending one in three nights having a sleepover at someone’s house, which means we’re pretty adept at keeping tabs on each other. It’s something we’re going to have to keep track of, particularly going into September.
I’m going to my last year of school, and I’ve got to sit at my A-levels, which means the whole thing is a lot more stressful and managing schoolwork as well as activism, which anyone who’s done it knows is all-consuming, is something we are all very conscious of.
Thankfully, a few of us have had experience doing this before. My background is in climate activism, so I’ve watched people go through those cycles, and we’re conscious that they are real. Also, we’ve got a lot of people on the team who are physically disabled, which means that they are used to the idea of managing their proximity to burnout, which is helpful for the rest of us as we can learn from them. We’re trying to communicate with each other as best we can.
Between these two actions, we had one week where half of us were at a summer camp with that queer youth group. And I was also away, and so were a couple of other people. So we just said take this week off, don’t worry about missing messages, because everybody’s away and breathe for a week. We returned refreshed, and I felt like a human again, which is nice.
Q: Have you had other liberation struggles reach out, or have you reached out to other liberation struggles? How does your group relate to intersectionality?
We have had one joint liberation group contact us and ask if we could collaborate and attend a demo they were doing. We are working beyond capacity so we can eventually reach out to other groups. The group haven’t spoken about whether this is something we want to focus on, but some people working behind the scenes also have strong links with other action groups, so we’re interested in that.
Very few of us are neurotypical; there are a lot of autistic people here. And when I say that to adults, especially people who used to work in corporate spaces, they think that must be difficult to manage. However, it’s one thing that makes us unique because everybody will have this tiny field they are an expert in.
So we’re doing an action through social media called Trans Kids Are Dying, where we are leaving a paper cut-out coffin decorated by a trans person outside of Wes Streeting’s office every day for as long as the bans up on hormone blockers. So we had this guy who had a special interest in 3D modelling. We asked him if he would make us a net, and he went away for 3 hours and came back and had this beautiful network that was super clear and easy to cut out.
Q: How have interactions with the police been during your actions and occupations?
Surprisingly chill for me as a white, middle-class, trans masc. On day one of this occupation, the cops showed up, and we’re not doing anything criminal. I’m the designated police contact. So the officer said, “Hey, just wanted to check in. Of course you’re perfectly within your rights to do this protest. Can I encourage you to do it on the other side of the railings?” And I was like, “No.” (But more politely, obviously.)
In climate activism, the police are incredibly violent, and I’ve witnessed and been part of a lot of police interactions. That was the chillest one I’ve ever had in my life. We managed to get them on camera, saying we could use the entire pavement. He said, “We don’t want to have to come back and bother you.”
But the grate over there was a friend of mine who is a person of colour. The cop who spoke to him was aggressive and ended up half-climbing over the railings and shouting, “Can you not hear me?” They were singled out, and it’s apparent the difference in treatment I got versus what they got.
It took until last night, over 24 hours, for us to combine stories and say, “I had the chillest interaction of my life; you just got screamed at by a cop.” But they haven’t threatened us with arrest or asked us to leave, and that was the same response we got on the ledge. They never asked us to leave, although they did try to intimidate us at one point, which was a bit stressful, but some of us stuck it out, and they left.
Q: This action is about education policy and the erasure, outing, and mistreatment of trans children at schools. How are your group’s interactions with schooling?
I firmly believe people want to do good things, and nobody wants to be an arsehole. That especially applies to teachers; nobody signed up to be a teacher to be horrible to their students; broadly, obviously, there are transphobic teachers. But broadly, it’s them not knowing what to do and not asking the trans child what to do, which is what they should be doing.
They are guessing and getting it wrong and doing stuff like outing people to their parents, misgendering them, or requiring that they use particular facilities based on safety and comfort without actually checking whether that fits in with the safety and comfort of the trans child.
I’ve had friends who go home at the end of the day to find that their parents have been informed without their consent. Teachers won’t tell you if they’ve told your parents that you have requested to go by a different name or new pronouns. You will get home at the end of the day, and your parents will say, “I had a call from your teacher this morning; this is what the teacher said.”
At that point, you’ve completely lost your agency over your social transition; it’s been taken out of your hands. It’s a removal of your autonomy, and if your parents are transphobic or violently transphobic, you can put yourself in a highly uncomfortable or dangerous situation.
We know that LGBTQ people are massively overrepresented in the homeless population and also, particularly in the youth homeless population, so a lot of this can genuinely end up with people homeless.
But even when it doesn’t, it is distressing to come home, maybe you weren’t ready to come out, or perhaps you know that your parents wouldn’t take it very well, to have that decision taken away before you’re ready or can make any preparations in case things go wrong. And this is on the basis that the teacher just thought it was a good idea.
I’ve heard of people who’ve had teachers overhear conversations between them and friends and then go to their parents. It’s very dangerous for many people whose parents they know would not be supportive. So I had a friend whose mum tried to make them move classes and ended up moving schools because they thought that I was indoctrinating their child in the ways of the devil, which wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been outed.
It is not something that should ever be done in any situation, no matter what you think the parents are like, because the kid knows their parents, and if the kid hasn’t told their parents, there’s a reason for that. It’s nobody’s job to override that decision.
Art (50) Book Review (104) Books (106) Capitalism (65) China (76) Climate Emergency (97) Conservative Government (90) Conservative Party (45) COVID-19 (44) Economics (37) EcoSocialism (49) Elections (81) Europe (44) Fascism (54) Film (49) Film Review (61) France (68) Gaza (55) Imperialism (97) Israel (108) Italy (43) Keir Starmer (50) Labour Party (108) Long Read (40) Marxism (47) Palestine (138) pandemic (78) Protest (145) Russia (322) Solidarity (126) Statement (46) Trade Unionism (132) Ukraine (324) United States of America (124) War (351)