nonbinary

What rights do trans people not have?

/ Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

This question has been coming up more and more online in public spaces and 9/10 its not in good faith. Cis people who lean towards anti-trans rhetoric or are out and out transphobes seem to think trans people are equal to them, or indeed that we have more rights socially and legally.

In this blog I aim to address this and add to the community knowledge base. I will try to stay emotionally uninvolved, even though these issues affect me personally.

  1. Marriage
  2. Gender Affirming Care
  3. Anti-discrimination Law
  4. Prison
  5. Gender Recognition
  6. Passports
  7. Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault
  8. Homelessness
  9. Trans Broken Leg
  10. Toilets and Changing Rooms
  11. Dress Codes

Marriage

When cis people get married, they provide identification and then give notice of intent to marry. This is regardless of sexuality.

For trans people to get married in a gender other than the one assigned at birth, we require a Gender Recognition Certificate. This requires months of work, medical transition which can and does take years and then approval by a panel of cis people who have not and will never meet you.

Nonbinary people aren’t legally recognised in the UK, so they aren’t able to get married as a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth.

If the person officiating the marriage believes you are trans and you haven’t jumped through enough hoops, or if you are in a religious establishment that doesn’t support marriage equality and/or trans people, they can refuse to marry you and you will be removed from the premises.

If you are already married and then medically transition, to remain married you will also have to jump through hoops if you are transgender.


Gender Affirming Care

Cis people can access gender affirming care whenever and however they like. For example a cis man can access viagra and a cis woman can also access HRT (eg oestrogen for menopause) at the chemist. Not to mention puberty blockers for precocious puberty in cis children, breast reduction or enlargement for cis women. (The list for gender affirming care that cis people can access is immense by the way.)

Trans children in the UK can’t currently access any gender affirming care due to the closure of the the only NHS clinic that would prescribe puberty blockers. This is under review and may change. However, before it’s closure the waiting time for getting on puberty blockers was three to five years, meaning that quite a lot of teenagers would age out of the service having had the trauma of going through the wrong puberty. Some don’t make it.

Trans adults in England and Wales have to convince a cis doctor that they are trans. Then you go onto a waiting list of three to seven years to get in front of another cis doctor who you have to convince you’re trans. Then you may or may not get various forms of gender affirming care, for example HRT. Sometimes they then take that away if there’s a change in your circumstances or a transphobic practice manager starts at your surgery.

No trans person can legally access gender affirming care without going down a gate-kept, medical pathway.

Stethoscope and LGBT rainbow ribbon pride tape symbol. Medical support after sex reassignment surgery. Grey background.

Anti-discrimination Law

Nonbinary people aren’t recognised in UK law so technically aren’t covered by any anti-discrimination protections.

(I will cover the recent discussions on the Equality Act later.)

Prison

If you happen to be sentenced to time in prison as a cis person, you will automatically go to the prison with the facilities that match your gender without question.

If you are nonbinary, you will go to the prison dictated by the assigned sex on your birth certificate because UK law does not recognise your existence.

If you are transgender and have managed to acquire a Gender Recognition Certificate, you will not automatically be sent to the prison that matches your now legal gender. Each prisoner is assessed on a case by case basis. This includes risk assessments relating to other members of the prison population. If you don’t have a GRC, even if you have medically and socially transitioned, you will sent to the prison dictated by the assigned sex on your birth certificate.

Transgender people as a % of the UK prison population: 0.28% ( 230 declared trans prisoners out of a prison population of 79,514.)

Gender Recognition Certificate

When cis people say who they are, society automatically believes them.

Trans people on the other hand have to acquire a GRC. This requires months of work, medical transition which can and does take years and then approval by a panel of cis people who have not and will never meet you.

You can then mostly access the services you need as the gender you are. (There are exceptions under the Equality Act and are likely to be more going forward.)

Nonbinary people aren’t able to acquire a GRC.

Some things are quite strangely not covered by a GRC. For example, if you are transmasculine and have a GRC stating you are a man, you are still not able to inherit your father’s estate or any hereditary titles as a cis man would.

Passport

Cis people apply for a passport by filling in an application form and providing identification.

Trans people can only apply for a passport in the gender that they are, if they have medically transitioned and if a medical professional approves of the transition and will write a letter to the passport office stating that we are who we say we are.

Nonbinary people can’t have a passport stating they are nonbinary.

Domestic violence & Sexual assault

The majority of domestic violence and sexual assault services in the UK are still gendered, with the vast majority of funding going to women who are victims/survivors, and men who are perpetrators.

Amongst these services, there is a divide in which some services will welcome and be prepared for trans women, some services have banned trans women, and some services mean well but are not prepared at all. 

For nonbinary and trans masc folks, this information is even less clear. Some services have moved to be gender neutral, but a huge amount are still aimed at women. 

In the event of needing to flee a situation, emergency services are focused on cis women who have been abused by men, and struggle to understand anything else. Emergency placements are, a huge majority of the time, only available to women. 

Trans men are often excluded from women’s refuges due to being masculine and therefore triggering other residents – trans women’s placements are often reduced to how well they ‘pass’. 

Trans people are more likely to be victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and yet, the services available to us limited and sometimes put us in another dangerous situation. (LGBT in Britain, Page 14)

(Please note that I agree that these services are also lacking for cis men but that falls under societies patriarchal structure and toxic masculinity and not something I’ll be addressing here.)

Homelessness

25% of trans people have experienced homelessness in their lives.

Homelessness services and hostels also contain a lot of gendering, with different pathways and services being available to women or men.

In a lot of ways, being ‘stealth’ will save you in these situations – as long as nobody ever finds out – but if you are anything but a passing binary trans person, you are in trouble. Nothing exists for you and you will often have to take your chances.

Trans Broken Leg

Mostly when cis people go to the doctor with a problem they aren’t treated as if their “decision” to be the the gender they are, is the cause of all their problems.

Trans people on the other hand are often told it’s because they are on oestrogen/testosterone or have had particular surgeries. For example I could go the doctor with a bad back and the doctor will say it’s because I’m taking testosterone and ignore anything else, esesentially telling me I have to detransition if I want to be taken seriously. We call this, “trans broken leg syndrome.” It’s similar to what fat cis people experience with everything being blamed on them being fat. Goodness forbid you’re fat and trans…..

Doctor and patient closeup, holding hands and consultation support, healthcare services and sad news, test results or help. Clinic, medical professional or black people consulting, helping and advice.

Toilets and Changing Rooms

Under the Equality Act 2010, trans people can use the facilities that match their gender. You don’t need a GRC or to have undergone any medical transition.

The current government is looking at removing this protection for trans people, essentially meaning we will only be able to leave the house for as long as our bladders can hold out, or use the wrong toilets and risk physical assault. (You of course also risk physical assault if you don’t “pass” as the gender of toilets you are in.)

Nonbinary people have to make difficult decisions and are only truly safe with gender neutral toilets.

Cis people can mostly use whatever facilities they like without fear and without the government legislating them out of public life. The exception to this is gender nonconforming cis people who continue to be the victims of gender stereotypes. For example butch women being chased out of the female toilets because they look too masculine. (Transphobia hurts everyone it seems.)

Dress Codes & Safety Wear

Work uniforms can be needlessly gendered, which hurts everyone, but especially hurts trans people who aren’t catered to. For example my work requires me to wear safety gloves. All the people who do my job are cis men so therefore they tend to have bigger hands. All my safety gloves are too big for me, putting me at risk.

No one should have to wear things they don’t want to wear, but trans people shouldn’t have to wear clothes which dehumanise them and often this is the case if you want to continue your employment. For example all male employees get to wear a shirt and all female employees are given a blouse. Now imagine telling your boss you’re a man and he insists you wear the blouse or you’re sacked. It’s nonsense, but it’s dehumanising none the less.


If the current government decide to strip trans people from the Equality Act, the list of rights we don’t have legally will grow quite considerably and therefore our social rights will also diminish.

Having spoken to other members of my community and from a personal perspective, trans people want gender to stop becoming an issue in social situations, to stop constantly being in the news for made up culture wars sticking points, to stop being the victims of violence, have our mental health taken seriously and have the right to exist peacefully.

Trans rights are human rights!

Queer Vegan



Labels

/ Frankie Mouche / 3 Comments

Everyone’s first experience of a label is the one they are given at birth. The one about 99% of us carry with us for our entire lives: our sex and gender. Everything you do and anything you will ever be is determined by that label in a patriarchal society. Those of us who reject the label given to us at birth are shunned by society and subject to systemic discrimination, yet society at large doesn’t seem keen on labels as a whole.

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Fast forward to 1999. I’m 14 years old and I’ve just started a new school. (I had to leave/was expelled from my two previous schools due to being bullied.) I’m into heavy metal and punk, so obviously I gravitated towards that group of people. The other kids called them, “Greebos” or “Greebs” but the most popular of them decided that labels weren’t cool so we never used the term. It was the same with the widespread bisexuality. If we didn’t talk about it or label ourselves we weren’t really different. We were just the same as everyone else, but we wore black and slept with people of multiple genders. (Yes I was having sex at 14.)

This situation didn’t last long for me and I ended up hanging out with the kids in the year below. They embraced labels and were subsequently called losers by the people I used to hang out with in my year group. We were Greebos. We were lesbians, gays and bisexuals and we were proud, even if just within our friendship group. We went through the same struggles together and our bond and our labels kept us together and kept us strong. I fell in love for the first time in 2001 with one of these people. We called ourselves lesbians and that stuck with me for the next nine years, even if the Greebo label faded into metal-head as time went by.

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So what are my labels now at 32 and what do they mean to me?

Autistic

I’ve been using this label since Feb 2017, when I truly accepted that this was who I was. A year later I had an official diagnosis.

I don’t say I am someone with autism. Autism is me. I am autistic.

Realising I was autistic was super validating for me. It explained a lot of my past behaviour and allowed me to find friends who were similar to me.

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Transmasculine Nonbinary

I am transgender. I lean towards masculinity. My transition involves testosterone and masculinising surgeries.

I am however not a man. I’m also not a woman. My gender identity and subsequent presentation fluctuates and sits well out of the norms for binary genders.

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Metal-head

I love all music actually but my focus is definitely focused on metal, punk and hardcore. I often dress in what can be considered as metal-head attire.

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Queer

Truly I am pansexual, but I like queer as an identity.

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Why are labels important?

My labels have brought some of the best people into my life. We have bonded over similar struggles and we have stood strong in the face of transphobia, homophobia and ableism. They give me a blanket of safety I can run and hide under when the allistic, transphobic world gets too much and they understand exactly why I need to do that.

It means when I’m out at the pub with my friends I’m not gonna get misgendered or called aggressive because of my autistic style of communicating. It means I was encouraged to be my authentic self at Trans Pride by being topless . It was the safety of having these people around me which allowed me to work up the courage to medically transition.

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We can also help other marginalised groups. They define who they are and the systemic discrimination they face. We listen to them and lend our privilege to help where it is needed. Without labels, I don’t think we would be able to do this so effectively and this leads on to my next point;

Why doesn’t society like labels as a whole?

In my experience oppressors don’t like labels because for them it means they are not the norm and when we use them, we use them to empower ourselves against their oppression.

For example cis women who reject the use of cis, even though it is literally what they are. They don’t like it because they have always just seen themselves as normal women and that trans women and femme aligned people are deviant in some way. This is often combined with TERf rhetoric. (The F is small deliberately cuz ain’t nothing feminist about their tripe.)

Another example is allistic people. This just basically means you aren’t autistic. Allistic people hate it because they see autistic people as abnormal and they are just normal people. Wrong.

So let’s embrace our labels and the labels of others, banding together to empower one another and bring down systems of oppression.

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trans-poc

My Emerging Male Privilege

/ Frankie Mouche / 1 Comment

I finally admitted to myself around a year ago that I needed to medically transition. What this means for me is that I’ll be masculinising myself with the addition of testosterone and eventually having top surgery.

I’m doing this because the dysphoria of being called she/her/woman/girl everyday is destroying me. I’m not a man either and I never will be. I’m non-binary and I’m transmasculine. However in the masculinising process I expect that I’ll get misgendered from the other side with he/him/boy/man. That doesn’t hurt me nearly as much and it comes with it’s own set of privileges that people who are seen as women do not get.

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So what is male privilege?

I took this straight from Wikipedia:

“Special privileges and status are granted to men in patriarchal societies. These are societies defined by male supremacy, in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. With systemic subordination of other genders, men gain economic, political, social, educational, and practical advantages that are more or less unavailable to other genders. The long-standing and unquestioned nature of such patriarchal systems, reinforced over generations, tends to make privilege invisible to holders; it can lead men who benefit from such privilege to ascribe their special status to their owned individual merits and achievements, rather than to unearned advantages.”

(Obviously I edited it slightly to erase their binary nonsense, but you get the standard textbook definition.)

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What this means is that anyone who “passes” as a man in our society gets certain privileges. This includes cis men, trans men and transmasculine nonbinary folks. This manifests in the way people treat you at work, how people value your opinions, opportunities open to you, how people greet you etc etc.

(Please note that passing is cis normative term that many trans people reject and that trans folks have their own set of challenges regardless of any male privilege bestowed on them by society.)

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At this present moment before I start testosterone, I have what I call “fleeting male privilege.” It’s given to me and taken away at a rate of knots when people realise I have boobs or that my voice is too high to be considered masculine.

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Until recently I’ve never had a sustained period of male privilege bestowed on me. My best friend is a nonbinary trans man and happens to do that weird thing the cis defined as “passing.” We were walking with another friend (who’s also trans) through Cardiff city centre and I guess all three of us looked like young white cis men because people got out of our way. People avoided eye contact. No one bothered us at all. This struck me because neither of them noticed and I noticed with every inch of my being. It made me really uncomfortable.

I think everyone deserves a high level of respect, dignity and opportunity but I guess that’s why I’m a feminist. I’ll be documenting my emerging male privilege as I transition.

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A Letter To My Friends & Family

/ Frankie Mouche / 5 Comments

In June 2012, I came out to my friends and family as genderqueer. I asked everyone to use gender neutral pronouns and never refer to me as female/she/her again. I explained that this means I am not male or female and never have been.

In October 2012 I dressed up as a zombie police officer for Halloween. I gave the character a beard. In fact the beard was so affirming that I wore it the whole of the next day and really didn’t want to wash it off. I remember telling my best friend at the time that I thought I might need to transition. She was supportive, but I was too scared and buried it deep inside me like I had done my whole life.

Over time I watched my trans friends transition and I was secretly jealous of their ability to be who they were. I kept telling myself that I didn’t need to transition. That who I was, was perfectly valid. The dysphoria was eating me alive nonetheless.

Around 2014 I redefined my gender identity as nonbinary. It means basically the same thing as genderqueer and sits as an umbrella term for people for don’t conform to binary gender norms. I liked it better. Enby is also an epic colloquial term. I also decided that this identity was a transgender identity. I now told people I was trans as part of my nonbinary identity.

Frankie came to be in April 2016. I needed to move away from my overly feminine name given to me when I was born. This was tough at work and initially with my friends. My family, never really having got the hang of my gender neutral pronouns, have still not got the hang of my new name as of November 2017.

From April 2016 to April 2017 I was happy just to be Frankie. My gender identity was still nonbinary, but instead of presenting in a fluid way where I would drift between feminine and masculine, I presented as entirely masculine.

At the end of April 2017 I was drunk in Cardiff. I was sat on my own outside of Brewdog enjoying the spring sunshine and everything I had been suppressing about my gender identity came to the surface. I needed to transition. I needed to masculinise physically. I text my mum and then told Facebook.

How I identify now is Transmasculine Nonbinary and I will be beginning my physical transition in April/May 2018. Here are some things you need to know:

  1. The NHS has made this process very difficult. They have been messing around sending me to mental health units and demeaning my experience for the past seven months, when I should have been referred to the gender clinic and been on their two year waiting list by now. I am still pursuing this route because there is no way I can afford my whole transition privately. However, I was able to afford two private consultations which will allow me to begin transitioning in Spring next year.
  2. My transition will start with regular injections of testosterone. This will push my body into what is essentially “male” puberty. My shoulders will broaden. My muscle and fat distribution will change. My voice will deepen and hopefully I’ll get a decent amount of body hair, especially on my face. (There are other changes too but you don’t really need to know about them. :P) I will appear to society as a “man”, but I will still have boobs. They will be flattened by a binder, when I find one that doesn’t cause me sensory issues.
  3. Somewhere down the line I will have what is know as top surgery. I will have my boobs surgically removed and replaced with pecs.  My boobs are a massive source of dysphoria. If I could have them taken off first, I would. People use my boobs to gender me and I hate it.
  4. I will not be having bottom surgery. My cunt does not cause me any dysphoria at all.
  5. This does not mean I am a man. I will never be a man. I am nonbinary. I do not fit in any binary boxes of gender nonsense. I will continue to use gender neutral pronouns.

 

I need you all to know that I have gone through a lot of emotional pain to get to this point. I NEED you to respect my pronouns and my name. Making mistakes was fine to start with, but it’s been a year and a half and mistakes are starting to look more and more like they are deliberate. If you continue to dead name and misgender me, I will have to remove you from my life.

This has been your final warning.

Frankie