‘I live in the UK and came out at 15, my message to trans youth? Keep going’

I first realised I was trans at 15. And yes, it was scary, but I’ve never looked back. I hope trans youth today will do the same.

I want to make one thing very clear: when I say I realised I was trans at 15, I mean that, at that point in my life, I was 100 per cent sure of my identity. It wasn’t the moment I started questioning my gender – I had been doing that my entire life. It wasn’t the moment I began experimenting with my presentation…

It was the moment that it fully hit me. Bam. I’m a woman.

Discovering you’re trans as a teenager is an admittedly terrifying experience. Once you’ve gone through the agonising work of scrutinising your short-lived past for moments that, in hindsight, are tell-tale signs of your identity, you’re left with an answer that society is either unequipped or unwilling to support you through.

I consider myself lucky. My family was generally supportive – bumps in the road are always to be expected – and, while the NHS’s torturous wait times ensured I wouldn’t start hormones until I was 20, I began my journey of self-discovery in a safe environment. Others aren’t so fortunate. To declare you are trans is to begin an exhausting battle against a society that wants to push you back into the closet.

The thing is, when I came out, the trans community wasn’t the centre-point of a viciously toxic campaign of hatred and bigotry disguising itself as “concern.” Sure, transphobia has existed for as long as trans people, but I was living in a world where, when I told my parents I was trans, their first question was: “So what’s that?”

I can’t imagine what it’s like to realise you’re trans at 15 in the society we live in right now.

Not only do trans youth need to deal with the abundance of obstacles that come with self-discovery, but these days, thanks to a hostile political and media landscape dead-set on making trans people’s lives worse, they have to deal with so much more.

We have seen uneducated pundits and bigots claim that trans youth, many of whom are old enough to get married or drive a car, are too ignorant to understand their own feelings. We have seen politicians disregard the Gillick competence test to implement a healthcare ban that is statistically making trans youth’s lives worse, all under the flimsy facade of “protecting” them.

“It’s no wonder trans youth are fighting back”

That level of infantilisation, for anyone who has experienced it, is infuriating beyond belief. I faced it when I started transitioning on a personal level – to face it at a national and institutional level must be torture. It’s no wonder trans youth are fighting back.

Witnessing trans youth groups show their disdain for the establishment’s continued treatment of them is nothing short of magnificent. We’ve seen trans teens occupy the NHS England headquarters, spray paint messages of trans solidarity outside the Department of Education, and stage “die-ins” at some of the most popular train stations in the UK.

To those who argue that these kind of protests are anti-social, wrong, or serve only to hurt the fight for trans rights, I ask you this: What else can trans youth possibly do to be heard in a world that ignores them not just because of their age, but their identity?

Above all else, however, I don’t think there is a stronger argument that trans youth are valid and should be taken seriously than the fact that there are trans youth still out there.

To face such unfettered vitriol and to not only persist, but to live authentically and deliberately through it all is inspiring. If our leaders had even a fraction of the courage of trans teenagers, we’d be living in a utopia.

Living authentically shouldn’t have to be a form of resistance, but it is. Seeing young people who happen to be trans unafraid to be themselves in the open shouldn’t be a rare and inspiring sight, but it is. People this young shouldn’t need to wake up every single day wondering which component of their lives is under threat, but they do.

I can’t help but be inspired by this generation of trans people. I’m 27 now. While I’m still young, I’ve been on hormones for seven years, and I’m at a point where my journey has plateaued into a comfortable sail across the waters of time. However, something about the way young people are fighting back has me nostalgic for the early days of my journey, when the fires of rebellion against an unjust system were still burning in my belly.

One day, in the near future, those trans young people scaling the walls of government buildings will likely reach this point too. I hope they do. I hope they win this fight and that their concerns evolve into more traditional ones for young people, like what they plan to study at university, or what their first tattoo will be.

To the trans teenagers, kids, and all young people in the UK and beyond reading this – things will be OK. The harmful rhetoric that tries to put you down will one day fade away and, despite all the tears and the breakdowns and the nights awake with anxiety, you will still be here and you’ll still be who you are.

Show them how much stronger you are; live your life the way you want, it’s the thing transphobes fear the most.