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Special Guest Chris Sheridan - The Queer Therapist
101 Plays2 years ago
On this episode of The Plainly Queer Podcast, we welcome Chris Sheridan a trans, masc, non-binary, neurodivergent psychotherapist. Chris specialises in gender, sexual and relationship diversity therapy and is the founder of The Queer Therapist, a UK online therapy service. They provides affirming therapy for GSRD and neurodivergent individuals and also serve as the lead psychotherapist and expert advisor for Voda, the LGBTQIA mental health app.
In the episode, we discuss the trans and non-binary experience from Chris’s unique lived perspective. We examine the current trends of transphobia against the backdrop of historical genocide and discuss how we can learn from the past to help us navigate towards a more inclusive future. Intersectionality and the sexy sounding concept of Neurospicy are also explored from a plainly Queer perspective.
You can learn more about Chris through their website at https://thequeertherapist.com/ or their Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/theqtherapist/
Below are some of the resources mentioned in the episode:
The Voda App: https://www.voda.co/
The Wheel of Power and Privilege: https://kb.wisc.edu/instructional-resources/page.php?id=119380
The Right is Laying the Foundation for Genocide article: https://www.theslateonline.com/article/2022/11/the-right-is-laying-the-foundation-for-genocide
Thank you for being part of our Plainly Queer community. We hope you enjoy this episode. Please note that it discusses potentially distressing topics, so engage mindfully and seek professional help if needed.
Here is a list of resources that may be of help to anyone listening:
Queer affirming counselling and psychotherapy services: https://www.insightmatters.ie/ and https://thequeertherapist.com
LGBTQ+ community support in Ireland: https://lgbt.ie/
LGBTQ+ Youth Support in Ireland: https://www.belongto.org/
Transgender Equality Network Ireland: https://teni.ie/
The Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org/ireland/samaritans-ireland/
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Transcript
Introduction: Meet the Hosts and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everyone. You're very welcome once again to the Plainly Queer Podcast. My name is Paul O'Byrne. I'm here with Claudia McGrath, my lovely co-host. And we are joined by a very special guest. Chris Sheridan is with us today. Chris is the founder of the Queer Therapist. So lead psychotherapist and expert advisor for the Queer Mental Health app VODA. We are very happy to have them with us
Chris Sheridan's Background
00:00:26
Speaker
today. Chris, thank you so much for joining us.
00:00:28
Speaker
Thank you so much for inviting me to participate today. I'm really happy. And Chris, I just find it like literally just before we were coming on, I was just doing some extra Googling as one does. You're actually originally from Ireland. That's right. Yeah. I didn't cop that until just now. So my apologies. Where are you from originally? So originally from Dublin and lived in Dublin and
00:00:52
Speaker
up until, I believe I was about 23. You don't have a strong accent at all? No, so my mum, even though my mum spent most of her life, so my mum's side of the family are like English Maltese. My mum has spent most of her life in Ireland but has that accent. My dad was Scottish and is also a mix of different sort of European identities but lived in Ireland and we were also part of a
00:01:18
Speaker
Greek Orthodox Church when we grew up. So there was a lot of kind of, I suppose that speaks again to sort of my context and background. We had a lot of, I guess, yeah, just European influence growing up. But I think living in the UK is interesting because people are like quickly pick up that I'm Irish, whereas when I'm back in Ireland, they're like, are you Irish? So I always find that, yeah, fascinating.
00:01:46
Speaker
I couldn't when you were talking, it's like I can't place the accent at all. Like I knew there was the Irish, there is the Irish in the background. I was like, where? Like, no, I wouldn't have said Dublin at all. They'll claim me, definitely.
Challenges in Queer Therapy
00:01:58
Speaker
100% were going to claim me.
00:02:00
Speaker
But I am, I am proudly Irish. I think as a core part of my identity, I am like fiercely Irish, I would say. I love it. Great. OK, so I'm going to go straight into one of one of our questions today. And that is that as a queer therapist, what teams and challenges do you encounter in the private practice? So amongst other queer individuals, what is coming into the earth?
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fairly broad mix of presentations. So I think it'd be helpful just to kind of start off by talking about, I suppose when we're talking about working with queer clients in general, we're talking about many intersections that interface with heteronormativity and cis-normativity. And with that sort of interfacing of identities with heteronormativity and cis-normativity, we see different presentations.
00:02:56
Speaker
in different groups. So for instance themes that come up with my trans clients may look actually quite different to themes that come up with say queer women or gay men. I think the kind of overarching themes across all of my kind of queer client work is things like Shame. Shame's a big one. Shame is kind of sits at the foundation of a lot of the work that I do working to identify how has
00:03:25
Speaker
how has this person kind of managed or coped with their shame? And often they will have developed different kind of coping mechanisms or defense mechanisms to manage that underlying shame. Rejection is another major theme. So that's not just rejection, say from family or loved ones, but again, it's, I guess, rejection from society and even a rejection of oneself. So that kind of internalized
00:03:53
Speaker
homophobia, biphobia, transphobia is present there. Yeah, the rejection is a massive one. Another major theme across the full sort of alphabet alphabet soup is kind of dealing with hypervigilance and minority stress.
00:04:10
Speaker
So again, if we're thinking about moving through the world with an awareness of otherness as part of our identities, we're likely going to be kind of screening or scanning our environments for
00:04:25
Speaker
maybe real or perceived instances of rejection, again, or criticism, or am I being othered in these environments?
Trans and Gender Diverse Experiences
00:04:34
Speaker
And again, what that does is it kind of, it kind of compounds what maybe sort of underlines the mental health issues, it compounds that and means that our community is facing more mental health issues as a result.
00:04:48
Speaker
If we go in and we look at the kind of individual identities, so trans and gender diverse identities, for instance, we see kind of themes there of obviously transitioning. That's a huge theme. And that could be at any point along that kind of transitioning journey. So people who are maybe, who are just questioning, who are maybe just starting to notice that there might be some sort of clash between the
00:05:14
Speaker
gender that they've been assigned and then the gender that they actually identify with or we could be meeting somebody that's fairly far along in their transitioning journey but may actually decide they want to take more steps say to socially or medically transition. Things like kind of other things within the sort of trans or gender diverse population are kind of a lot of practical considerations there including kind of
00:05:38
Speaker
hormone replacement therapy, navigating medical systems, navigating oppressive structures is probably the biggest theme in that work. I think the more, the more work I do with trans and gender diverse people, the more I realize it's not the individual with the issue. It's usually they are having to wait. They are having to again, navigate oppressive, heteronormative, cisnormative structures.
Issues in Gay and Queer Women's Communities
00:06:05
Speaker
So yeah, it really could be anywhere along that journey and navigating all of the kind of medical complexity that comes with that. If we look at, say, gay men, for instance, how shame maybe has kind of played out with gay men, what we see a lot is, again, really quite unrelenting standards, perfectionism, kind of
00:06:25
Speaker
very high achieving what that means in the kind of therapy space is we're dealing with a huge amount of self-criticism. We're dealing with a huge amount, again, of shame. So a lot of the work is around kind of building self-compassion and even building compassion for for peers in the community. So
00:06:46
Speaker
Again, I've worked with various different, even sort of dating platforms or dating apps. And we see particularly with gay men, a huge amount of hostility again, on a lot of gay dating platforms. And again, we need to kind of interrogate, well, where's that coming from? And again, a lot of that is, is to do with shame. Queer women or yeah.
00:07:09
Speaker
those that identify as women or cisgender women are generally speaking kind of dealing with themes of again I would say invisibility is a core theme, invalidation is a core theme, and again shame is a core theme that sits in there. There could be further kind of complexity in there around things like fertility, things like navigating what it means to be
00:07:32
Speaker
queer woman within the sort of family structure when we're within wider society. And again, paradynamics play a huge part in that. So each identity has its own interesting paradynamics when it comes to interfacing with their families and interfacing with the world. So huge, huge complexity. And I haven't even mentioned there's a
00:07:53
Speaker
those of our clients who are asexual, those of our clients who are intersex, and the medical complications that come up with that medical stigma that comes up with that, or asexuality, which is, again, still profoundly stigmatized as an identity. And while I'm seeing now more recently, a lot more clients are coming forward and able to kind of proudly name their ace identity or gray sexual identity, whatever it is, yeah, it's still very, very stigmatized.
00:08:21
Speaker
So I hope that gets you out. I was taking notes. I was literally, as you were speaking, like so much was sparking. And I think one word that you kind of brought up, one theme, like we've, we've obviously done a series on queer mental health, just discussing it ourselves as two psychotherapists myself and Clodagh, but I don't remember hearing the word rejection much actually in our discussions or
00:08:48
Speaker
in our kind of exploration of this over the last few months. And rejection is so, it's at the core, isn't it? It's just that absolute fear, even in relation to coming out, the apprehension and the fear around that is all about rejection.
Societal Shifts and Queer Therapy
00:09:06
Speaker
It's all about being rejected. And shame, of course. A question that I asked another guest a few weeks ago, and I'll put it to yourself as well, Chris, do you think
00:09:18
Speaker
as a queer community will ever not feel shame? I think the only way we will not feel shame is that, is if our societies become queerer. And what I mean by that is if we start moving away from binary thinking.
00:09:41
Speaker
if we start moving away from the idea that there's only man, only woman, there's only gay, there's only straight, there's only monogamy, or there's only polyamory, once we're kind of fused to that binary thinking, that's what often fuels the shame. Because if we don't see ourselves within that binary, we're immediately feeling defective or flawed.
00:10:08
Speaker
that there's something, yeah, something wrong with us. So the only way our community will really, I suppose, recover from shame is societal shifts and attitudes that are, yeah, I mean, at VODA we talk about the future is queer. The future is queer, we strongly believe that, and that is the only mechanism, I believe, that will shift that.
00:10:35
Speaker
It goes to the importance of the training then. You spoke on so many teams there that even just, even just mentioning the hypervigilance a person would go through and no matter what their presentation or what they're going through.
00:10:50
Speaker
That hypervigilance, I don't think, is talked about in this. And I don't think it will be recognised in the room, or taught of in the room, unless you have the training to know this is what queer individuals are living. It's such an important point, Clodagh. So again, within traditional talking therapies, we focus on things like cognitive distortions.
00:11:15
Speaker
But when we take the idea of cognitive distortions into the room, into queer therapy, actually, the person often has a very legitimate reason for having cognitive distortions. And yes, maybe some of that work in the therapy room will be to sort of help that person to develop more adaptive cognitive styles, that's thinking patterns. But
00:11:40
Speaker
actually some of those thinking patterns could be adaptive, could be actually helpful to their safety, could be helpful to their sense of well-being. So that's the fundamental, I think, the fundamental, I guess, the reason why it's so important that queer therapy as an approach, GSRD therapy as an approach becomes mandatory in our training programs because without that information,
00:12:09
Speaker
how are therapists supposed to understand this kind of the systemic stuff that the ideas of heteronormativity and cisnormativity and binary thinking and so again that that allows us to in many ways
00:12:24
Speaker
I think with a lot of my clients I always use this I don't know if you've come across it there's something called the wheel of power and privilege by Sylvia Duckworth and it's a really helpful infographic to look at power and privilege in in society. When I show my clients this you can just see this sort of light bulb going off in their heads and they realize oh
00:12:47
Speaker
This isn't actually about me. This is how our societies have been structured. This is how our societies have been organized. And then we can get to thinking about, well, who do those categories serve? Who those categories serve? And who established? Who created these categories? And for what purpose? So again, it just shifts the focus from I'm not the issue in this picture. So yeah, it's hugely important.
00:13:17
Speaker
I think it's also important what you've highlighted, Chris, is for therapists to be willing to operate outside of the binary. And I think a lot of therapists maybe would have fear in even approaching many of the issues that you touched on that you come across. I think because without knowledge, you wouldn't have the confidence to approach these or you wouldn't have the confidence to kind of work with these presentations.
00:13:47
Speaker
So I think it's about stepping up and being able to kind of journey outside of that binary with your client. And I suppose, like you say, in a compassionate way. Yeah. And that's, that's quite scary. What we're asking again, therapists to do is probably the same work we're asking our clients to do, which is, is scary, but it can actually seem quite overwhelming, that sort of expansiveness stepping outside of that into.
00:14:14
Speaker
what is beyond the binary. It's kind of, you know, we get, we get to choose. I imagine it would make a lot of people, and it has done, I've seen it many times over, but it makes a lot of people question their own lives. So there's a, there will be a hesitation for them to go there because actually no, I like my box.
The Founding and Growth of VODA
00:14:32
Speaker
My box is safe and I know the corners of my box. So please don't take me out of my box. Yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't threaten my safety. Yeah.
00:14:43
Speaker
Interesting. Chris, you mentioned their VODA and I suppose you are the lead psychotherapist and the kind of expert advisor for VODA, but I suppose how did VODA come about? How did your involvement with VODA come about and what's your experience of it been?
00:15:00
Speaker
So Voda was originally founded by Jaron, my colleague, and now there's two sort of main co-founders, so there's Chris and Jaron. So Jaron established Voda now kind of a year and a half, two years ago, and really off the back of
00:15:19
Speaker
I can speak briefly about Jaron's experience but off the back of being an Asian gay man and struggling, struggling with navigating again the world as an Asian gay man and so Jaron's background is in sort of startups and isn't, I know with Jaron Voda isn't just about, it's not just about work, this is passion, this is love, this is
00:15:43
Speaker
absolutely purpose for him. Jaron approached me probably about six months in. And so yeah, I did, well, I do and I did a fair amount of posting online on Instagram. And generally have just been kind of building my own brand, which is kind of very much focused, yes, on the kind of queer, queer therapy side of things, but but more specifically on transgender diverse and neurodivergent identities.
00:16:13
Speaker
and alongside that we've also developed a sort of training norm that is actually really pushing forward for exactly what we're talking about, becoming mandatory in training courses. So we ended up providing a sort of core CPD for the BACP here in the UK, which is on working with trans and gender diverse clients. So
00:16:34
Speaker
There's been, I guess, a fair amount of, I suppose what you could call thought leadership that's been formed out of the kind of queer therapist brand. And that was the sort of initiating factor for Jaron to approach me. I think Jaron saw alignment in terms of kind of my therapeutic approach.
00:16:52
Speaker
and what his vision is for Boda. I've mentioned there we now have so co-founder Chris who is honestly like computer scientist genius just and also just a fantastic guy and we also have a team of other therapists as well that kind of feed into it. So far my experience has been it's been it's been wonderful it's been really again just aligned with my own values. I
00:17:19
Speaker
with kind of developing the queer therapist, it was about claiming space and creating a space that we don't typically see. When we go to therapy agencies or we go into therapy practices, we don't generally see trans therapists or neurodivergent therapists or queer therapists for that matter. So for me, the queer therapist was very much about claiming that space and
00:17:45
Speaker
proudly, proudly standing out. Again historically it always worked in fairly, I guess you would describe heteronormative, cisnormative environments like the NHS or like other third sector therapy agencies. So the opportunity really was about expanding that vision for almost like the scale of what we could potentially offer to not just the UK but long-term globally what VODA will be able to offer
00:18:15
Speaker
we hope will be huge for many, many people. I mean, for me, there's just something about we have we have feedback that regularly comes in and the young people all the time who will just say they will, I don't know, listen to one of the programmes on
00:18:31
Speaker
managing gender dysphoria. And they will say this has offered me even five minutes of relief. That that's, that's huge. That's huge. So again, yeah, very aligned with my own values of how can we democratize
00:18:47
Speaker
sort of psycho-educational knowledge around kind of queer therapy, how can we get this information out to the masses, there shouldn't be something that is kind of in many ways kind of elitist in terms of kind of forward therapy, who can access those spaces,
00:19:04
Speaker
everyone should be able to access those spaces. So Voda has a completely free sort of suite of programs and has an extremely affordable package for the sort of premium membership. And we are this month, we've just put out a sort of pride collection, which is fantastic. We've also released another 30 programs this month. And each month, we're going to be just building up our banker programs. So yeah, it's been wonderful.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah. I wake up to Voda every morning because the little kind of daily thought comes up and then that makes you click into it. And then what's your mood for the day? And you pick your emoji, then I do my little kind of two or three line journaling. And it's just so, it's, it's user friendly and it's, it's not too intense. It's very, yeah, it's, it's very kind of not, it's basic, but in a good way. You, you can engage with it. It's not overwhelming.
00:20:00
Speaker
amount of psychoeducation on us, like you say, is like top notch. It's very digestible, even first thing in the morning. Thank you so much for feeding that back. Well, that's just, again, that's wonderful to hear. And again, we're, we're bootstrapped as a, as a kind of company so far. So we're only going to see that kind of program just expand or the banker programs expand.
00:20:25
Speaker
Things are only going to get better. But yeah, I think one of the main kind of things for VODA is about user-friendliness and also the aesthetic. So the design is really important as well, but it's great. It's great to hear that you're using it. More emojis maybe. Sometimes I'm kind of like, I might be a little bit in between those two. Yeah, maybe more.
00:20:46
Speaker
I believe you can now do multiple emojis, I think. I don't use the emoji function, but that's, that's what I heard. It makes me feel young when I do. No, yeah, but no, it is a great mental health resource for the queer. And I think it's a great actually app I've been telling.
00:21:07
Speaker
peers like to recommend to clients like that maybe kind of therapists who aren't really kind of as informed as they could be due to core training, link into resources like this, use it as a tool in the therapy space for your queer clients.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. And, and what we're kind of, again, what we're sort of telling even other therapists is this can be given how expensive again, therapy is this can subsidize some of that. So some of our clients who we've maybe been seeing for a very long time, we might say, right, actually let's move on to seeing each other every two weeks, but I'd like you to do a couple of these programs in between and we can kind of feedback. And so again, just yeah, how we can use that to supplement around or in therapy as well can be a really good resource.
00:21:52
Speaker
It's very empowering as well putting the power back into the client's hands. It's it's great. Yeah, literally
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah. OK, so I'm going to jump off the dold it now for a minute and ask. For those that don't know, for those that are listening and asking questions and wondering either about themselves or about others, but one of the questions that comes up a lot is what's the difference between non-binary and transgender? Are there intersections between them? What is it that people are asking when they ask that question?
Understanding Non-Binary and Transgender Identities
00:22:29
Speaker
So if we think about kind of transgender almost as like the umbrella kind of label and then we can kind of see all of the different sort of trans and gender diverse identities under that. So we might have trans, simply just trans, we might have non-binary, we might have transven,
00:22:50
Speaker
trans woman, trans mask, trans masculine, gender queer, agender, gender neutral. I can never pronounce that one. There's a huge neutral, so essentially gender neutral is another one, but of course language is ever evolving and
00:23:08
Speaker
Certainly when I'm working with my own clients, I think the most important thing to do is to ask, what meaning do you give this label? So in my case, I generally refer to myself as trans, but more specifically, I identify as trans mask non-binary. So that will be very different for another person, but the kind of distinctions there are generally speaking, transgender. If a person is describing themselves as transgender, they may
00:23:38
Speaker
experience their gender is something that's more closely aligned to gender binaries so they may see themselves fitting more neatly into either the kind of man or woman category. Whereas if we're talking about a non-binary identity that person might be
00:23:55
Speaker
The spectrum analogy is a little bit outdated, but I'll use that for now. So if we're talking about a non-binary identity, we might be talking about someone who experiences essentially neither an absence of woman-ness, an absence of man-ness, and may identify somewhere along that sort of spectrum, maybe leaning more towards femme expression or more towards mass expression. But there are plenty of non-binary people
00:24:22
Speaker
who kind of don't experience, they just have an absence of both of those identities and actually don't see themselves falling along that spectrum.
00:24:30
Speaker
So yes, there are huge intersections. So again, I think simply, I'm, I'm labeling myself as trans and non binary, this huge amount of intersection. And it in many ways, again, it speaks to the, I suppose, the complexity of the language that we're using. But generally speaking, I think we just need to ask, what does that mean to you? What does non binary mean to you? What does being trans mean to you?
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah. Can I follow up, Clodagh, just really, sorry, we're going to probably come in here and like, oh, a million things. You mentioned there, Chris, the kind of concept of the spectrum is now becoming a little bit kind of outdated. I know for myself, I would use that sometimes to frame sexuality and gender as a spectrum. What alternative is there now in relation to that? What other way of reframing that?
00:25:24
Speaker
So the spectrum is actually, it's a helpful almost like weigh in just to start our thinking about it. But if we really start thinking about gender, like any other identity, there's going to be multiple dimensions to it.
00:25:38
Speaker
So where we have one spectrum, that's kind of a one-dimensional view. So that's why I'm saying, OK, it's a little bit outdated. So some people are actually describing it more of a 360-degree universe of possibility. It's 360-degree expansiveness of expression. So that gender expression could
00:26:04
Speaker
could present itself in multiple different dimensions. So we're talking about not just gender identity as one dimension, but we're talking about a dimension of gender expression or a dimension of even things like it could be a thing, a dimension of butchness. It could be a dimension of how even our humanness can be a sort of gender experience that some of my clients will talk about. What's coming into my head, okay? Only because I do this.
00:26:33
Speaker
The word sphere is coming up in relation to a three-dimensional sphere.
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a lovely way to describe it. Yeah. A sphere, a sphere is really good because actually there's multiple perspectives, multiple angles and multiple possibilities actually within there. I was having a vision of colors as well coming in. So you have different splashes of colors and that's in some days you can see it's more of a certain color and then on another day it moves. It's just always moving. Do you know when you drop color into water?
00:27:04
Speaker
and they all just start to meld around. That's what was coming into my mind and everybody has a different flavour, everybody has a different colour. Yeah, that's beautiful and it's kind of I guess ultimately it's getting away from the binary but it's also trying to again shift the focus onto we don't actually have to define this.
00:27:25
Speaker
We can actually sit in that expansiveness. That's okay. I think as well to let people know they can continue growing. They can continue expressing, waking up on a daily basis going, okay, what's working today? Like any, like you would say to anybody that you get to become every day.
00:27:46
Speaker
So allowing yourselves to write your whole life. Not that, not that you are getting the labels, I know we're wanting to make away from the labels, but getting the labels to put yourself in another box. You're actually, in a year's time, you may see a difference and to constantly allow that to happen. Yeah. How freeing is that? I just love the idea of waking up in the morning and going down to Primark and just kind of browsing the whole place and just picking out something you'd like that day.
00:28:14
Speaker
And just being able to do that every day, just go into kind of like some department store and just pick out the outfit, just not based on anything, just yeah, how you're feeling in the moment. What I'm kind of observing, even just as we're talking about this, is the kind of smiling or kind of smiling. There's something really kind of, I don't know, soothing and lovely about that idea. It's just like, you just got to be you, just got to be you.
Rise of Transphobia and Political Impacts
00:28:43
Speaker
And I suppose my follow-up question then is probably going to counter that because I suppose there is then the lived reality of what the world is like outside of spaces like this, where we get to smile, where we get to kind of experience queer joy with each other. But what are your thoughts on the current kind of transphobia and kind of that anti-binary, non-binary rhetoric that's out there at the moment?
00:29:13
Speaker
What are your thoughts and relations to that? I mean, I think from the outset, it's kind of devastating, you know, it's just devastating kind of what's happening in the world right now. And for your listeners who maybe are aware or not aware, what we're kind of seeing particularly, particularly so in the last five years is this growing anti-trans rhetoric.
00:29:38
Speaker
particularly so again it kind of really seeded in particular within the UK and we're now starting to see it seed elsewhere very much in the states but also in Australia. What I generally kind of say to people when I'm kind of explaining this is
00:29:56
Speaker
It's just the tip of the iceberg. So what we've seen in history is that certain groups in particular will be targeted and that particular sort of dehumanisation or polarisation that happens within society is a kind of mechanism to
00:30:15
Speaker
almost like mobilize a base of support for maybe a political leaning. So what we're seeing in the UK and kind of I would say across the sort of western, very western world in particular, is a sort of move towards more right-wing leaning policies. So this anti-trans rhetoric at its core is actually an anti-democratic sort of rhetoric and
00:30:43
Speaker
The kind of the media sort of sensationalization of trans identities and this sort of anti-trans rhetoric is just a smokescreen for what is kind of actually quite painful in terms of what's happening behind that smokescreen in terms of our legislation, our rights being rolled back, not just within the sort of queer community, but this is across many, many different sort of intersections in society.
00:31:10
Speaker
So one group in particular that I can mention is the sort of turf movement in particular, who have gained huge momentum in recent years. So the turf movement is trans exclusionary radical feminists. They are a subset of feminists. And their kind of core belief is that really, I suppose, there's a lot of hostility shown towards trans women. And the core belief within sort of the turf movement is that trans women are not fundamentally women.
00:31:40
Speaker
So it's only those who have been assigned female at birth can identify themselves as women. And this kind of thinking or this sort of belief system is being, I would say, mobilized by really common figures in society. So the likes of J.K. Rowling and Posey Parker,
00:32:01
Speaker
gained huge support and of course we know we know historically a lot more sort of right leaning policies tend to have more money to back their campaigns so they have made huge momentum in recent years but I suppose like I say this is a smokescreen I say this is the tip of the iceberg because again if we look across history so sort of similar dehumanization of a trans gay man in particular in the 80s we saw the