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We celebrated #iwillweek from the 12th to the 16th of November, a week-long celebration of young people –just like Fraser, who shares his story below.
Hi, my name is Fraser and I am an eighteen-year-old transgender man living in the West Midlands.
I first began questioning my gender when I was very young and didn’t feel right wearing skirts and dresses. After being the only knight at a princess themed party I thought that there might be something different about me. After much deliberation and self-exploration I came out to my friends and family, aged fourteen, as Fraser.
Growing up I never really knew anybody who was LGBTQ+ and my parents never mentioned anything, so when I did come to the realisation I was transgender I felt quite isolated.
I struggled a lot with depression and self harm, feeling suicidal also wasn’t something that was uncommon too. When my mom found out, she put me into counselling which was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Through my counselling I started to attend an LGBTQ+ group where I met other transgender people who were just like me.
The group is also where I started my first ever campaigning work. Through a local programme, myself and a few others from the group formed ‘The Transgender Inclusive Schools Project’ or TISP for short. As a group, we wanted to create a supportive environment for other transgender people, where they could live, free from fear; while at the same time supporting them with their mental health and quality of life.
The project started around two years ago and in that time we have created a resource pack which contains an extensive booklet of information designed to increase transgender awareness. But that’s not all, we’ve also made a two hour training session designed for school staff, which we’ve adapted for voluntary sector workers. Our work is allowing people in my local community to ask the questions they want answered about transgender people, without fear. We run a very open environment at our training sessions and we have had many positive responses which is brilliant. It’s great to hear how, by bringing real life examples and scenarios to the forefront of the session, people have felt more confident to talk openly about gender without the fear of getting it wrong and upsetting people.
I first heard about Stonewall’s Young Campaigners Programme when I was attending a Stonewall youth pride event. A Youth Programme Manager from the charity, who was running the event, suggested that I apply for the programme and a few months later I was sat on the train on my way down to London to attend.
The programme was honestly the best three days of my entire life. I have never felt so safe, liberated and loved. Everyone there was so supportive, enthusiastic and wonderful. At home, I often feel uncomfortable because I don’t always feel accepted and understood; at the programme I could just be me, no questions asked. Being in a space where there are only other trans people was so powerful and motivating, it was like there was an instant connection between all of us. I’ve met friends who I am so proud to call a second family and through the programme we have created a network of campaigners across the entire country.
At the programme we learnt from seasoned professionals about how to campaign properly, how we can make a change in our community but also in ourselves. We did a lot of self-exploration around why we are so passionate about trans issues. Stonewall were also very good at instilling the importance of self-care, ran sessions on what it could mean to us and how it will change the way we campaign, which I found really interesting and important.
Through the work at Stonewall, my project has also expanded and now TISP is going to be running up and down the country with the help of the people I met on the residential. We now have people working in Leeds, London, Southampton, Newcastle and even as far as Inverness in Scotland.
I believe educating others on trans people is vital. This is because people often fear what they don’t understand; which can lead to hatred and often violence against the trans community. For example, my project had an article written about it days before the first TISP sessions were due to take place. The reporter’s language was completely outdated and so negative that it led to over fifty people commenting horrible and uneducated things about us, when they had never even met or seen us before. I believe that if people just spoke to trans people then many of the issues they have would be resolved.
Looking to the future, I want education about trans people to be implemented everywhere. At the moment I’m focusing on my local community with the support of my friends, Stonewall and the amazing people I met while I was away; but eventually I want to run a national programme which allows trans people to be who they are without fear of rejection, ignorance, hatred and bigotry.
Stonewall’s Young Campaigners Programme is supported by Comic Relief and the #iwill fund. The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £40 million joint investment from the Big Lottery Fund, using National Lottery funding, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.
