Advocacy and activism: Podcast episode one

Welcome to this brand new podcast series Life as a Trans + student, a collaboration with Student Minds, Gendered Intelligence and All Things Mental Health. As part of Student Minds' Student Space package, this series explores the trans and non binary student experience of mental health in higher education. This series was co designed with 8 trans and non binary students across the UK the students discuss three different themes in three episodes. We're excited to bring the series to you and look forward to opening up a conversation.

Today to introduce it to listeners I'm Aneeska Sohal the founder and project manager of All Things Mental Health. I'm Anna Bailie the researcher in residence at All Things Mental Health we're a mental health podcast focusing on young minds and students we bridge the gap between research and lived experience creating space for new dialogue to emerge with a recent feature in the Guardian. This podcast is in the top 15% of podcast shared globally, partners include the University of Oxford King's College London Student Minds Smarten and U-Belong.

Izzy, can you tell us more about this project? Sure I'm Izzy and I'm from Student Minds where I'm the senior Program Manager for Student Space. My role oversees the delivery of our website Student Space which consists of psychoeducational resources to help students navigate the uncertainty of student life within Student Minds, we recognise that students from specific communities are at a higher risk of mental health difficulties and often face unique challenges that their peers don't therefore over the last year or so we have prioritized tailored content co-created with students from several marginalized groups. Last year we launched Life as a Black Student co-created with Andy Owusu, Colourful Minds and a steering group of eight black students and now we're using that same methodology to co-create life as a Trans+ student for and with trans and non binary students over around seven months. We worked with specialists from Gendered Intelligence and a steering group of trans and non binary students to produce a content pack of articles, toolkits, videos and of course this podcast series to help trans and non binary students tackle the challenges of student life. The content covers all relevant topics from navigating healthcare and university administration to finding support managing difficult situations and advocating for oneself.

Thanks Izzy and Ugla, can you tell us about your work with Gendered Intelligence? Hi I'm Ugla, I work for Gendered Intelligence as a trainer and consultant that means that I train various organisations in the UK on trans issues and consult on policies projects and anything and everything related to trans issues for organisations and groups that want to become more trans inclusive. This series is lived experience led by our students discussing the themes that align best with their areas of interest and lived experience. Our themes include advocacy, living a double life and coming out stories.

So Ugla, what are the most pressing issues for trans adult binary students today? I think for students it's simply being recognised as who they are with all the social acknowledgement and admin processes that come with that - being able to be yourself at university is a huge factor in making your experience positive and not being confronted with prejudice, discrimination and stigma. Navigating life as a trans person in a society that is sadly quite hostile is quite challenging both in terms of social interactions, access to healthcare access to legal recognition; all of this plays a part in the challenges that students and most trans people are grappling with at the moment.

Thank you Ugla and with that welcome to the Life as a Trans+ student podcast. Working with our student team on this project has been a pleasure and we're excited for you to hear their great insight. This series is needed for the sector to better understand some of the nuances of the mental health experience of trans and non binary students, we're proud to present a series demonstrating lived experience and leadership in action. Our student team will lead the episodes from steering groups to podcast delivery. Thank you for listening, we hope you enjoy the series and stay tuned for the rest of the episode.

Hello and welcome to this brand new podcast series life as a Trans+ Student. Today's episode focuses on advocacy and activism. To introduce myself I'm Freddy Sperring, I've just started a PhD in trans healthcare that is on pathways of healthcare for transgender people and the way that we navigate these pathways. I also work for charities doing research and doing podcasts and things like this and I use he/him pronouns.

I'm Avery Greatorex a undergraduate psychology student at the university of Central Lancashire. I'm the representative of trans students at my union and I am the trans officer at the NUS Liberation Campaigns Collective - it's a mouthful to say that one. It's great to be here.

Activism beyond Students' Unions

So I think the first topic that we really wanted to talk about was activism beyond our unions - that is the student unions and just how we can kind of maybe chat a bit more and just see what else is out there beyond the university bubble. I was wondering - do you have any experience moving outside of the union Avery? We both have a lot of experience in our unions and like within the the student union movement but I think it's a good starting place. I - definitely - if a student isn't sure where to go, starting with your union is a is a really good place but moving outside can be really rewarding and there's honestly so many pathways to it. Me and some friends created an organization which, sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't work. You can find charities out there but they're always looking for volunteers and you end up finding out about things that you've never seen before. Generally that world is so open but it can be a bit difficult to find those specific outlets sometimes.

Have you had experience of that yourself? Yeah for sure definitely I've moved outside the union it's quite nice sometimes as well when you are leading something within your space to just go out and do something that's where you're listening in instead of running it. It's just really nice when I was running stuff at Durham University to do stuff outside the university that were in queer spaces where I didn't have that leadership role to just kind of have fun, see other people you know, answer my friends and I think that's just a really nice way to kind of have another space where you can just be yourself and be calm but not have that kind of leadership role. I think that leadership role sometimes like obviously there is so much reward to it and so much benefit but it is really really harsh sometimes being a participant of something. I personally found it really difficult at first because I'm quite an independent person, but when I started work with like different charities and different organisations where I was just a small piece of the puzzle but even without that small piece the picture isn't complete being a small piece of that was incredible. Those incredible insight into how the world of charities and things like that works there's a lot of skills to be learned and it's generally really positive, it's really great to be part of something that is larger than the university.

I think sometimes at university we can start to feel like that kind of big fish small pond kind of feeling, especially when I think I know that we're both kind of - I've been at university for quite a while and you can sometimes feel a bit like you know what am I doing what else is there and it's really nice to find other charities that are working maybe nationally or maybe just in the local area that are doing things with a wider variety people that are reaching out more. It's just really nice to see you know, what else is out there. I think as you said it's really nice to be like a small cog I've done some work with lots of work with charities now with different charities and it is really nice to be a little part of something bigger rather than trying to run something and try to scrape everything together it's nice to be part of a system sometimes.

I think it could be really rewarding but the bit about like sometimes you just get stuck for like what's next 100% like I feel that all the way universities they are their own little communities and they are sometimes really they feel really small there's gonna be there's tens of thousands of students at a lot of universities but yet I suppose with trans and non binary activism, it's quite tricky because you're trying to work with a very very small group that generally with university we're all discovering ourselves it could be hard to find, and so working for those charities and those different organisations makes it a lot easier because they've already done that bit of work and then you get to be a part of the change if that makes sense. Yeah for sure, and I think definitely when you're in like university of like thousands of people and then you got the trans community which could be really really small I think sometimes it's just nice to see other people you know, make new friends someone who you don't have history with who isn't like a friend of a friend or like an ex you know. Universities can be really small like can be really like complicated and sometimes it's nice just to be like I'm gonna go to this club I don't know anyone I'm gonna talk to people it's gonna be fine you know and it's really nice to to know you're not gonna see the same people that have the same crazy social dynamics.

You can end up with in such a small queer community at university it can be can be quite scary working outside of university because a lot of us - I know I definitely speak for myself and there's a lot of university students here who probably listening along who have just come out of a level or sixth form colleges, you're entering into a completely different world at university but there's still loads of similarities there venturing outside is kind of scary sometimes but it gives you like a safe taste of the adult life like you get a little bit of the real world hitting you in the face but it's only very gently so it's okay. I feel like in my first year, I was definitely inside or just doing stuff for other students I definitely wasn't like going out into the community I think that a lot of especially first year students can feel like 'I'm in my safe bubble this is where I'm gonna be' but actually I did feel first of all the queer communities outside university did also have a lot of young people obviously not everyone goes to university so you do have people that haven't been to university or maybe going in a few years or just never plan on going and who want to have a queer community and a queer space there is other young people out there if that's kind of who you wanna meet but I actually found a lot of my most rewarding kind of friendships and like supportive mentorship that I had were from people who were slightly older and I think that sometimes you can get in this bubble especially coming from school where you like these people are in my school year they are my friends but being friends with people who are a little bit older who maybe gone through some of the stuff you've been through who can kinda give you advice on what to do when you are experiencing a lot of the same issues and can give you a lot of support and help which is not you know something you cannot get you can get from people your own age. I think having someone is a little bit older can be really helpful so I think that I get it you know I get the fear of meeting people at different ages people who come for different backgrounds but it's easy to say don't be afraid but I think there's a lot more to gain and a lot more that it's gonna be great that comes from it then you'd expect and I think it's really great.

Yeah definitely the meeting people who are a bit older than you often times they have the experience of what you are going through right now and that really really helps I think that's a big part of trans activism and advocacy, because it is all about the community and building that community, so being able to then be a part of the community as a younger person generally means that you're able to learn from the people around you and sometimes it's not only like advocacy and activism in just the trans space, you can reach out into your community because there's so many different things you could be working on and that trans element of it can really open people's eyes so you can be joining something that isn't about trans people specifically but you really open people's eyes to it. There was this lovely gentleman I ended up working with he was he's in his 80s and really opened his eyes to these issues and he started campaigning for me at meetings and stuff like that and it was it was incredible no matter how old someone is or how far in the process they are or even if they are trans, that little bit of introduction from someone who's new to the scene or a little bit of information really goes a long way.

Collaboration with Allies/ Non Trans-Specific groups

On a similar note, working outside of your community and working with allies or generating those allies is really important. Collaborating with organizations outside, collaborating with small groups, collaborating is important. What kind of experience Freddy have you had in like collaborating with allies, collaborating with things that aren't always considered trans specific or you know stuff like that?

I think collaboration is really, really important, especially collaboration within and outside the university. I think - I did my undergrad at Durham University - which I think I mean we can all agree can be quite posh and can have other forms of discrimination as well as transphobia. For the trans people that I was looking after, I think it is really important to if you wanna be the best kind of advocate you can be understanding other people and understanding what's going on of people's lives and understanding how that's maybe affecting their trans experience or just affecting their life in general like I think that not only has it made me a better advocate myself just because I wanted to support them cause they're my friend to just say like what's going on, you know is there something I could do to help it, what is the problem and sometimes in my role as a student leader I could provide solutions that they didn't even know were owt there, and then sometimes it's just about listening to friends and holding space and just saying that's unfair it shouldn't have been like that and you can't always go back and change something but it is important to listen to people and hopefully maybe things like that won't happen again; or if it is gonna happen again, maybe you can learn how to respond to that in a way that is gonna be beneficial to other communities.

I think it is really important to listen to a wide variety of views to diversify a bit and maybe just break up that uni bubble and just say like there's other people out there who have important things to say and we can talk to them learn from them, maybe they can learn from us and just you know share a little bit. Interestingly I've had a very different experience so you know you've been to Durham which is usually higher up on the league tables for the universities and stuff like that I'm at the University Central Lancashire which is a widening participation university, meaning that it kind of focuses on people in disadvantage backgrounds and so there's a lot of different issues to tackle, a lot of it around poverty, cost of living and stuff like that but there's also people who are like adopted who have had care experience and you end up finding that a lot of the struggles can be very similar.

I'm sure people who are watching the series and listening along are going to hear the word 'intersectionality' a lot, it is very integral to this point because a lot of the experiences of one group of people can be quite similar for a different group of people. At our university we have a very very small Jewish community and one person in that community who is gender diverse and so we managed to talk to them and get to know them a lot better and now the Jewish community and the trans community, our university do a lot of work together because we are very small groups of people and there is a crossover.

It's really nice to hear that the one person who was the overlap between the communities was able to kind of make that collaboration happen and I think that it really benefits both communities. I think sometimes we like to say someone's like under trans umbrella or not under trans umbrella but a lot of people experience issues with experimenting with gender, experimenting with gender expression, wanting to appear in the world in a way that might lead them to experience transphobia even if they themselves don't identify as trans, we are opening our doors having collaboration saying you know the more the merrier everyone's welcome. It's really great because it allows people who have experienced negative things to say you've had that too and we might not both identify as trans but we can kind of talk together and collaborate and so the more people we let in, the more we can talk, share this experience, provide support is really nice but yeah I think super important to have other small groups in the university to know that we are a safe space for them and also it's just nice sometimes to hang out with other people.

I think I've always say I think the one thing you take away for this podcast is I just love to make friends and if people are coming in it's like yeah we can hang out, we can have fun teach me how to do something that's really fun or I can teach you something that's fun and we can just you know have a good time and I think that nothing can be lost from creating those kinds of collaborations.

Yeah definitely, and those collaborations of groups that might not seem relevant at university can go a really long way. I know a few years ago my LGBT society before I was involved had a collaboration with the Taekwondo Society and we ended up doing a self defense class specifically geared towards the LGBT community of different considerations made. It was a really good social and it was a really good exercise that will hopefully give people knowledge that benefits them for the rest of their lives. That kind of collaboration does create friends and you end up learning new things - university is an amazing space to deal with that and to create those friendships and create those intersectional groups you've got going because there's so many people doing so many courses and it is a little scary sometimes but student groups and those little communities those little pockets are really good spaces to tap into.

Definitely I'm so jealous of that self defense class that sounds so fun I'm like writing it down like if I'm gonna be involved in uh in student activism I'm like we should do a self defense class that is so great. The weirdest collaborations could happen I know that there's a hummus society at Durham I always wanted to collaboration with but never happened I never quite worked out what our angle was apart from 'I like hummus' and I thought other people would as well. I think it's just really interesting to find those groups out there, there might be trans people in those groups, there might be gay people in those groups, might just be you know great allies in those groups and saying let's do something together, let's hang out you can have more people see your little society. We can talk about you know being LGBT or we could just like hang out we don't need to like necessarily talk about being trans or gay or LGBT but we can just kinda say like we're here unapologetically ourselves and maybe there's a few people in hummus society I don't know who are thinking 'I might be trans who is struggling' with maybe what they're feeling who maybe have a friend who's come out or a family member who can maybe gain something really really great for that, or maybe we could just all have a bunch of great hummus I don't know you know?

There's gonna be a disagreement I'm not a big hummus person myself but I'm a little jealous the fact that your university has a society like that I mean we have a flapjack society so I wanna try one up you here we do have a flapjack society which is amazing but going to your point, I think the those kind of connections - those friendships that allyship doesn't have to be about trans issues. I hundred percent agree you can just hang out and you'll find that generally people who are on side, who are your friends who are exposed to being around trans people will be allies. They will be there to help you when you need that help, when your community needs that help it is a really important part of activism. Just talking to people, making friends cause yes the listeners are gonna get out of this - Freddy really likes making friends and so do I! Friends are brilliant and very helpful, they generally know how to help relieve like pressure on you or to help create some amazing different campaigns.

I remember we wanted to print some leaflets and my friend knew a person who knew a person who had a printing company and we ended up getting really cheap leaflets - those connections really really help. Yeah I think if you're gonna take one thing away from our podcast, just talking to people, making connections - that is a form of activism in and of itself and put yourself out there. It is brave and we don't wanna downplay that it can be scary and especially if you're approaching a random society it can be nervous - you're approaching like let's say the Taekwondo Society, you don't know anyone maybe you just drop them something in their Instagram and saying like 'hey we'd love to do a collaboration'. It is scary but I think you know through having done student activism for like I'm not going to say how many years cause I'm gonna out myself for being old but a few years now and I'd say most of the time I've never had a negative message come back - most of the time I'll either get completely aired or something really positive comes from it and I think that you know putting yourself out there and just saying one chat is the best thing you can do.

Looking after yourself

So we we talked a lot about different socials and like Hummus Society, Taekwondo and the Flapjacks then you need to call Avery Flapjack Society UCLan, but I think that one thing we're talking about as well is having fun and relieving that kind of pressure that activism can bring - so just wondering Avery do you have any kind of tips for looking after yourself and kind of being sustainable in the way we do activism as in making sure we can continue to do it for a long time?

So when this is mentioned I almost feel called out because I learnt the hard way that you can't keep things going forever. If you put all of that load on yourself - I'm the kind of person who will just say yes that's why I'm on this podcast in the first place and don't worry I have learnt some some some good tips and some good self care stuff now so this podcast isn't too much to worry but I would take on so many roles. I was the chair of like three societies, a course rep, the trans rep, the vice chair council I did loads of political stuff, volunteering stuff - let's be realistic you can't do all of these things as amazing as they are. Have a good grasp of your time you know get a calendar sorted - if you don't have a calendar please please please please please get yourself a calendar. It doesn't have to be physical it could be digital I just use a Google one it's nice and simple but alternatives are available.

Honestly, when you physically see how much stuff you're doing, if you allocate certain time source for certain things oh I have this role and I have a meeting at this time, when you have that physical representation of your workload that's a really good thing to help you decide whether or not you should take this new project on or whether or not you should maybe scale it down a bit I don't know that I think that's that's what's helped me a lot with this process yeah I think definitely being able to see your time layout in front of you I'm also Google Calendar person other calendars are available as we said but I I think laying it out seeing in front of you knowing where your time is can be really helpful.

I know people who do like post its on their wall with the different days and what they're gonna do I know people who have like whiteboards just something about seeing it - you can't refute the fact you're busy and I think it's also when you're trying to fit something in it's looking at that and going 'when would I do it' because sometimes when you take on something within activism you don't necessarily get an amount of hours per week it's not like a regular job where you might be told you could be working 20-40 hours a week, you know? You are kind of just told it's a role and you don't really know what that entails so I think sitting down, be like how many hours is this role gonna take I think it's easy for us to say 'oh I won't take on another part time job because I'm too busy' but a lot of these can end up being a part time job and you need to know that you can't add another 20 hours to your week when you're already doing you know, 20 hours of this, 20 hours of this, 10 hours of that.

I've also learnt the hard way. I did a lot in my final year in my masters and so taking a big step back from it because it just was too much and I think that sometimes saying no is hard but it's important. Yeah definitely and I think when you say no to something or when you can't take on a responsibility, there's a lot of that personal feeling of 'oh maybe I'm not a good enough activist', 'maybe I'm not going far enough', 'I'm not doing enough work' but if you're looking after yourself you can do this for longer because as much as I'd like activism to be a quick easy thing, you know a campaign, I get a position sorted and everything is fixed and we live in a in a wonderful, wonderful country where everything is fixed immediately it's just not how it is and this takes time. If you aren't able to look after yourself and do a project for a long time for however long it might take, obviously there's no pressure to go all the way but if you want to and you want to see your dream idea come to life, you need to look after yourself you need to step it back and sometimes that does mean taking things slower so you can see it happen because the last thing we want is for someone to be burnt out a month into a campaign and then from there on nothing happens because it it it ends up harming yourself, ends up harming - I don't I don't wanna say it harms the movement, but it it makes it very difficult for progress to happen if everyone's constantly in this cycle of burnout, so I think the most productive thing you can do and it's taken me a long time to convince myself of this is to have a break.

Please please have breaks, find a hobby, do something because it can get really tricky sometimes and you know that's okay but definitely have those breaks. I think you're definitely right especially on the point where you're saying that it's never gonna be fixed and it's never - you don't get this role and suddenly we live in a great world and you just say oh you know done, ticks transphobia, sold let's move on. There's always gonna be more work even if you do make significant gains, there's always gonna be the next thing. I remember gay marriage came through and there's a big celebration and we were all really really happy because of course some people been fighting for this for a really long time, but we still have movements for gay rights, we still have movements against homophobia and it's kinda because we always have a different goal and in a way that's always great because we're trying to make it go forwards, we're trying to make strides, we're trying to take steps but the same time that also means there's no clear end to when you should step away and I think that sometimes you need to say to yourself 'I've given a lot to this and you know maybe it's time for someone else to to give a bit' or maybe 'it's time for me to take a little break and come back when I'm feeling a bit healthier' because at the end of the day, you don't just solve things in one tick, you make good strides, you do a lot of great things but at the end of the day you don't just fix things.

I think that is important to remember - for you, you saw gay marriage come in and it was this amazing thing at the time and it obviously is. I wasn't really old enough to understand what it meant for me, my big thing was when the conversion therapy ban wasn't going to happen when that was announced and I at the time was only just out as trans for about a year and went to every protest and went to like all of these different events and it turns out you can't afford a bus fare to halfway across the country all the time and you can't physically, you shouldn't be spending that much time and then when I became a university student and worked for my union on the same campaign, I started emailing everyone trying to get people on board.

I was at National Union Students Conference while trying to do meetings about the campaign that I was campaigning for at the conference and you need to take a moment and think - can someone else help me with this? I was with my union, if you are with your students union or you're considering working with your students union do make sure you're aware who in that union is actually getting paid to do that job because we are often volunteers, there are people paid to do that bit of work so you know take a moment take a step back maybe someone else can have that meeting, maybe someone else can run a little bit of the campaign. You shouldn't be at a conference and doing meetings and all of this at same time while your exams are happening. Don't do that 100% - look after yourself and think who is there to help me and that's why we previously mentioned and we segued into this - using the friends point because sometimes they will be able to help with the small task. The small tasks always add up.

Being paid for your work

I'm really really glad you brought up being paid cause I think that can be a bit of a taboo subject and I think it can also be a subject which people feel a lot of guilt about and I certainly, when I did my masters I took a step back from a lot of my unpaid advocacy work just because I was very burnt out, very tired and then towards the end of my masters I started doing some paid advocacy work for a few different charities and I think when I was going through that transition from paid to unpaid, I think at first there was a bit of guilt because you're going from the only thing I care about is the movement to everything I care is about the movement but also like, pay me? I remind myself that it is really important work and we live in a society where work does get paid for, I think it's important to know when you're being relied on too much especially by university.

I think especially my friends at university, I was doing a lot of meetings but I was the only person in the room who wasn't getting paid and that did kind of start to make me feel a little bit annoyed. I was doing a lot of work doing a lot of advocacy and I was holding these big meetings with university high ups you know, I have really great opportunities to meet a lot of the high ranking people at the university which was really great and I'm really glad that they met with me but at the same time there's a little bit of you that's like you're the only person not getting paid you're putting a lot of work load on you're also a student and it is okay sometimes to say 'I feel like I'm being exploited here I feel like you're taking a lot and you're not properly compensating m'e so I think there's nothing to be ashamed of doing paid work.

I think the other great thing is that when we're in movements that have paid people and unpaid people, if you are feeling overwhelmed looking at who's paid, looking at who has more free time because being paid does afford you more free time and the great thing that I've had is that I don't have to have a second job now that I'm being paid for the advocacy work and that means I have a lot more time to put on advocacy work which means I'm not getting burnt out - so finding out who is actually getting paid and giving them maybe a bit more workload or allowing them to kind of divide up the workload because they do have more free time, because they are you know working and a job and you know being a student absolutely and because a large part of self care is the mental health side of things which were focusing on a lot and we should definitely should be another large part of self care is making sure you can pay your bills and eat food.

I was doing a political campaign where I was spending my last couple of pounds getting the bus so I could go door knocking and I was unable to pay my phone bill and it's not good for you to be doing these things. If there's people who can be paid to do the work and they are being paid to do the work then make sure that you're not putting yourself at risk just to I don't know sometimes it's to raise your own profile but other times it's because you feel like you need to. You don't need to, there are people who are paid - you need to look after yourself.

This is about community, this is a community group effort and the group stands stronger if you yourself are okay and you're doing alright. Yeah for sure and I also think it's important to know when someone is taking advantage - if you feel like you can't quit, if you feel like you're being overloaded, if you feel like there's one person's put a lot of pressure on you or maybe several people put a lot of pressure on you, if you feel like a tonne of guilt at the thought of going - this is raising some red flags. We all really care about the movement and sometimes that care about the movement can be used in ways that isn't great and it can put you in a bad situation. It can make you feel very overwhelmed and it can really can be awful to think of not doing it anymore and I think if you really feel so horrible at the thought of not doing it anymore, it's a real big red flag that it's maybe not the best situation. I definitely agree.

Conclusion

All right Freddy, have you got anything anything else we think we haven't covered yet? I think if there's one thing to take away it's getting collaboration, making friends and just knowing yourself and kind of check in with yourself, thinking 'am I taking too much, do I have more to give?' and just being really honest. I think self honesty is a really radical act and asking to be paid can be radical - it's not bad. It's been lovely to talk to you as it always is, anything you would like to add?

I think definitely at the end where you mentioned if you feel so bad leaving something then definitely take some time to reassess and make sure you've got the necessary support around you to help you take whatever step is necessary for you because you as an individual can make a big difference and you want to make sure that you are doing well. You can't make as big of a difference if you yourself are not feeling good or you're burnt out so I definitely agree - if you're feeling like something is too hard to escape from or you're you're not in a good place, you definitely should be getting that support because it is available and sometimes that support can just be friends you know. Talk to people - it's something we've repeated a few times yeah talking to people is so important.

So thank you everyone for listening, I hugely appreciate you being here Freddy I wouldn't have been able to yap into a microphone for so long without you and I hope everyone has a lovely rest of their day and uh I hope you enjoy the rest of the series wherever wherever it may take us