Transpiration Special: Oliver Radclyffe, from Her to Paternity

On this transpiration special edition, we get down and dirty with transmasc author Oliver Radclyffe, talking about every aspect of his life, from an upper-class girl breaking gender boundaries, and mother of four, to his eventual coming out at a motorcycle rally, the euphoria of aligning with his gender identity, and the challenges and delights of his ultimate transition journey.

A refreshing and enlightening conversation, this episode delves into the complexities of being trans where even the closest of familial relationships can become steeped in what Oliver describes aptly as a "hostile cis perspective".

From Oliver's first-hand account of his life experiences, we navigate the grey areas of gender norms and the back and forth struggle Oliver had with his personal identity that set his transition back for many years until he hadan epiphany reading a famous book by his now namesake, Radclyffe Hall.

We chat about the societal presentation of non-binary genders and the growing acceptance of breaking away from conventional gender-specific clothing. Oliver also opens up about his ten-year journey of coming out and transitioning, an odyssey that he beautifully captures in his upcoming book, 'Frighten the Horses.' 

Our dialogue extends beyond Oliver's personal experiences. It touches upon broader issues affecting the transgender community, such as the anxiety of transitioning, the difficulties in accessing healthcare, and the recent legislation impacting the healthcare rights of trans youth in the United States. This conversation provides an intimate look at the triumphs and challenges faced by the transgender community. Regardless of your sexual orientation or identity, this episode will broaden your perspectives. So, tune in and become a part of this enlightening conversation.

Transcript

Oliver: 0:00

You were saying what a professional setup you've got here, Rachel.

Phoebe: 0:04

We do.

Rachel: 0:07

Basically two yogurt pots and a bit of string.

Phoebe: 0:28

Hello and welcome to The Joy Tuck Club. I'm Phoebe, and with me is my co-host, the always fabulous Rachel. We are also known as Red and Freckles, and are the team behind two damp trans. What are we up to this time, Rachel?

Rachel: 0:42

Well, on this transpiration special edition, we get down and dirty with trans author Oliver Radclyffe, talking about every aspect of his life and transition journey from an upper-class girl breaking gender boundaries, and mother of four, to his eventual coming out at a motorcycle rally. This episode is a lot longer and a bit bigger than our usual offering, and that, coincidentally is also how Oliver describes his second book, Frighten the Horses.

Phoebe: 1:08

Good one, but let's rein that in for now and share a little background. Oliver has been described as part of the new wave of transgender authors. He's been published in the New York Times' wonderful Modern Love column and podcast, and his first book, adult Human Male, was released by Unbound Edition Press the same day we were recording this interview. He writes with a unique voice and virtuosity about the intersection of gender identity, sexual orientation, feminist allegiance and social class.

Rachel: 1:37

No one should miss out on him. Absolutely. so sit back and enjoy. You'll hear a lot of love and kindness in this interview.

Phoebe: 1:44

And in these times in the trans community, we could all use more of that every day. Rachel, let's roll the interview. Oliver, it gives us enormous pleasure to welcome you to the Joy Tuck Club podcast.

Oliver: 2:01

Phoebe and Rachel. I am so happy to be here with you this morning. Oh, we're so glad you are here. Well, this morning is for me, this afternoon for you, I think yes, indeed.

Phoebe: 2:10

Hey, you and I swapped time zones. I moved from Connecticut to the UK and you moved from the UK to Connecticut.

Oliver: 2:15

I know, it's very strange. I can't. We're all so displaced at this point. The only person who's in the right place is Rachel.

Rachel: 2:25

No, no, not at all, because I was on nights last night. So I feel like I'm oh, so you're displaced as well. Yeah, I'm displaced out of time.

Oliver: 2:31

We are a diaspora of trans people.

Rachel: 2:33

I'm nocturnal at the moment. We are.

Phoebe: 2:36

Nights for what, Rachel, was it your?

Rachel: 2:38

My current job.

Phoebe: 2:40

Oh, yeah, your current work. Yeah, that's right, your current work. Oliver said Things in the pennies. Yeah, the pennies. Yes, because podcasting isn't going to do that. But, Oliver, this is an incredibly exciting day for you.

Oliver: 2:55

This is a very exciting day for you, for me, for me, not for you. This is a very exciting day for you, Phoebe, because this is the day that I, that you're, on our podcast. This is a very exciting day for me because it is pub day of my first book, Adult Human Male, which comes out today.

Rachel: 3:17

Congratulations.

Phoebe: 3:19

Thank you, that's fantastic and it's with. It's with.

Oliver: 3:23

It's Unbound Edition Press, which is run by a wonderful editor called Patrick Davis, and they are dedicated to diversity and to radical queer just really strong voices and strong writing and poetry nonfiction. I'm part of their monograph series, so I'm being Myself and Janet Hardy, who wrote the ethical slut, are being published together, so she's got a volume coming out. I think probably about today as well. We're doing a couple of speaking engagements together, so it's very exciting. It's a tiny little book. It's only 80 pages long. It's just a little short book of prescriptive nonfiction essays.

Phoebe: 4:14

Yeah, on, because it's a monograph. It's on a particular topic.

Oliver: 4:20

It is, it is.

Oliver: 4:22

It's basically two interlinking topics.

Oliver: 4:25

So it's interrogating the popular and erroneous idea that trans is an ideology rather than a physical manifestation of self, first and foremost, and also it's looking at the repercussions and the effects on trans people when our lives are viewed through a predominantly cisgender lens.

Oliver: 4:46

Yeah, so in it I talk a lot about breaking. Well, I talk about the idea of the hostile cis perspective, which is a one step beyond the average cis perspective, through which our lives are predominantly reported and viewed and discussed. And the step beyond that is the hostile cis perspective, which is a perspective that just doesn't believe that trans people exist. And this is where it ties into the idea that trans is an ideology rather than a physical identity. And the hostile cis perspective, because it doesn't believe that transness exists, is reporting our lives, trying to discredit everything that we do and say and feel in order to remove the mechanisms that allow us to exist, with the idea being that if the mechanisms for our existence aren't there, we will simply go away, because trans isn't real in the first place. So it's really breaking down those ideas.

Phoebe: 5:55

This is going to be a very good read. Yeah, do you think this hostile cis perspective is also by? Even the most well meaning of allies tend to get it so very, very wrong at times.

Oliver: 6:10

Yes, exactly that, and that's why I've written the book. Oh, I mean, bang on the head, you've nailed it. I've written the book with a target audience of potential allies who are being continually misinformed with the same type of misinformation and the kind of misinformation that makes sense to them because it tallies with their worldview, it doesn't disrupt their worldview. And I have the most perfect subject in my dad, who lives in England. He's this wonderful, warm-hearted, kind and generous old school upper class English chap and so he reads all the right-wing newspapers and he has been so supportive and so accepting of me and my identity. But he's constantly being fed this hostile cis perspective to the degree that he can't really see it a lot of the time. So he will send me these articles from England saying I don't understand what's going on here, because it makes so much sense to him that it's automatic that he should believe it, and yet it's out of line with what he understands is going on with his son over here in America. So those are the people that I've written the book specifically for, to say look, you really have to see that the cis perspective isn't neutral, it's a position, it's essentially a political position. And if everything that you're being told about us is being diverted.

Oliver: 7:50

Through that position, you're going to get a very different understanding of what our lives and what our needs are, because everything is the needs of cis people constantly being centered in the conversations about the lives of trans people, and I think a lot of people don't realize that. They don't realize that when we talk about trans people, what we want to talk about are the needs of trans people and the experiences of trans people and the lives of trans people, and yet what we see talked about so much are okay, trans people need this, but what is the effect going to be on cis people? How is this going to affect cis people? How is this potentially going to compromise cis people? How is this going to impinge on the needs of cis people? And that's fine, it's a conversation, but it's a conversation about cis people, not about trans people.

Phoebe: 8:45

Yeah, and it's a conversation that was had around homophobia back in the 70s, 80s.

Rachel: 8:54

Especially over here with section 28. Right History of bringing itself yeah.

Phoebe: 9:02

And what strikes me recently is that is the change when you look at the writing in the Daily Mail or the Telegraph or the New York Times too often as well, and then there's horrendous online publications that are spiked.

Rachel: 9:17

Oh, that's right, was that article we read the other day? Like in 115 stories in the Daily Mail in January, this year alone, trans stories.

Oliver: 9:26

Yeah.

Phoebe: 9:27

That was in 2013?

Rachel: 9:29

Yeah, there was 16.

Phoebe: 9:32

That was 16, yeah. And they're now using the language of propaganda, the techniques of propaganda, to dehumanize trans people. So it's no longer enough to say that we don't have a basis for existing. They're saying we are a danger. Of course, that's the trope that's constantly rolled out, and also we're just awful and ugly and a lesser human being than anyone else.

Oliver: 9:57

Yeah, which of course plays into our deepest insecurities and everybody else's innate prejudice. Yes, so the damage happens to everybody.

Phoebe: 10:09

Well, so going back a little way, I love when we first met and we met a few years ago, it seems, in the US and I very quickly read the essay you'd had published in the New York Times and I've met I really did. You were unpacking and looking at the relationship you'd had in London right Long time before.

Phoebe: 10:39

That's great Pre-transition, pre-transition pre-coming out, pre-coming out, and it was a self-searching essay. Yes, yeah, when you, because it was pre all those things. When you think about it now, would you have written any of it differently?

Oliver: 11:00

I don't know that I would, because the essay was written about a friend I had back in the 1990s. I was in my early 20s I think I was 20-21. And I worked in a pub and I became romantically involved with a guy called Mikey who had cancer and who subsequently died. And the essay was about this guilt I was carrying for my confusion at the time and the potential effect that confusion might have had on Mikey at a time when he was at the end of his life. And I think what I love about the essay is I was just at that moment of awakening. I'd recognized that I was only attracted to women at that point, but I was still in the process of understanding my gender identity and by the time the essay was made into a podcast it was in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and by the time they made it into a podcast I had started to transition. So the story was really part of that whole process of transition, of the unpacking of who I was and how much I understood about who I was when I was younger, because there was just this common misconception with trans people that just the lights come on one day and either it's when you're five and you wake up and you say, oh, I'm a boy, not a girl. And then you tell your parents and immediately everybody starts calling you by a new name and sending you what a gender clinic. Because obviously in England there's no waiting list at all for gender clinics and you certainly accept five year old children or, if you're an adult, that your gender identity is something you've always known, but you have been closeted about. And then one day you open the door of the closet and step out as a fully formed new human being.

Oliver: 13:07

Yes, and of course we all know that's not the way the majority of transitions happen. They're just incredibly slow and it's this gradual awakening and it's almost having a box that you take the lid off, have a peek inside, then close the lid again, and then you come back a little bit later and you open the box and you have a peek inside and then you close the lid and you walk away again, and that can go on, happen for years. So when people say, when did you first know? My response is which first knowing? Because I first knew again and again and again and again, getting yourself into a place where you can say okay, I'm really going to leave the box lid open now. It can take a really long time. It took me 40 years.

Rachel: 13:55

Yeah exactly. I knew I was different from most of my life and there were times when I almost grasped it. Yeah, but yeah, essentially, it took me 40 years to actually come to the conclusion that this is who I am.

Oliver: 14:10

Yes, and I think what what says people don't necessarily get is that for them, our transness becomes visible once we stop transitioning. But before that point they saw us as the gender that we were assigned as birth, because that's what's visible, and what they miss is the fact that that's what's visible to us too. And when you look at your own body and you have this thought in your head, there's something wrong here. This isn't who I am, but the physical evidence against that is so huge. You're wearing it all the time. You're in it. It's like present all the time.

Oliver: 14:51

Society is telling you that's who you should be. Society is telling you everything in your life is telling you that this is who you are. It's really hard to override that with something that seems so sort of esoteric, that seems so sort of almost whimsical, and it's really only once you start doing it that it confirms your suspicions. So there is, I think I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I feel like there is just an element of you just kind of have to suck it and see you really do have to just take that step and take the leap, and then it's like oh God, thank God, I was right, this is absolutely right, this is thank God, you know. Then there is that moment of wow, this is real, this is right. And then, of course, god, why didn't I do this?

Phoebe: 15:47

30 years ago. I remember taking that leap and then unstrapping my parachute as I fell. I don't need a parachute for this, I'm all the way. Yeah, exactly. So I wonder about something, though because you're born the only daughter of an upper class English family, it's on your website just earlier.

Oliver: 16:10

They did have another son, by the way.

Phoebe: 16:11

I wasn't the only child, the only daughter the only daughter I see but you also had a ponchon for motorbikes and escapades and so on that were not perhaps generally approved. Yeah, do you think at that time that was just a willfully independent wild child, or were you actually already pushing the boundaries of the gender role into which you were?

Oliver: 16:34

born. Oh, I was absolutely pushing the bounds of the gender role. That was my attempt to become a boy, and the way I understood it at the time was I wanted to be one of the boys. I didn't understand that I actually wanted to be a boy, because I just didn't think that was a possibility. As Rachel mentioned earlier on, we were growing up in section 28, which, for anybody who doesn't remember those times, was when it was illegal to teach about LGBTQIA identities within the schools. So we were given no education. There was nothing in the media, there was no internet in those days, so it was a blackout of information. So it was a blackout of information.

Rachel: 17:22

So you had the propaganda around AIDS. Exactly Right, yeah.

Oliver: 17:27

Exactly. I mean, it was a terrifying and, as you say, blacked out time to be queer and I didn't know that I was queer, I had not accepted that I was attracted to them and I was fighting that on a daily basis. And with regards to my gender identity, I was acting out all of my innate impulses but there was no way I would have recognized at the time that it was because I actually am a man. I just wanted to be one of them, I wanted to be with them, I wanted to be part of that scene.

Rachel: 18:05

Yeah, so did you suffer from dysphoria, even though you might not have had a name for it? Do you look back now and recognize that there were signs?

Oliver: 18:13

Yeah, yeah, I do, but mostly it was not so much during that time. I mean, it's really hard to deconstruct, but it was mostly prior to that time when I was at an all girls boarding school and we had to wear a school uniform. That was really complicated. And then later in my 20s, when, for complicated reasons that are actually that I talk about a lot more in the memoir that's coming out next year, I decided to revert and go back to being a girl, because I felt like that was my only option and I needed to get married and get a husband and have children, and so then I grew my hair out and I started wearing skirts and dresses and high heels and makeup, and that was horrendous.

Oliver: 19:06

The dysphoria that started then was like being hit by a train, because it was something that I was overcompensating and I almost it's something that almost happened overnight, because there was an incident that happened in my mid 20s that made me realize that I couldn't carry on down this kind of biking single half person path and that I needed to become what everybody else expected me to be, and so it was a very abrupt change and, yeah, I slipped very quickly into alcoholism and drug abuse and depression and all the things that come along with the dysphoria Right and that lasted for 20 years Fun, fun decades, during which time I had four children, gave birth to four children, got married, gave birth to four children and then finally, at the age of 40, came out as a lesbian first.

Phoebe: 20:04

Yeah.

Oliver: 20:05

And then over the next seven years, that was my coming out as trans. It was very, very slow.

Phoebe: 20:12

Yeah, you toyed with the idea of being a butch lesbian, right yeah, but that wasn't satisfying that gender identity that was starting to yeah, it wasn't.

Oliver: 20:21

And then I went through non binary and thought can I stop here, please, god, can I stop? Yeah, but no, no, I had to go all the way, and so I did.

Phoebe: 20:33

You. You mentioned an unexpected epiphany you had brought on by the well of loneliness. Do you want to talk about that?

Oliver: 20:43

God the well of loneliness. Yeah, I wrote this essay about it in electric lit and it was when I read it several times. And the first time I read it I was looking for a lesbian role model and because Radclyffe Hall came from the same background as I she was English, she was up class, it was very familiar the way she was a very depressing book and not terribly well written, but but her lifestyle was very familiar to me. Yeah, so I read it, looking for how do I? How do I be a lesbian? Obviously this is not the best way to learn how to be a lesbian by reading 1920s Matt, a class English woman who solves her problem by moving to Paris and then becoming wildly depressed. But the second time I read it I was out and I was looking for something else I was looking for how do I be a butch lesbian? How do I be somebody who's more masculine?

Oliver: 21:42

And then, I think the third time I read it, I saw all the subtext, trans subtext, and you know, obviously we can't label Radcliffe Hall trans posthumously, because that's not, that's an overstep, but the subtext is there. Yes, the descriptions of dysphoria are there. This constant urge to be more masculine, yeah, there's a wonderful line in it where somebody says there's something of the acorn about her and it's. It's a little allegory, a little bit of symbolism of the acorn being very masculine. That really woke me up because I wrote a poem when I just came out, called the acorn, by coincidence, and it's a very kind of Celine Dion ballad, very melodramatic over emotional poem, which I would never read to another soul, but it used the same metaphor. So it was through reading this sort of weirdly old fashioned book that I began to recognize, like Redcliffe Hall. You know, I'm not a lesbian and I'm not a butch lesbian and I'm not non-binary, I really am a trans man and that's where I need to go.

Phoebe: 23:01

Yeah, and then the description of the face and the mirror, which, of course, is something so many.

Rachel: 23:09

Oh, I think that resonates a lot with you, doesn't it?

Phoebe: 23:12

Yeah.

Rachel: 23:13

Yeah.

Oliver: 23:14

Yeah, it really does, doesn't it yeah?

Phoebe: 23:17

It's All right. You know, for me it was also the goal and the mirror that I'd dream about, and mirrors, obviously as a reflection of self, show what's wrong Mirrors are very problematic for trans people.

Oliver: 23:29

They really are. Yeah, I write about them a lot in the memoir and you know that was a hard thing, because it's considered very amateur in writing to use a mirror to explain a first person description. And yet mirrors were hugely emotionally challenging for me, and so I had to include them in the book. Yes, but it got to a point where I just lived in a house with no mirrors because I just didn't want to see myself anymore. Oh, really, yeah.

Phoebe: 23:58

Yeah, that makes sense. So, rachel, you were fizzing earlier with so many questions. I was, and let's get into some of them because, oliver, you're also the first trans mask we've had on this podcast. Hooray, well, yes, and yay for trans masks.

Oliver: 24:19

Yes, Exactly yes.

Phoebe: 24:22

And so this has opened up a whole well of questions.

Rachel: 24:26

Yeah, well, the first one was you know, we're all trans here and we're on the same journey, but we're going in the opposite direction, I know, but do you think the path is easier for trans masks, trans men compared to us?

Oliver: 24:41

Yeah, I'm going to say yeah, but I do think it's easier. Here's a way of putting it. I think it's easier because we live in the present and then the future, and the past is the past, I think from all of my trans femme friends. Okay, let me put this a different way.

Oliver: 25:06

When I transitioned, the relief I felt wasn't tainted by the reaction of people in the outside world to me, because I now I'm five foot three, right, so I'm a little bit little and my voice still sounds a little bit trans-y, but that's probably only familiar to people who are looking for it. So anybody who knows I'm trans or any other trans mask is going to pick up on that little trans mask lill, but the majority of people because I'm losing my hair and I've got stubble on my chin and my voice has dropped an octave. I pass as a man, and so the relief I felt in myself about, you know, inhabiting a body that I'm aligned with and being able to act and behave in a way that aligns with who I am, was reflected back at me by how the outside world treated me and, although I've lost, I have to be more careful around my relationships with women now, by and large, I'm treated with more respect now than I was before I transitioned.

Rachel: 26:16

You've actually answered one of my second.

Oliver: 26:18

Yeah.

Oliver: 26:19

So I remember when Phoebe was so.

Oliver: 26:23

Phoebe was like maybe just a few steps behind me and when she first started transitioning, I remember having a conversation where I was reassuring her oh my God, you're just going to feel so great when you've done it and I promise you it's worth it. And then I called myself and thought wait, I'm not taking into consideration the fact that if Phoebe doesn't pass, the way she is going to be treated by the world is substantially different. I'm treated, and I remember her and I having a conversation about how, previous to our transitions, she would have stood up to protect me against misogyny and after our transitions, it's now up to me to stand up for her against misogyny. So this I write about in the adult human male, this precise concept that our power in the world has shifted through perception. So Phoebe isn't less strong than she was before she transitioned and I'm not more strong than I was before I transitioned. But the way we're perceived by the world has changed, so that power dynamic has shifted in a way that is completely beyond our control.

Rachel: 27:37

Yeah. So how is that different treatment manifested? You find yourself listened to more, questioned less, and males are assumed to be more competent than females.

Oliver: 27:47

So well, it's yes, because I don't work in a corporate environment. I think a lot of trans masks who work in office environments corporate environments see that immediately.

Rachel: 27:59

I've seen the opposite. Yeah, of course, now, in a conversation, I'm not listened to and my opinions are constantly questioned. Yeah, whereas before I transitioned, that never happened. Yeah, we were talking about it before. I mean in some weird way. I find that strangely validating.

Oliver: 28:19

Yeah, yes, because people are convinced that you're a woman.

Phoebe: 28:22

Yeah, oh look, I've been ignored again. Yes, yes, exactly.

Oliver: 28:26

Exactly, I know right. I mean, I find that I just I feel safer, I feel more confident, I am absolutely acknowledged by men in a way that I wasn't before, which makes me realize how ignored by men I was for the whole of my life. It's very difficult sometimes to extract the feeling of being at home in myself and the disappearance of the dysphoria and that comfort from the comfort of the privilege of being male and the difference in how I'm treated. And I find that I have to keep a really close eye on that line between enjoying being a man and not taking advantage of being a man. So it's something that I have to be very careful of. The disadvantages that come with it are that they exist, but they're so small as to be silly good anecdotes, but not much more than that. So, for example, I have to be a lot more careful about how I talk to or treat women who I don't know. You know I can't coot other people's babies anymore, which I find really sad, because I love babies and every time I see a baby I just want to grab it and hug it. And now, whoa, I can't do that.

Oliver: 29:47

I remember I was in a hotel, my son was at a volleyball tournament and there was a knock on the door and I opened it and there was a little five year old girl standing there and I said, oh, hello. She said hello. I said, are you lost? And she looked at me in that kind of yes, I'm lost sort of way. And so I said a crotch down and was chatting with her and her sister who must have been about 10 or 11, arrived and the look of horror on this girl's face, the sister, and she grabbed her little sister and pulled her away, sharply, looking at me with suspicion.

Oliver: 30:21

So that is, I'm not the friendly stranger anymore that I used to be, and my kids pick up on it. So my kids are very good at instructing me what I am and aren't allowed to do this. I'm not allowed to be so friendly anymore with people I don't know. So with a friend of one of their's mothers who I hadn't met before, while I was chatting with her, I touched her on the shoulder and my daughter was like you can't do that anymore, you can't just touch somebody on the shoulder and I'm like, oh God, yes, of course, Do you miss that? These are the little things that I do miss.

Rachel: 30:54

Do you miss that Postness and intimacy of?

Oliver: 30:56

female friendships. Yeah, I really do, I really do, I do. But I will say, given the sacrifices that you guys have to make, it's a small price to pay. It just means I have to be more careful, and that's just how it is. I mean, if I was born as this man, I would have learned that care from childhood. I hope if I had decent parents and a good upbringing, I would have learned to be that careful from childhood. So that is just part of being a man. You just have to be more respectful.

Phoebe: 31:29

Well, there is a perspective from a trans woman's point of view as well, that we absolutely cannot go up to a lost child.

Rachel: 31:37

Yes.

Phoebe: 31:38

If we are clocked, we are potentially in deep trouble. Yeah.

Rachel: 31:42

Yeah, yeah, that's still in the back of my mind.

Phoebe: 31:46

Always with me.

Oliver: 31:47

Yeah, yeah. So you have a lot of what I have and then more on top. So, yeah, I would definitely say it's harder.

Rachel: 31:57

Yeah, I mean there seems to be less focus on trans men in society. It doesn't seem to be many news reports shouting about male identifying women canceling men.

Oliver: 32:07

No, there's not. I mean no, the aggression that comes towards us comes more at the youth level to try to stop trans men from becoming trans men in the first place. Once we're adults and we've transitioned, we generally become pretty invisible and that's partly because we kind of are invisible. We're just like little men. You know we're not, we're not threatening, because generally we're smaller than everybody else and it's relatively easy to pass as a guy. It really is, I can't remember her name.

Rachel: 32:36

It was a woman who wrote Whipping Girl Julia.

Oliver: 32:40

Oh, Julia Serrano.

Rachel: 32:41

Yeah, she said it's easier for trans men because nobody notices a five foot four man, but they notice a six foot two woman.

Oliver: 32:50

Oh, exactly, exactly.

Rachel: 32:51

That's probably why we get more focus. Yeah, because we don't blend so easily, so some of us don't want to blend.

Oliver: 33:00

Yes, yes, well, exactly. I mean, if you look at a loke who is out there not blending in a way that is just magnificent, and that's their whole resondetta is to not blend and to walk down the street and say, fuck you, this is who I am and you need to start getting used to this. And, of course, that is what we want, isn't it we?

Rachel: 33:23

want what we think of. Anyone else Looks like a one, rachel.

Phoebe: 33:29

A loke lives in New York.

Oliver: 33:31

Yes.

Phoebe: 33:31

Yes, they've written some beautiful, quite small books. Yes, lovely poetry. Yes, yeah, and writing about, I mean, yes, they can be quite scared at times, but they are so full of I don't want to have to give a fuck, so I'm going to be me and I'm going to present in, you know, with my hairy chest, in my dress, with my beautiful beard, and I am proud of who I am so proud, and it's yeah.

Oliver: 34:00

And that I mean that is ultimately the path of trans acceptance, isn't it?

Phoebe: 34:04

Yeah.

Oliver: 34:06

Is having more visible trans people out there. I mean, that's one of my regrets about passing. I want to pass because I'm a trans man and that's what makes me feel most comfortable, but I have lost my visible queerness now.

Phoebe: 34:19

Yeah.

Oliver: 34:20

Which means that unless I'm talking about it or writing about it, I'm not actively changing the world's acceptance of queer people. Just by being out and about, just by that visibility that people who don't pass have and people who are non-binary have.

Phoebe: 34:40

Oh, you could be there at a Pride parade waving a trans flag, and they'll be saying, oh, absolutely, absolutely, but I'm not doing it in the supermarket, you know.

Oliver: 34:53

And my dream for the future is one where everybody gets to be whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, for whatever reason they want, that there is no trans and cis, that's just everybody saying this is low A, which is. I'm interested to hear what you guys think about this, because I was thinking about this the other day. I was reading something, I think, on themus about queerbaiting. So if somebody was being accused of queerbaiting and I take issue with that accusation, because what I want is a world where anybody can wear what they want or kiss who they want, regardless of their orientation or gender identity, so that non-normal presentation and behavior becomes normalized. And so, therefore, to say you can only kiss somebody on stage if you're queer or, in the case of Harry Styles, you should only wear these clothes if you're trans, seems to me gatekeeping in a way that is just not really helpful to the trans community. What do you think about that?

Phoebe: 36:11

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, we are always fighting the dichotomy because that's all it is of binary gender. And it's hard to know where that idea sprang from. Did it come from the Bible? Why is it so tightly ingrained in society?

Oliver: 36:32

White colonialism. I believe it's white colonialism and yes we're still conforming to it now.

Rachel: 36:43

We're stereotypically atrocious. I've got long red hair.

Phoebe: 36:47

I wear dresses as expected of a woman. I was thinking that, oliver, when you were saying why can't clothes be non-gendered?

Oliver: 36:55

that's where it goes and it's well actually if they're completely non-gendered.

Phoebe: 36:59

I don't know if that would work out so well for me, because I so enjoy wearing feminine clothes.

Oliver: 37:05

Okay, it's not so much that I want clothes to be non-gendered, because I think that one of the reasons that our presentation is so important is it tells people who we are, and you can only have a true connection with somebody who can see you, and the way that we show who we are is by how we present externally. So when my kids say to me, if clothes aren't gendered, why do you wear men's clothes? I wear men's clothes because I want people up to understand that I'm a man, because I am a man. That's why I have, that's why I don't.

Oliver: 37:36

I can't grow a beard because my facial hair is ridiculous, but I don't shave properly because I like the stubble, because it indicates who I am, and I'm not sad about losing my hair because there is nothing more masculine than my current hairline. It's more that, as we know, not everybody is a binary gender and therefore the people who are non-binary display themselves, display that identity through wearing an amalgamation of clothes, and the more we normalize wearing clothes that don't conform or presentations that don't conform to a binary gender, the easier it is for those people to move safely in society. So, therefore, if we have people like Harry Styles going out there and wearing dresses, and if we have straight people, straight men, kissing other men on stage at concerts, it's just normalizing a behavior that was once taboo and making, I think, making it easier and more socially acceptable for the people who are generally non-binary or pansexual, bisexual or any of the less binary genders or sexualities, to move through life.

Phoebe: 38:58

Yeah, that makes good sense. Can we talk for a moment about your second book? We can, yes, Firstly, I love the title.

Oliver: 39:08

Frightened the Horse, frightened the Horses. So do you know their history of that quote?

Phoebe: 39:13

I don't care what they do in private, so long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. Exactly, and I didn't know who had said it. I had to look that up, Can you please?

Oliver: 39:27

Yeah, so it was an actress called Mrs Patrick Campbell, and it sounds extraordinary to think that this poor woman didn't even have a proper name. She was just known by the name of her husband. But she was the original Eliza in Bernard Shaw's first production of Pygmalion.

Phoebe: 39:46

No way, yeah, yeah, and her name was Mrs Pat.

Oliver: 39:52

But it was Beatrice Tanner. It was Beatrice Tanner but she was known as Mrs Patrick Campbell. That was her stage name or the name or her professional name. And you know it's funny because there is no more gendered play than Pygmalion. And it is also a play about somebody pretending to be something that they're not.

Oliver: 40:15

So Eliza in the play was trained by the patriarchy to be something that she wasn't. And at the very end of the play she almost sort of reverts back to her old self. She comes back in and says I washed my hands and faced the work come. I did. And of course you know Henry Higgins is the you know well famous and great misogynist out there. And she was interviewed by a journalist about and he asked her how he felt about the fact that it was back in the 1950s when homosexuality was still illegal. And she was asked what she felt about the fact that there was a couple of gay men in the chorus of the play and she said I don't care what they do in private, as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses as courses. It became the kind of advocate for staying in the closet and so I made it into a I made it into an attention, so we'll get out there and frighten the horses.

Oliver: 41:16

Yeah, yeah, I love it and it is a. It's a memoir about my coming out and transitioning, covers 10 years from the first day that I took the lid off the box of my sexuality and left it off, which happened bizarrely, on 9 11. In 2011, at a motorcycle rally in Connecticut, my husband and my four children and it then follows my path through the next 10 years as I come out as lesbian, as I sort of figure out how to leave my marriage and how to tell my children, and I start having my first relationships. And then, throughout the memoir, my identity keeps bubbling to the service and I keep pushing it back down. And it keeps bubbling up and I keep pushing it back down until halfway through the book when I'm like, oh, I don't think I can keep pushing this back down. And then the second half of the book is largely about me coming out as trans.

Rachel: 42:18

So, anytime that you think you'd left it too late, I know a lot of trans femmes, I think.

Oliver: 42:22

Oh, you know, I've been through puberty, middle age, now it's no, I thought no, I thought, coming out period, I had left too late. And in fact the first conversation I had with my therapist after that motorcycle rally, you know I came out to him, I cried, I did all the kind of stuff that you do and at the end he said what are you going to do now? And I'm like, oh, I'm not going to do anything. I'm married with four children. I've left it too late. And I remember distinctly he looked at me and he said what if I told you it's not too late? And I took those words out of that room and I think it was the I think it was the greatest non drug induced sense of euphoria that I've ever had. I remember standing in my backyard thinking what if it's not too late? I'm 40. I'm in a life that I simply cannot stand to be in for a day longer. And my therapist has basically just told me that there may be a way out and that and that was it. So from that point on it was really just a matter of figuring out how and when. And then I knew very quickly that I was trans after that moment.

Oliver: 43:36

But it was too. It was too much for me to deal with, because I had to deal with coming out and telling my husband, telling my children, my family getting divorced. You know, though, there was so much to deal with in my life there was no way I would have been ready to deal with that as well, and I had no queer community either. So I needed more stability around me in the way of queer community before I could start looking at that. So it took seven years before I was ready to go.

Oliver: 44:04

Okay, this other thing that I've been sidelining, maybe we need to start looking at that now. So, to anybody out there who, firstly, thinks it's too late no, it's not. And secondly, if it takes a long time, that's fine, because I think that our bodies and our minds and our hearts understand that this is like a really complicated process and it's a lot, and doing it slowly is sometimes the only way to do it. And then, suddenly, when you're ready, it happens really fast, because when I finally was ready to deal with my transition, it happened really quickly.

Phoebe: 44:46

Did it become all consuming for you?

Oliver: 44:48

Yes, yeah, absolutely, I took over my whole life.

Rachel: 44:51

Yeah, no, it's same for me. Yeah, yeah, you know, I went from not knowing who I was questioning, why I feel different, to suddenly just thinking about every waking hour I'm trans, just going around in my head and what I needed to do. How could I move forward with this, even though I knew I should probably put the brakes on the slow down?

Oliver: 45:15

It's so difficult, you can't? I mean, it blew up my relationship just because it was so all consuming, well, that I couldn't think about anything but that.

Phoebe: 45:24

That comes back to what we were talking about before how, from an outsider's point of view, our transitions seem very fast, what you're trans, and then suddenly you're on your way and leaving them behind or they can't deal with it, whereas we've been thinking about it for much longer than that.

Oliver: 45:41

Yeah, and I think transitioning.

Rachel: 45:43

It's a pressure release, isn't it? I had all of this unknown pressure building up over 40 years.

Phoebe: 45:50

Yeah.

Rachel: 45:50

And then suddenly it's like, oh, this is what it is, and it just all wants to come out.

Oliver: 45:55

Then, yeah, and yeah, it's like a bursting down, absolutely yeah.

Oliver: 46:00

I want to pull that thought back to the conversation we were having at the beginning about the way it's reported and a piece in the press about a kid who the way the story was written was he turned up for his first assessment at the gender clinic and the next week was sent to the endocrinologist.

Oliver: 46:24

And the way that that was written was that he's just going to turn up and then he's with the endo and then he's on hormones, right, without understanding that firstly, he'd been on a waiting list for like three or four years just to get that first appointment.

Oliver: 46:38

So he'd been talking through this with his parents and whatever therapists they could provide for three or four years before that appointment and then, before he even spoke to his parents about it, this kid was probably thinking about it for three or four years, because there's no kid who wakes up one morning and goes, oh, I think I might be trans or non-binary. I'm going to tell my parents over dinner. You know they are thinking and they're researching, they're talking to friends and eventually they pluck up the courage to tell their parents and then their parents are talking with them about it and then eventually they're like, okay, maybe we should get on a wait list, and then you get on the wait list and you wait several years and then, of course, once you have that first appointment, they refer you to an endocrinologist. There's probably another three years wait before the endocrinologist can see you or can. So this again goes back to the difference between what the experience is to how it's reported and therefore seen by everybody else.

Rachel: 47:38

Yeah, giving drugs to children, mutilating children, you know, but none of that's true.

Oliver: 47:45

Exactly.

Phoebe: 47:46

History. Yeah, if only it were some sort of pipeline where you just hopped on one end and came out the other a few months ago, and it'd be very nice, you could just like lie down on a conveyor belt and wait for everybody else to do it for you.

Rachel: 47:59

Elevator music would be very long.

Oliver: 48:03

But, yeah, no, when you finally want to, and that is why it's so devastating for, you know, kids who are, and anybody who's you know, trying to do this through the national health system. Yeah is because once you know, once you've accepted who you are, you just want to get that shit done fast. Yeah, yeah. And if you don't have the money to go private and you're then told, well, you've got to wait four or five years before you can even see an endocrinologist, I mean I can't.

Rachel: 48:30

It's long. It's longer than that. It's longer than that now.

Oliver: 48:34

I mean it's horrendous.

Rachel: 48:36

It's terrible, Like some, some late transitioners, if they don't have the money to go private. The wait lists are so long in some places they might never be seen and I can't imagine how unbearable that is.

Oliver: 48:47

No, I can't imagine. Or over here in the states where it's now becoming illegal and these kids have been taken off the medications. I mean you would tear my testosterone out of my dead hands, because if I couldn't take testosterone and my body started to revert which it would I wouldn't survive it.

Phoebe: 49:15

No, hey, that's interesting, because you once said that you wouldn't take testosterone because I had too much for your body.

Oliver: 49:23

Yeah, but now that was a total lie. That was an excuse because I was terrified of taking testosterone.

Rachel: 49:32

And what?

Oliver: 49:33

terrified you? What terrified me? Okay, so I spent quite a lot of time thinking about this because the terror was real, and so the excuses came on I'm too old to take testosterone, I can't do that to my body but it was all due to fear, and it took me a really long time to figure out what that fear was. And the closest I can get to explaining it is I was. I was afraid that I would lose my status, whatever status I had I and developed through my femininity and through being attractive and my. So this is complicated breakdown, but if you think, if we think in very stereotypical terms, okay, and I'm talking really real stereotypes here Women gain status through being attractive, through being slim, well-dressed, well-manicured. Men gain status through being large and powerful and successful and rich, and you know I'm talking real stereotypes here. So, as a, when I was presenting as a woman however deeply unhappy I was on the inside, I was working the privilege that I had as a slim, attractive, able-bodied white woman with long blonde hair, and I knew that if I transitioned I would lose all of that and I wouldn't gain any of the status markers that men have, because I'm five foot three and I'm not rich and I have no power. And so all I could see in my head was I'm gonna be a really unsuccessful man. I'm just going to be this little short man with no dick and I'm going to have like zero status. And that was really frightening to me and the you know when you had, when we were talking about having those light bulb moments that I had when I was reading the well of loneliness.

Oliver: 51:43

There's a writer and academic over here called Tressie McMillan-Cottom who wrote a piece, I think in the New York Times I think it was in the New York Times I could be wrong there about blonde status, about blonde as a status. And for many years I had resisted cutting off my hair and I didn't know why, because if I wanted to be more masculine, why was I so obsessed with holding onto my hair? And I read this piece and it was like a light bulb went on over my head. It was ah, it's my status. She's absolutely right. My whole status, identity, is tied up in my blondness, and that's not just my hair, as my whole presentation.

Oliver: 52:27

And so when I go on testosterone, I'm going to lose that and it's like almost like reaching a kind of rock bottom, but calling it a rock bottom is the kind of wrong analogy, because really it's that stepping off point of okay, I'm just gonna lose it all. I'm going to lose my status. I am going to stop worrying about whether I'm attractive anymore, I'm gonna stop worrying about whether I can attract a partner anymore. I'm just gonna say fuck it everything, because the only thing that matters now is that I transition and that I become the person who I need to be. And so that was the point I reached of saying there is of understanding that there was no possible way for me to be ever happy in this world unless I fully transitioned into a man with a receding hairline and the stubble and the voice and the hairy chest and the redistribution of fat, as we very nicely call it.

Oliver: 53:33

How about BO? And BO God, I sweat. Now, jesus, I did not understand what it was like to go running and have your shirt stick to your chest, but now I do. How does that feel? Oh, it's lovely. I mean, I tell you, the nicest thing is mowing the lawn with my shirt off. Bloody hell, that's great. This is why I wanna talk about this publicly, because if I felt this, then I can't be the only person who's feeling this, and I just wanna say to everybody out there just do it, yeah, yeah, because I don't care if I have no status, I don't care if I'm not attractive, I don't care if I never get another partner again. I'm hoping I will, but if I don't, I don't care, because I'm so comfortable and happy now.

Rachel: 54:22

Dad how do you think testosterone has affected you mentally? I've read other trans men say that they find that they're less emotional. They're more focused and decisive. Now, have you experienced?

Oliver: 54:36

that, yeah, all of that. And again it's difficult to know how much of that is a hormonal adjustment, how much Okay, it's difficult to extrapolate how much of that is because that is what the hormone does generally and how much is because I just have the right hormone in my body now because I'm so much calmer. I'm not saying I used to thrive on drama, but drama was a very big part of my life and now drama just has no appeal to me whatsoever and I thrive on calm and stability and that feels amazing. And I don't know whether that is because estrogen made me more emotional than testosterone or I was simply more emotional because of the dysphoria and the distress and the unhappiness of being a trans person who hadn't transitioned.

Oliver: 55:41

But what I do know is that whatever testosterone does to me, it feels like me and I know that without that hormone in the body I would no longer feel like me. The dysphoria would come back immediately, even if a lot of the effects that testosterone have are irreversible. So even if it were to come off tea, the majority of the physical effects that you see on me would stay, but I know that there would be a shift internally that I would feel and would be immediately distressing. And that's what I find so upsetting. When I think about these kids in the southern states who are being told they have to come off these hormones because I don't know how those kids are going to survive it. I really don't.

Phoebe: 56:31

Especially MTFs who are being taken off puberty blockers, and so everything that you love about testosterone is what they're going to be subjected to. Yeah, and irreversible yeah yeah.

Oliver: 56:45

Yeah, it's horrendous. And knowing that and again I write about this in the book of essays that came out today knowing that for those kids particularly, knowing that they are going to watch themselves go through those changes and that they're going to be irreversible and that they're not only going to make it hard for them to pass as they grow older, it's going to put them in danger. And knowing that in other parts of the country there are young girls who can just mature into young women with the minimum of fuss and that that is not available to them.

Phoebe: 57:21

Yes.

Oliver: 57:23

That I think. I mean I just don't know how a kid survives that. And it's all very well to say relocate, but a lot of families don't have the means to relocate.

Rachel: 57:34

Well, plus I think the last count a few days ago, it's up to 22 states. Now I think I mean that was a couple of days ago it's probably gone up since then. It's happening so fast.

Oliver: 57:44

It's happening so fast. It's happening so fast that we can't keep up with it and certainly the media can't keep up with it. And the media has really stopped paying attention because it's like it's not even news anymore. You know another status and puberty blockers won't.

Phoebe: 57:59

Oh, it's like another mass shooting.

Oliver: 58:01

It's like another mass shooting. Exactly here we go. Well, whatever.

Phoebe: 58:05

How about we head towards a brighter note, please?

Rachel: 58:09

do. Okay, I'll try. Let's do Lead us into the light.

Phoebe: 58:11

Lead us into the light.

Oliver: 58:14

Lead us into the light Exactly. I love that.

Phoebe: 58:16

So it's always fun to have a discussion with anyone trans about how their tubity has been as the hormones kick in and suddenly you're back there again as an awkward teenager. Oh my, what's going on in your body, or your mind, or your heart? Yeah, whoo. How was it?

Oliver: 58:35

Oh my God, Going through male puberty when you're in your late 40s, early 50s Girls, I mean I'm glad I'm through it. I'm just saying I'm glad.

Rachel: 58:50

I'm through it. It was bad enough to go through it in your teens.

Oliver: 58:53

Oh, bloody hell, Never again. So I mean just all the obvious things. The only thing that I didn't get, which people had warned me about, was the mood swings. I really didn't get the mood swings at all. Yeah, Because and again I think that's because, you know, it just felt so good to be filled with testosterone that it made me calmer rather than more agitated. And also, you know, I've been a belligerent fuck for most of my life because I was so unhappy. Yeah, so I was really kind of losing that belligerence as I went on tea.

Oliver: 59:27

But the other stuff I mean acne at the age of 50, not fun. Glad I got through that one relatively quickly. The horniness yeah, what can I say, did you? It does wear off eventually, yeah, but yeah, I mean that's just that that's a lot of hormones to put in an adult body and you know I'm a parent of four kids. I don't get out much. I really don't have time for relationships right now. So that's just a lot of kind of sex swimming around in my brain and in my body that doesn't really have anywhere to go.

Phoebe: 1:00:07

Did it cause any shifting around in your sexuality?

Oliver: 1:00:11

No, it didn't, but I'm curious about that as well because I have theories. So I was very open. I've had a lot of trans men who previously only slept with women, who then became more attracted to men as they transitioned. And there was a question for a while, like on Reddit, you know, does testosterone make you gay? Which I just think is one of the best questions you could possibly find on Reddit Does testosterone make you gay? And I think the answer is no. I think what it does is it allows people who are already bisexual to explore those parts themselves.

Oliver: 1:00:49

And here's my theory about why it didn't happen to me, because I really am only exclusively attracted sexually to women.

Oliver: 1:00:56

But I think if I had been bisexual or pansexual prior to transitioning, I wouldn't have been able to sleep with a man because he would have seen me as a woman.

Oliver: 1:01:07

So I would have only been sleeping with heterosexual men, which I was I did, but those heterosexual men saw me as a woman and therefore treated me as a woman, which obviously just increases your dysphoria, whereas after you transition you can sleep with gay men who see you as a man and therefore you're fully aligned sexually with your body.

Oliver: 1:01:29

And I think that what people sometimes overlook is that sex is a two-way thing. It's not just who you sleep with, as who you are, that not dictates your sexual orientation. But your sexual orientation isn't just about who you sleep with, it's about who you are when you sleep with that person. So I think that a lot of trans men who previously identified as butch women were able to manifest that masculine identity in bed as butch women with femme women in a way that they never would have been able to with a man, whereas post transition they can just be a man and they can be a top or a bottom or a verse or whatever they happen to want to be, whatever floats their boat. But they could do that with a man just as much as with a woman, because they're being seen in bed for who they are.

Rachel: 1:02:27

I always like to say I don't think your sexual orientation changes, but your frame of reference. Yeah, exactly, you reorientate yourself, but it's just coming out of the middle.

Oliver: 1:02:38

Yeah, yeah, and I really opened myself up to the idea of could I be a gay man? Because I kind of would like that. I would like to be a gay man. I think that'd be really fun because my community is queer and so if I was a gay man, I would slot straight back into my queer community with no problems, whereas as what's known as a trans het man, I'm probably going to be dating straight women, I guess, or pansexual women, which would be easier, I think. But if I date straight women, either then I have to step out of the queer community or they have to step into it. It feels a little bit more complicated. So I love the idea of being gay man, but unfortunately I'm not, which is disappointing. But yeah, no, it's just women for me. I am pretty much one of the old school, born that way, trans het people.

Phoebe: 1:03:34

Yeah, the change for me was that I found I didn't want to be with a man anymore because, frankly, I suddenly felt too vulnerable. Part of it was me saying, well, I know what testosterone does and I don't trust that stuff anymore and I don't want to be that close, that intimate, with anyone who has it coursing through their body.

Oliver: 1:03:58

Yeah, yeah, I can see that, unless they've been socialized female first, of course.

Phoebe: 1:04:03

Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.

Oliver: 1:04:07

I mean, I tried T on T. I had a great T on T relationship with someone who has now become one of my closest friends, yeah, but it was very clear from very early on in the relationship that this was a romantic relationship, not a sexual relationship.

Phoebe: 1:04:22

Yeah, yeah.

Rachel: 1:04:25

I think for me it was more that I couldn't be attracted to what I didn't like about myself. Right, that was what it was. But having said that, I've been a little bit confused since I transitioned. Yeah, I've always liked. Yeah, I'm into women, that's all it is. I'm into women. And yeah, on nights out, I have found myself on occasion in the company of men on the dance floor and I don't know if I'm actually attracted to them or it's their attraction to me that gives me that validation.

Oliver: 1:05:02

No, I think I mean I'm not going to speak for you, but I will speak for that that validation, Because I used to get that when I, before I came out, there was something about male attention, male sexual attention, that was very intoxicating and so I confused myself. I'm like, well, am I attracted to him? But no, I'm like kissing in the sex. But the intoxication of that attention and for me it was not validating who I was. It was proof that I was pulling off the facade successfully and so weirdly getting attention from kind of toxic arseholes was even more of a validation that I was being a successful woman. Because I was being so successfully a woman that I was attracting the attention of people who only look at surface. It's really fucked up.

Rachel: 1:06:04

Yeah, no, that's probably exactly what it is for me as well.

Phoebe: 1:06:07

Yeah, yeah.

Rachel: 1:06:09

Because you know, I remember thinking at the time. He's whispered in my ear like you're the most beautiful girl in here and I'm just thinking, ha, who are you in for? A surprise.

Phoebe: 1:06:20

Well, I mean, he wasn't wrong.

Oliver: 1:06:26

Yeah, it's. These things are so for queer people. These things are so entangled and braided together. It sometimes takes a lifetime to separate out all the different braids and figure out what's me, what's not me, what do I want, what do I don't want, what do I not want? What have I been socialized to think that I want?

Phoebe: 1:06:51

Yeah, I think it might go some way to explaining my own constant sys-hat relationships with detours along the way, which was a very similar thing. It's wow, I'm pulling off this guy thing so well. This is very validating for me for my ongoing performance. Once I came out, of course, I could throw off the old clothes and you know the suits and how I had to try to conform in things like business meetings, but the relationships along the way were the yeah. I'm doing that right as well.

Oliver: 1:07:33

But I mean it's understandable because we are primed from childhood to be successful. Yeah, you know, we're taught that whatever we do, we have to be successful at it. Or you learn that you do, or you learn that you do. You're conditioned to strive for success. So whatever you're doing, you want to be as successful at it as possible.

Oliver: 1:07:53

So if what you're doing is trying to be this person that you're expected to be because you're trying to please everybody, you're trying to do it as well as possible and any validation you're doing that well is going to give you that endorphin kick, even while it kind of destroys your soul. The interesting question is is there a way to be a successful trans person? Because originally the idea of a successful trans person was a trans person who passed. But that's playing into the same binary preconception that cis has a higher status to trans and therefore to be a successful trans person you have to be as close to cis as possible, even if that means going as far with your transition as you can, whereas I would argue that the most successful trans person is someone like a loke who is willing to go out there as 100% authentic to themselves and wear that all day, every day, in spite of the constant pushback from the whole of society.

Phoebe: 1:09:17

And I think that's also answered by how do you know when you've transitioned enough, where do you stop, and it's simply it's not to meet anyone else's expectation when you've resolved your dysphoria or done everything you can, that will help it.

Oliver: 1:09:34

Exactly, and the thing is about that is that you know when you've got there. You know, and you know when you haven't got there. Like me, trying to stop at non-binary, I'd had top surgery, I was only wearing masculine clothes and my hair was short. I was androgynous as they came. I was like please can I just stop here. I want to stick a needle in my bum once a week the rest of my life. It's a pain in the arse. Literally a pain in the arse.

Rachel: 1:10:03

There's the sound by Right.

Phoebe: 1:10:07

This is just another version of it's all going to be okay in the end, and if it's not okay yet, that just means it's not the end.

Oliver: 1:10:16

And also, it's okay for the pendulum to swing a bit far and then go oh no, I don't want to be here, I'm going to swing back a little bit, which is a lot. You know. We hear of a lot of trans women who say you know what? I've transitioned fully, but I still feel like I'm a little bit more non-binary, and who then go forward identifying as non-binary Because, you know, one assumes that they found alignment in their body and their physical sense of self and yet they're really not going to buy into that whole. Yeah, I'm a binary gender deal. Yes, because I mean, how many of us in the world really are binary gender? I mean, is anybody really, if we were to break down every single human being in this world and take away all the kind of societal conditioning? Is anybody the binary gender? Probably not.

Phoebe: 1:11:13

It's like asking is anybody truly straight?

Rachel: 1:11:18

Yeah.

Phoebe: 1:11:18

Yeah, and any bloke in a pub or whatever I say so you're going to tell me you've never looked at another guy and said, hmm, they're attractive. Right, not say, wow, they're well built, or whatever, I admire their form, or something.

Rachel: 1:11:35

Yeah, you know, there's a little tingle. He's a good looking guy, yeah, yeah.

Oliver: 1:11:41

But I think gender even more so, because where a sexual attraction is understood by people to be something that one acts on, that sex as an act is something that you have to step towards. Your gender is innate and we are so conditioned in our gender even more so than in our sexual orientation. I think, yeah, yes, and if you removed all of that conditioning from the majority of men who refers to them as cisgender, I just think you'd find something very different going on.

Phoebe: 1:12:22

Yes, wouldn't that be interesting, wouldn't it?

Oliver: 1:12:28

We could make it illegal to be cisgender.

Phoebe: 1:12:31

I'm going to call up the head of our cult and find out, if they can yes, exactly how we can do this. Plan B, we need Plan B right now. Start seeding the clouds.

Oliver: 1:12:41

Exactly, we do have a transgender and it is to make everybody trans. Sorry, but that's the truth. You're absolutely right about us. We're really freaking dangerous.

Phoebe: 1:12:52

Yeah, the time is here. Turn on that special 5G thing and exactly Exactly, let's do this, let's do that. Oh, the vaccine, the vaccine is right, the vaccine?

Rachel: 1:13:02

Yeah, we have many ways of we're transing everybody.

Phoebe: 1:13:05

Yeah Well, I met you when I was a baby trans. I think I met you about a month after I'd had my first HRT and you were I don't think you'd even started HRT when we met.

Oliver: 1:13:20

No way, really. No, you hadn't started. Oh, that was about six months later. So when you met me, you were just saying the words, you were social transition phase. I was amongst my people, you were amongst your people. You were like say this now it's okay, it's safe, yeah, yeah. It was really wonderful to watch.

Phoebe: 1:13:42

Well, I don't know about transing the whole world, but you did help me. Did I trans you, phoebe? You gave me a sense of Please say yes, sure, yes, you kind of. You transed me and thank God you flipped the switch the other way when you did, because imagine me becoming even more male than I was.

Oliver: 1:14:01

Oh, my God no.

Rachel: 1:14:03

No, no More male than you were pretending to be. More male than you were pretending to be.

Oliver: 1:14:07

You were doing a remarkably good job as well, just as I was when I was pretending to be a woman.

Rachel: 1:14:11

We were quite successful at that we're very good at hiding in plain sight.

Phoebe: 1:14:14

Yes, nicely said yeah. And your books, hopefully, will not only quell what is happening out there, with the one published today Today, anxiously waiting for your doorbell to ring in, for the dog to sound, god any minute now, and then I'm going to do the ceremonial box opening with my dog, because all my children are at school and anyway they couldn't give a fuck.

Oliver: 1:14:39

So and then, yeah, then here it is my new book and you have some readings planned? Yeah, I mean look, I have got a bunch of readings planned all in America at the moment. I am hoping to come over to England next February, sometime around the 20th, so we'll put a date in our calendars.

Oliver: 1:14:57

Yeah, put a date in your calendars and I will let you know what. I'm going to be calling up the bookstores and see if I can do a few readings over there. Absolutely, but look honestly, if it just changed the heart and mind of one person, I will have done my job.

Phoebe: 1:15:11

Well, I'm sure you will. You already did it for me, so there you go.

Oliver: 1:15:15

And then the memoir, which is obviously a lot longer and a bit bigger, yes, which is at the moment scheduled to be published next July. So, yeah, it's like London buses you wait forever for a publishing contract and then to come along at once.

Phoebe: 1:15:34

Do you have any more planned? What's in your future?

Oliver: 1:15:36

I do, I am drafting a novel.

Phoebe: 1:15:40

Whoa.

Oliver: 1:15:41

Yeah, yeah, I'm going straight into it. Yeah, I'm there.

Phoebe: 1:15:45

Oh my gosh.

Oliver: 1:15:45

I don't want to write any more nonfiction for a while because I've just written two nonfiction books. So I figured there's a lot of stuff that I couldn't write about in the memoir because there's just places you can't go when you're writing about yourself and people you know, so wrap it up in fiction.

Phoebe: 1:16:01

So let's wrap it up in fiction.

Oliver: 1:16:03

Let's get really down and dirty in fiction. Yeah, yeah, that's going to be fun. Can't launch to go wherever I want to go. Yeah, that's going to be really fun. It's going to be a while. I haven't written fiction before, so I mean I have in short stories, but not something of this length, so I don't know how long it's going to take, but watch the space. That'll be what's next and you know, and hopefully you know the odd essay or or pet or whatever along the way.

Phoebe: 1:16:28

Well, I think I speak for Rachel too and I say we can't wait to get down and dirty with you.

Oliver: 1:16:33

Me neither. I can't wait for your feedback. I want to know what you think.

Phoebe: 1:16:38

Thank you, oliver. This is oh. I just have one final question. Go on.

Rachel: 1:16:43

Any regrets from transitioning Such a small question that has so much weight to it?

Oliver: 1:16:54

Do I have any regrets? No, I have losses but not regrets, and that's different. It's a good answer. Yeah, no, no regrets, absolutely none. I would do it all over again with fades and earlier.

Rachel: 1:17:11

Yeah, I guess that answers the button question and that does, doesn't it?

Oliver: 1:17:17

Yeah, yeah, none, no Ladies, it's been such a pleasure to be here. Really. Thank you for having me on on my special day. It's like my birthday my birthday.

Rachel: 1:17:29

I'm just disgusted that you didn't get to unbox in front of us.

Oliver: 1:17:32

I know I'm very sad. That's very disappointing. I know Maybe if I get it later, we'll have to hop back online and we can have a quick ceremonial unboxing that you can edit in at a later date.

Phoebe: 1:17:43

That would be good. Let's do that. That would be good, all right.

Oliver: 1:17:47

Oh, thank you so much. Oh, my God, this has been so much fun. It's so lovely to see your beautiful faces.

Phoebe: 1:17:53

Oh, then you're ugly mugged too. I'm my ugly mug.

Rachel: 1:17:57

She's only saying what we were all thinking.

Oliver: 1:18:02

It's great, isn't it? It's just great. It's great just to not care anymore.

Phoebe: 1:18:09

All right lovelies, all right, may your doorbell ring and never stop frightening the horses.

Oliver: 1:18:15

I never will. Phoebe, and you and Rachel too. Yeah, I love you both very much, wow, okay.

Rachel: 1:18:23

Bye-bye, bye-bye.