Transpiration Special: The Many Facets of Rachel

Ever wondered how it might feel when your identity is at odds with the world's perception of you? Rachel, a remarkable trans woman and mother of four, sheds light on this experience. 

In a talk given to a global audience at her workplace during Transgender Awareness Week, Rachel courageously shares her personal journey of self-discovery and resilience as a transgender woman. She explores her transition amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges she faced, and the impact on her relationships. 

But she doesn't stop there. With the rise of anti-trans rhetoric in the media and its devastating consequences on the transgender community, it's crucial for allies to step up. She delves into the issue, discussing the government and media's anti-trans policies and the effects they have on the community. She emphasises the need for allies to speak out against transphobia, offering ways you can lend your support.

Join us as Rachel, this podcast's incredible co-host, explores transgender identities and rights against the backdrop of her own lived experience, aiming for a world with more understanding and acceptance.

Chapters

• 2:10 Facet 1: Early Years
• 6:36 Facet 2: Cracking an Egg
• 11:09 Facet 3: Begin Transition
• 14:50 Facet 4: Collateral Damage
• 17:03 Facet 5: Current Work
• 20:35 Facet 6: Trans Lies and Statistics
• 24:56 Facet 7: Rememberance
• 27:05 Facet 8: Being an Ally

Transcript

Rachel: 0:00

Ah, it's good to be back behind the mics again.

Phoebe: 0:02

It certainly is, but I'm a little confused because we haven't planned the next episode yet. What are we doing here?

Rachel: 0:10

Um no, this one's going to be a special episode.

Phoebe: 0:13

Oh, cool, okay well, I really love surprises. What's the topic? Uh, that would be me, aw, my favourite topic of all time. But what are we talking about then?

Rachel: 0:24

Well, we're not talking about anything. You're not in this one, it is just me.

Phoebe: 0:31

Oh, oh, okay, let's see what happens. Play the music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Joytak Club, a podcast that celebrates the diversity and beauty of transgender identities and expressions. I'm Phoebe, and with me is my co-host, the absolutely gorgeous Rachel. We are also known as Red and Freckles and are the team behind two damn trans. Say hi Rachel, Hi Rachel. This is a very, very special episode. It's a talk that Rachel gave as part of Transgender Awareness Week at her current work, which is a quite large, well-known multinational, and it was broadcast throughout and is honest, raw, uplifting and inspiring, and we think you're going to love hearing it. Rachel, do you want to say a few words about it before you begin?

Rachel: 1:40

Not really. You kind of hide out the intro, but that's fine, because the rest of it's all about me. Oh okay, so that's fine I couldn't have put it any better.

Phoebe: 1:50

Oh well, you actually did put it a lot better in the talk, and while we do need to apologise for the quality of the recording, rachel was not actually underwater as she sounds, but sitting in a cavernous room talking into a telephone conference mic. We're sure you're going to love it.

Rachel: 2:11

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Rachel and my pronouns are she. Let's start with a little bit about myself for those of you who don't know me. I'm a mechanical engineer and I've worked for over 22 years at our website. I have four children, a dog called Minglin Merciless. I enjoy paddleboarding, hiking and trigger bagging which, if you don't know, isn't some kind of sex act Astronomy, watching films, eating out and, along with my partner Phoebe, I'm a co-host on the Joytop Club podcast and the co-author of Book.

Rachel: 2:52

And I'm also transgender, and it's that last thing I'm here to talk about today. There's a very good reason that I left that until the end. I think people get too hung up on our differences that they fail to see our similarities. I'm just like you. I enjoy doing the same things you do, and the fact that I'm trans shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, to some people it does. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Rachel: 3:19

Let's firstly look at what it means to be transgender. It's a common trope from gender-criticals and transphobes that being transgender is a lifestyle choice. But one day we just decide to be trans in the same way that you might choose to take up golf. But the truth is, many trans people spend a large portion of their lives denying who they are trying to fit into the cisgender mold until they reach a breaking point. Being transgender is as much as a choice as being cisgender. Cisgender, in case you didn't know, basically means that you're not transgender and it is not a slur, despite what Egon Musk says. If you aren't trans, you're cis. If you Google the word transgender, you'll get this response.

Rachel: 4:03

A transgender person, often shortened to trans, is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they are assigned at birth, and that's pretty much it in a nutshell. You may have heard the phrase born in the wrong body, but for a lot of trans people, that's not what it feels like. I mean, this has always been my body. It just didn't look how it should have done. So, basically, when I was born, they looked at me, saw a penis and incorrectly ticked the box. That said male, told my mother congratulations, you have a beautiful baby boy.

Rachel: 4:35

When I was then raised as a boy, I was expected to live out a stereotypical male existence, performing to a set of societal conditions for a boy, such as liking the color blue, being into football, playing with cars and toy guns. You get the picture. But when I was six years old I got my first clue that I was trans, although I wouldn't realize that. For many years I stayed over at a friend's house and his mum had made him a teddy bear. Now this teddy bear was a bit worse for where I was, coming apart at the scenes exposing the stuff. It had been stuffed with other pairs of tights. And for some reason, upon seeing the hosiery, my six-year-old self without any influence from social media or the internet, I might add, this was 1979, had an overwhelming urge to put some on. So I rolled up my pajama trousers, slipped one leg into a pair of tights that I had extracted from the teddy, and I don't know why. I don't know why I did it, but it felt right. It was in that moment a tiny spark ignited in me and it was also in that moment I learned I had to keep that spark hidden, Because my friend saw me with one leg in a pair of his mum's old tights and screamed at the top of his voice for her to come and witness my crime against gender norms. After that, I hit the spark and even tried numerous times to extinguish it over the years, as a child growing up in the 70s and 80s with comedy shows like the Two Rollins, Kenny Everett, Dick Emory and Les Dawson. Society taught me over those decades that people are conditioned to find a man in women's clothes of music. So the need to keep the spark hidden was even more pronounced. The urge to dress as what I now know is my true gender wouldn't go away. So I started putting on my mother's clothes and a loan in the house, and it felt so euphoric. But afterwards I would feel guilty, like there was something wrong with me.

Rachel: 6:28

Although I had a weird fetish, it wasn't until my late teens that I had the first inkling that it might have been something else entirely. I went to an old boys' grammar school, which for me was hell. I don't even want to talk about the twice weekly hell that was the compulsory communal showers. I had a part-time job in the supermarket and for the first time I had friends who were female. I found it much easier to talk to girls and they were also very accepting of me even pretending to be a boy. I was very effeminate and I think they thought I was gay.

Rachel: 7:02

I was hiding in plain sight, trying to my best to act like a boy, doing what the other boys were doing. And so, as was expected of me, I started dating one of my female co-workers. One day I was in her bedroom waiting for her to get ready so we could go out, and I was pretending to nonchalantly flick through one of her women's magazines. In reality, I loved looking at them, but to admit that would blow my cover. I came across an article with a dramatic title my Husband Became a Woman and is Now my Best Friend. This was the first time I was actually aware that it was possible to transition. But any thoughts of transition in myself soon forgotten when my girlfriend fell pregnant. So I literally had to man up.

Rachel: 7:47

I tried to extinguish the spark, got married, threw myself into being a father, but the spark refused to die and I felt compelled to cross-dress in secret, going through a cycle of euphoria, guilt and then shame each time that I did, Swearing, never again, only for the cycle to start again after a few weeks or months of abstinence. The marriage ended after 13 years and two children. By now I was in my 30s and I thought it was too late. It was something that you had to do before puberty. So after spending two years alone and thinking I would die a sad, lonely man. I met my second wife. I still continued to hide my true self, keeping what I now know as gender dysphoria abate by continuing to cross-dress in secret.

Rachel: 8:37

And in 2019, a family friend came to visit with her teenage son. He was wearing makeup and gelt clothes. I applauded his mum's attitude towards letting her child explore their gender and I said to my wife if that was me, if I was a teenager now, I could have been like that. This, of course, triggered a long conversation and for the first time, I confessed to someone that I had questioned by gender. She worriedly asked me if I wanted to be a woman and, seeing her obvious distress, I said no In my mind. I wasn't lying to her, as I didn't want to be a woman. I was one. My wife supported me by allowing me to present more feminine women at home, and this enabled me to explore my female self. I would paint my toenails, sleep in a vest top, wear women's jeans, and I can't tell you how happy I was when it was acceptable for men to wear women's jeans as skinny jeans. What I didn't realise at the time was that being able to dress more how I wanted to was adding fuel to the spark and I was completely unprepared for the inferno that was building inside of me.

Rachel: 9:44

In February 2020, I was at work browsing online forum and I came across a post where someone was explaining their journey to transition. The similarities to my own life were uncanny. I used the phrase I've never heard before gender dysphoria. When I googled the definition, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. It was what had been plaguing me my whole life. The fire in me grew and the pressure that had built up needed a release. As I realised I was transgender, I broke down in tears, partly with relief to have a name or an explanation for what it was, and partly because I was scared for what that meant.

Rachel: 10:25

Once I pulled myself together, I decided I needed to talk to someone about it. I still wanted to keep it a secret until I had confirmed that I was actually trans, so I arranged some counselling through the employee assistance programme. I went home that night and sat in my car outside by house for 10 minutes composing myself. I didn't want to say anything to my wife until I'd spoken to the counsellor. No need to worry her unduly. So I went in and tried to act normal. She took one look and said you look terrible, what's wrong? And for the second time that day I broke down in tears, told her I think I'm transgender. She hoped that she'd tell me we would be okay, but we were not okay. I had counseling and then some therapy and ended up getting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Rachel: 11:16

Now the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says gender dysphoria is a marked incoherence between your experienced or expressed gender and the one you were assigned at birth, Although in 2019, the World Health Organization decided transgender health issues will no longer be classified as mental or behavioral disorders. But in layman's terms, gender dysphoria is basically a mismatch between my brain and my body. It manifests in many different ways, but the main three are social this is a discomfort with presenting socially as your AGAB or your assigned gender at birth. Body dysphoria is discomfort with your body being a different gender. And mind dysphoria it's discomfort with your mind and emotions not lining up with your gender identity. There is only one known cure for dysphoria and that is the transition. So I saw my GP and got put on the waiting list for the GIC, which is the Gender Identity Clinic. At that time, the waiting list for the clinic was already around three to four years.

Rachel: 12:25

Then COVID happened. I think that people being able to work from home led to a lot of eggs cracking that's the term that we use for realizing your transgender. Not having to go into work or out socializing made people look inwards and that, coupled with the opportunity to address how they wanted, meant the pandemic became the trend and now, post COVID, the GIC waiting time is measured in decades, Due to the current state of the trans healthcare in the UK. I don't anticipate I'll ever be seen Myself.

Rachel: 13:01

Coming out for COVID was hard. I knew who I was now and I wanted to explore that, but I couldn't. Lockdown had happened, support groups disappeared, Shops were shut when all I wanted to do was find my tribe, Get my eyebrows waxed, my hair done and my ears pierced. This is a picture of myself from an interview I gave to the Huffington Post about transitioning in the pandemic, or, as I called it earlier, the pandemic Pressure of transitioning in lockdown ultimatum. The prospect of having to wait years to access hormones was too much for me. So I paid to get private treatment and, through remote appointments with an endocrinologist, got myself an HR team and for me to finally be on Easterdin instead of Testosterone was amazing. It was like I'd been a petrol car running on diesel my whole life and now I was on the right fuel. My performance was much improved, but my relationship was suffering.

Rachel: 13:57

I wanted to move at 100 miles an hour with my transition and was frustrated that I couldn't Under the cover of lockdown. I was growing up my hair. I pierced my own ears and changed my name by a deep hole. I felt like what transition was moving at a glacial pace. For my wife, things were moving too fast. She was having to watch her husband change before her eyes. She started to view me as two people and she once told me she hates Rachel and wanted to stab her. We were on a roller coaster ride of her accepting, then hating Rachel and accepting again. I could see the hurt I was causing and at one point I even tried not fully transitioning. I thought I could try and be gender fluid, switching between genders, a woman in private and a man in public. But the lid was off of a trans dollars box and nothing was going to stop what had been set in motion.

Rachel: 14:52

Now I always knew there would be some collateral damage if I transitioned. I knew that some people would struggle to understand and a few would fall by the wayside along my journey, but for me the cost was very high. Without going into too much detail, the further I went into my transition, the harder it was for my loved ones to accept who I truly am. It's one of the absurdities of being trans. The person they knew was gone. They were grieving me and it was hard for me to help them because to them, I was the one that had killed me. I'm now estranged from most of my family.

Rachel: 15:30

On my podcast, one of the big questions I always ask our guests is if they have any regrets from transitioning, and the best answer we've had so far are borne from my own response to that question. Regrets, no, Only losses. Transitioning costs me a lot, and those losses hurt. I think about it. In most days I don't regret transitioning. I stop living a lie, one that I told myself most of my life. One thing transitioning has taught me if it is someone puts conditions on you or only brings you negativity and misery, then you don't need them in your life. Love should be unconditional. The old saying blood is thicker than water isn't true.

Rachel: 16:19

I spent 40 years trying to be who everyone expected me to be, and when I finally accepted my truth from my own sanity, they got upset and told me I was being selfish by not considering how I was making them feel. I'm happier now and although I've lost so much, I've gained so much more. I used to be the grey man, fading into the background and try not to draw attention to myself. Now I'm a proud, confident trans woman living my best life, happy to have dropped my mask, living life to the fullest by authentic self, with my found family and my gorgeous fiancee TV. But all love me for who I really am, not who they thought I was.

Rachel: 17:05

I officially changed my name in December 2020. I had been out at work to HR and one senior manager for a few months prior to this, and we worked together to formulate my coming out to the rest of the factory After lots of deliberation. This happened by a simple matter of fact email that read please be advised that Rachel formerly dead name Vishwik, that's me brings you a thermosteo canning and glass is informed us that she is transgender and will be presenting for you now when she returns in the new year. Please respect her gender identity and her privacy. You should address her by her new name, Rachel, and refer to her with female pronouns. She her leadership team will continue to support Rachel through this transition period.

Rachel: 17:50

Personally, I'm very proud of the culture we have here and that we live by the hashtag just be ethos or be yourself, be valued, belong. Work has been anything but a smooth ride during my transition. I'm the first trans person to come out on site and, as such, there was no plan. We had to make it up as we went along. And let me tell you, coming out as a trans woman in a heterosexual, male dominated workplace is nerve wracking. I was removing myself from a position of privilege as a white male and placing myself in a misunderstood minority, which was hard for most people to take. Some things we got right and a lot of other things we got very wrong. I've had to face, and continue to face, regular misgendering dead naming, sexual harassment, misogyny and transphobia. Some are accidental from people who didn't know any better and some deliberate, but they all hurt the same. I've cried more at work more times than I care to remember. I only managed to endure through to the support of someone who's become my closest friend.

Rachel: 19:04

Now is a good time to talk about dead name. A trans person's dead name is the name they went by before they started to transition, or, as I like to call it, the before types. To call a trans person by the death name is probably the worst thing you can do. Second is to misgender them, Because if you dead name or misgender us, you're really saying you don't see us as a person. A person may have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to come. Just to recap, If you think you know a trans person's dead name, no, you don't. Thankfully, work is slowly getting better. We have a guide in place to assist managers if one of their employees comes out to trans, so hopefully no one else will have to be told by their manager in a one to one that he's noticed that their boobs are growing. I'll be asked if they dress as a woman outside of work.

Rachel: 19:58

I've been transitioning for nearly four years. I'm not in my final form. I am in a place where dysphoria rarely rears its ugly head, Even now it can. I'm finally comfortable with who I am and how I look. The proof of that is this I'm here in front of you today doing this talk Transgender Awareness Week, no longer trying to fade into the background and put myself front and center, standing tall, proudly announcing this is who I am and hopefully setting an example to everyone that it's just okay to be yourself. I didn't come here just to talk about myself. I want to raise awareness that the current climate of hate there is towards trans people, online, in the media and politically.

Rachel: 20:47

Let's start with the media. This slide was originally titled Press Stats, but it makes pretty grim reading so we adjusted it slightly. Several years ago, the British press rarely covered the trans community and when they did, many of the articles were positive. Let's look at the telegraph, for example. In January 2016, they published just 10 articles relating to trans people. Six were positive, including a piece by Tori and Pete calling for better healthcare for trans people. We'll get to the Tories in a minute. In January this year, they ran 75 articles about trans people and 73 of those were negative. This represents a 650% increase in coverage. The Daily Mail ran just 22 articles in January 2016. In January 2023, this ballooned to 115. Of these, 100 are negative.

Rachel: 21:46

The anti-trans rhetoric has been fueled by our own government who, by their own admission, have chosen to use trans people as a political football to desperately try to cling on to power when the reality is. In a recent poll, only 1% of voters said that trans people will matter in the 2024 election. Recently, our Prime Minister, who has previously been recorded making jokes about women with penises, announced in his speech at the Conservative Party conference that men are men and women are women. That's just common sense. The cheers of the assembled party. According to Sunak, the women pictured here are men and the men are women. It's just common sense. This also comes after the Tories revealed plans to ban trans women from female-only boards in hospitals, despite there being no complaints about trans women and cis women in 102 different NHS trusts. They also plan to ban inclusive language in the NHS.

Rachel: 22:46

They blocked Scotland from making it easier for trans people to attain a GRC, that's, a gender recognition certificate, A process that currently takes a long time and a panel of four strangers to determine if you are truly the gender you say you are, based on two years of evidence you have to compile on catalogue. To give you an idea of how absurd this is, imagine if you needed to be diagnosed as homosexual by a GP, Live openly gay in the world for two years, compile proof that you have and then pay money to the government for a panel of strangers to determine if you are gay enough before you could be recognised as gay. Attend a recognition certificate, by the way, doesn't give the trans person any more rights. It just enables us to get married and have our deaths recorded as our true gender the rights we already have under the Equalities Act 2010, that the government is also trying to get the wording changed in that to exclude trans people. The result of all of this is an 11% rise in a crime against trans people in the last year, A rise that the Home Office openly admits MPs might be contributing to the way they talk about trans people.

Rachel: 24:02

Trans people are around four times more likely to experience hate online, causing depression and, a lot of the time, suicidal thoughts, and this leads to statistics that around 85% of trans people were considered suicide by self included. Nearly half, 48% have attempted it. At 55% are diagnosed with depression. These statistics show transgender people are more likely to experience mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts and our cisgender peers. This is often due to discrimination from both social and political forces, as well as gender dysphoria. Anti-transgender rhetoric makes it seem as though transgender people have a lot of depression because we're trans. Let me be very clear we have depression because of the way the world treats us for being trans, not because we're trans. And so today is transgender day of remembrance, A day to remember how trans siblings were no longer with us.

Rachel: 25:08

Trans people are dying as a direct result this hate towards us less than 1% of the population Brianna Gay, a 16 year old trans girl, murdered because she was transgender. Eden Nye, a 23 year old trans woman, took her own life after being forced to return to Saudi Arabia and be transitioned by her family. Alice Littman, a 20 year old trans woman, ended her own life after being unable to access gender assuring care due to the incredibly long wait times on the NHS. And most recently, Corey Hall, a 14 year old trans boy, took his own life to a hospital because of online bullying and then, when his mother posted about it online, she was also bullied by the same gender critical people. They told her it was her fault that her daughter was dead because she had indulged her trans fantasy. Corey's mother ended up deleting her account temporarily to escape the hate, but that wasn't enough for the GCs to then try to organise a protest at Corey's funeral.

Rachel: 26:29

These are the few stories that make the news. There are many more who slip quietly away unapported. It has to stop. Sorry, but we are a minority. We cannot win this fight alone. We need allies to speak out and stand up against the hate. Pull it out when you see it. Only when there is pushback and voices outside the trans community with a bigoted politicians and media and realise their lies and false panic aren't working. It takes very little effort to be an ally. Here are some simple examples of how you can help.

Rachel: 27:14

Respect people's gender. Don't assume anyone's gender and don't refer to someone's gender based on how you think they look or whether it makes sense to you Using pronouns. If you're unsure of the right pronouns, use their name where possible, along with gender neutral language. When I introduced myself at the beginning, I said hello everyone. That's because I don't know how all of you identify. To have said something like welcome, ladies and gentlemen, potentially would have been wrong to some of you. I don't assume to know your pronouns, so I use gender neutral language. Create the safe space by introducing yourself, your name and your pronouns. Put your pronouns in your email a simple act that requires very little effort, but normalize these pronouns and shows you're an ally, Avoid dead naming.

Rachel: 28:10

I've already spoken about this. I'll mention it again. Don't ask a trans person what it's a real or old name, or use persons dead name, Because in doing that you feed a culture that constantly invalidates that person's identity. Create confidentiality. Do not reveal someone's transgender status without their permission or consent. They might not have been out to everyone or maybe living stealth, keeping the fact that they are trans a secret or fear of reprisal.

Rachel: 28:44

Challenge transphobic behavior. Don't be an active bystander. If there is one person and four transphobes sitting at the table, then there are five transphobes sitting at the table. If you're not helping us, you're hurting us. Respect boundaries.

Rachel: 29:03

Although many trans people like myself are happy to answer genuine questions, some are not. We are not your trans Wikipedia. The information is out there. Educate yourself. Also. You wouldn't ask one of your cisgender colleagues about their genitals, sexual preferences or what surgeries they've had. So respect trans people in the same way. You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've been asked about the contents of my knickers, Normally by strangers.

Rachel: 29:35

Listen, educate yourself. It's okay not to know how to treat a transgender person. Listen to them about how they want to be treated. If you are unsure, ask in a polite, respectful way. If you make a mistake, simply apologize and move on. And finally, support choice of facilities. Trans people should be able to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identity and expression without fear of reprisal, violence or judgement. Another lie peddled by the media is that trans people trans women in particular are sexual predators. They call us men dressing as women just to invade women only spaces. Truth is, we just need a pee. We're not invaders, we're asylum seekers looking for a safe haven, and the chances are you've probably already shared a toilet with a trans person and never even knew it. So that's about it from me. I'll just say one last thing. Trans people have always existed and will always continue to exist. You can help make it an easier, brighter existence. Thank you for listening.

Phoebe: 31:00

So that concludes Rachel's talk, and, gosh, I hope you got as much from that as I did. It's also a wrap for this episode of the Joytuck Club. Thank you so much for listening and for tuning in and being part of our community. You don't know how much it means to us. If you want to connect with us further, please visit our website, thejoytuckclubcom where you can find show notes and resources and transcripts and more.

Rachel: 31:25

Yeah, and you can also follow us on Twitter, instagram, blue Sky, facebook, and the accompanying video of this talk is going to be on TikTok and YouTube, and you can find us through the handle at 2damptrans on all of those platforms where you can DM us if you have any questions or topics you'd like to discuss.

Phoebe: 31:44

And don't forget to subscribe and rate us on Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. We're on all the popular platforms now.

Rachel: 31:51

And of course even some of the unpopular ones too.

Phoebe: 31:54

We appreciate your feedback and support. So until next time, remember you are valid, you are beautiful and you are transcending boundaries.