Lesbian Day of Visibility 2020

My first memory of the word lesbian was when it was being used against me by my bullies. Age 12 and already a bit of an outsider for being a fat, sci-fi loving, video game playing, maths geek, I had cut my hair short - a decision that led to my first encounter with homophobia. I can’t imagine that I really understood it, but with that experience the feeling that I was something wrong, bad and unacceptable as a human being began to be deeply embedded.

This was 1990, and I was in the middle of my school education under section 28. The only lesbians we knew about popped up on the TV for two weeks a year during Wimbledon, and then disappeared again. I often think how different my life would have been if there had been role models for me back then But all I had to help me navigate my identity were the worst of cartoon stereotypes.

So, naturally, I grew my hair back out and stayed firmly in the closet for another 15 years, internalising all the shame and pretending to be the person I thought I should be - or at least the person I felt other people thought I should be.

Today is Lesbian Visibility Day, a day which is about being yourself, being proud, breaking out of those stereotypes and making visible the breath-taking range of what a lesbian can look like. Representation matters, and visibility is not just for ourselves but for current and future generations. I want to be visible and proud alongside all my fellow lesbians today. I do it for the 12 year old me, who so desperately needed to see us all.

Time To Talk 2019

Today is Time To Talk Day, an annual event by Time To Change to encourage us all to grab a coffee and have a chat about mental health as a way of challenging the stigma surrounding it.

I am a huge fan of this concept, we should all be able to talk about our mental health challenges, in fact I truly believe that by doing so in a collective way as a society, we can improve everybody's mental health. Sharing your experience with someone who has not yet had any problems, will give them an insight and help them identify if they are struggling at a later date. It has the potential to create the kindness we so desperately need to be showing each other, which is sorely missing in a country that feels so divided right now.

One in four of us will be experiencing a mental health issue today, most of us will at some point in our lives. We should be talking about it more.

However, I am here to acknowledge just how bad I am at talking about my own mental health. I completely understand that it would help me remove some of my internalised stigma about mental health. Which could speed the recovery from my current state of mind. But right now, I am unable to voice my own thoughts, even to those I know and trust the most.

I am lucky enough to know that this is not always the case. Last year I gave a speech as part of The Women's Equality Party's healthcare policy roadshow, something I never would have thought I could do. Remembering that it has been possible helps me to hold on to the fact that it will be possible again. I am extremely glad that my party added healthcare to its core and especially grateful to the team that put together such a brilliant set of intersectional policies, which you can read in detail here.

This Time To Talk Day, my hope is for everyone to reach out and offer a chat over a cuppa tea, but to do so understanding that sometimes sharing that time with someone in silence may be just as healing - the words may go unsaid, but the gesture is still significant.

Milk? Sugar? #TimeToTalk #ItsOKToNotBeOK


This is the speech I gave last summer:

As a society, we need to be approaching and dealing with mental ill health just as openly and seriously as physical ill health. The two often go hand in hand, however we are more likely to have our physical symptoms fixed, often missing out on treating the mental ones.

Even a broken leg could lead to mental support being needed to getting back up and walking on it again.

There is still a lot of work to do in education around mental illness to remove the stigma and enable communities to be more understanding and help one another, that includes within the medical profession.

I would like to see our doctors focus on needs-led, rather than diagnosis-led treatments, working through the causes of mental health issues, rather than focusing on the symptoms.

Less than 6% of government medical research funding in the UK is put into mental health, despite the prevalence of mental ill health in the population.

The vast majority of this research is funding to strengthen and support existing ideas, with considerably less going into prevention, detection and screening or developing treatments for mental illness. https://www.mqmentalhealth.org/articles/research-funding-landscape (2016)

My own internalised stigma around admitting to having any kind of mental health issues definitely did not help my situation. When I initially went to GP for some help, I was determined not to take any medication and was put on a 6 week CBT course. There was no follow up, no talk of what options were next.

I didn’t have any physical symptoms to ask the GP about, so I didn’t see any point – until two years later, when I was having daily panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, I was thankfully able to make myself go back.

I was then put on anti-depressants & added to the waiting list for some talking therapy. By then, I’d already left it at least a year longer than I should have done, I was sent a pamphlet on how to deal with stress whilst I waited for a phone call. 

In the postcode lottery, I was one of the lucky ones and only waited 6 months, but again after 8 sessions, I was signed off as improved – which I was, but I knew I had a lot more work to do if I wanted to be able to do more than just get through each day.

Looking back, I find it incredible that at no point was there any conversation around support networks or longer term strategies for preventing me getting into that situation again. I decided to stop taking the anti-depressants, I just didn’t make an appointment for a repeat prescription, my GP hasn’t been in touch at all since (3 years now).

I am privileged to have had the resources, to have the time and finances, to be able to prioritise my mental health and find a private counsellor, who helped me make myself more than a ghost of a person. If I hadn’t been able to do that, I can see I would still be on the merry-go-round of short term sticky plasters.

I strongly believe we need a community approach, if there were a drop-in centre where you could make connections, speak to people who are going through or have experienced something similar, where staff can connect you to further services – be that NHS, private or charity, if you need them. Somewhere to talk through treatment options.

If this place had existed, and I’d been connected to it right back when I first asked for help in 2010, I don’t think it would have taken me until 2016 to feel like a solid human again.

63% of women in the UK experience some form of mental health problem in their lifetime with twice as many women as men diagnosed with anxiety disorders, which isn’t surprising when you consider the big role that inequality and discrimination can play in mental ill-health.

Women are more likely to live in poverty, live alone (particularly in older age) or to be carers for other people, all of which can contribute to poorer mental health.

Trauma and adverse childhood experiences such as sexual abuse, gender-based violence, war and displacement, are also key determinants.

We need to be looking at the cause of the increasing number of young people who are being diagnosed with anxiety and stress (exams & social media), the number of hospital admissions for anorexia in girls under 18 doubled in the UK between 2010 and 2017 (? Number of places increased? Article this week 30% decrease in number of NHS beds for mental health patients).

We need to ensure funding for specialist services are ring fenced, people with disabilities are more likely to also require mental health support. The LGBT+ community require support that understands the additional inequalities of being in a gender binary, heteronormative environment. We need to address the over-use of detention (‘sectioning’), particularly for people of colour.

There is the high incidence of suicide attempts by women experiencing domestic abuse and suicide is the biggest killer of women during the childbirth and early postnatal period.

Societal pressures are also causing the crisis in mental health in young men that is attributed to the way boys and men are socialised with a “toxic masculinity”.

Whilst women are more likely to attempt suicide, men are more likely to use more violent, fatal methods.

We will focus on delivering community-based services and trauma-informed therapeutic interventions - for example, instead of asking, “what is wrong with you?” asking “what happened to you?” and working through the causes of mental health issues rather focussing solely on the symptoms, designing and delivering services collaboratively with those who are using the services.

By mainstreaming mental health into all policy areas, we will restore the link between social injustice, social inequalities and individual or community distress. This will enable us to meet and prevent the main causes of poor mental health.

Labels

For the last 5 months or so, I have been doing some long hard thinking about who I am, something that I probably should have confronted years ago, but somehow managed to bury deep until this year. A combination of currently feeling in the best, clearest head space I have ever been in and somehow still feeling like I am living a lie.

Its been 15 years since I accepted that I was a lesbian, it took me a few more years to be able to tell people, but the end of denial and questioning felt like the biggest breakthrough ever. Perhaps it was but looking back I feel like what I did was try on a different label & felt more comfortable and ran with it. I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to make it fit, and now I’m questioning if I have been just trying too hard to fit a slightly-less ill fitting set of social expectations.

I have always struggled with being in queer spaces, accepting that that comes from an element of expectation on my part, but since long before I was accepting of my own sexuality I sought out queer spaces and found them intimidating and not for me, which kept me questioning myself. Yet I kept persisting, as there wasn’t anywhere else I felt comfortable either.

I realise now that I am far from alone in my first experiences of lesbian venues, showing up with the expectation of finally being welcomed with open arms into The Community, only to have the door slammed in my face by the (I now realise) infamous door staff of the candy bar in Soho, for not looking lesbian enough or not being masculine/feminine enough or just being too fat. I’ll never know, but I still look back with anger to those days. How could anyone who has questioned their sexuality then reject another human who shows up looking for acceptance too. I never, ever want someone to feel like their identity is invalid on the grounds of social expectations, be those from inside or outside of the queer community.

I spent the next 5+ years getting very comfortable knowing that I was the odd one out in a straight bar. Feeling awkward in a space I knew wasn’t meant for me was less problematic to deal with than feeling awkward in a space that I felt should have been my comfort zone.

Being accepted by my straight friends as the lesbian in the room was fantastic, and no one needed me to go any further with explaining myself. Walking into a female queer space, I was met with a sense of expectation that you would then have to fit into another label – butch or femme, lipstick, chapstick or boi. I didn’t have a clue and felt exhausted with the idea of having to go through another round of soul searching to find a new closer, but probably still ill-fitting label.

So, I didn’t, I stuck to hanging out in straight spaces, with little fear of being confronted to have to say anything about my sexuality at all. Over time, I made more lesbian, gay, bi and questioning friends, making the straight spaces a little more queer which made me happy, to be accepted in a mixed crowd was a new comfort zone.

Needless to say, I remained firmly single through these years and was happy to stay there but as friends and family all married off & started having kids, I found myself spending more time alone. It was time to take an active role in looking for a partner, so turned to the internet. I met several people doing this, and one did turn into an 8-month relationship, but I know looking back I was playing a role – it wasn’t really me in that relationship, it was my idea of what a partner should do, how I thought I should act – all seen through a lens of straight relationships.

The end of that relationship was the first big crack in my mental health, looking back it was coming for a long time & if I hadn’t had my own expectations, having grown up a tomboy, of I needed to be strong and unemotional, I may have sought counselling much sooner & not circled down as far or as deep as I did.

Having come through the next 5-year period of anti-depressants and counselling, I have found my new family with The Women’s Equality Party these last two and a half years, so why am I now questioning myself and my identity again?

The Women’s Equality Party has had the most positive impact in my life. It has given me hope for politics, it has connected me with so may amazingly supportive women and created the sort of mixed space where I feel utterly unjudged by fellow members of the party. There are no expectations on my place within societal structures, there is a pure acceptance of being taken at face value, without judgement. I am being appreciated for the time, skills and ideas I bring to the table. I’ve worked all my life in a male dominated environment as a computer programmer and I have never felt seen in my working life the way I feel seen and appreciated and encouraged by my fellow volunteers within the party.

This year alone has seen me standing in the local council elections, taking to the stage to speak about my personal experience with mental health services and writing a motion that got passed by conference into our party’s official policy document. I look back on where I was 3 years ago, even one year ago & I barely recognise myself. I have done things I never thought I could and I am ready to step up and keep pushing at my former boundaries as I carry on this journey.

So, this all sounds positive, right? Why is it that I have been struggling these last 5 months? Being challenged on what I thought I was capable of has allowed me to push at some of oldest walls I had built up in my mind.

It started with an invite to the Diva Awards back in June, a glitzy celebration of LBT+ women and allies, which I was to attend with friends from the party. This filled me with fear, it could have been excitement, but I find it hard to tell the difference between genuine nervous excitement and actual anxiety – I have spent too many years in trepidation that I will slip back down the well of despair that I default to worry & fear in these scenarios.

My feelings were overwhelming and disproportionate to the event & I knew it. Lots of old default thinking of self-hatred bubbled to the surface, for letting myself get so worked up before it began that I couldn’t enjoy it.

Roll on a month to Pride, and I did the exact same to myself, feeling utterly sick at the idea of marching with my fellow party members through London. I felt more of a fraud than ever when confronted by the very space I have craved to fit into and hating it. Hannah Gadsby in Nanette has come the closest to connecting it for me, talking about the first time she saw “her people” on TV at Mardi Gras – “We like to dance, don’t we? … my people …”.

I turned 40 this year and treated myself to a no-holds-barred week in Edinburgh at the Fringe festival, where I prioritised seeing shows based on feminist themes, queer women stand up, anything challenging mental health and some sci-fi, coz a girl had to have some fun too!

My over ridding take home from all these shows was to challenge my view of myself, why do I still approach all these new experiences I am having with such fear – of failure and of success. I have such high and low expectations of myself, simultaneously and with no reasoning.

On returning home from Edinburgh, I found myself in the middle of an unexpecting whirlwind of internal politics at The Women’s Equality Party, as the disagreement on trans rights ripped through the heart of the party I thought already held trans rights absolutely at the core of its ethos.

This sent me into a tailspin, questioning first if I had been wrong on the party position. Earlier this year, I was on stage at Queer Question Time as The Women’s Equality Party representative and proudly repeated the party line from our policy document: “We recognise that the binary words ‘woman’ and ‘man’ do not reflect the gender experience of everyone in our country and support the right of all to define their sex and gender or to reject gendered divisions as they choose”. Had I got the ethos of the party so wrong? I was completely taken by surprise by the speed and strength of force behind the turn of events, from where I was standing.

This was an incredibly painful couple of weeks that sent me questioning the loudness of my voice on this issue as well as questioning why I had been working so hard for a party if it didn’t accept my trans siblings & if I HAD got the position wrong, could I forgive myself for having represented such views, even if unknowingly.

I spent a lot of time crying during the two weeks between the storm beginning and conference bringing it some sort of a head and I discovered the power of a hug. I was struggling emotionally, and I reached out and created a support network to help me get through. I was vulnerable & I found strength in a group. This is new for me, I have always seen myself as a strong independent woman and it has made me question the core truths that I thought I knew about myself.

I identified as a Tomboy from a young age, looking back I can’t be sure if I chose this label, or if it was given to me, but I see now that I buried the patriarchy within myself with that label.

I have spent my whole life trying to emulate and fight for the right to be seen as having masculine traits within this feminine body. This is why I have had my own journey to becoming fully trans inclusive, I initially found the idea of someone changing their body to match their gender at odds with my desire to change attitudes to my gender based on my body.

Once I started questioning this, thinking about what gender, sex and sexuality meant to me and what it might mean to others, I concluded that these go hand in hand to truly break down societal conventions. The current system re-enforces the very gender stereotypes I have been trying to break – only by demolishing them and allowing for the non-binary can I truly live freely.

I want everyone to be able to accept any human being as they present and to believe them when they tell you about themselves. No assumptions. No stereotypes. That’s the world I want to live in.

My visceral uncontrollably emotional outpouring during these weeks leading to conference has forced me to question further why this topic completely broke me. I have dug deep and considered the last 30 years of my life as a whole.

Since puberty I have been at odds with my body, I am completely disconnected from my physical appearance, I don’t have mirrors in my flat, I avoid photos. I feel awkward all the time. In my head, I present as androgynous, however, mother nature delivered me G cup boobs, making it impossible to feel in control of the first impressions and assumptions people make based on my appearance.

I am also aware that I have a lot of internalised stigma around being fat and being female and being queer, thanks to growing up in a hetero-normalised, fatphobic world. I have known from a young age that I had no desire to have children, however I still feel like I have failed at life for not having got married and had kids. That’s the end goal we were all given as girls, right?

Over the months where these questions have all raised themselves and caused me some painful, personal introspection, I can also see I made some significant steps forward. The discovery of the amazing Gender Free World (https://www.genderfreeworld.com/), who make shirts with extra room for boobs - allowing me to dress comfortably and present as I have wanted, in shirts that are fun & fit my body. I finally got my hair cut short again; the liberating moment of seeing myself emerge from underneath the curls was liberating and freeing. A hair cut really can change your life.

So, where do I go from here? I want to find a way to lose all the labels, all the baggage, I want to get to know myself without any of the social pressures or internalised biases that I have held onto for far too long. I want to start again, to find a place of self-acceptance and then possibly, I can finally find my own personal comfort zone within the world. Maybe my life really will begin at 40.