Writer & Photographer.
Funding for youth services is getting reduced every year, whilst the risks to young people grow every day. Protest against the cuts, write to your politicians, ask them to ring-fence youth service money as non-negotiable when it comes to budget reductions. As both a society and as individuals we need to get involved and think about ways to change things. Ask yourself how can I help? What skills do I have? What resources can I bring to the table?
I have a good relationship with my body. Just reading those words though, reminds me of times when I didn’t. For most of my teenage years onwards my body didn’t feel like mine. I covered it up, I refused to be photographed, I hid it as much as I could. I didn’t want the way I looked to be recorded, I didn’t want to be reminded of what I was. I didn’t want to see what I was.
My body wasn’t mine, it felt wrong, and as time went by, I started to realise why. I was trans, and worst of all, I didn’t know what to do about this.
Telling someone that you’re trans is an act of bravery. The default response I, and many others expect when we disclose this, especially in terms of relationships and sex, is of rejection.
Every time we tell someone we are in actual fact putting our faith in them. We are trusting them not to go with the default. We are trusting them, we are trusting you, with something so precious, so personal, and so fragile.
Let me tell you what sex from my perspective is like. It’s a question you want to ask right? I know when you see me sitting there at the bar that you’re thinking it. I know that in a minute you’re going to come up to me, and because I’m trans, because you think it’s okay to ask, you’re going to ask me outright, what’s it like?
How we know we’re women is very different to how others may, or may not, interpret our womanhood. One is about our own internal sense of self and the other is about other people’s preconceptions, assumptions, and prejudice, be that subliminally, or intentionally.
Freiya Benson 