How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S16, Ep7 How To Fail: Munroe Bergdorf on the beauty of transitions, breaking the rules and learning how forgive herself and others

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

TW: rape, racism and transphobiaI have admired this woman from afar for many years and was so honoured when she agreed to sit down with me for How To Fail. Munroe Bergdorf is impossible to summarise: she is an activist, model, writer and broadcaster but those words can't accurately convey how much she has done to shape our culture.In her UTTERLY BRILLIANT new book, Transitional, Munroe draws on her own experience to reveal just how deeply ingrained transitioning is in human experience. It's a book that explores change and the fluidity of identity and relationships, sexuality and gender and it's so, so powerful.She joins me to talk about the long journey to live her truth and how she overcame a lack of self-worth to understand she was worthy of healthy relationships. We talk about how she navigated PTSD, panic attacks and anxiety and about her refusal to play by the rules.It is an extraordinary conversation, as befits an extraordinary person. But please do be aware that we cover some traumatic territory, including Munroe's violent rape at the hands of a stalker. I am so grateful to Munroe for her courage in talking about it. Such stories are urgently necessary to share in order to attack misplaced stigma and shame, and Munroe emerges from everything she talks about with strength, grace and integrity intact. This is not a story of being defined by trauma, but of overcoming it - and of continuing to fight for change.--Transitional by Munroe Bergdorf is published tomorrow and availabe to order here.--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail]--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpodMunroe Bergdorf @munroebergdorf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned

from failure. Monroe Bergdorf is an activist, model, writer and broadcaster. A contributing editor at British Vogue who's written for multiple publications, she has since 2019 been a national advocate for the United Nations and the recipient of an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, the University of Brighton, for her campaigning work in transgender rights. A founding member of L'Oreal's Diversity and Inclusion Board, she's also the host of Spotify podcast, The Way We Are, and the hit MTV show, Queer Epiphany. She was born to a Jamaican father and English mother. She grew up identifying as gay under Section 28, the notorious piece of legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government, which prohibited what was termed the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and schools.

Bergdorf began her transition the year that the Equalities Act passed in 2010. The first GP she spoke to said he had never met a trans person before and would have to Google for help. Times have changed since then, largely because of the tireless effort of activists like Bergdorf, whose work has often come at significant personal cost. Her memoir, Transitional, is out tomorrow and is a riveting blend of memoir and manifesto, so enlightening and quotable that I found myself dog-earing almost every page. In it, she refers to the universal nature of transition. Transitioning is ingrained in our human experience, Bergdorf writes. It is not a process that only trans people go through.

Transitioning is universal. Transitioning is an alignment of the invisible and the physical. It's the truth rising to the surface. Monroe Bergdorf, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much for having me. It is an honour to have you. I was raving to you earlier about how much I love your book. God, I feel so emotional because just hearing that from people that I really respect and look up to and it's just such

a bare book it's like I've really laid myself bare with it and it's so honest and it's been very difficult to revisit those experiences almost more difficult than it was to go through them because you're on autopilot but then going back there when I'm in a completely different place knowing that the book resonates with people is just everything so thank you so much thank you for writing it and thank you for your bravery and making this public in so many ways but I wanted to ask you about how you wrote it because it's unique the way you blend it the way you blend personal experience with this really fiery eloquence about what you think about

the world yeah well with through a lot of frustration um but I actually wrote the book three times. So the first one was kind of more theory-based. So it was more manifesto. Second one was pretty much like all memoir. And then I merged the two. So I just kind of like found a way to weave it. I wanted it to be memoir, but I also wanted to give context to why I went through what I went through and you know not not only talk about section 28 but talk about the human cost of that because we often talk

about legislation but we don't talk about the actual impact that that has on queer youth we don't talk about you know the lives of queer youth we don We talk about youth as people that have lives and, you know, whole identities. It's been very, very tough. It's been a very, very difficult book to write. It's my first book. So I'm glad that I got the hardest one out the way. Yeah. And you're a terrific writer. Can I ask how old you are? I'm 37. Because you write with the wisdom. Sorry, I'm 36. I was like, how old do I be?

You write with the wisdom of someone who is 85. Thank you. And I wonder, I suppose I have two questions about that. One is that there's such a clarity to your thought process on the page. And I really admire that. And I'm quite envious of it because I'm someone who often doesn't think she knows what she actually thinks. And I wonder if you do know what you think, if that's always been the case or if you think it's the result of everything you've had to go through. Because you've been in a position where you have had to think and advocate for yourself almost at every juncture. Well, it's a really cerebral book. It's almost like you're inside my head with me. I think I'm in a continual process of figuring everything out. The book is really the process of me figuring it out. The curve of the book is almost like I experience

trauma, then I become the trauma. And then there's a gradual separation between me and the trauma, being able to look at it almost from a bird's eye perspective. So I think I'm still figuring things out, but I really wanted to just share what I have figured out for sure, and also give people resources. I think that people often think that they need to be the ones to figure it out. And looking at the works of different thinkers and plugging into community and also sharing your own experiences and listening to the works of different thinkers and plugging into community and also sharing your own experiences and listening to the experiences of other people that really helps you figure it out because I think we all feel like we need to have all the answers we need to go through

everything alone we need to be our own hero which we do need to be our own hero but we also don't need to do it alone you know other people can be our heroes too and I think that that really is the power of community. I also really value that idea of the truth being made visible through transition do you feel you're living your full truth now? I mean I don't think I'm living my full truth because I think I've got you know a lot more growth to do and a lot more transitional moments to experience but insofar as not living a life of shame and not living a life where I feel I need to be something that I'm not, not living, you know, amongst the expectations of other people, I think definitely as much as I can at this point, for sure.

You write about your childhood in the book, and I deliberately mentioned that thing about Section 28 in the introduction because as you say it's so powerful to remember that legislation has a human cost on an individual level. Can I just touch briefly on what your experience at school was like? for a lot of people of my generation who are queer, just because there was this culture of silence when it came to being bullied for being gay or any kind of queer identity. It was almost that you couldn't talk about your identity, so you couldn't talk about the bullying that you're experiencing. So it kind of forced everybody into silence, you know, the bullies and the bullied, and the teachers, the teachers couldn't address it. The teachers couldn't. I mean, I had one teacher who spoke in code to me and I didn't even really realize what he was saying, but he was like, you know, if you're being bullied for who you are,

I just want to let you know that I want to say something. I want to help. I only just realized, you know, at university what he meant. So it was a really, really horrible time. You really felt like your lived experience was second fiddle to everybody else's. We didn't have any access to sexual education. We didn't have any access to, you know, the feelings, understanding the feelings that we were going through is, you know, the aspect of shame was magnified because there was literally no one to tell us that we should feel otherwise yes there are some very powerful passages where you talk about how you learned about sex from porn because you had to because yeah the only sex that we're taught about at school if we have any sex

education is heteronormative and i was like that's so fascinating and because I'm privileged by being part of that majority I'd never thought to question that in the same way that there's this incredibly powerful passage on page 110 about growing up gay and how growing up gay oh I'm glad that you like that I loved it yeah I think what I was going to and through about whether or not to keep that in, just because it's a real departure from the flow. But I really, I'm so glad that I kept that in. That's the bit I was going to ask you to read. And had I not forgotten my copy of your brilliant book, I would have asked you to read it.

But it's this whole passage, it's almost like a spoken word poem about growing up gay meant, for instance, that you never heard pop songs celebrating that kind of love and I just thought that was so it was just so important to yeah I wanted to paint a picture about the little things that build up into a bigger picture and it's you know the constant microaggressions that we talk about so you know it's not a big deal on its own you know a guy wolf whistling at you on, you know, it's not a big deal on its own, you know, a guy wolf whistling at you on the street, but when it's constant and when it's, you know, constant little things that build up into a big picture of other people thinking that they're not big things, it really

starts to wear you down. So yeah, I'm really glad that you liked that passage. I loved it. I'm so glad you kept it in. Before we get onto your failures, I also wanted to talk about the fact that you're very ahead of your time, repeatedly through the course of your life. You've spoken out on issues or you've crested the wave of something that society has really taken a while to catch up on. So that moment I mentioned

when you went to speak to a GP in 2011, he was like, oh, I'm going to have to Google that. Never met a trans person before. Blew my mind. That's only 12 years ago, 10, 12 years ago. And the other thing, and maybe we'll get onto this as part of one of your failures, was the incident that you went through with L'Oreal

and how when you posted about Charlottesville and about the racist killing of an activist you were using words that many of us didn't use until the murder of George Floyd until Black Lives Matter became something even bigger during the pandemic I wonder how lonely that sometimes feels. It's lonely, but at the same time, I think being forced into a life of silence is more lonely. And I think for so long, I really felt like I had to be silent. I felt like I couldn't say what I felt and it's worth it. It's worth the backlash. It's worth character assassinating you it's worth all of that because I know that that's the truth and when you speak the truth when you live the truth when you follow the truth in terms of where you want to go I feel like that's something that you can hold in your core

so yeah it is tough and it's frustrating. You know, it's never good to have a GP have to Google to help you. But that's also the experience of so many people. GPs aren't infallible gods, you know, they're people and they're under pressure increasingly, especially as, you know, there's mounting pressure on our NHS. I think that they're very, very hard pressed and things are happening that they've never seen on our NHS I think that they're very very hard pressed and things are happening that they've never seen before so I think that that hopefully unfortunately is an experience that other people can feel seen in yeah and you make the point in the book I should say that you'd rather the GP was ignorant rather than bigoted well exactly yeah he was just a bit

of a hopeless you know I mean he definitely wasn't an idiot but he was just a bit of a hopeless you know he mean he definitely wasn't an idiot but he was just like seemed like a little bit away with the fairies and just like oh I've never seen or met a trans person before and I don't know just kind of like looked at me like I was some sort of like unicorn and I was like I'm literally on the brink right now can you can you please just but um he he was nice he was nice it was just I would rather have had somebody who was just like right yes let's get you to a psychiatrist so that they can diagnose you and get you onto the waiting list because it's mounting up and it'd be great if it was somebody who understood the social context around being trans and you know you're not gonna understand that

with a quick google so like kind of where to refer me to yes that's googleable but when it comes down to the actual needs of a trans person that's something that medical practitioners and caregivers should know and they don't you mentioned earlier that the personal animosity, the hatred directed towards you is worth it for the greater goal. I salute you for that, because I can only imagine how much you have to contend with. And I feel like you never asked to be an activist, but you're here and you're expected to be. Well, in a way, it kind of saved my life, I think, because, you know, I started speaking out when I felt massively frustrated, as I'm sure that you've read in the book, and I felt like it was my way of coping. I didn't really think of it necessarily as activism. I just thought of it as

a way of me being able to connect with other people. And then I guess it turned into activism when I started working in the fashion industry and started booking interviews and it just kind of like snowboard and happened and then I was like okay well I'll just go with this because it's really what I want to do anyway I want to educate people I want people to understand what I'm going through I want to give people context so that people know what other people are going through and I, it is worth it because I know that what I'm speaking about doesn't just affect me. I'm not speaking on my own behalf only. I'm speaking on behalf of literally millions of people who can't speak up for themselves, who don't have

the same platform that I do, who are constantly, you know, who don't have the same privileges that I have now. I once upon a time didn't have the luxury of having the money to get cars and I would have to get on the tube and get spat out on the tube, get people pushing me, pretending to push me onto the tracks. It's this constant harassment. So I know what, it's not like I've always had this privilege or this life. I know what the everyday life is for a trans person and it's not something that I'm willing to back down on it's not something that I'm willing to water down or stop talking about because a few people want to shut me up I'm so sorry that you've had to carry that pain I'm so sorry that you've had those experiences and I'm so sorry that like we

let you down like the rest of us let you down. I'm sorry. Everybody has their thing. You know, society lets women down. Society lets black people and people of ethnic minority groups down. Society lets down so many different kinds of people. And I think that's really what I want to get across in the book is that marginalization and oppression and prejudice, that's all it is. It's the same thing. We are all people. So it doesn't matter what kind of guise it takes. It makes us all feel the same. So if we bind together as marginalized

people, imagine the change that we can make. Imagine how many more of us there are than them. And I don't know, I just think that that's really what I want people to take away from this book, apart from the fact that, you know, none of us stay the same forever, and that the world has always changed, and it will always change. That we all have very similar experiences that have been separated and given different names by design to divide and conquer us so that we don't fight back together. Oh, I could just listen to you talk for hours. Thank you. And it's such a beautiful way of looking at it. Croak, croak at the moment.

We're approaching. It's very sexy. Thank you. It is a beautiful way of looking at it. I mean, the world is literally spinning on its axis every day the world is transitioning every single day the world is evolving every single day you strike me as an extremely truthful person i wonder if do you pick up on energies when people are lying are you capable even of telling a white lie like you look great in that okay you are okay yeah i mean. Yeah. I mean, you have to,

you can't go through life just like giving it raw to everybody. I mean, everyone's kind of, you know, navigating their own difficulties. Sometimes you need to just like tread lightly, but I mean, yeah, I like to think of myself as a truthful person. I think it's important, but you know, we're all human beings and I'm not, you know, I'm no different from anybody else, but I think that it's always the best policy. I haven't always been a'm not, you know, I'm no different from anybody else, but I think that it's always the best policy. I haven't always been a truthful person, you know, but I think that that's really testament to where I was in my life and the life that I lead now, yes. But when you are forced into a life of shame and secrecy and almost like self-hatred of course you're gonna you know lie because I used to lie

because I wanted to create a better impression of myself because I didn't think I was enough as I was I would lie to get my own way because I felt like the you know the cards were stacked against me in the first place it was very much self-preservation. But I think the more that I poured into myself and invested in myself and curated the people that are in my life around me to also be truthful people that I didn't feel I had to compete with, that I didn't feel like I had to tear down to bring myself up or that weren't doing the same to me, I felt like I could live a life of truth. And that's really what transitioning is, isn't it? It's living your truth. It's, you know, having a career that feels fulfilling. It's having deep

and honest friendships that you can lean back on, that give you a support system. It's living authentically with your gender or sexuality and transitioning from a life of shame into pride. I mean, that's all that pride is as well that we celebrate every year. It's being able to live as your truth. So yeah, I do try to be as honest as I can at all times, as long as it's not gonna hurt someone else's feelings. Let's get onto your failures.

So your first failure is your failure to seek out healthy partnerships which as you put it to me led to your journey into self-acceptance and a partner that you deserve yeah it's kind of what I just talked about but I think that we often don't help ourselves enough because we're trying to change ourselves within a atmosphere of chaos. And I really feel that it's important to bear in mind the people that are around you and make sure that you're not holding on to things because you feel like you should hold on to them.

I'm kind of talking in riddles right now, but I used to date in a way that I felt like I should either fix people, or I felt like I should be with people that were kind of punishing me in a way that I wasn't, you know, willing to punish myself. I was in abusive relationships for a long time. I was in very violent relationships. and it was almost like I was with them because it was a way of punishing myself and I didn't need to do it. But once I started understanding that I need to be the one to love myself enough to not be in that relationship anymore, it was easier to pull apart and it was easier to get away but it's the

relationship dynamic of you know abuse it's it's somebody feeding off of that part of somebody that desperately wants to be loved but there's also an element of self-hatred and for me it was really really tough it was one of the hardest things to write about in the book and then once I started nurturing healthy relationships and the first person that I really found healthy love with was actually another trans woman and that was something that I didn't ever see happening and she actually passed away this year I'm so sorry Monroe yeah it's been really hard because like she's you know my first big great love and I really count as real love and I think the fact that she was also trans and also a woman allowed me to fall in love with my own transness in a level that I hadn't really acknowledged I hadn't acknowledged an aspect of internalised transphobia

that maybe also led me into an abusive situation because I so desperately wanted to be loved. I desperately wanted somebody to see my humanhood past the physical. I would often just end up in relationships with people that would either fetishise me or want to control me or want to control me or want to you know embolster their own masculinity and with my ex who's passed away it was really none of that it was all about just like loving me as the person I was and once I had that love in my

life it really just filtered out and I started making better choices for myself and I started putting the love that I gave into other people into myself and then it just almost kind of like it would just bounce between us but she just taught me so much and then from then onwards I've really not shied away from feminine aspects in other people whether or not it be men or women I haven't dated a non-binary person but I mean I'm pansexual so just you know I love people but the aspect of femininity up until I was in love with Ava just I never really embraced that so I think in falling in love with another woman and another trans woman it really allowed me to love myself that's so profoundly beautiful and what an extraordinary gift Ava gave you I'm

so sorry for your loss thank you for sharing that thank you you put it so powerfully that idea of not being able to love yourself and I'd love to read the quote that I literally took a photo on my phone as soon as I read this because I was like I need to remember this and I need to quote it to other people you wrote you can't hate yourself into someone else loving you it took me a long time to realize this ain't that the truth truth? I mean, that is everything. Everything. It's simple, but it's, you know, it's the tea. It's, unfortunately, I don't think that we think enough about why we put up with these kinds of situations, why we allow ourselves to be treated in certain ways, why we overlook certain things. And I really did hate myself because it's all that I was taught. From an early

age, I was made to feel like the outsider. Then the outsider got turned into like the monster, then the monster got turned into a ghost. So I've been navigating a space between being completely ostracized, monsterized or invisibilized. And then by the time that you're a young adult, you're like, where's my self-worth? I had none. And my choices really reflect that. And that's why I'm really trying

to exercise empathy, you know, with people that aren't in their best moments either. And, you know we we've all got those moments that we look back on and we're like I really didn't behave how I should have or how I would now and I think that that's really what this book is is showing that it's not always our fault yes you can transition into loving yourself you were talking there about your relationships in young adulthood but i was very struck in the book about your relationship at school with the person

who bullied you you had a crush on him oh yeah i thought that was really interesting because i was like oh it started very early then that idea that if someone was treating you badly yeah that's what you could hook on to unfortunately yeah but I also don't think that that's something that's uncommon when we were younger you know when the boys used to like pull the girl's hair they'll be like oh it's just because he likes you yeah it's so dysfunctional isn't it it's so weird and I guess guess I really, really internalized that. But it was also a very, very innocent relationship. I mean, he was my bully, but he was also everyone's bully. He was just a real, you know, that kid that's in primary school that just is obviously not having a good

time at home, that just lashes out. And I managed to find his soft side I managed to get him to open up to me by writing me letters that we would leave in each other's lunch trays and this is in the book one day his mum found the letters and then she homophobically assaulted me when I was I can't remember how old I was I think I I was eight. And, you know, she had him in one hand, she had the letters in the other hand, and she was shouting words at me that I had no idea what they meant until I got to high school. And then I was being called those names again. So yeah, it really started early with, you know, kind of going for the wrong people. But I guess that that's also, you know, testament of going for the wrong people. But I guess that that's also, you know,

testament to how I felt about myself. I think also, again, you write about this very respectfully in the book about your parents. But there's also a sense that unless we have the full confidence that our parents love us exactly as we are, that's going to a knock-on effect in all of our relationships yeah I'm glad that you said that about sensitively writing because it's so hard because I've got such a great relationship with my parents now but it hasn't always been great so how do you write about something that hasn't been great whilst also respecting the relationship that you have right now and also understanding that they are also people that are growing and transitioning and have their own arc of, you know,

understanding other people around them, especially those who they love. So it was really, really tough. But I wanted to just be honest. I wanted to show them that I'm proud of them, but also like show other people who are going through the same thing with their parents that it is possible to find resolve.

It's possible to see your parents as, you know, infallible people and still love them. It's possible for them to also read this book and renegotiate their relationship with their child but I yeah it was it's one of the hardest aspects of the book because there was that element of doubt when I was growing up that do my parents really love me am I even you know their child have they you know where do they pick me up from because I'm definitely not related to anybody in this house I often felt when I was a kid and it was really really tough because

looking back I know that they loved me but it was often not shown in the way that I needed it to be I needed them to say that we don't care what your sexuality is we care about your well-being we want an open dialogue, not a closed one. And all of these things I really needed, I just needed like openness. And unfortunately my parents haven't always been very, very open or willing to facilitate the conversations that I needed back then. And that's all I needed really was a conversation. I needed to be able to talk about the things that I was being silenced outside the house. I really feel like a home should be somewhere that we can talk

about anything. And it would have given me the core that I needed back then. But we've come so far and I don't hold any, you know, ill feelings towards them anymore. It's really taken a long time to get to that place but we're in such a great place right now i'm so glad to hear it and that's great advice for any parents grappling with anything that they're confused about making home a space of safety and openness yeah and being open to the conversations Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words, supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, These words, supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words, supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago,

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a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Have your parents read Transitional? No. Okay. Well, they've got nothing to fear. I think they come out of it really well. It's hard, isn't it? We've been on a journey with you.

Yeah, it's hard because you need to read the whole book and i just feel because obviously they lived it with me and there's so much hurt there anyway with how we've all behaved i mean i'm sure that they will one day they will one day but i've said that i don't want them to read it just because the the levels of violence that I've experienced throughout my life they know because they've been there having to pick up the pieces at times but I don't really want them to read the ins and outs of what I was getting up to having underage sex with men who were grooming me or you know a policeman at one point yeah yeah or like you know being raped and like things like that I don't want them to have those images of me in their head yes so that's the reason that I don't want them to read it not really you know they know that we haven't always gone along and seen eye to eye just like so many teenagers with their parents but it's more I don't want them to

blame themselves for what I ended up going through you mentioned the fact that you were raped there and you write about that in the book I'm extremely wary about bringing this up because I don't know where you are with whether you want to talk about it today but I also want to acknowledge it because it was terrifying to read so I can only imagine how much more horrendous it was to go through yeah yeah I always say sometimes the hardest thing to really grapple with after being raped is that sometimes you feel like you would be better off dead because it's like somebody who has it in them to rape somebody, you kill something inside somebody

because that person will never see the world with the same kind of eyes ever again. So it's like a part of you dies and then you have to navigate the world with a part of you that's dead. And it's like you can see other people living their lives with that part of them still alive and that carefree nature and that almost ignorance that everybody should have, that you don't know that somebody can behave in that way.

You haven't seen that look in somebody's eyes you haven't seen somebody that's trying to kill you and it was just the double edge of you know that it wasn't just rape it was that he was trying to murder me and in my own bedroom so it's something that's really hard to live with but it's also something that we don't really talk about especially people in the public eye I feel like we don't really talk about it I want more people to feel that they can and I want people to understand that this isolating feeling of you know the part of you feeling like it's being killed is is something that you can work through and And I have worked through it. I still have PTSD. I struggle to stay in houses, to sleep in houses. It sounds so silly. But I prefer to sleep in

apartments that have multiple doors just because he broke into my house whilst I was sleeping, pretty much. And I lived on the bottom floor. So I struggle with beds that are near to doors. So yeah, it's really hard. And it's something that really doesn't just stay in your past. And again, in the book, I show how that's had a knock on effect with, you know, the relationships I ended up in, I ended up punishing myself after I was raped. And then that led to abusive relationships because I couldn't love the body that I was in. I was then being demonized externally by people who didn't love the body that I was in because I was trans. I struggled to find partners who could see me as a human being and not just trans,

so I'd be fetishized I couldn't have access to health care the law wouldn't help me I couldn't get employment so you know it was really just a hole and that's a hole that so many trans girls are in and then when you have that compounded by people in the media who have things to say about people and experience that they have no idea how hard it is. You know, imagine how hard it is. We all know as women, how hard it is to be a woman, but then to have other women campaign against you on a subject that they have no firsthand experience of what it's like to be, it's just mind-blowing to me. So, you know, I'll always be batting for my community. I'll always be the one to speak out

because we need it. Because there are women that are on their knees that need help, that are not getting it from the government, that are not getting it from the media, and aren't getting it from people that should be, you know, holding our hands and protesting with us because we're protesting with them. I am so grateful for you. I will always hold your hand. I'm so sorry for what you went through.

I'm so grateful that you chose to keep on living. I'm so grateful for your strength. I'm so grateful for your beauty, which comes as a result of your strength and is not just about how you look, although you are phenomenally beautiful. i'm so grateful for your beauty which comes as a result of your strength and is not just about how you look although you are phenomenally beautiful i'm so grateful thank you from the bottom of my heart for talking about that thank you before we move on to your second failure where are you now with relationships and i suppose it's a twofold question are you in a happy relationship? I knew you would answer this question.

Come on. No, no, no, it's fine. I don't want the happy ending. It's all good. Are you in a happy relationship? But also, what's the relationship like with yourself? Is it a daily effort to love yourself? I don't feel like it's, I'll start with myself first. I don't feel like it's a daily effort anymore. I feel like I've really had a breakthrough this year. I started this year in the worst place and I can talk about it now because it's been a real journey this year for so many people. I feel

like this year has been chaotic. It's been chaos. I started this year in a very, very dark place. I had to check into rehab for anxiety and depression. And then I actually, half my face froze from stress. And then I had an atopic heartbeat and my body started like shutting down because I was so stressed. So I was forced, I'm laughing about it now and it's not funny at all, but I was forced to take two months off work. And after those two months, I really started understanding that I had been living in survival mode for years because I hadn't taken, who can take two months off? That's a privilege in itself. But I started to realize how I didn't know what it was like not to be stressed. I didn't know what it was like to not feel anxious. I'm only now

realizing that I'm living without anxiety. And that's something that I haven't experienced in years. So that's why I am smiling because I'm not in that place anymore. And I'm really proud of myself that I've poured into that. It's lovely. And I'm not taking it for granted and I'm also not playing it down because like I said for years I haven't been able to just you know throw on some clothes tie my hair back and go down to the shops it's always been kind of like catastrophizing what could happen on the way to the shops what could happen if you bump into somebody and they're not seeing you looking perfect what could happen if you know your photograph or like do you know what I mean it's like I'm not working against myself for the first time in my life and that feels amazing

so yeah I am in a relationship I've okay good I got there at the end I I'm in a relationship I've been in a relationship for like the past year and a half he's amazing he is our chef which is amazing okay that's a great combination I know so yeah lots of great food lots of really fun romantic times and it's great to be with a partner who isn't threatened by somebody who is extremely ambitious and successful in their own right and doesn't feel like they need to diminish my achievements or dreams in order to make way for theirs or make themselves feel better he's an incredible person I'd really written off man until I was with him and he's really shown me that good men do exist and especially good men can be a good lover and a good friend and a good person in the life of a trans woman.

And that's something that I'd really given up on. I never thought that I'd be able to find like a healthy love with a man, especially a cis man. So congratulations. I want to respect your privacy, but I also want to ask how you met, but you don't have to tell me. I'm an open book at this point. We have a mutual best friend. I can't do the apps.

I'm a romantic person. I really like to feel like I'm meeting people in situations that it's almost like serendipitous that there's like some sort of you know fate there yeah like a meet cute yeah so yeah we just met through my best friend I was actually in a gay club with him and I was like no one fancies me and he's like obviously no one in here fancies you but I'm living with this person at the moment and he won't stop talking about you. And then he put us in touch and we went on a date. He took me to his friend's restaurant and the chef was bringing us food to the table,

like stuff that wasn't even on the menu and just kind of fell in love with him really quick. Oh, so happy to hear that. Thank you. I'm so bad at talking about personal stuff I don't upload any personal stuff on social media I'm really big on boundaries and that's really up until very recently something that I haven't been willing to compromise on and obviously with this book I'm showing you know a more personal side and being very honest so yeah it's something that's very new for me like sharing the things that are really close to my heart well it's a really wonderful

thing and I think you do a very good job of still maintaining boundaries where you need to in the book you do talk personally but you're very kind about other people. Do you think? I do. I do. You definitely, I mean, when people deserve kindness, not when they don't. Okay. I was going to say, there's some reads in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously. But with your parents, there's a lot of forgiveness in the book alongside calling out dysfunction,

which is necessary to do. Calling out danger, calling out violence like that coexists with i don't know it's just i i'd never read anything like it i'm not doing a very good job of putting it to work i think you are it's yeah yeah i guess what you mean it's blended it's just like blended in a really beautiful way that's really what i wanted to get across i i think in this time i'm such a millennial i I always start with, I think I need to talk with more assertion like Gen Z. We're in this time where we're constantly encouraged to pick yes, no, bad, good. Things can be everything all at one time. Somebody can act like a complete

asshole and still be a nice person. So people can, you know, make bad choices and not be a bad person. I think that it's really important that we try to understand that we are all human beings, that are whole beings that can be different kinds of people day to day. And, you know, you can meet somebody on a really bad day, but it doesn't mean that they're a bitch. You can meet somebody on a really good day but it doesn't mean that they're a bitch you can meet somebody on a really good day and that doesn't mean that they're not awful to somebody else we're really nuanced as individuals and that's really what I wanted to get across in the book that's exactly it thank you teamwork that's exactly it okay your second failure you've already touched on it but it's your failure to forgive yourself and others yeah that's exactly it okay your second failure you've already touched on it but it's your failure to

forgive yourself and others yeah that's kind of what I was talking about I was really angry at my parents for a very long time and that resentment that you hold on to when you are at war with somebody you end up being at war at yourself because you're the one that holds onto it. You're the one that carries that around. So many arguments I've had with people and then they're like, I didn't even know that you felt like that. I didn't even know that, that there was animosity there. And then you realize that you're the one that is at war with yourself because they don't care. So ultimately I've just tried to lead with more forgiveness with other people because I want that same forgiveness I want to be able to like forgive myself for like what I've gone through but I also want to forgive other people for what

they've gone through because I think in extending that to other people you can extend it to yourself and vice versa so I think it's a holistic. You go through life angry and then you end up being angry at yourself. And then it's a self feeding cycle. And then also being unforgiving to yourself, you just continuously go from chaotic situation to chaotic situation. And then you seek out the chaos as well, rather than seeking out the peace. And then you feel uncomfortable within the peace so I look back at how I was functioning and I forgive myself because I was I was in survivor mode I was doing the best that I could but I also want better for myself and when I see other people acting in that way I'm not judgmental in the same way that I was because I was once that

chaotic person too. I was once unwilling and unable to help myself. I just kept bouncing from toxic man to toxic man, from bad decision to bad decision, from, you know, frantic choices to frantic choice. And I have, have you know complete compassion for anybody that's making those same decisions because sometimes it's the only way that you know but you need to be able to forgive yourself and to forgive other people to be able to get out of that. How recent has that forgiveness for yourself been because I know that dealing with your PTSD and your anxiety I know that it came to a head during the pandemic didn't it which is yeah like still only a couple of years ago yeah well writing this book really unearthed a lot of stuff yeah I mean since I've been in the public

eye it hasn't been as bad because the chaos all then became external that's really interesting that's fascinating because you might think that's counterintuitive, that being in the public eye would make it worse. But you're right that you can externalise what's in your head. I feel like I was just sorting myself out and then fame happened. And then I was like, okay, well, now I need to level up personally because all of the chaos is no longer just inside of me and in my

personal life it's now in the public sphere so it changed when I came into the public eye and then obviously like navigating extremely wild situations that nobody should be in like you know being sacked by one of the biggest beauty brands in the world or you know having to leave the labor party as an advisor or being attacked by a member of the house of lords or being assaulted live on television or you know all of these wild things that have happened over the past five years i really had to level up and be on my own side. So it forced me to grow. But then I guess I wasn't processing any of it because I was in go mode. I was in, you know, how am I going to get through this mode? And then when the pandemic happened, yeah, it all came out and I started feeling everything,

not only what I hadn't processed in the public eye, but what I hadn't processed before it, because I was also in go mode then. So I started having PTSD from being raped. And I even had, you know, stuff come up from childhood, because I realised in writing this book that everything is linked, that all of my decisions that I made as an adult were influenced and impacted by what had happened to me in my childhood and in my teens. And I just started feeling extremely angry at everything, at my parents, at society, at the government, at myself. And then I guess I started feeling like I was grieving, like I was grieving a life that I didn't have, that I realised that none of that should have happened at all to anybody. And then I started just letting it go.

And then stress happened. Then I went to rehab and then my ex died. And then whilst grieving for her, I feel like it just changed something I had a new respect and understanding of like my own mortality and like life in itself and I started feeling like this is my life and all of this stuff that's happened to me is not me this trauma that I have is not my identity it is my story who am I outside of this trauma who am I in this life and I feel like her death in a lot of ways really shook me awake and I've just been in a very very different place since grieving her loss because I feel like I'm not going to allow what happened

to her to happen to myself or to anybody else that I love and it brought me closer to myself and to the other people in my life that I love. You're living life for the both of you in a way. Yeah. Did it take a lot of therapy to get this wise? No, just a lot of trauma. Okay. A lot of introspection and I think so in different ways. I mean, I'm not really a kind of person that likes to talk to strangers. I think therapy is massively, I'm not a therapy denier or anything. I think it's massively important. You should pick the therapy that works for you.

So I think different kinds of therapy work for different people. I'm not really into just talking to somebody about, you know what I've been through I love might as well record that for a podcast well exactly but uh yeah different kinds of therapies definitely have worked I think it's really down to who you have in your life and I have the most amazing friends I have an incredible team around me I would not have been able to get through it if I didn't have an incredible team. My management are not just managers, they are friends that, you know, my manager saw me on Good Morning Britain debating Piers Morgan and tracked me down that day and signed me on the spot. And we've been together ever since. And my publicists are incredible in, you know,

sheltering me and understanding how it is for trans people in the media and educating themselves. So I'm very well protected, but I'm also very, very conscious of the fact that this is my life. And I'm not going to allow people to tear me down anymore. I'm not going to allow them to tear other people like me down. And unfortunately, sometimes it takes the most difficult situations that you could ever imagine to get you there. You mentioned L'Oreal there, and I just I'm aware that I also talked about it at the top of this podcast and so for anyone who didn't know and I

was reminded about how wild this was by reading your book so you were appointed you were the first transgender model that L'Oreal had ever used and you posted on social media about the Charlottesville massacre and you said lots of incredibly reasonable things. Well, yeah, I was angry. It was kind of like people were almost more concerned with the fact that I was angry and the fact that I was using swear words than the fact that we were witnessing a Nazi protest

and people being killed by white supremacists driving cars into them of course I was going to be angry of course I was going to you know be you know screaming from the top of my lungs because no one was listening nobody wanted to talk about racism even though we were seeing it play out in the most extreme way that you could possibly see it play out so yeah that time was and really you were you were calling out white supremacy and you were saying rightly every white person has to look at that and has to look at the institutional nature of racism and what we've inherited from a deeply traumatic past for black people and when I read it again I was like yes of course agree with every

single word at the time because you were still ahead of your time there were all of these tabloid generated headlines about you claiming all white people are racist and L'Oreal ditched you very like that which was an incredibly difficult period for you professionally fast forward Black Lives Matter happens L'Oreal posts a black square for blackout Tuesday and you leave at 48 hours and then you rightly call them on that and say you've never reached out to me you've never apologized about what you did and then a conversation was facilitated with the head of L'Oreal and now you are on their diversity and inclusion board which is great so I just wanted to bring people

up to speed on that it It is a very wild story. It really, really, really is. And one of the things that you say so powerfully in the book, I wonder if I wrote the quote down about how we, again, like I, as a privileged white person, do not get a daily assault of seeing white people's dead bodies assaulted by the state on social media. We are violently accustomed to seeing that happen to black bodies. And it was just a really necessary passage for every single person to read. The fact that we've become so accustomed to that that there's no dignity no the black body

no well it says that it's just seen as a body isn't it it's not seen as a human being with a lover or kids or a future it's not seen as the loss it's just seen as you know expected and that's what's so disgusting I mean I talk about in the book where when I heard about Eric Garner being killed I instantly just thought well that could be my dad that could be anybody that I knew and what would his family be going through right now? Just seeing his body be just like shared on social media like it was nothing. There's a respect that we afford white people in life and in death that black people just aren't given. And it's really, it's really disgusting. It's really quite something. And I mean, it's even the same with, you know, trans people.

We're seen as our bodies. We're not seen as our bodies we're not seen as people we're not seen as daughters we're not seen as lovers or people that contribute to society because we're often not given the opportunity in society and you know unfortunately we're so often shunned as daughters we're shunned as lovers we're we're this constant experience of being shunned that when we're shunned as lovers we're we're this constant experience of being shunned that when we're dead we're also shunned in death so yeah i think that that's something that a lot of marginalized people experience within cultures where there is such a stark hierarchy of who is given the respect in life and at the same time as your bodies are shunned, they're also politicised in a way that you have never asked for.

So I want to get on to your final failure now, having given that preamble, because I wondered if it fed into this final failure, which is your failure to play by the rules, which ended up playing a key role in your career. And I wondered if that L'Oreal example of you making that original post was one of your quote unquote failures to play by the rules. Well, I think getting sacked

is kind of a failure. It's hard to spin that one, but I managed it. I think it's, yeah, I mean, that was a big failure in my eyes. At the time I was like, oh God, shall I just have said nothing? Because I didn't know that I would be able to build a career off of a life of authenticity

and just saying what I believe to be true, what I know to be true. I hadn't seen any trans people before me in the industry, really, and do the same kind of thing. The only people that I really could look to were in America and they were actresses or singers or, you know, in the entertainment industry. But somebody who worked in fashion and then spoke about their lived experiences and also campaigned for their community. Fashion and activism really weren't synonymous

or being, you know, used in harmony when I came into the industry. I mean, Grace Jones did it incredibly. She got so much flack in terms of how she refused to be the nice, kind of palatable, feminine woman. She was constantly questioned about her sexuality. And that's the kind of woman that I look to. I look to a woman that refuses to play by the rules, someone who is going to be herself regardless, someone who is going to constantly push the envelope. And sometimes that includes pushing people's buttons, because she knows that the reason that she's pushing the buttons

is to hold up a mirror. And if people don't get it now, then they eventually will. And I think that that's really been the curve of my career is that at the time, a lot of people don't understand what I'm saying or what I'm doing, but I do. And the people that I need to understand me do. And the people that I don't need to understand me straight away will eventually. And eventually I feel like we're all going to get onto the same page. The way that the world is moving with, you know, cost of living crisis and political polarity and all of these constant failings at the highest levels of government, we all need to pull together if we have a hope of getting into a better place. So we really do need to understand each other

and we need to do it quicker than we are. But that desire to be understood, that desire to be liked, that desire to play by the rules is not something that I hold dear to my heart anymore. I want my community to be understood and I need people to do that quick. I want my community to be understood. And I need people to do that quick.

I don't need to be understood as a person because, you know, you can get there in your own time because I'm just one person. But you need to understand my community's stat because we need people's support. We need people to understand what's going on at the highest levels of government. We've got a prime minister who says that he wants to remove transgender rights from protections that would allow us to be in the right prisons, in the right hospital wards, to not be discriminated against in the workplace, to use the bathrooms that we want to use. It's absolutely insane to me that we have the highest minister in office sanctioning transphobia,

making it seem like we don't already have these rights, you know, just throwing it into question. Like when the time comes to vote, people are almost assuming that we don't have these rights already. so they're gonna of course vote against them and we're being framed as a threat as a danger as an inconvenience there's no mention of what trans people are actually up against that we are struggling to find employment that mental health issues are massively disproportionate within our community. And we make up a tiny proportion of the population that we are often being thrown out of our homes at an early age, that our health care system is in crisis and it takes up to five to seven years to just get a first appointment,

that trans youth are self-harming and trying to take their own lives from a very early age because they're not being helped when it comes to gender affirmative therapies or healthcare. You know, no kids are getting surgeries. There's so much misinformation going out and around. So these are the real issues that we're facing, not the fact that we want to use the changing rooms in Primark, but that is the constant conversation. It's almost like, look what's over there, not what's actually happening here. If I were to ask you to define yourself and to give you five words, what five words would you use? Oh God, I'm so bad at talking about myself. I would say open.

I like to think that I meet people as they are, that I try not to project how I feel about people before I get to know them because we never have a hope in knowing who someone is from the first five seconds. So first impressions are never right. I try to be as forgiving as I can just because I've had to forgive myself a lot

and I've had to forgive other people in my life a lot to be able to move forward. I think I'm a very, very loyal person. I will do anything for my friends, often to my own fault. Pay me back. I will do anything for my friends I will go above and beyond to make sure that they are happy and healthy and that I hold space for them to heal because I know what it's like to not

have that space held for you and I haven't always had friendships there's been times when I had no friends so I really value the ones that I do have. And I don't have that many of them because it's very hard to meet people in this industry. When you live a public life, people have an idea of who you are before you even meet them. So it's very difficult to suss out people's intentions or people's preconceptions. So next one, ambitious. Love that. I think I'm an extremely ambitious person. I have a drive that I think is my biggest attribute. I've really had to live a life of

discipline and a life of tenacity and constant setbacks, constant people that are gatekeeping, people that are withholding and, you know, coming into the fashion industry, nobody wanted to hire me. And it took some of the biggest photographers just taking a chance on me, like Nick Knight, like Rankin, who wanted to work with me when, you know, I was constantly having doors slammed in my face because they were like why would we work with a trans person almost and it's you know I know that a lot of black models from the 90s felt the same way as like we're you know I watched documentary the other day where they're like we're just not hiring black models this season it's exactly the same so why would we work with a trans person there's not that kind of campaign it's not an lgbt campaign wow and like now we're seeing that change we're seeing trans people

be in shows and it's not a thing that they're trans it's just you know i mean it is a thing because the visibility is incredible and you know when i see a trans model on a runway if it's like Alex or if it's Maxim or if it's oh god India or if it's all of these incredible people that are within the industry that means so much to me but it is not exploited that they're trans anymore and for so long it was I have done shoots where my transness has been you know almost like a gimmick and I'm really glad that I've opened doors for so many people. I've been in this industry for almost a decade now. But if it wasn't for, you know, hearing the stories of, you know, women like Naomi Campbell and Joan Smalls and Jordan Dunn

and Leomi Anderson talking about, you know, being exploited from like the ages of 14 and being told that there's no black models this season or being on set and not knowing how to do black hair if it wasn't for those stories and seeing their tenacity and that they could get through it then I could apply the same kind of work ethic and be like okay well one day there's going to be more than one trans person on the runway or there's going to be a trans person on the runway and you know I have faith that there's going to be more than one trans person on the runway or there's going to be a trans person on the runway and you know I have faith that there's going to be multiple trans people on runways one day and then that's going to filter out as well and then we're going to see more trans

people in all sorts of campaigns and then the beauty standard is going to change and then trans beauty is not going to be seen as any different from any other beauty just like black beauty is now getting the respect that it didn't once upon a time. And that's really, you know, what the book is about as well, is that everything does change. And I've really got faith that one day trans people are going to be able to navigate society in the same kind of freedom that other people that experience the same kind of oppression in yesteryear did and we'll just be able to be ourselves without having to constantly be so aware of the fact that we're different you gave me four words i'm gonna let you off the final one oh i'm sorry i forgot that i was

um maybe the last one's long-winded it's such such a beautiful place to end. And if I can, I would like to give the final word. You're like, this is quickfire. I think, no, I never wanted to be quickfire with you, honestly. I could do this for hours. But I know you've got a fabulous launch to go to. The final word for me would be powerful. You're so powerful. You're powerful in your truth.

You're powerful in your words on the page. You're powerful in person. I am so grateful to you for finding time to do how to fail honestly it's meant the world to me thank you and I want everyone to stop listening right now and to rush out and buy your book because it blew my mind and I know it will the listeners too Monroe Bergdahl thank you so much for coming on how to fail thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently it helps other people know that we exist.