Tea at Four - Navigating gender dysphoria, dating and having periods as a trans man: We talk to activist and author, Kenny Ethan Jones

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

To celebrate Pride, the girls are joined by trans activist and author, Kenny Ethan Jones. He chats all about his transformative journey from battling gender dysphoria to harvesting his eggs for his sister. Kenny and the girls also deep dive into dating and sexuality from a trans-man perspective, the unique challenges faced by Black trans people, and how Kenny went from being socialised as a girl to inheriting male-privilege.Join us for an incredible conversation that underscores the importance of empathy, allyship, and understanding in supporting trans communities. Kenny’s new book, ‘Dear Cisgender People’, is now available to buy and is a must-read for everyone to understand how to be an ally. Send your stories and dilemmas to [e-mail] or DM us on Instagram @FourNine

As I've gotten older and more comfortable with my body, I've realised that I've never had an issue with my vagina. What is it like having sex for the first time post-surgery? Listen, you just want to go hot and heavy and straight in there. One of the first things I was told when I started testosterone was that you won't be able to have biological kids, which is untrue. I'm 100% confident in who I am now. Yeah.

Love it. That's a really wonderful... Can we have some sound effects? Hi guys, welcome back to Tia4. My name is Christy. And I'm Lauren. And this is the podcast where we talk all things that normally stay in the group chat. So today we have a lovely guest with us, don't we Lauren?

We do indeed. Today we are joined by Kenny Ethan Jones. Very excited to have you here you're bringing the energy you're glowing thank you it's that new author glow do you know what i mean okay little teaser little teaser so kenny just for a bit of context you are a model an author an activist you're also the first trans man to front a period campaign literally made history would you be able to give our audience a little bit more context as to who you are what your journey has been like so far yeah well the first and most important thing is that i'm a dog bad so the most beautiful pomeranian you'll ever see her name's cleo cleopatra she's one and a half and i absolutely adore her and she brings lots of joy into my life and I think sometimes I like to start conversations

with things that bring you joy yeah um I'm obsessed with cars okay um which is yeah I don't get a chance to talk about that very often um so I'm just gonna plug it here I love cars that makes sense what car have you got I'm thinking that's an interesting thing to ask so any conversation I can have about cars I'm like let's go anything that goes fast in fact love it um outside of that yeah my my work i you know champion for for trans people and queer people um my upbringing was quite difficult you know i came out as trans when i was 11 years old and i came out to my mom and she was more than welcoming. Like she just, she didn't necessarily understand what was going on,

but as far as she was concerned, you know, she just wanted her child to be happy. And I wasn't, I wasn't happy at that time. And so I remember we didn't have the language back then to explain what transness was. So I just turned around and was like, I see myself as being a boy with a girl,

not a girl with a girl. Okay. And her response was, okay, my love, let's talk to a doctor. Oh, dream. Yeah, literally it and you know then it was just constant you know my mom on the phone chasing the doctors like when when is my son getting his appointment um and so yeah she was like the cornerstone of like the man who i am today and gave me the strength to to even be here

and champion for trans people yeah so yeah it yeah, it's been quite a journey. Yeah. But I would say I knew I was trans when I was three years old. Okay. And there's a funny story that I always like to tell. Three years old? Yeah. That's very young.

I don't even remember anything that happened to you when I was three. No? No. Do you know what? Funnily enough, so when I was doing research for the book, you know, there's lots of science that suggests that we understand gender and race at three years old. Okay.'s at that time obviously that you'll hear a lot of trans people be like oh i think i knew i was trans when i was three so it's a very common

quite a common age for people to realize um and i realized because my mom had this open door policy at home i mean she used to look up the bathroom sorry i mean you still look after a lot of um the kids from their state at the time and so i'd see all the boys pee obviously right so i just walked past the bathroom i said okay cool one day i take my little butt in that bathroom and tried to pee in the same way that they do right and instead of peeing in the ball i peed everywhere else and i just remember hysterically crying like why is this not working like why am i pee going everywhere and i think it was at that point my mom was like okay my child's a little bit different so she you know she always used to

say there was lots of different signs uh but when I was a little bit older my mum put me in a dress to go to a wedding and me being a genius that I was at that age um ran to the bathroom she had run a bath and so I ran into the bath jumped into the bath with this dress on because I knew that she'd have to change me so there was constant moments like that where my mum was like okay well you don't like girls clothing you know you your mindset and how you act is very in line with all the boys yeah um and you're being distressed whenever you're in situations where people are treating you as a girl so I think when I came out it was very much this makes sense yeah did you find yourself at moments like challenging or like pushing down the idea that this wasn't normal thoughts or like this is not

something really being represented around me or was your mum constantly championing like this is you know something we need to be acknowledging at all times yeah and then starting a journey from there the key point is is that when i was younger you know i didn't have these kind of rules um around gender as we do now and as we get older so for me i was i was just kenny i was just running around being kenny so and no one was treating me any differently because at that time you know when you're that young it's okay to express yourself however you want to it's as you get older that it becomes a problem right and so the first problem that i had was when i went to an all-girls school and that's when i realized okay well the girl like the world sees me as a girl and i see myself as a boy and there's

big friction there and so it was at that moment that it was definitely like solidified that the world sees me differently and i need to talk to people about this but obviously there was a lot of confusion because at that time you're talking about 19 years ago there was no like minimal understanding of transness no representation on like tv and even if it was it was very much like the butt of the joke it wasn't like in any serious way um respecting trans people and so I just I felt quite alienated because I didn't even know who to speak to about it you know I went to my mum out of pure distress of being like well I don't understand why the world sees me this way when I see myself to be very different yeah and so yeah but yeah 11 years old is where it really started and you know went

to the doctors and they said hey there's there's a word for this you're experiencing gender dysphoria um we believe that you're transgender I said okay cool now there's a word I can work with this and so it was easier then to have conversations with other people in my life and be like hey you know i'm trans yeah and they'll be like okay well what does that mean and they were just like you've always been kenny so like no one was really surprised um so yeah and then it just kind of moved on from there wow amazing i was gonna say i just loved the fact that you had your mom as your support system because i do feel like if you didn't have that kind of person to support you going through school,

especially secondary, the ghetto, the ghetto. And I went to all girls school. So I know, and they love us. So, um,

it's just the fact that having that kind of figure that was there behind you back in you and in your corner is absolutely amazing to see. And you can see that that's the person that you are now. And that emphasis and that strength that she's given you like you've basically exuding that now so yeah big up mum yeah can we just big up your mum for real she deserves it she deserves it love it so yeah what's the journey been like between then and i guess becoming like an activist because it's one thing to know, be a trans man in all it is in itself. But then also, you know, championing that for yourself, but then other people and, you know, being a bit more progressive with everything that comes with that.

Like, yeah. How have you got to this point? Oh, God. Loaded question. Very loaded question. Tried to keep it short and sweet. I think ultimately it was becoming confident in who i am um and you know in a society that tells you that you're basically worthless if you come from a marginalized identity it was really hard to to have that confidence and yeah it took me a good couple years from from the age of i'd say 11 to

21 it was mostly about self-discovery and ultimately understanding what what does it mean to be a man and what is that going to look like for me? And, you know, a lot of that especially came from having a puberty that I found challenging, going into having periods and being like, well, the other boys don't have periods. And how that then reflected of how I felt about myself and my body. And there was always this friction in my mind of well their body's different to mine and does that mean that I'm less valid because mine isn't the same as theirs and well society reflects that message also and so it was saying I now have to kind of unlearn everything I've learned about what is a man and what makes a woman yeah and build it for myself in a way that is authentic to me in my experience because I'm alive I'm here and I am a man and so I needed it it was never going to look the same as a cis man and for those who don't know what cis means it just means non-trans and so yeah I think a lot of my teenage years was was figuring that out on

top of just having really normal teenage experiences like fancying my first girl do you know I mean and really like quite normal things and then these really quite traumatic experiences where i didn't even know who to talk to about them and you know as much as my mom was so supportive she was only so much that she was gonna understand too 100% yeah i mean so a lot of it was figuring out myself and having the confidence also to to just be like this is who I am and not allow any room for interpretation to that and by what I mean by that is saying I'm a man and I'm not gonna allow you to treat me any differently you're not gonna misgender me you're not gonna call me by my old name this is who I am

and if you don't respect that the door is that way but ultimately at a young age when you're still trying to figure out yourself and having to kind of have that backbone for the sake of my mental well-being yeah it's really difficult um how did that affect your relationship with like your siblings because especially being young and then obviously you're trying to you know present yourself as this i am this person how was that kind of relationship like how did they kind of get to understand you understand where you were going with your transitioning oh really difficult really difficult so i'm half jamaican half english and so i have one sibling on my mum's side and 10 on my dad's wow yeah massive family he kept himself busy yeah wow very busy yeah yeah so my sister my mum's side kizzy is my oldest

sister one i'm most closest with she was very supportive okay very in line sister my mom's side kizzy is my oldest sister one of my most closest with she was very supportive okay very in line with my mom's perspective like we want you to be happy we'll support you in whatever you do yeah and black side of my family was a little bit more difficult you know i mean you know there's a lot of stigma they just don't get things as as as well and yeah it was quite difficult in the sense that they just didn't i don't think they didn't want to understand me i just think that everything in their upbringing told them not to support who i was yeah yeah essentially and then i think as well it became harder because it's like well i'm not only trans i'm also bi so it's that double hit of i'm now growing and living my life

in a way that you don't support um and I think when I was younger I didn't necessarily have the same standpoint I do now in terms of my boundaries and respecting myself so I allowed a lot of misgendering um and you know allowing them to talk about me in ways that I didn't I didn't like because I wanted to still have a relationship with them to some degree and I also understood quite young that not everybody's gonna understand this and it's gonna be a journey for everybody like I'm still learning to understand what being trans means for me and they're obviously gonna have to take the time to to understand that and so I think I respected that and was like I'm gonna accept treatment that I don't necessarily agree

with now but there's gonna become a point where I'm like I can't we're cutting it and so I think as well as I grew older it became a little bit more easier for them to accept me just because well they saw that I was more confident they saw that I was more happy and I started to basically stand up for myself and say hey it's Kenny now it's he and that's it and I think ultimately as well which is this is quite difficult to be honest and probably the first time I've ever really spoken about this i think being who i am and having the status that i do for has allowed them to accept me more okay and but not many other people have that privilege i guess which is a bit of a shame because it's only that i've kind of been put on a pedestal that you're listening to me yeah it's like because i'm

this guy in a trans community now you accept me but had i just been a regular person with a regular job would you feel the same way about me and the answer is probably not not for all of my siblings absolutely not a lot of them are supportive but I think I don't know it just gave them a different level of validation because it's like oh my brother's famous my brother's on tv so it's different and that was quite difficult to accept because it's like well you should have just accepted me in the first place like I'm your brother yeah um and i also think a part of that as well as being cis passing which essentially just means that i look like the gender as i identify okay and so i don't interrupt um narratives of what gender looks like because i'm very i guess heteronormative to a degree so i don't

really interrupt what people view a man looking like so i think it's also easier to accept me in that way versus if i looked more feminine let's say i don't necessarily think they'd have the same opinion i don't just think that's my family i think that's society yeah especially our black community it's i think joy is i feel like it's a lot of things that we are very surface level with we don't i don't i don't get like you're allowed to ask the questions i don't know why we're quite afraid to kind of like touch on those type of subjects and it's really upsetting because it's like instead of you learning and understanding you're like yeah i'm just gonna take it as face value none of my business go about my business no do you know it's so funny as well because i've got

a chapter in my book called black and trans and i do a correlation between the fact of like colorism and being cis passing because it's the same level it's a similar discrimination and the reason that i felt i guess a little bit more betrayed by my black family more so than the white side of my family is because well you've been discriminated for years for for the color of your skin and now i'm being discriminated by in a way that's just been repackaged so it's like more than anybody else you should understand this more but you're pushing on that same discrimination to me. Make it make sense.

Exactly. Make it make sense. Yeah. Yeah. You talk about the relationship you have with your sister. And I guess one of the big things we've seen in your journey and what you've documented on social media is the fact that you've harvested your eggs for your sister which is fucking incredible firstly um would you

be able to just talk about that experience oh god yeah so it just got done funny enough yeah amazing so it was really wonderful so my sister has been struggling to become pregnant for a while uh she's trying for about four years and she ended up having a miscarriage which broke her heart and i know she would call my phone and say hey this is i'd ask her how's team getting pregnant going and she was always quite discouraged um she has lots of she's she's a bit older and so basically her biological clock had been ticking and she's getting to a point where it's really difficult for her to become pregnant on her own and then one day we're on

the phone and we're having a conversation which was started off quite jokey to be honest and i said oh you can have my eggs if you want oh literally just just like a flyby joke right thinking nothing would come from it but i was i it wasn't i wasn't finding it difficult to say that because i i still would stand by that but it was just a joke power the tank I know and then I went away

she was like oh do you have eggs and I said well I don't actually know there's not lots of research around child's health so I wasn't really sure so came off the phone now I hit up Google did a little tap tap and saw that there was that possibility. My sister went away, did the same thing.

We left the conversation there. Didn't speak about it for a good couple of weeks. Thought nothing of it. Yeah, done. Anyways, call my phone again. Was she serious about what you said? I said, absolutely. Like, let's do it.

And so we did more research. I came across a lot of trans men who had become pregnant a lot of trans men who had harvested their eggs so i knew it was a possibility so it was just about talking to the nhs and arranging it so we had that conversation with nhs said hey i want to harvest my eggs um and then yeah so i started the process and it was wild wild yeah oh my god where do you even start yeah so you want hormone basically just can you just put it in basic terms 100 yeah so essentially from the beginning you have like a consultation where they just make sure like you understand everything and they do their best but it's a very fast-paced process in which you're taking lots of medications they all have like different requirements and so it's quite a intense

consultation but essentially they're just like okay you know they're trying to understand that you you understand what you're doing right um and that this is quite uh you know it's a big deal a big deal for mentally to process for your body to go through so that's the initial conversation that they'll have him with them and then they'll book in a date which is quite funny because they're like you can start tomorrow if you want i'm like what like i'm not even ready right now really think about this but also yeah yeah do you know i mean you can start tomorrow and i said no no let's arrange it for two weeks time yeah so you start it so you go in and they talk to you about the medication that you have to take and they do a little explanation of which like what everyone does

again it's too much information to quite to process so you're just trying to remember what injections you need to take at what time yeah um and so from the beginning i was on four medications so you're on two injections that you have to take daily followed by a pill that you have to take yeah one of the things that i found really considerate was the fact that the doctor that i had been seen my had had trans patients in the past and suggested a specific medication that helped to suppress my oestrogen levels because i said the one thing i was really concerned about was being triggered um and experiencing gender dysphoria and i think you had it quite quite intensely when i was younger and so that was like my number one fear yeah um and essentially to go on the process you have to reduce your

testosterone amount yeah yeah so i was taking three and a half pumps daily before and then i had to reduce it to one pump a day so it's also like a lot of your body uh like changing hormonally so there's already that happening on top of the fact that then you are taking similar kind of process to ivf essentially yeah all these hormones that are you know trying to get your eggs into a place where they're ready to be collected yeah and so yeah you've got to take the injections two injections two pills every day and the thing that i found the most difficult was that you have to take the injection at 8 p.m right and i'm always at some work function at 8 p.m right so the first day i did this shot i had to do it in prep because i was literally me and my best friend in prep putting out all the serums and

lifting up my top to do a shot on my stomach bear in mind i hate needles wow in public or in toilet no because i was like the toilet is so dirty so i'm just on the shop floor just said let's just get this done. Sister needs a baby. Let's make this happen. So, and yeah, my best friend, Charlie,

she's just so silly and encouraging. She's like, we're getting pregnant in prayer, everybody. I like that. Pregnant in prayer,

yeah. I was like, I cannot do this right now. This is, there's so much going on. But yeah, and like even the next day I was somewhere else

at a next work function. So basically what I'm trying to say is try to do it in a time in your life where you're not busy and you can just be at home at 8 p.m because otherwise it's just a bit techy and also one of the medications requires to be cold so i had to take it around in you know one of those kind of like cooler bags oh god okay yeah so there's lots of different elements to it that's quite difficult and then every day obviously your body is like changing um and as i got nearer the end of the process the part that i found really difficult was the fact that obviously your eggs have like duplicated in size so the pressure it puts on your bladder made me feel like i needed to pee every 10 seconds and that was quite difficult because and at that point you i guess to some degree I've never been pregnant but I can imagine it quite a similar feeling to pregnancy yeah because you're very

bloated lots of women have reported you know looking like they're four months pregnant I was but not too much but it was more like the pressure on my bladder um and yeah just emotionally what that you know the process goes through so yeah yeah it's quite it's quite difficult it's quite intense and to be honest with you I don't think i've fully processed this though wow no how long did that take all in all between 14 days 14 days in total yeah until the collection itself and then the collection itself it's quite a straightforward process to be honest so you go in you know the doctors come in they just make you you know feel comfortable make you understand what's going on you get put to sleep the procedure itself is about 20 minutes to half an hour so it's really quick

um and then i remember just waking up and like mid conversation with this nurse i'm not even remember going to sleep which is really bizarre she was like oh do you want hot chocolate or coffee and i was like hot chocolate please and then i opened my eyes and i was like oh is it done everything went well she's like yeah you're all good i said oh okay great so it's quite bizarre but yeah we managed to collect um 19 eggs and then successfully froze 11 and then two extra eggs matured overnight so we in total collected 13 which is a really good number that's insane i guess obviously this is a journey that you're giving to your sister. But was it ever something that you've actually sat down and had a conversation with yourself about? Like, oh, actually, would I like to have children in the future?

And what does that look like? Yeah, I've definitely thought about children. One of the first things I was told when I started testosterone was that you won't be able to have biological kids, which is untrue. But that was the belief at the time because if you look historically um so gender affirming care so like hormones now is used as a as as a positive thing for trans people to affirm them in their gender but originally it was used as a way to make trans people sterile and not to produce children and that was the belief and so that's what that's where that understanding comes from basically i think it's good to understand the history behind it yeah um and so when i was told you know when i started testosterone

hey at this point because you're asked at that point do you want to have your eggs collected oh okay yeah that's kind of because it's seen as the non-reversal point um well it's just that doing any reversal things at that point would be very difficult um but i was the gender dysphoria that i was experiencing was way too intense and anything i thought something that was going to make me hyper aware of my body i was like i cannot do that yeah so i just said nope um and i've always been happy to adopt it's always been where my heart has been at anyways i think even if you know i went on to to have a baby of my own i'm still probably adopt as well so for me it was never i didn't really care um it was just more i'm in a really comfortable place

with my body and who i am i'm really confident and if i can give this to my sister yeah and you know it keeps the jones blood in the family um i'm happy to do so so it wasn't it was probably aside from knowing that i was trans it was the second easiest decision that i've ever made amazing and you said i think it was on your social media at the end of this 14 day period you get a period is that right how do you fucking deal with that mentally and yeah the period is stressful so stressful it was it was the number one thing that made me feel dysphoric growing up yeah so it was the number one thing that I was also very aware of of this process um luckily I've it's

definitely been a bit more easier this at this point but I think again it's because of all of the work that I've done and the healing that I've done with the relationship with my body that I found it a little bit more easier but nevertheless it's still it's still kind of there I mean it's always lingering but yeah I think this period as well was it's been especially difficult because you know when I was having my periods before I transitioned I'd have a period maybe for four days five days maximum in and out boom bang very like clean period right and this one's been a bit more difficult so it was like five days of quite heavily bleeding that then dragged out to spot in for about two weeks

oh my gosh so it was I don't know it just like mentally took me back to that place of how i felt when i was younger and i had to tell myself i'm no longer that person yeah kenny like you don't have to be fearful like you're confident in who you are now like don't let this drag you back to that place so there's a lot of like mental conversations that i was having with myself um and yeah periods can be very difficult to navigate in the sense that for a lot of trans people especially young trans people um you know all the narratives about periods is essentially centering cis women and you know is exclusionary of trans people non-binary people and so i think if you don't know i guess see stories from other trans people that are experiencing periods it's very easily to easy to feel alienated and isolated

and so i think i know i'm no longer in that place and obviously i've done a lot of work around periods yeah but it's still easy to be taken back to that place and you have to kind of talk yourself out of it so i think if there's any trans person that's going to go down this process or is experienced in periods and needs kind of like advice my number one thing would be to look at stories from other trans people who are experienced in periods because you know you see yourself in them yeah and also they can just give you better advice for how to manage it and if you are um being triggered by the sight of blood maybe use like period underwear specifically that are black colored so that you don't have to look at that um and yeah just just openly have conversations about having periods yeah because i think when you make it seem like it's a city like a secret

or something that you're ashamed of it makes it worse and so like listen i'll talk about periods all the time i don't care yeah so i think that yeah more people should to talk about them unapologetically because it's just a natural body function that your body's experiencing there's nothing to be ashamed of 100 period i mean if we can say period let's talk about periods period period period exactly that love that wow well i guess we've got some other things that we wanted to ask. Let's get into it. So I guess something that me, not out of curiosity, but like in terms of sexuality, when you become a trans man, not that you have to answer to anyone or like know exactly where your sexuality lies. But I guess does your sexual orientation change or does it stay the same like how have you found discovering

that and you say you're bi but like was that completely obvious at first or was it like a discovery thing oh no it's very much discovered yeah i was i was very dramatic i'm a very dramatic person sometimes right so yeah as a young guy identified as straight yeah and he found myself attracted to women and I was 21 years old and I was talking to this guy on Instagram and I wanted to fly to America because at the point this time I lost both my parents and I was heartbroken I didn't know what to do with myself and everybody around me felt sorry for me I had just become oh well he just lost his mom and dad yeah and nobody saw me for anything more than that and it just felt dehumanizing to a degree I

know people meant well but grief kind of becomes you yeah I was no longer Kenny I was just something that everybody felt sorry for and I really struggled with that and I just wanted to escape that for a moment so i did a very dramatic thing packed up my shit and literally went to houston texas i was like i'm done with this get me out of london um and i had been talking to this guy on instagram for a while and at first i just believed in a friendship way so gone to america now meet him really lovely we get along very well slowly i'm like nah this is not these are not normal feelings like this is more than friendship feelings right i'm sat there going oh do i do i find men attractive is this what's happening right now and kissed him i was like okay yeah no definitely find men attractive and so yeah spent a few more weeks in houston loved it there came

back and was like right i'm i'm bi all my friends funny enough my close friends were just like we're not even surprised kenny it's you you're just such like a free like what's the word i'm looking for just ultimately that you just don't really care about yeah you're just a free soul you don't really care about things like that you just you like people so the fact that you find men attractive nobody's surprised i was like oh thank god because i thought it was going to be so difficult coming out for the second time essentially yeah so yeah it was quite refreshing um geez did you even like so much pressure to constantly come out in that like i know we're probably not at a point where you can normalize the whole journey but like it must be a little bit draining to feel like to be scared that i'm have to approach this subject again well i just i decided that i wasn't going to treat it and

approach it like that yeah i thought that i would just naturally bring it up in a conversation that i also date men and i date women yeah rather than making this big thing out of it because i think the issue is is making a big thing out of it because why can't it just be as normal as being i'm straight straight people don't come out no so why do i have to come out so ultimately it just became a thing where you know if i had a boyfriend at the time i'd be like oh my my partner's over there and i'd be like oh this is my boyfriend or you know i was dating a woman i'd be like oh this is my girlfriend and i never made it this massive thing because it shouldn't have to be like we are we need to move so past that oh yeah yeah that age of like youtubers i remember when it was like fucking video and it's

almost like a cool memory in my brain all those youtubers that sat down in front of the camera and made it a big thing because it almost set a precedent for everyone else that has this massive thing sometimes a lot of the time a secret and it's like oh god i have to make this big song and dance out of something that should really just be as normal as saying oh yeah i'm straight it's just assumed yeah bizarre crazy weird time but i guess in in terms of approaching being trans in your relationships how do you go about that that's a good question so i've always had an approach of i don't want to waste my time or other people's time okay and so because of that i'm just very straightforward and upfront i am trans i think some people may prefer to wait a few dates before they expose that but also not being funny it's such a big part of my life and who I am that it within the first

conversation you ask me what I do for work yeah you're gonna know that I'm trans anyways so for me I made a conscious choice of always just saying that I'm trans and being very loud and proud about it and it come from the place of when I was younger I was consistently outed and so I was never afforded the opportunity to not say that I was trans and so I think a lot of my decision to tell people has has come from that place as well and so yeah I just I just you know if I meet somebody and I like them within usually the first 20 minutes of having a conversation I say hey I'm trans you know if that's an issue for you that's okay provided you're not doing it in a way that's transphobic that's okay i'm totally fine with that i'd rather just i'd rather not like no now and then more time

that kind of opens the door and invites conversation for them to ask questions and i usually say that i say hey listen let's just talk don't worry about saying anything offensive i'd rather you ask questions say it in a way that's not the best and we can just like work past it together versus you being afraid to ask me things and you have questions but you're not asking them and we're not connecting in a way that i want us to so let's just talk we're just people i'm fine with that so that's the way that i approach dating and for me it's worked out very well but i do have a lot of respect for why some people wouldn't want to take that same approach and would rather wait till they're in a confident place because you know it it's up to that person whether or not they want to disclose that they're trans you know i do i do think a lot

of cis people feel like it's owed to them and i can understand to some degree especially if you're thinking about having children and how that aspect's going to work but i think it's only important then okay um but yeah for the most part i just think it's it's it's an individual decision yeah yeah and something i find quite interesting that brought up in the call before this was you saying it's actually helped you being socialized as a girl in terms of dating women could you talk a bit about that yeah so when i was writing my book i wrote a chapter about masculinity and essentially one day i opened it talking about this so one day i was doing a panel and this woman came up to me and she was like you're more men than most men

and i said wow that's such a statement yeah and so i said to her like why have you said that and she was just she responded i just think you have a really healthy approach to masculinity and I wish more people was like you and so I thought to myself where has that come from because I did think that was the truth as well because I have a you know I used to have a lot of boys in my life that I feel like we're very different people so where was the difference and ultimately I think yeah a lot of it's come from being socialized as a girl because you are told to be polite to be accommodating for people um I don't need to tell you to do you know what I mean and so a lot of those yeah those conventional things that I taught to for girls to be yeah I was not fully taught but to some degree through like more so through school and places that really didn't understand that I

was trans I was taught to be that way and you know when i came out as trans i took the route of being completely opposite i went to being very like masculine and borderline toxic masculinity because i felt like i had to prove right to people that i was a man like i had to prove that i was bigger than cis men in order for my gender to be seen as valid and so i started to do things that if i'm honest i would say was quite misogynistic um i really had to be like sit down with myself and be like what the fuck are you doing kenny because this is not who you are this is not how you want to treat people so what are you doing but it came from a place of wanting to be valid and wanting to be seen as kenny and then one point i had enough because i said the only person that i'm well i am damaging

women as well but ultimately i'm damaging myself yeah and I don't want to be this person so stop doing it and so that's what I did I just I stopped and I had to really take like a full check-in of myself you know spoke to my therapist a lot about it and said hey like I want to be better um and then we started to talk about things what I would classify and make somebody a good human being and a lot of it came from the framework that I learned as being socialized from as a girl yeah and so I started to implement those things more and then suddenly over time you know five years later I've got a woman turning around and saying to me you're more men than most men so I realized that a lot of it came from going from being socialized as a girl to becoming a man then feeling like I have to be overtly masculine in

order to be valid as my gender saying i don't like who i am anymore and then reverting back to things that i had once learned um when the world saw me as a girl amazing i mean that's far to come and i guess not everyone has access to a therapist like how like if if you were kind of doing that journey on your own how do you kind of really work out who you are and who you want to be that's a good question i think ultimately i did a i did a men's course i think about two two years ago now because i just i wanted i don't have a lot of men in my life my life is surrounded by women which i absolutely adore because they're all fabulous but i you know there's definitely a synergy there that I wanted to have with men that I wasn't

having and I wanted to meet more men that were trying to do the work yeah and so I went on this course and a lot of it was just really kind of sitting down with the things that you don't like about yourself I mean just being honest about that and a lot of them and not to go into their private stories but a lot of the men in those places were like, I don't like how I let down my partner. You know, I don't like that sometimes, you know, I'm controlling, but it's coming from a place in which I'm scared. And like all of these different elements.

And I just thought that it was a wonderful space in which men could just freely discuss who they were. And so ultimately what I took from that was that, yeah, you have to be accountable for your actions. You have sit there and say I don't like this about myself what can I do and do a lot of reading that's what I did more than anything else a lot of reading on what like healthy masculinity looked like and you know I looked up for to different men as well that I thought okay like I like how they project masculinity and I like their definition of masculinity so what things about them can I steal for myself yeah i wish all men did that honestly then what i love about what you're

saying is that it's wanting certain aspects of other people but also understanding yourself and who you are i feel like what i've picked out from it is you never lost who you actually were now do you feel like a lot of people maybe i might be wrong those that are transitioning maybe they have that kind of pressure of oh because i've transitioned now I need to be this person or I need to look a certain type of way I need to you know have some sort of authority so it's like that's that can find that kind of balance which is very important and how you've actually expressed that is something that people should really take take note thank you yeah thank you yeah I think it is incredibly difficult I've spoken to a lot of trans women as well saying that they you know

they overperform femininity because, you know, they want to be seen as valid as being a woman, which I think is a very normal state to be in because of the way that we see gender in society. But you can't get lost in that. That's the thing. You know, there needs to come a time where you say, this is who I am and this isn't who I am and detract from that.

But yeah, I think I but I think like cis women I don't know if you you both have had any experience of that where you've overperformed femininity especially for men yeah yeah I mean yeah I think me my my would be when I was young I was such a tomboy I was ready to play for England and everything everyone was like nope you're going to a girl's school why why going to a girl's school worst worst worst period of my life because obviously girls are i love i love i love the women but sometimes girls girls can be mean yeah we mean people um and then i think from that then going into um a mixed sixth form it was like okay cool you know i'm trying to get out of my you know

tomboy i used to love a hoodie i used to love a know i'm trying to get out of my you know tomboy i used to love a hoodie i used to love a hoodie i never used to wear anything else but a hoodie and i'm just trying to kind of understand like you know what i can still be christy yeah christy can be sometimes tomboy sometimes you know a bit you know cool yeah but then also i can be like a little cute little you know you can kind of do it all yeah man i do that you have to be one or the other yeah i think that is but when you're young as well it's like what is what's the trend back then what is what is like what's up what's the top thing to do right now so it's like you're battling a lot of like emotions or like oh maybe i shouldn't do that maybe i should do that or the pressures of

having sex first oh yeah it's always like oh you haven't done it yet oh my god you're not you know i mean it's going on the pills it's essentially a trend in school it's like oh i want to get bigger boobs i want to do this i want to do that what do i want true yeah everyone else is you don't have there's no i there's always let's go with the crowd whatever the crowd's doing let's do it so um yeah totally understand identity yeah big up yourselves man come on guys identity is tough i still don't feel like i'm fully stop it no but it's like sitting with yourself and like figuring out who you are and what you want to be in life is i think it's all right i feel like in society and and for everybody that's listening i feel like it's okay to ask yourself those questions i feel like we run away and on like sitting sitting by ourselves

journaling okay what do i want to do today how do i feel you're allowed to ask those questions and i feel like i'm at a place where it's like i used to do everything for everybody else but now i'm like bun you guys me first you know putting yourself first and just ask just have an honest transparent conversation at the end of the day you're going to give yourself do yourself a disservice not listening to what that inner person is saying to you do you know what i mean facts i guess i love it i guess in your journey as well there's an idea that when you do transition it's like done it completed the journey is done where are you at now compared to when you were young with I kind of do you fully feel like you're there mentally

physically like also we haven't really touched on like gender affirming surgery like what where are you at physically with yeah your journey yeah let's talk about it i'm 100 confident in who i am now yeah i love it that's a really wonderful can we have some thank you i feel like i deserve that come on no i'm yeah i'm in a really wonderful place right now yeah and i feel that i've earned it you know all the work that i've done so yes you know growing up and doing all of that unlearning finding what masculinity means to me re redefining my definition of what makes a man yeah and you know having gender affirming surgeries so i started testosterone when i was 18 i believe so i've been on 130 now so i don't know do the maths i'm terrible at maths but yeah long time yeah that's okay someone someone do the

but yeah i've been on testosterone for quite a long time. Wow. AKA the beard. The beard's growth has come from that. And then for me, I always wanted top surgery. Like 100%. There was never any question about that. I always went up and down with whether or not I wanted bottom surgery just because it's a very complex surgery. It requires three procedures and it needs to be spread across a year and a half.

So at the time as is why i didn't know you know how would i afford the time off work would my job allow me to obviously i'm freelance now but had i gone down more of a commercial route and had a nine to five so there was just lots of questions but ultimately you know i think for me as i've gotten older and more comfortable with my body i've realized that i've never had an issue with my vagina okay i think it's more about i was always worried about how other people viewed my body like i don't i'm not uncomfortable it's more about the period stuff that i don't like yeah which is fair i don't think a lot of people have like having periods so i kind of realized that in terms of me entertaining the idea of having bottom surgery

for the most part it was coming from a place of how other people viewed my body and not from me which you know goes on to what the reflection that we were talking about so decided not to as of today i still i still do think about it from time to time don't get me wrong but it's now from a place of like do i want it for me yeah and versus doing it for others which i think is the healthy place that you really need to be out with decisions like that because you can't be making decisions like that for other people which i mean so yeah no I'm really happy um you know at one point I had jaw filler uh which was really good I really liked it but just an expensive sport that I no longer want to participate in so I've opted out but um no I just I'm really comfortable I

think for me it was always I wanted to have a deep voice and I wanted a flat chest um and getting this beard growth has just been a massive plus. So I'm, yeah, no, I'm really happy. I don't, I think if you turn around and said to younger Kenny,

you know, what, what would you want to look like? I don't even think he would have imagined this. So I'm really, I'm really content. And yeah, just like even small things.

At one point in my life, I had like removed all the mirrors in my house because I literally couldn't look at my own reflection. It was that bad. And now sometimes I do a a little back step a little shimmy back into okay okay do you know what I mean yeah I think when you you go from that place to that place and you look you go wow that's amazing yeah so yeah no I'm in a really good place I'm sure that you know that's not to say that all my body issues are fixed because absolutely not. And there's still days I'm very hung up on my body. But for the most part, I'm having a lot more good days than bad days. And that for me is a sign of I am where I should be.

I love that. Thank you. So you are an author. Yes. And you have just bought out a book, which is fucking slay. I could never. Come on. Can you tell our audience about what it's about

and show the beautiful cover, please? It's artwork. It's artwork. It's gorgeous. It's the branding for me. It's the branding for me. Come on. No, so yeah, thank you.

So, I mean, let's talk about the cover. So this is a custom made font and I specifically wanted that because I wanted the book to, so basically it's you. So, I mean, let's talk about the cover. So this is a custom made font and I specifically wanted that because I wanted the book to, so basically it's kind of like a love letter to cis people. So it's about talking about ways that you can love and support us and show up for us and stand beside us rather than in front of us or behind us.

And so I wanted the cover to kind of speak to the energy in which the book goes in. So it was really important to me that it felt more like a handwriting kind of kind of situation so yeah that's the cover um like I said at the bottom a guide to trans allyship and empathy I think one of the things that I really focused on in this book more than anything else is I think lots of trans people have been dehumanized by the discussions in the media and so I just wanted it to be a book that was like hey two friends having a conversation about what you think about trans people yeah and I think the book really reflects that but

ultimately um my mum is throughout it because obviously she's such a such a such a big big massive important person in my life and so you know she was the number one person that taught I would say she was my number one ally yeah and i think a lot of the ways that she treated me um is the way that other people trans people should be should be treated yeah and so i talk about yeah the ways in which she treated me there's lots of different chapters on many different things uh you know there's a the chapter beginning chapter gender begins here which discusses you know the history of gender because i think a lot of people think that being trans is something new we've existed just as long as non-trans people have um it's just that we've been marginalized and pushed out the history books right so we just I discussed that you know there's a whole chapter on being black and trans

and talk about the fact that you know I didn't feel accepted by the trans community because I was black didn't feel accepted by my black family and community because I was trans yeah and navigating that difficult intersection uh there's a whole chapter on my mini penis chapter about sex you know so if you're dating someone who's trans you know it talks about also do you know the bigger it's a bit it's bigger than that as well it talks about the fact that um you know i did an interview with dr karen gurney and she's incredible and we spoke about like sexuality because the basis for sexuality is i find myself attractive or the opposite right and because of the way that we are now expanding how gender looks you know do these do these narratives and do these

boxes actually fit and are we potentially um cutting ourselves off from different connections with people on the basis of how we strictly box our sexuality and so yeah it goes on to have that conversation there's a whole chapter about periods in which i discussed jk rowling and her perspective of the trans community which i'm sure we can go into more detail yeah um and yeah ultimately you know about trans youth and hormone blockers and all these different discussions basically everything that's being discussed in the media right now about trans people was spoken about in that book and it's very conversational you know i even say you know if you you get to the end of this book and you just, you still think fuck trans people,

then thank you for your time. You know, it's not, I'm not trying to convince people on the opinions that they should have. It just, it's just for me, I wrote it to serve as the truth because I think there's a lot of miscommunication and disinformation about trans people.

And so I just wanted to say, hey, I'm a trans person, a human being, very normal. We just want to have normal lives. Here's what's being discussed about us. Actually, this part isn't true. Yeah. say hey i'm a trans person a human being very normal we just want to have normal lives here's what's being discussed about us actually this part isn't true yeah um and this is this is the information to that and you know use this book as you will um and hopefully you learn something nice i love that as well you've done it in a very informal way because i think one of the most

intimidating things about these conversations is that people just don't want to approach it at all because they don't know the right way to ask so yeah funny you say about jk rolling i know i mentioned it but everything i have learned about what that woman thinks about things has been against my own will like i don't even i don't even fucking follow her on twitter on x and it will come up with like oh this post we think you might like well, spoiler alert, no I don't and it will be something, she's just like giving her opinion on

trans people and it's like no one asked for it, who has that strong like feelings of hate so much so and says it so often, it's constantly inspiring hate and encouraging this community of people that always have something to say like that must be exhausting for you yeah yeah no it definitely is i think the first time that i spoke out against jk rowling was when she made the comment on x about

uh periods but she there was a there was a post basically just saying the word people who menstruate to be inclusive and then she turned around and made a joke about i can't remember what she exactly said but you know there's there's a word to refer to that womb bound womb something basically just making a mockery um or in trying to make a mockery out of trans people yeah but actually in the same sense she was making a mockery out of women because there are women out there that don't have wombs have undeveloped vaginas multiple different things that are happening and so it just felt like she was throwing us under the bus but she was also throwing her own community under the bus um and yeah like you said she's gone on to say a lot of she's doubled down on her transphobia essentially and she's just running with it at this point um and i don't

yeah it's it's hard i think the thing that i like to i think the framework in which i like to see jk rowland's uh stand against trans people on this from this perspective right so you know she's openly spoken about the fact that she's a survivor of sexual violence and domestic abuse and i think it would be fair to say that's horrible and shouldn't happen to anybody yeah but i think she has quite a fear towards men because of that and rightfully so like who wouldn't react like that yeah but I think she has quite a fear towards men because of that. And rightfully so. Like, who wouldn't react like that? But I think ultimately she sees anybody that has a penis as a man, right? And that's why there's a lot of violence towards trans women from that perspective. And I don't think it's just her that hold that opinion.

I think it's lots of people who, you know, turn around and say, oh, well, I don't even want to say it so like aggressively but they just see it as like they see trans women as being predators to some degree or trying to gain access to women-only spaces because they want to do things that are nasty and that's not the case and in fact the evidence and the statistics show the opposite trans women are in uh wait let me get this right trans women are more likely to be harassed in bathrooms than cis women are and you know i think it's just putting a marginalized group in a more marginalized situation and i think a lot of these conversations you know it does affect trans men

but specifically that their hatred is pushed towards trans women yeah um and it's unfair and it's it's all hysteria because there's actually no statistics to suggest that trans women are are being abusers are being rapists are doing all these things like and i think jk rowling and people who have her perspective need to reframe their hate and understand who is the problem and that's cis men that are attacking women yeah they have the same predator yeah and so i think that you're you're causing a divider when you both have the same enemy so to speak it doesn't make it doesn't make sense no that narrative as well is so fucking damaging because like like i said it's not even

something i look into that's put on my timeline and then instantly you start building like these it's what annoys me is that because obviously christie's got quite great status it's like it's going to be plastered everywhere and you don't know the damage that is causing so it's like i feel like well then society is weird like the most craziest things they put out there and you never know who you are you know how it's triggering somebody else and it's that kind of desensitizing that what we've all kind of like been brought up in yeah so i think you've seen the media now it's just like oh okay but it shouldn't be oh okay yeah like this is alarming thank you red flag yeah yeah so well i guess in making the narrative more approachable the conversation around all of this

um we asked our audience um what are some questions that you would love to ask a trans person and we'd love if you'd answer them amazing okay christy do you want to start i will start so question one of the questions were what what is it like having sex for the first time post-surgery okay okay good question listen you just want to go hot and heavy and straight in there. Let's go straight into your sex life, Kenny. No, it's a good question.

Well, I haven't had bottom surgery like we've discussed earlier. I've had top surgery and I think for me, it changed my life. You know, specifically having a lot of dysphoria to that area. And then one day it just disappearing. It was really wonderful. And so, so you know I went from a position where I would always have sex with a t-shirt on to being like let me just whip this off straight away do you know what I mean so

it brought out a different Kenny and um ultimately as well I think as I got more comfortable and I started to get more into it like my partner touching my chest while having having sex became I don't know it was just like more like a gender euphoria moment because for something especially i think when you've you struggled with something for so long and then it becomes a source of joy i think it's extra special and so yeah it's really wonderful and if i ever get a penis i'm sure it will be just as glorious so period i love it i didn't even know that was a term gender euphoria that's amazing yeah yeah so just

the opposite yeah amazing uh another one that was asked was if you have a new name how do you choose it right so the name Kenny funny enough I did not choose it I think most trans people probably choose their name I didn't my my my old name was Kelsey uh that's usually known as a dead name so you shouldn't call people by that but i i feel like that name still is a part of me and i don't mind talking about it i really like it probably like name my kids kelsey or something like that so yeah but um kenny came from the fact that when i was attending my old girl school the girls turned around and said oh you're so much like a boy we're just going to give you a boy's name and so they called me kenny and

it just stuck that was it and it just got to a point where there was no point of choosing a new name because that it felt like who i was as well and i wanted i was always very set on keeping the k because i didn't want i didn't want that to change yeah and so yeah i was like kenny all right well it kind of suits me then everyone oh this is my friend kenny and then before you knew it it just replaced kelsey and i said well yeah my friend my friends have spoken and this is my name and yeah i was really grateful for that because i don't i don't know i think i would have chose something that didn't necessarily suit me to be honest it does really suit you yeah shout out to jamelia well done nice one love it all right next question once you start identifying as the other gender

why do you still say trans why trans women or trans man and not just women or man fantastic question and well that's a question that people should be asking themselves yeah why you know do we feel the need to put trans in in front of things um for me there's so there's two parts of it we shouldn't have to use the word trans to define ourselves and the second part of it actually is quite helpful sometimes especially in like a health care perspective where you know if i don't put the label trans in front of my name then you know when i go for a doctor's appointment or when it comes to letters about my health right they're going to be like well he has a penis and so sometimes it's useful it's useful in like medically um and sometimes people find it useful as a way of describing their lived experience and so they

can see it as more empowering um i'm a man first trans man second yeah and that's just the way that i see it yeah love that um someone also asked are you worried about the health complications later in life it's a really good question i think at one point i was not so much now and i think it's it's more worrying because there's not a lot of research around trans health care in general so even if i wanted to know the potential if there was going to be any implications I wouldn't but as far as I see it you know for instance like top surgery women have been having boob jobs for god knows how long there's lots of research to suggest that that doesn't there's no complications to that down the line so you know and I haven't had any implants

in fact the opposite's happened and all the tissue was gone so I kind of i've tried to a lot of my health care in the way that i view myself is is guesswork ultimately because there isn't the research out there and you know in terms of taking testosterone um well the way that i see it is well both all bodies have testosterone and estrogen and i don't think there's any you know going to be complications from that aspect and you know what more so than anything else even if there was i've made the right decision for myself yeah and i would be willing to take on the consequences to that um but what should ultimately be happening is that there is research that suggests and you know there could be ways that we could you know if there were to be complications there could be ways to avoid those complications because we have the research that

that helps us to make those decisions so right yeah i guess it makes you live quite presently like if you're really focusing on no which is a great thing of obviously not great that there's not the research to look forward into your future and like have that autonomy but makes you very live for now kind of vibes well i just i just yeah i just i'm not not really worried yeah ultimately this is the cost to be who I am. Yeah. That's how I see it. And I would pay that price any day.

And I'm sure for people in other situations, they face similar situations. So for me, that's just it. I don't, I don't, it's not that I don't care about the complications. It's just like, you know, regardless, they would be worth it. Yeah. That's beautiful. I love that.

Have your friends slash family changed the way they acted around you or treated you well i guess kind of goes back to the conversation we were saying earlier but i think the flip side is more about how society treats me which is that i've inherited male privilege within my transition and so life has definitely become a bit more easier for me in that regard really yeah that's really interesting in in what ways more obvious than well i think do you know what i was thinking about this and i find it quite difficult to explain but it's more in the small interactions on a day-to-day like when i go to a restaurant and i'm with my partner who's a woman they will talk to me before they talk to her small things like that where or even you know

conversations in which you know a female friend of mine is trying to have a conversation with something like a member of staff because something is wrong and they're just dismissed but the second i have that conversation it's like no we understand sir fine fixed wow so it's that male privilege aspect that i didn't really think about but in the small day-to-day things I'm like oh wow this is this is definitely giving you have advantages in life yeah wow so yeah quite quite weird I'm still I'm still working on that and still trying to understand it but that those are the things specific life experiences I'm I'm seeing it displayed right now yeah that's really interesting um and the last question we've got is if you're a trans man

do you feel you relate to stereotypical ideas of masculinity i think at the beginning of my transition i did and going back to a conversation we had earlier about me kind of falling into being you know hyper masculinity yeah borderline toxic masculinity but i think after a while because of that experience of being socialized as a girl it's you know you start to have that conversation with yourself and you then you build masculinity for you yeah so i do feel like you know as a man it still pushed on me yeah it still said hey this is what your masculinity should look like but the version of me you know the person i want to be says no this is where i fall where my masculinity fits i like being this version of myself and i'm not i'm not going to accept any other way well thank you so much for having this

conversation with us today you are an incredible person first and foremost and i'm really fucking excited to read the book yes thank you this is people where can they find it let us know all your local bookshops i mean all the big ones as well but yeah i'd really appreciate your love and support and if you purchase a copy because essentially this proves to the publishers that trans voices are worth investing into so please do buy a copy and tell a friend amazing thank you