Thoughts

New Hair

Also feeling quite wobbly at the moment, so decided to come out for a self care date. I have a familiar, favourite book and am at a restaurant that I've had an eye on for a while.
The owner seems to have sussed that I want to quietly take a bit of personal time and suggested that I might want the main course in twenty minutes which was perfect.

Happy 15th Birthday* Robyn.

You're wonderful, smart, funny, creative, cool and a bit of a wally and I am so grateful to have you in my life. Proud of you. x

Folks that are not trans or "don't have a horse in the puberty blockers race":

You may be wondering why this is a big issue? Surely "kids need to be left alone to be kids"... Right?

Almost without fail, every trans adult that I know wishes they'd had the chance to temporarily pause puberty and prevent permanent body changes from happening. I.e. Most trans adults remember being transgender children. We remember acutely how real this was. Many of us have suffered through reversing the negative effects of an unwanted puberty. For me this has been expensive, horrible, painful and traumatic surgeries that have partially reversed some of what my male puberty did to me. I will have to live with the rest. If a child is saying they want to delay their puberty for transgender reasons, I believe they know their truth a lot better than I do... And I probably know a lot about their truth.

In this country, we don't allow under 16's to access cross sex hormones (that would allow them to have their desired puberty) because we deem them "too young to know". I think there are pros and cons on this argument, but it was defensible because we as a country were allowing those that felt that they were trans to delay puberty until they were legally old enough to decide. Now we're outlawing the medicine that will allow them to wait until they are "old enough to make their own decision".

This move is a step backwards designed to intentionally cause harm to a new generation of trans people. This will cause suffering that will last a lifetime. Forgetting for a moment, how I feel about my body, I have to deal with stares and comments in the street. I often feel scared going to the gym or using the loo in public. I have experienced discrimination at work. And every phone call to the bank involves being asked to speak to the account holder because they can't imagine someone with my voice could be "Sophie". This will never change and is just what my life involves.

However, things changed and I know young trans people that had access to medicine to delay puberty and, when I think of them, it makes me happy that they won't have to grow older with irreversible changes that cause them distress... Having any other thoughts on this subject (other than perhaps "it's none of my business") seems barbaric. It feels like the world was a more humane place that the next generation of trans folks will suffer less than my generation.

Apparently we don't want that.

When I grew up in the 80s and 90s we had "Section 28" with legalized bullying and marginalisation of queer youth. It made it crystal clear that it was unsafe to share my truths with the world. We are absolutely headed back into this place. It will cause suicide, self harm and other acute mental health crises for many trans youth. This will not stop them from being trans. They will just grow up into bodies that cause them distress and have a lifetime of mental health problems and chronic dysphoria as a result.

You may be thinking that I'm being paranoid. It's not targeted at trans people .. and that it's just about children's safeguarding? Well... Firstly, these drugs are safe. They have been used for this purpose for 40 years. And, here's the kicker...the use of this medicine is still allowed for non-transgender youth. That is to say, they are absolutely targeting trans youth. They know the consequences and they know what they are doing. This is cruelty against a socially unclean, powerless minority by a powerful majority. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am appalled by the silence on this issue.

Moving day with my roomie, Hannah Rebecca
🥰😍🌈💕

Doing the whole worky clothes London thing today.

I grew up near this - interesting to read a little bit about it.

The transition to AI warfare seems to have already begun. It's quite chilling to feel that we've opened this box now.

Fun day at Thorpe Park with Dilly.

It started out pretty rainy, which was not great but did mean the queues were short. One of the roller coasters, Colossus, we were at the front and it was raining so hard that it was like looking into a shower.

After lunch it cleared up and the sun was out. We probably managed 10 or 12 rides. The best was the new Hyperia ride, which is apparently the fastest and tallest in Europe.

We finished the day by going on the water rides, getting completely soaked and squelched our way back to the car.

It feels really important to be grateful for these moments when they happen as the progress to teenage life means that they are few and far between now and I find myself wondering with many of these experiences "is this the last time we will do this?"

Lovely walk along the river followed by a drink with Ali and Bee

Movie night

Hard not to be happy today.

🌞 The sun is out and the air smells hot and dry; Summer is here.

🏙️ I'm in my favourite city. And had lunch at @welovefalafel

🟣 I've just had my hair done by the talented and lovely @rhitaylorhair

🟣 I've got matching nails.

💼 I finally finished packing.

❤️ I'm in the car on the way to meet up with my lovely partner that I've not seen in two weeks.

🏜️ And... Tomorrow we go on and adventure. We're going to Nowhere @going_nowhere_burn. It's going to be two weeks in the desert where we build a small town full of wonderful, funny, interesting people, amazing art installations, good music and fun night life. Oh and loads of my friends are there.

My daughter, @robyn.j.collins, performing in Bugsy Malone

Last week after a difficult week, we decided to rent this place in Devon for a couple of nights. The place was very comfortable and cosy and had a log fired hot tub which was super nice with a glass of wine.

Shepherds huts are becoming a thing.

Brilliant night out with @robyn.j.collins watching @eddieizzard doing a one woman performance of Hamlet. I was expecting that as a play I don't know super well and with only one actor I would get lost, but she did a good job of delineating each character with gait, stance and voice, so it was really easy to follow. Robyn has performed in Hamlet before, so knows the play very well and came out chattering about how good it was.

Thank you @rebeccacollins2911 for gifting us the tickets.

Yesterday I had an amazing adventure to Muir Wood, north of San Francisco. It felt like a magical place, like I was walking through an elvish forest from Tolkien or on Endor and about to see Ewoks.