A Sit-Down with One of the Boldest Young Trans Activists in the United Kingdom
Mira Lazine interviews trans activist from Trans Kids Deserve Better after the cricketing of an LGB Alliance conference.
Illustration by Amanda Ellison
by Mira Lazine
On October 18th, Assigned Media columnist Mira Lazine interviewed a member of the United Kingdom based activist group, Trans Kids Deserve Better following recent actions.
The United Kingdom has been getting worse on trans rights. Not only are the media and political parties capitulating to a handful of influential TERFs, but public policy increasingly reflects this.
Earlier this year, the country banned puberty blockers entirely. This is on top of multi-year waitlists from the National Health Service that jeopardize the lives of trans people in need of healthcare, which have been alleged to have caused an uptick in youth and adult suicides.
Enter Trans Kids Deserve Better. They’re a UK-based activist group that consists primarily of transgender youth aged 18 and below. They’ve quickly made a name for themselves after forming earlier this year with headlines from actions like climbing the National Health Service headquarters and occupying the Department of Education.
Most recently, they infiltrated anti-transgender hate group LGB Alliance’s conference and released over 6,000 crickets in the middle of a talk held by the most boring fake whistleblower, Jamie Reed.
Assigned Media had the privilege of sitting down with one of the activists in the group, who asked to go by Crash (He/They).
AM: What was it like going to the LGB Alliance conference, releasing those bugs? How were you feeling and was it as hilarious to see as people at home might expect?
Crash: Going into the conference, we had to mingle with people beforehand, so it was quite suspicious when we walked in with slightly chirping bags.
So that was obviously a weird part of it. We ate like all of their jaffa cakes. It was weird chatting to people that were so lovely and polite, that I knew would hate me if they knew who I was or of all the amount of bugs in my bag.
They had some singers and stuff. They didn't tell you that TERFs cannot sing for the life of them... they were... oof.
One of the scary things about it was bringing in the crickets. We had bags taped to our legs. We had a group chat set up on WhatsApp on our burner phone called Girls' Night Out. And we were trying to use kind of coded ways to talk about it, like "oh, how's everyone doing? Is everyone ready for going out,” and by going out you mean you're releasing the crickets
The moment I remember most vividly was when I got the message from my friend.
We got the message for 10 seconds and my friend was like, next to me, he's kind of shaking a bit. They're like go, we need to go. We need to do it now.
The crickets didn't arrive until the morning of. So we were like, out across [from the conference] and trying to find [the crickets]. We tested how hoppy the crickets were, which sounds ridiculous but it's true. The hoppiness factor was an important part. And so we just had no idea how it was going to go. We didn't get the opportunity to find it funny at the time because we were mainly focused on absolutely legging it.
AM: One thing I was wondering was what led you to target the conference specifically. Did you choose to do it during specifically Jamie Reed's time or was it just by chance that it lined up like that?
Crash: So there was quite a lot of discussion actually about when we were going to release the bugs. But it was specifically during the talk with Jamie Reed because she was one of the people that overthrew the place that's like healthcare for trans kids in the United States. And she was wanting to talk about how we can do more of that. And basically bragging about how she's taken healthcare and transitioning away from kids in the United States. And we were like, you know, we've got enough of that already.
Her speech was one of the ones that was most targeted towards trans kids. We were like, okay, that seems like the one.
AM: Would you consider the action and any prior actions as well, successful?
Crash: Overall, yeah. After previous actions, we had the ledge and the grate. I actually wasn't around at the ledge. But that got immediate attention and it got things moving for definite. And that was all at the very last minute.
The grates outside the Department of Education… I would say that was successful. Not because of press attention. We didn't get much press attention, but I would say that's where all of the sense of community and interactive stuff that we've had came from. We had a drag show on one of the nights. And we had so many people coming and saying hi and supporting us. And that was a massive deal for building support and community within the trans community itself.
Even outside of the UK, we have messages and emails and stuff we got, it's incredible. From the occupations, we'd already kind of established ourselves within the trans community, but we weren't being heard outside of that. And that's honestly where the crickets came into play.
The press picked up on it. We've had [GB News], a recent article where they called the LGB Alliance an anti-trans conference and that was huge. It was just massive to be actually acknowledged with the fact that it is just a hateful anti-transgender conference, because that's very rarely happened in British media especially.
AM: What motivates you in your group's activism? Were there any specific driving forces, any individual things that the British government did that just let you all say that enough is enough?
Crash: So a lot of it is the puberty blockers ban. But also the Cass Report, it's a big deal. There are just things where they're making trans healthcare harder and harder to access, especially for kids. It's a waiting list, taking years and years and years. I was put on the GIDS waiting list when I was 11 and I've stopped, I haven't heard back.
And the transphobia that each of us individually as trans kids receive on a daily basis as well as the transphobia published by the British press is just constant.
There's also the aspects that you don't see published by Daily Mail or whatever. It's the fact that we have a group chat where someone reads a bedtime story each night and a voice message. We have art clubs, we have a Minecraft server, everyone is so ready to support each other.
During the action, before and after, obviously the people going in, we were all stressing out, it was terrifying. We had friends, one of the other kids, she was such a hero with it, even though she wasn't obviously going in, she was still such a vital part of it because she made us mac n cheese, she made us baked goods and she helped us burn our phones, and it was just such an important part of taking care of what was happening.
I think that a lot of what drives our processing actions is anger and want to change.
But what drives the behind the scenes is that care that has actually allowed the action to happen.
AM: And I know you touched on this a little bit in response, but how have you, your group, and trans youth as a whole, been affected by the UK's continuous attacks on trans people?
Crash: We each have our own struggle with trying to access trans healthcare, but it is just not possible. I made a statement recently through [Trans Kids Deserve Better] that was, I've since been young and I felt very trapped because I haven't felt like I would be able to transition, which didn't seem like a realistic possibility, how expensive it is to go privately and how much harder it's getting to access. And I know that so many of my friends, so many of my trans friends and colleagues with the TKDB feel the same.
Then outside of the medical care aspect, there's also the schools. I don't have a single trans friend that hasn't received some level of harassment in school for being trans. And even though obviously it's not like the UK government is coming into schools and harassing trans kids, it is the UK government that is allowing their treatment to continue with not teaching in schools that trans is an okay thing to be.
It wasn't treated as something that was a genuine possibility to exist as. I even had a teacher who would repeatedly call me he and a bloke when I had short hair but the second I came out was trans, it completely switched up, it was she/her she/her she/her.
AM: I know you said you weren't part of this action, but what is it like to be a part of a group that has been climbing government buildings and making a big name internationally?
Crash: As far as NHS building, that was, it was insane to see that happen through social media. I didn't know that I would someday be part of that group. But I was there during the grates.
One of the crazy things about it is just seeing it get talked about and hearing about it. Like, I saw one of my friends, repost on Instagram something about the crickets at the LGB Alliance. And I was like, hey, you know that was like me, right? It was on a call and she was like "What?"
Also it's been so amazing to see the amount of support, not only nationally but internationally. And actually during the grates operation on the Department of Education, we got multiple messages and things that were given to us. And so we got one about trans futures, being like, hey, you know, you guys are doing amazing, we're supporting you.
AM: So what would an ideal world look like for trans rights? Like what would a world look like that's kind of the end goal for you all?
Crash: It would be a world in which we were able to medically transition safely and without having to like years and years and years and years and years and years of waiting lists. It would be a world where gender was taught respectfully and not as a debate point. It would be a world where we weren't harassed for just existing and were just not like free to be ourselves without having to deal with people just being willfully ignorant and sometimes just intellectually cool. And so it would be a day to day life. It would be a world where we were left in peace and be able to live our lives as we are.
AM: How can people at home support your work?
Crash: Part of it is just when you hear transphobic talking points in day to day life, in media as well, just to challenge it honestly.
And for your kids in the day to day life just be there for them. Just do your best to support them in every way you can.
But there's also an element of just don't be a dick. Obviously you can't expect that every cis person will go out of their way to try and help trans people when they can. It would be nice if they didn’t yell stuff about us, to be people who are actively working to become allies and could just work, maybe actually stop being transphobic.
AM: Is there anything you want to say to readers of this interview specifically?
Crash: I think for any trans people out there, you are loved and supported in your transition, even if it doesn't feel like that a lot of the time.
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As trans rights become more and more jeopardized across the world, the need for action becomes pressing now more than ever. Trans Kids Deserve Better is one such group who stepped up to the call, and their actions will no doubt change history.
Mira Lazine is a freelance journalist covering transgender issues, politics, and science. She can be found on Twitter, Mastodon, and BlueSky, @MiraLazine