--- title: "Queer Stories Across Boarders" episode: 110 date: 2024-05-16 guest: "Georgie Williams" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/110-queer-stories-across-boarders audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-110/audio.mp3 --- # Queer Stories Across Boarders Joanne Lockwood is joined by researcher and storyteller Georgie Williams to explore what we can learn from queer lives and communities across borders, and why narrowly defined gender and sexuality “boxes” fail to reflect human diversity. Georgie shares the origins of their project Slash Queer: building an open, accessible archive of oral histories from around the world, shaped by the people telling the stories. The conversation moves through how western frameworks have been exported through media and colonial histories, and how other cultures have long held broader understandings of gender, sexuality, kinship and social roles. Together they discuss identity, pronouns, and the practical realities of being read by others. Georgie explains their shift to they/them pronouns and the difference between genuine effort and defaulting to what makes others comfortable. Joanne reflects on transition, “passing”, and the everyday ways couples navigate social scripts. The episode also addresses safety, bias and access to care, including how healthcare and public spaces can become sites of policing and exclusion for trans and nonbinary people. Throughout, Joanne and Georgie balance humour with clear-eyed challenge: expanding representation, loosening assumptions, and making room for people to belong without having to fit a prescribed template. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Introduction and Welcome - 02:00 — Platform shares free stories about diverse communities globally. - 04:57 — Diversity in gender and sexuality is universal. - 07:35 — Evolution psychology controversial; Japan's historical sexual norms. - 10:44 — Gender policing shapes social currency, influences binary identities. - 15:20 — Specific cultural term "two spirits" among Native Americans. - 17:25 — Diverse roles in ship crew create balance. - 20:35 — Changed pronouns due to persistent misgendering online. - 23:47 — Desire for moustache, challenges with trans healthcare. - 28:10 — Advocating for trans healthcare to ensure safety. - 31:51 — Easier to talk about disability than trans. - 34:56 — Denial of trans healthcare still a problem. - 37:43 — Age doesn't define when you know yourself. - 41:11 — Representation needs depth, not just surface level. - 45:16 — Solid sense of self in relationship dynamics. - 48:02 — Partner's playful gender role reversal joke on ship. - 51:13 — Podcast named Queer, find it easily. - 51:57 — Outro ## Key takeaways - The intricate dynamics within queer relationships and the departure from gendered roles and societal expectations. - Playful subversion of traditional gender norms within personal relationships as a source of freedom and self-definition. - The concept of the gender binary as a restrictive force and its disproportionate impact on non-binary and transgender individuals. - How other cultures, such as Indonesia's Bugis society, embrace more fluid understandings of gender and sexuality. - The significance of LGBTQ+ terminology as a tool for self-identification and community connection. - The intersection of healthcare and transgender experiences, addressing assumptions and the importance of informed, inclusive practices. - Personal transitions and the resulting effects on intimate relationships, highlighting the breadth of acceptance and understanding. ## FAQs ### What does Georgie Williams discuss about their relationship with their partner in this episode? Georgie Williams delves into how they and their partner navigate their relationship without heavily relying on traditional labels, allowing for a dynamic that playfully challenges conventional gender norms and celebrates freedom and liberation in defining their own roles. ### What are the limitations and impacts of gender boxes as discussed in the podcast? Both Joanne Lockwood and Georgie Williams discuss the restrictive nature of gender boxes and how they can limit individual identities. They explore the negative impact of the gender binary on non-binary individuals and the societal pressures that discourage people, particularly cisgender heterosexual white men, from exploring the breadth of their gender and sexuality. ### How do different societies view gender and sexuality? Georgie mentions the Bugis community in Indonesia as an example of a society with a more fluid understanding of gender and sexuality. The conversation reveals that cultural ideas around these concepts are varied and not solely confined to binary or heteronormative models. ### What has Georgie learned from their project "Queer"? Through field research for their project, Georgie has captured diverse stories of gender and sexuality diversity globally. They've discovered that these elements are intrinsic to our humanity and that views on them span a wide spectrum beyond the binary norms. ### How does Georgie Williams view LGBTQ+ terminology and pronouns? Georgie finds LGBTQ+ terminology vital for articulating identity and connecting with similar experiences. They prefer the term "queer" and use they/them pronouns, discussing the practical challenges and the importance of respecting chosen pronouns to reduce the need for constant self-explanation. ### What do Joanne and Georgie joke about concerning nonbinary individuals? The conversation shifts to a lighter tone with jokes about the hypothetical 'nonbinary superpowers', including their uncanny ability to recognize other trans people intuitively. ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what a true really takes to create a world where everyone not only belongs, but thrives? You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with inclusion bites. And today is episode 110 with the title Queer stories across borders. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Georgie Williams. Georgie is professionally queer and what that really means is that, is that they specialise in gender and sexuality diversity, field research, platforming, voices and stories in countries around the world. When I asked Georgie to describe their superpower, they said that they made the shocking personable. Hello, Georgie, welcome to the show. Hello, Joanne. Thank you so much for Georgie Williams: having me. Pleasure. I've been looking forward to this for ages. Very Joanne Lockwood: excited. So, Georgie, queer stories across borders. Tell us more about your project and what you're up to. Georgie Williams: So I started with Queer, which is my little organisation recording stories of gender and sexuality diversity around the globe back in 2019. So originally I was supposed to start my phd in social justice at University College Dublin. I already had a background in gender and sexuality. I had a gender master's from Lund School of Economics, and I had an undergrad in psychology. And so I was very much coming at this from a research perspective. And what I wanted to be doing with my phd and couldn't do was create an oral histories archive of gender and sexuality diversity around the world that was very much steered by the people telling the stories. My concern was that people are very curious about gender and sexuality diversity at this time, but when we look at it from a global perspective, I often believe that people can be exploited by having their stories told in a way that doesn't truly represent their culture and community. And I wanted to be able to share these stories open source as well. I didn't want people to have to pay to learn about these things in the way that I'd learned about many of these communities in a lecture hall with a lot of student loans to show for it. So what I wanted to do was create this platform where I could share these stories from my field research all around the world for free. So I started queer and I went out into the field five years ago now, and I travelled in the first half of this project through the USA, Japan, Indonesia, and then I conducted the lockdown episodes in the UK and Ireland during COVID And then the second half of this project I conducted in 2022 and 23 that took us through Malta, Turkey, South Africa and Lesotho. So we're still processing those episodes. The final episode of season two will be coming out in about a month or so, which is our episode looking at sexuality diversity in Lesotho culture amongst Sutu people. And I actually interviewed a very senior member of the Lesotho government who works in gender about that. So I disseminate it all open source as a podcast and transcribe it as articles as well. Fascinating. Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I've spoken to you in the past around this project, and when you say you're in the field, I mean, you have been in the field, haven't you? You have been around meeting people in their homes, in their communities, in a wide range, diverse set of backgrounds and experiences beyond just the white middle class view of UK gender politics and gender identity. So what have you kind of, if you had to distil it all down, what have you learned yourself about your own sense of identity and sexuality and gender from a global perspective, rather than just our blinkered UK view? If you. So I think the thing that's been so interesting about Georgie Williams: conducting this project and learning myself, as I travelled in the fields, I entered the field as a specialist, but I have never tried to market myself as an expert, because you can't be an expert in the human experience. So when I was out there with the stories I got to hear and the people that I got to collaborate with in the field on this project, I very much came to understand how gender and sexuality diversity is part of what makes us human. That actually, no matter what culture, no matter what time period, the ideas that we had about gender and sexuality were actually quite broad, I think, where the ideas we have about a male female binary and about kind of heteronormativity having those propagated in the west, particularly in countries like the US and the UK, we believe it's universal for several reasons. First and foremost, through those ideas being exported in western media around the world, exposing other communities to that, but predating that as well. Colonialism had a huge influence on spreading these ideas about gender and sexuality. But it doesn't mean that these ideas emerged spontaneously in these environments. Quite the opposite. I've worked in communities all around the world who, some of whom have five gender, three sex social systems, some of whom normalised women having relationships with other women even when they were married to men. Our ideas about what kinship and what human connection and what personal identity looks like, we've very much, many of us who have grown up in the west, grown up with this very distilled, very reductive idea that doesn't account for global human diversity. And through that as well, it's given me a lens to better understand my own identity. And I've had feedback from listeners as well, who have used episodes to articulate their identities to people in their lives. And that's been really encouraging. Joanne Lockwood: There's a belief or a myth or that we as a society have evolved to understand around sexuality and family values and our structure, our social constructs, if you like, that we live in the rule set. We have. We consider ourselves an evolved society where some of this queer notion is we've evolved out of, but I think it's the opposite way around. We kind of haven't evolved yet to truly understand queer identities. So I think it's really interesting that you've brought in that Georgie Williams: idea of evolution, because I think that the arena of evolutionary psychology, the exploration of human behaviour through these evolutionary lenses, has often caused harm and caused significant misunderstanding with regards to what is quote unquote normal with regards to human behaviour and socialisation. And the example I'll bring up, actually, is something that I learned during my work in Japan was that with regards to sexuality, during the Edo period of Japan, which is around the mid 16 hundreds to early 18 hundreds, relationships between men, romantic and sexual relationships, were very much normalised. And this, I don't describe it as falling out of fashion, but was discouraged by the japanese government from the point of the Meiji reformation at the end of that period, where, and this is unusual compared to some other countries I've looked at and worked in. What happened at that stage is that Japan looked to the west for what was in vogue, I guess, culturally at the time. If they were going to be increasing their trade connections and they were going to be connecting more with the western world, then what were the cultural norms? And at the time, one of the things rising in popularity was the pseudoscientific field of sexology. This was popular in, I believe, Prussia and the UK, and I think France as mean. Interestingly know, anyone could call themselves a sexologist at the time you could be working in a zoo, behaving animal behaviour and call yourself a sexologist. And the consensus amongst these sexologists was, well, animals engage in what was described as same sex behaviour at the time. Humans don't because they're better developed than that, so we don't do that here. And Japan looked at that and went, okay, well, the relationships that we have going on right now between men that are permissible, that is going to be unacceptable in a global arena. And that led to this discouragement and ultimately rampant homophobia within japanese society. And obviously there's other contributing factors as well. These things never happen in a vacuum of one specific cause. But yet you talk about the idea of the way we've evolved and the way that humans conduct themselves in relationships and in society, and actually pseudoscientific ideas about that fed the propagation of homophobia in parts of the east. Yeah, because we are programmed from a very Joanne Lockwood: early age around rule sets of right and wrong and normal expectations. I'm a great fan of the work defining the act like a man box, the gender box, the rule set that we're given as a man, as a woman. God knows where non binary people fit into those two boxes. There's no kind of middle box offered in this rule set. And it's trying to figure out how do we evolve people's thinking where these boxes don't serve any real purpose other than to police people back into behaviours. Georgie Williams: It's a great question, and I like that you mentioned policing, because gender policing is something I talk about often, ways that we are encouraged to regulate one another's behaviour, because if we align with that, it creates this social currency. Right. We are favoured by our peers, we are given advantages that other people aren't, as long as we perform correctly within the box assigned to us. And it's funny, I mean, I don't want to get too technical with what we're talking about today, but there is a phrase I came across kind of, I don't want to say early on in my research, but around the time my masters, that describes the gender binary between the concept of being male and the concept of being female as we know it in the contemporary west as a parasitic symbiosis. And if we break that down, what it's basically saying is that these two identities sustain each other by feeding off each other. So in the sense that men are encouraged to recognise who they are in the world by going, oh, well, I'm not feminine, I'm not like a girl, I don't do this I don't do that. Therefore I must be a man. And this is why non binary identities, if we use that very culturally west specific term, this is why they're considered so disruptive. Because if someone's identity can be an amalgamation of feminine and masculine behaviours, or male or female coded anatomy, how does a person look at an individual like that and go, well, I must be a man or I must be a woman. But also that person has some of these attributes, and they're not a man or a woman either. And it's disruptive. It's incredibly disruptive. So, yes, those boxes are still incredibly limiting in the west, even when there's a lot that happened over the last hundred years in terms of expanding the idea of what womanhood can be. You know, we talk about things like fashion and haircuts and job roles, et cetera, et cetera. But there is still a ways to go in terms of dismantling those incredibly rigid boxes. You find that in Joanne Lockwood: your experience, that a lot of misunderstandings come from people's repression and self oppression of their own identity. Maybe they're scared to explore who they are. Maybe there's this fear of being finding out or allowing themselves to consider they may be bi, trans, nonbinary, and they're trying to hold it in, into this little box with these rule sets, otherwise it'll explode. And they don't know how to handle that. Yeah. And actually, there was Georgie Williams: a really interesting documentary a few years ago on Netflix. I don't know if it's on there anymore, but it was called the mask you live in, and it talked about masculinity. And it opens with this conversation about what it means to do anything like a girl. They said, listen, if you want to hit like a girl, behave like a girl, cry like a girl, it's rock bottom, right? That means that you've ultimately failed at the thing you were supposed to be doing. But to do something like a man is absolute top of that bar, right? And it's also an unsustainable achievement. To do anything like a man means you have to continually prove it to yourself and others for the rest of your life. And if it slips for a moment, your whole identity as a man can be revoked externally by judgmental outside forces. And so, yeah, this idea that we have about gender, especially when it comes to things like masculinity, it's all so fragile. And I think there is this fear that comes with asking those questions, because what it means is that you can lose that currency, you can lose that potential. That privilege, especially for cisgender heterosexual white men, if they question their identity regarding their gender or sexuality, their social standing can absolutely plummet. And it's incredibly daunting for many individuals to ask those questions, because societally, we haven't facilitated a safe environment for people to ask those questions of themselves without risking something. Other Joanne Lockwood: societies cope with these multiple genders, a more fluid kind of identity, not just one spirit, two spirit, three spirit or five spirit, however you want to describe it. How do their societies cope with those multiple identities in people? Because in the UK, we seem to have this big culture clash. How does that manifest in different societies around the world? So I'll add Georgie Williams: going on to that. So two spirits are a very specific cultural term that has been used specifically within native american communities, particularly navajo communities. And when we think about identities, they're always culture bound. Right? This is why sometimes I take umbrage with using the acronym LGBT for communities in the global south, communities in Southeast Asia, for example, communities across the continent of Africa, because very often people in these communities already had terms for this gender and sexuality diversity that predate the term LGBT. And so, yeah, with some of these communities I've worked with, there is this. I don't want to say perfect harmony, but a sense of balance, that it comes from the fact that they don't ground one's worth and identity in innate biology, which can change. Anyways, biology does change over time, and there's so many people whose biology doesn't fit into a binary anyways. The sex binary was very much an invention. It is something that was formulated by doctors in order to determine what was the correct male or female body, which often led to the abuse of many individuals whose bodies divide those boxes. I'm sidetracking myself. But within many of these communities, I'm thinking in particular of my interview I did with a member of the Bugis community, which is a community that recognises a five gender, three sex social system in Indonesia. The Bugis are an ethnic group who are comprised of, I believe, 6 million indonesian citizens. And, I mean, this is incredibly large country. I believe that Indonesia is the largest muslim majority country in the world. We're not talking about some tiny little corner of the world that observes this. And there it is very much held belief within the buddhist community that, yes, all five of these identities are supposed to exist because everybody fills a different niche. And it's funny, when I think about this myself, I'm not even going to relate it to gender and sexuality, but I spent the best part of last year when I wasn't in the field doing research, working on a ship as a crew. And it's funny because within the crew, every single one of us took on different responsibilities. But if one of those people wasn't there, then mopping up those responsibilities was difficult because we all held our own role, we all contribute in different ways. And the Bukhas community, I would like to draw a very loose comparison, that everybody has different responsibilities and contributions that are not married to but aligned with their gender identity, and it creates this sense of balance. It's, as far as I can tell, relatively non hierarchical, or at least not hierarchical in the way that a male female gender binary is. Yeah, Joanne Lockwood: I'm with you on the LGBTQ plus II AP Alphabet system. I think all it's doing is it's creating more boxes and trying to stuff people into boxes. And I'm a bigger fan of the word queer because I don't need to define myself any more than just queer. I e, not straight, not Cis, not whatever. I can exist in this space that is me without having to explain it. Because I think once you start mixing gender identity and sexuality, it's not a linear scale, it's a four dimensional model, and your little point within that model can change and evolve and float around from day to day. Who I'm with, what I'm doing, how I relate to tv programmes. I can sometimes relate in a more masculine way or more feminine way. Even though I perceive myself as a woman and feminine, I don't reject some of my traits and my upbringing. And to queer really allows me to exist without a border. Yeah. And I mean, I will say, regarding Georgie Williams: the LGBTQ plus acronym, there are ways in which it can be useful. I recognise the fact that having these specific terms allows us to, number one, articulate ourselves, but also, number two, find people of similar experience. Also, specific terminology is incredibly valuable from a legislative standpoint in terms of ensuring particular protections. That said, I completely agree in the sense that recognising it as a reclaimed term, I prefer to describe myself as queer because I don't believe that I owe anybody an explanation of the nuances of my identity every time I come out to someone. Queer, for me, has been a wonderful catch all, where it says I exist outside of the bounds of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and that's incredibly freeing. I Joanne Lockwood: think I remember when we first met online, I think a couple of years ago, maybe during COVID you were using both masculine feminine and gender neutral pronouns, almost like he, they, she, they, her, him, and you kind of weren't prescriptive about how the pronouns are used, because sometimes, again, that triggers people into trying to box you off again, doesn't it? It's like, oh, it's so difficult. Totally. And actually, I now use they Georgie Williams: them pronouns. And it's interesting, I have friends who will occasionally use he him pronouns with me, but I retired using she her entirely. Because the issue that I came across is that when I listed my pronouns, especially, we're talking Covid era, most of my work I was doing was online, and so I would have my pronouns in my zoom tag. Overwhelmingly, people would look at that, decide that because I was presenting in a feminine way, the thing that made them the most comfortable was to just use she for me. And I very clearly remember, and yes, I was angry in this moment, but I actually think it was a really justified anger. I remember in a meeting with some colleagues mentioning that, yes, if you've noticed that my pronouns have changed from they she he to they them, I want you to know that it's because I've revoked the other pronouns until you learn how to play nicely with them, that actually, at the end of the day, my identity is a very. I don't describe it as fluid, and I don't describe it as complex either, but a nuanced, non prescriptive thing. And I want to know when people are actually making an effort with my identity. I am always incredibly touched when someone that I meet isn't familiar with my pronouns and puts in a real concerted effort. And that doesn't mean getting it right straight off the bat, but I can tell when people are trying, and I can tell when people are barely navigating their own discomfort and trying to avoid doing something that's ultimately a very low level of respect for a person. So, yeah, I use they them now because for me, anyone can be they masculine or a feminine looking person can be they. And it's the same for the pronouns she and know. There are many lesbians in the world that use he him pronouns. There are many gay men who refer to one another as she or her. But where we're know, especially in the UK, in terms of our societal development at this stage, we still have incredibly gendered ideas about the pronouns she and he. So where I'm at now, they feels like the way to go. And I wish that it wasn't informed by that external pressure. But at the same time, our identities do respond to our environment. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, we're kind of hooked up with how people look, aren't we? Yes, you've got this in your pants, you've got this in your head and you have to portray those to make me comfortable. As you say, you identify with they, them pronouns, nonbinary or kind of queer as such. But you look, as everyone would probably say, traditionally feminine. And it's not that you aren't feminine in some way, but your identity is queer. And amongst that, and I remember you saying to me once that you really love to take a little bit of testosterone and grow a little bit of a moustache or a beard. And I thought that was fantastic when you said this and I thought, wow, that amazing blonde hair you've got, and a little bit of a moustache would be fantastic. It looks so good on you. I still want to get to the moustache, Joanne, I really do. Georgie Williams: I was on testosterone for about six months and then I think I said to you that I had to stop, mostly because travelling meant that I couldn't access testosterone easily. And then when I came back to the UK, I didn't have the money for healthcare and trans healthcare is treated like a luxury instead of a. Right. So, yeah, I didn't take testosterone long enough to get that wonderful little moustache that I still dream about. But the thing is that I'm acutely aware of how choices I have made with my appearance lead people to read me in particular ways. For a long time, I have had long blonde hair, very blonde hair, and people always read that as an inherently feminine thing. And I'm always like, no, in terms of where my masculinity is at, I kind of want to be like a slightly more muscular version of like, Legolas from Lord of the Rings, right? Who has that fascinatingly blonde long hair, right? That's where my masculinity sits. But we don't read people like that. And I recently did some training for an organisation where I was actually saying, when we look at people, we are inclined to read things like, long blonde hair is feminine, right? Facial hair is always masculine. Ignoring the number of individuals who identify as cis women who have polycystic ovarian syndrome and grow facial hair. We have so many rigid ideas about the way a body has to look. And yeah, I think sometimes people think non binary. People look completely know, like Tilda, Sweden in Constantine, just completely androgynous. Right? That's not how it works. I've previously joked that being non binary for me means that I'm actually gender greedy. I actually want to look really feminine and really masculine at the same time. And that makes it harder for people to read me. But I also think that our dependence on being able to make gendered assumptions about people from the moment we see them across the room is an unnecessary habit that many of us are encouraged to develop. Joanne Lockwood: I'm just imagining you as Legolas, as a king of the elves and be able to walk on snow or grass without leaving footprints. And that'd be a real good upgrade to your superpower. Wouldn't say? You didn't know that Georgie Williams: nonbinary people can do that. No, it's not in Joanne Lockwood: the book. I've got. Obviously, that's a secret thing, that nonbinary people. There's all these books, these imaginary books around trans people and cabals and how trans people all keep in touch with each other. We get this super connected power base all telekinetic and you must know every other trans person in the country. You must get this. Do you know so and so? No, I don't. Sorry. No. Georgie Williams: Worst is when that happens to me and then I'll be like, well, listen, we don't all know each other, but, yes, I do actually know that person. It is always. I Joanne Lockwood: just. I can definitely see you as an elf. So that would work. Just maybe grow your ears slightly. Bit of a. But yeah. Legolas doesn't have a beard, though, does it? So we're a moustache. No, I'm like a pirate. Georgie Williams: Legolas. Yeah. I used to support a moustache for many years. I was in the Joanne Lockwood: RAF when I left school and it was a bit of rebellion because in the RAF the only facial hair you're allowed is a moustache. Very stereotypical, kind of World War II pilot sort of twiddle it type thing. If I'd have been the navy, I could have grown a full beard, but I was able to grow a moustache and I had this from the age of probably, I don't know, 1718, which was a bit mousy and a bit kind of nonexistent. And then I shaved it off for a bet in the year 2000 and it was kind of part of who I was for a long while and my daughter really rejected me for a while after I shaved it off because her whole entire visual image of me was with a moustache and she had never seen me without it. But then when I transitioned, I had the lot lasered off. If anyone's ever had laser on their legs, try having it on your face, it's incredibly painful. 14 separate occasions of. So, yeah, I'm wholeheartedly hairless. Wherever I can be, because I want to play that game of gender. I want to play that game of. I want people to clock me and read me without stubble. So, yeah, I recognise that I am fitting into Cassidy constructs and it's hard not to. To fit into that rule set when you want to be accepted for who you are. Georgie Williams: I also think it's safety when advocating for trans healthcare. Before, I previously said that one of the ways in which it is as a life saving service is because if people can't tell that you're trans, you're less likely to get attacked on the street, like, you're less likely to face employment discrimination, you're less likely to be made to feel like a second class citizen, that there are many people who I think could comfortably live their lives as a trans person not passing to a cisgender standard, because that's what it is, right? We're talking about a cisgender standard of gender identity, not just a universal one, but also people want to feel affirmed, they want to be treated with respect and made to feel safe, but they also want to be recognised as belonging to a particular community as well. And when I think we use aesthetic details as an excuse to deny people the word I'm looking for, I guess membership dignity to a particular group. Dignity, yeah, but also membership to a particular social group, like gender identity. It means people have to jump through so many hoops in order to feel affirmed and secure beyond how they felt about themselves in the first place. A lot of Joanne Lockwood: people's safety and their fight, flight or fear mechanism where they freeze is all caught up in very historical, prehistorical kind of brain development. The biases and the vagus nerve and our reaction to things. And in the same way that trans people are trying to. We use the word pass, mask, cover, whatever word you want to use to be read, perceived as the gender they identify as, because it's a very strong reaction in people who will fear. Fear or discomfort around someone who is of the opposite gender, for want of a better way of describing it, which is a lot of the critical movement is caught up in fear of men in spaces. And the perception that a trans woman or someone who is identifying as queer is actually a man or wolf in sheep's clothing is kind of the argument. So how do we reconcile that fight, flight or freeze mechanism that is being invoked by people who are not read or pass in that chosen gender? Well, I mean, I think there's Georgie Williams: a huge overlap with this conversation and conversations around disability inclusion and racial inclusion. It's that idea of person has to look a particular way in order for me to respect them. And there's ways that we can unpick those cognitive biases. I mean, this is unconscious bias that we're contending with is so many of us were taught from a young age that this is what a respectable, normal person looks like. And if they deviate in x, y or z ways, then there's something innately wrong with them. I think in particular, what the gender and sexuality kind of diversity community faces the most are accusations of perversion, right? That actually there must be something inherently creepy or predatory about you if you flaunt these gender rules in how you present yourself, and also in terms of what relationships you navigate in your personal life. And I think if I had an answer for how we confront and dismantle these issues, I'd be making so much more money. But fundamentally, it is about taking a step back and questioning on what grounds do we decide who's a person and who's not. I think with disability, that's an easier conversation to have at this time, instead of competitive with the trans community, because disability is something that can happen to us. Lots of people don't want to talk about it and don't like that, but it's a thing that can happen to us. And sometimes the conversation around disability inclusion, although it definitely isn't easy right now, is sometimes about, well, if this happened to you, how would it change how you felt about disability, and how would it change how you wanted to be perceived? And you're still that person. Your sense of self can absolutely change, but you're still absolutely a human being. But people don't like to think about trans identities in that way, because they believe that being trans is completely alien to them as a cis person, that they could never go through this process of learning about themselves and discover that something they've been taught is an absolute truth about themselves is not the case. So the touch point of empathy can be difficult to get to, but it is about saying, well, listen, what actually differentiates me from that person hugely? Is it as simple as aesthetics? Mostly, yes. The overwhelming majority of people just want to be able to go about their lives without causing problems for anyone else, without causing any extra stress for themselves. And when we create gender neutral spaces, we take a worry off of the minds of most trans people. And listen, we could have a whole separate question about the unfounded concerns about predatory trans people, specifically trans women being demonised, not being allowed into gender specific spaces, and how so many of the accusations around conduct just have no evidence behind them. But that's a whole separate issue. And yeah, I think the conversation is getting better, but it's definitely vitriolic at this stage. Yeah, I've had Joanne Lockwood: conversations with people who are concerned about their own personal dignity and their own personal respect for maybe intimate care or using a toilet, and there being a trans woman present, or the trans woman is providing the service or the care to them. And they said, I wouldn't like that if that person. Because in their head they're thinking this person isn't a woman, they're thinking this person is a man. They can't disassociate their assignment at birth with their identity and who they are today, regardless. And I said, I just asked them the question. So if you didn't realise the person who was treating you was trans, it would be okay. Then they went, well, yeah. So it's down to how good someone looks, how someone passes to gain acceptance. We would look at cyclists I think someone's talking about in the news at the moment. We talk about people in prison. If you couldn't tell they were trans, it's okay, then it's only the fact you can tell they're trans because they look different or they're a bit taller, their fingers are a bit larger. So you're using beauty bias or perception bias around how someone looks. And that's the challenge, isn't it? Which is why you talk about passing and living up to the rule set. Yeah. And actually that reminds me of some reading I was Georgie Williams: doing just last week. It was some archival writing, I believe, mid 19 hundreds, about health care for transsexual, identifying individuals, but specifically with what we would now describe as trans women, where sometimes their healthcare physicians were denying them treatment because they didn't pass enough. There was even an excerpt from a trans woman talking about how I believe she had been permitted treatment because the doctor said that as a heterosexual man, he felt an emotional response to her and therefore that must make her a woman, that it was down to terms of this doctor's attraction to her, which is outrageous. Can you believe that that is still an issue that we face because it is like we still have issues with people being denied trans healthcare because it seemed that they're not putting in enough effort to pass as the cis version of their gender identity? And can you imagine what it would be like if cis individuals were being denied health care on the same grounds of, oh, well, I don't want to really treat you like a man, because as a female doctor, I don't find you attractive enough to believe you're truly a man. Can you imagine if that was happening? Yeah. Or are you sure you should have a baby? Joanne Lockwood: You don't really look like a mother. That sort of thing isn't there? And, you know, funnily enough, I've experienced the opposite with my own Georgie Williams: health care. As someone who I have no interest in having biological children, I am very much staunchly child free in that regard. And I have had medical professionals make very, very sweeping assumptions about what I want to do with my body. I once had a doctor tell me, well, if you wanted to get this procedure done, there'd be so few complications that you won't even have to tell the midwife when you give birth. Emphasis on the when. And I just thought that that was absolutely shocking. So, yeah, the way that we police gender with people's bodies, it's a shame that there's still, especially in this country, more so in this country than in the rest of western Europe, a pushback from so many women about fundamental rights and protections for trans people, because they've also faced the same struggles with bodily autonomy and recognition for that. And, yeah, we have more in common in our battles than we have. Different, in my opinion. So in your adventures Joanne Lockwood: around the world, talking to people and experience, at what age do you think someone's old enough to know that they're trans or queer or bi or gay? At what age does that formulate? I think that that is Georgie Williams: such a complex question, because for me, that's like saying, at what point in your adulthood do you know that you want kids or that you'd be capable of having a child and raising them properly? And by that, what I'm saying is not that young people don't know when they're young that they're trans or queer, but that it is subjective to the individual, and that there are many young people that absolutely know who they are from a young age, and that putting a hard line on it and saying you'll definitely know by this age, or you can't know until this age is incredibly reductive. I didn't come out about my sexuality until I was 15, which is by no means late, but I had been aware of it, in a sense, since I was about seven years old. I didn't have the language to articulate it at the time. Maybe if I had, I would have been able to talk about it more freely. I have a younger relative who first. She first expressed interest in other girls the age of, like, six or seven. And because it was a non issue, because this is a household that talked very openly about gender and sexuality. There was no discomfort in her expressing that. And now that she's a lot older, she still very much feels that way. I don't like the idea that gender and sexuality is something that you only truly understand at a certain age, because I think what that implies is that if you identify, especially if we're talking about sexuality, if you identify as gay or bisexual at a young age, it comes back to that idea of perversion, that there is something sexual about that child. Sexuality encompasses romantic interest. It doesn't have to have anything to do with sexual interest, and especially not as a child. You can have crushes on people in school in the way that a heterosexual child would, and it doesn't have to mean anything else. But we don't like talking about gay children and trans children because we see it as something inherently perverse. And it's not. There is nothing abnormal or strange or predatory about being a queer person or being a trans person. I think you picked up Joanne Lockwood: on it there. The parents are loving, they want their child to succeed, and suddenly they discover there's something not the same as them. They no longer fit into their dream and vision of how that child's going to evolve, grow, have a family. They could become grandparents. Suddenly, all their life's ambitions for this child have been shattered because they're queer in some way. And that's kind of the parents almost again trying to police their child back into the visionary box they had for them and see them as broken or having a condition. Some of that surely comes down to representation. If you're not seeing queer people, trans people, nonbinary people, bi, gay, on television, in the media, working in shops, that reinforces the subversive, secretive, perversive type stuff we've talked about, because people aren't being in the mainstream. So we need to make sure we have more mainstream representation of people with a disability, of people of colour, et cetera, and queer people to allow people to believe that they can succeed in society. Yeah, Georgie Williams: absolutely. And I think that representation, our idea of representation, I still think, is very two dimensional as well, where it's like, am I seeing a gay couple in a McDonald's advert and that kind of thing, where it's like, okay, great. So do you actually care about these people and the nuances of their identity and their welfare, or do you want to virtue signal using our community? And, yeah, I think good representation involves showing how people don't fit into clear boxes, ever. That your ideas about queer people, trans people need to be loose and open to account for everyone. Because it's not about just creating more bites, like we said earlier. It's about saying, well, the boxes don't actually exist. I remember when I was growing up that whenever I saw people talking about bisexuality, it was about kind of dispelling this notion of, well, bisexual people aren't greedy, they're just capable of attraction to more than one gender. And I remember as a teenager being like, no, I am. I am greedy, but I'm also a human being and I don't need my identity to be sanitised in order for me to be respected. There's many, many. Listen, if you think about cisgender, heterosexual men who can have many relationships all the way throughout their lives, and people go, oh, good for him, right? Anyone else? Especially bisexual people, you have lots of different relationships, especially early on in your life, and it's seen as dysfunctional, it's seen as, once again, perverse and predatory. So, yeah, I think representation is also about saying there's nuance to our identities and this is how we present them. Not morally perfect queer people, not queer people as villains, but a little bit of everything. Yeah. When I Joanne Lockwood: transitioned seven or eight years ago, hard to define a point because it's an evolution rather than a point in time. I was married at the time for best part of 30 years, 28, 29, 30 years. My wife, in order to be able to get her head around it, had to open up her own thinking around her own sense of sexuality. And it's actually, if you like, enabled her to be open about her bisexuality, which allowed her to reconcile with me and accept me for who I am without rocking her sense of self either. So she's now openly bisexual. It doesn't mean to say we're going to go out there and have relationships with anybody else. It just means that we're quite comfortable in a relationship that isn't traditional, it isn't normal, whatever, however you want to describe it. I can be queer, Marie can be bi, I can be pansexual. Not that I want to do anything with it, but it allows me to have a conversation with my wife where we're compatible because we're not creating any rule set that says we're incompatible. And allowing herself to explore that, created the ability for her to accept me in a way that we embrace each other's identities now rather than being a barrier between us. And I know many people struggle, if you're in a relationship, to be able to take that bisexuality or that gay or that lesbian or a trans dynamic into your relationship, because it's about you, isn't it? It's about your own identity and it impacts them. Yes, totally. Because I Georgie Williams: think when we have conversations about this, people always consider their own identity. And when we have to ask those questions, sometimes it can make us uncomfortable. And actually, I mean, speaking from a personal perspective as well, my partner has always identified as a cisgender, heterosexual white man. We actually met on the ship that I was travelling on, which was a very queer ship. We had a female majority crew, we had many queer people. I was one of four trans people in the crew. And this was his kind of first experience of being around trans people. And it was never something that shook him up, ever. And I remember when we first kind of started our relationship and I remember saying, well, do you ever question how this makes you feel about yourself? And I remember him being completely honest and being like, well, listen, I don't care enough to ask those kinds of questions about myself. I am happy and I am in a relationship. It doesn't have to shake the foundations of me feeling like me. And I loved that because it wasn't him saying, oh, well, your identity is not relevant to how I feel about myself. But he was more like, I know who I am and I don't need to put labels on that. I can feel like the labels I've grown up with still identify me, but still feel very firmed and assured about my own identity in this relationship and respect and acknowledge yours. And I think sometimes we expect queer relationships to tick certain boxes in order to be respected. I think especially it's something that I see with. I've see it with trans women who previously identified with gay men, whose partners still identify as gay men. And yes, sometimes that doesn't work, sometimes it does. And both of those people can feel comfortable in their identities, but also say, this relationship works for us. Joanne Lockwood: So you're out with your partner who identifies and presume he expresses as a white man or a man, a straight man who gets offered the menu. When you sit in a restaurant, does he offer the menu and asked to place the order, or do you get a look in? I'll be entirely honest, he Georgie Williams: is a very sweet, softly spoken introvert and I am a human tornado, which means that largely, I take the lead on these things anyways. So I think, yeah, I haven't really paid a huge amount of attention to it, but usually I'm the one that will ask for the bill and things like that. I think usually it comes to me because that's one of the joys of gender, is it doesn't matter what gender you are, if you are loud and annoying, people will defer to you. In a restaurant, when my wife and I, we go Joanne Lockwood: out, we're in a restaurant, and we know that the waiter is going to come over and look at both of us a couple of times and go, what do I do? We have a discussion before we go in and say, right, your turn to order, and I'll pay, sort of thing. So we predefined how we're going to respond and interact with the waiter because we know that it often causes confusion. I'll reach the menu, or we'll say to each other, so what do you think you're having? Or what do you think you're having? And we go, okay, you go first. No, you go first. All right, I'll go first. So we have that kind of. But it's almost like a little game with us because we know the person is not sure how to deal with us. Well, I mean, my partner and I kind Georgie Williams: of play with these things in similar ways as well, because I think he loves the novelty of it, that you get to see people behaving in such unusual ways, because that social script is gone. And one of the things that I remember happening was actually on the ship that we still go and do maintenance on together. So the thing is that he and I refer to each other. He refers to me as his husband. I refer to him as my wife. And it became a joke that was like, oh, actually, we quite like this. And it's quite sweet. And I remember once he was working on the other side of the ship, and the person down on the deck, I was up in the rig was like, oh, do you need anything? And I was like, can you just tell my hot wife that I love him as a joke? And someone misheard that and turned to my partner and went, oh, your hot wife loves you. And I was like, no, you heard that in the way that you wanted to hear it because you looked at me and went, that would be the person who's described as the wife in this relationship. And I thought it was so interesting, that exposure of that kind of, like, unconscious bias. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it is. And it's fun. I often get people now helping me with my bag up the stairs or something. If I'm checking to a hotel, someone will rush over and go, I saw it, love. I'll take that. And I go, yes. Result micro validation. Yeah, I'll take that. Every day. And Marie looks at me funny sometimes. He says, aren't you going to carry my bag? I said, do I look like a husband? But obviously ingest. And we play with it, and it's fun to sort of challenge these gendered rules and who does what? My wife and I do joint talks. She always says that I don't do the dishwasher. And so the dishwasher is, for whatever reason, Marie's role. But I always point out that I do do the rinse aid and put the salt in because that's not what Marie does. I do the mechanical stuff. She does sort of like the housewife. Yeah. I think it's no different to other queer relationships. Lesbian relationships, gay relationships, bi relationships, whatever. You just define your own protocols, don't you? Georgie Williams: You do. You really do. And it was something that I found very affirming at the start of my relationship with my partner was he said that one of the things he loved about being in his first ever queer relationship is the freedom it gave him, that actually there weren't ways that he felt pressured to perform in order to be the man in the relationship and have his partner be the woman in the relationship that actually, we've kind of thrown that script out the window, and we were figuring out what worked for us. And it feels very emancipating to be able to say, actually, whatever worked before felt restrictive. And we get to decide what this dynamic looks like. And sure, maybe it makes other people uncomfortable, but that's nothing to do with us. It's been. Yeah, so liberating. Thank you. That's amazing. Joanne Lockwood: And we could carry on all day. I know we could. And we've spoke many times before. This is fascinating. And to Georgie, how can people get hold of you? I'm sure they'd love to tune into your podcast and find out more. So how do people get hold of you? So if you'd like to Georgie Williams: listen to the podcast, the podcast name is Queer, so that's a forward slash Q-U-E-E-R. If you search queer on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you'll come across it. It's queer in black text on a white background, so it's relatively easy to find. You can also find it via my social media. So my Instagram handle is queer. That's slash queer. It's the same handle on Twitter, which I barely use now because of Elon Musk. You can also find me on LinkedIn, my name being Georgie Williams. And you can also cheque out more of the project at the Slash queer website, which is slash queer.com slash queer. Thank you, Joanne Lockwood: Georgie. You've been amazing. Thank you for having me. As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to inclusion bites and become part of our ever growing community, driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire. And unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite. Close.