[Intro Music]

00:00:08:11 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated, in every classroom, in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series one of the Diverse Ed podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:14 – 00:01:18:01
Nick
Hello and welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. My name is Nick Kitchener-Bentley and I’m a lead practitioner and drama / inclusion teacher at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:18:17 – 00:01:28:29
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi and I’m an assistant head teacher also at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also a network lead for Women Ed in London. In this episode, we will talk to Dylan from the gender reassignment chapter.

00:01:30:12 – 00:01:44:00
Nick
Okay, so, Dylan, one of the things that we like to do at the start of each podcast is just to get the contributor to talk a little bit about themselves. So I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind just introducing yourself to the audience in one sentence, please?

00:01:45:05 – 00:02:06:01
Dylan
I’m Dylan Ahmed and I am a trainee teacher training to be a PE teacher, so still in uni, and I am a member of Phys Equity and a youth leader for Phys Equity and we look at diversity and inclusion, especially in PE.

00:02:06:01 – 00:02:13:02
Yamina
Thank you so much. Congratulations. So what we want to ask first is what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.

00:02:14:19 – 00:03:37:04
Dylan
So for me, I only recently left secondary school a few years back and I got really into networking as soon as I left through the Twitter world. And I came across Hannah and looked at Diverse Ed and got quite involved through Phys Equity as well. And I realised that it was having great contributions from so, so many teachers. But then I was looking and I was like, there’s not much youth involvement so far. Like people who had recently been students, recently gone through the school system and experienced it from that point of view. And I was like, I have so many experiences to talk about, so many things I’ve done through school that could help teachers, people like me, training to be teachers, to have a deeper understanding about it. And I got involved with Diverse Ed and started doing a couple of panels and I just got so into it and loved what it was doing and so many people started to interact with me and ask questions. And yeah, I kind of just went from there and got involved, and it was just great working with my chapter as well.

00:03:38:10 – 00:04:10:16
Nick
Thank you for that, Dylan. I agree. It’s really powerful to have such a mixture of different voices or people from different sectors of education, you know, whether you’ve just recently been to school like you’re describing or people that have been working in schools for a long time. So yeah, it’s really good to have that diversity of perspectives. And you just touched on something that I think is really interesting also, as well as your contribution, that of the whole chapter team that you’re working with because we were working collaboratively weren’t we? So could you maybe tell us a little bit about the different themes that your overall chapter team wanted to explore, please?

00:04:11:20 – 00:05:38:01
Dylan
So as a team, we looked a lot at trans and gender diverse inclusion across the curriculum and different year groups. So we’ve got a chapter based on primary school education. We’ve got a couple of teachers talking about their interactions with staff and how it works in their own work life and their experiences with that. A few of us talking about students, bringing trans and gender diverse students into the discussion rather than talking about them, but not to them about their own identities. And a lot of what we wrote about did focus on taking the ideas that are in the media right now, especially right now. There’s so much discourse, a lot of it negative, and trying to steer away from that, steer away from that discourse and start talking more about just basic respect, humanity, not politicising this whole idea of teaching people about what it is to be trans, to be gender diverse, and just looking at it from a completely different perspective to what we’ve been seeing in the media recently.

00:05:39:09 – 00:05:53:18
Yamina
I love that. Thank you so much. And I think you just kind of really linked to our next question about what are some of the key challenges for people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment that your team really wants to address.

00:05:53:18 – 00:09:21:05
Dylan
So some of the things like I’ve just mentioned, the media has been portraying recently, is that we are being so politicised. We have become this point of discussion where it’s like they’re trying to draw out so many negatives that most of the time just don’t exist. A lot of, for me, especially going into PE, a lot of the recent rules in athletics and just lots of sports where there’s loads of bans going on and trans athletes having more restrictions. It’s something that’s just been really upsetting for anyone to see, especially being in the community ourselves, and in the chapter we were looking at, especially in schools, how I think I mentioned in my chapter one point, whenever it is discussed in schools, or at least when I was there, it tends be a topic of debate rather than something we’re being educated about. And the idea that we’re always being debated, our own identity, is something that people can argue back and forth about, and we’re just sitting there. No one’s really listening fully. We can say what we want, but it’s just being looked over because there’s so many loud voices going over the top of us because people enjoy seeing these arguments. Like for us to see what it’s like, why there’s some things that they say that are negative. Like a lot of the discussion around people not liking the idea of gender neutral toilets, things like that, where we just sit back and read, like we can say what we want, we can say that we’ve had our struggles with going to a public toilet, and being scared of being harassed or literally being kicked out of the toilet by someone, which are lived experiences for us. Like a lot of the people that I’ve spoken to have had similar experiences where they feel so scared about a simple thing like that and they’ve had really bad experiences. And we’re getting, we’re still getting put in a negative light about it because people are making other ideas up, which aren’t fully backed by lived experiences of people being like people are going to dress up and predators are going to go into the toilets. This is something I see every day when I’m on Twitter, like someone arguing about that where there’s little to no evidence about things like that and it just comes back on us, like, what do we do? And a lot of this chapter, we were like, we need to try and address it in the best way we can to enlighten people and not make it something that people can argue about. Let them see our stories and what we actually have to experience just to be able to live on a daily basis doing basic things.

00:09:22:19 – 00:10:48:09
Nick
Thank you for that, Dylan. I think you’ve spoken incredibly powerfully about the experience and the frankly disgusting media oppression that we’re seeing at the moment, the narratives that have been playing out that have been damaging to real people. And I think that that will resonate with people who are listening. So I just want to thank you for that. It’s incredibly important that we all speak up for trans people. And in my mind, and as a cis, white, gay man, I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community, but I’m aware that I have a lot of privilege, and I know that it’s really important that everybody takes a stand here in this moment because, as you say, it is unacceptable and in your chapter, Dylan, you write really powerfully about some of the problems of the things that are going on in the school system specifically and what needs to happen. Yamina and I have been looking at some of the different parts of the chapters. And one thing that we were really interested in was your key takeaways. So I’m just going to read out your takeaways that you write at the end of your chapter and I was wondering if you could maybe expand a little bit about them and explain why that’s important. And so you wrote that transgender and gender diverse children exist at the margins of our schools. Not enough is being done to bring transgender and gender diverse children into the discourse. Opportunities are missed every day for adults to make things better for transgender and gender diverse children. Could you just expand a little bit for us on this and explain why these takeaways are so important to you?

00:10:49:16 – 00:16:41:04
Dylan
Yeah, so I think all three of them do go quite hand-in-hand with each other, the first one being that trans and gender diverse people exist in the margins of our schools. And I think that’s something that really resonated with me and my experience within school and going through school. When I came out in school, I was the, as far as I know at least, the first person in that school to come out as trans and it was quite a big thing because a lot of teachers didn’t exactly know how to go about it. As supportive, supportive as many of them were, no one knew what to do. It became a thing where I, as the student, had to take responsibility for myself, feeling safe within the school. I had to take that responsibility of going to senior leadership and being like, look, I want my, I need my preferred name on the register. And that whole process took between, that started in year nine that process, and just before I left in year 11 was when I got my name actually on the register and just things like that, things like I was very lucky with changing and I was very close to my PE department. It was, I wasn’t too bothered about the changing rooms, but then there were a lot of people that came after me who were but they were too scared to really say anything. I think I was quite lucky. I had a very good relationship with the majority of teachers in general. I found it a lot easier to speak to them and get things done. We got a transgender policy written while I was in Year 10 or 11, I can’t fully remember, which I did side by side with one of the senior leadership members. And as great as that was, that I was able to do that, I don’t think it’s fair that that responsibility was put on a student. It could have, it could have been someone else. It might not have been me. It might have been someone else who just doesn’t have a great relationship with teachers in general. Doesn’t feel confident enough to bring these things forward and in the long run, with the teachers not fully knowing what to do about that at the time, that student would have felt so much worse off if they came out and nothing was done because they wouldn’t go forward and do it themselves, which is not something they should have to do. And I think that’s the most important thing about when I talk about trans and gender diverse people being in the margins of our schools. We are everywhere. Like if you see or not, if we’re out, if we’re not, things should already be in place for us to be comfortable, personally, as someone who is quite an advocate, it was a great feeling to get those things done in the school. But at the same time, the amount of effort it took, it was mentally draining. It was in like the most important years of secondary school, like year 10 and 11, when I had GCSEs, you know loads of stuff, year 11 I missed loads of school basically just because of that. I’d come in for PE and basically that was about it. Like I remember that was my safe space. That was my one safe space. I’d like, sometimes I’d missed the whole day, know I’d have PE period five, sneak in through the visitor’s gate just for that. And then looking back on it now, if it were different, if those things that I had made come, come to life had been in place prior to me coming out, I think my school experience would be completely different, especially in later years of secondary. It’s just something that I think is so important for every school to hear because now being a trainee teacher, I’ve just done my first placement recently and I’ve only been out of school for three years, maybe three or four years, but the school that I’m at now, they’ve already, they already have these things in place. And I’ve had students who I’ve taught who do identify as trans or gender diverse. And it is such a different situation for them. And I’m looking at it now like, wow, I wish that could have been me and it is great to see it starting to be implemented in some schools. I don’t know if I just got a school that happened to go through the same process that my school did, or if it is something that’s just happening generally in schools now, but I can see the difference it makes. I can see how it would have made a difference when I was in school. And I think that’s why I think those takeaways are so important. The responsibility shouldn’t be put on the students when they’re already having such a tough time because we already know how much just the identity of being trans or gender diverse goes hand-in-hand with a lot of mental health issues.

00:16:42:22 – 00:17:46:29
Yamina
Thank you so much. All I’ve done this series is cry, so I will burst into tears soon, but I’m holding it together today. And I think what you said is so powerful and so important, that lots of that work does tend to fall on the minoritised person or the minoritised groups and your experience there is so hard hitting actually. So as teachers, it’s really important for us to reflect on what we’re doing and whether we are creating that sense of belonging is actually what you talk about in your commitment to the manifesto where you ask teachers, actually school leaders, to look for opportunities to give transgender and gender diverse children a sense of belonging. So we wanted to ask you, Dylan, how do you want your commitment to the manifesto to really galvanise actions from the readers? Because we can hear from what you just talked about in terms of the key challenges, but in terms of our readers and our listeners, what do you want? What actions would you like to see and what changes would you like to see essentially in terms of any teachers who are listening right now?

00:17:46:29 – 00:21:32:00
Dylan
I think the one basic thing is the sense of understanding and respect. And it sounds so simple. It sounds so simple. But there’s been times where I’ve been told that I’m accepted and they respect me. But then it was contradicted with the actions of, no, you can’t have your name on the register. Or I had an experience when I was first asking about my name. Yeah, it was year eight or nine, I want to say year nine, where there was some of the leadership members who were telling my other, my other teachers who were gladly calling me by my name, gladly using my pronouns, were being told not to. I found out from one teacher and I was, I had no words. And that’s what I mean by just simple understanding and respect, like calling someone by their name, using language that makes them feel accepted, makes them feel like they belong in that place. And of course, alongside that, the actions that you do, having things in place in schools where students, if anything, can get a note by their name on the register, if not, have their name changed because of different reasons. There might be, and I think, like I’ve talked about in my chapter, the whole curriculum in general, it’s hard to change a whole curriculum. I know that. And it’s so ingrained in schools, especially with such a heavy focus on exams, but if not changing the whole curriculum, stopping lessons from being tokenistic, stopping lessons on trans identities, from being those one offs that become debates, even if it is slowly implemented throughout in subtle ways even, it can be something like mentioning a role model in that area, in history, in maths, in English, whatever it may be that happens to have a trans identity. It can be the subtlest things that make a trans student go, oh, I can identify with that. And even to those who aren’t teachers listening, those who might still be in school, those who are parents, whatever, it may be listening to that person. If there’s someone in your life that has come out as trans or gender diverse, listening to them, not arguing about them or questioning them, trying to understand what they have to say and giving them that space to be themselves, to talk, not having to hide who they are and not using headlines from the media to come back at them like, oh, well, the news said this. So yeah, like in a nutshell, it’s all about actions, respect and understanding.

00:21:33:10 – 00:21:41:02
Nick
Well, that’s three very clear things, isn’t it? Thank you for that. Actions and ideas and understanding. No, I’ve forgotten. Would you say it again, Dylan?

00:21:41:02 – 00:21:44:01
Dylan
Actions. Respect. Understanding.

00:21:44:14 – 00:22:32:04
Nick
Actions. Respect. Understanding. I’ve got that, good. So I’m just writing this down because it’s so interesting and I love what you were saying there about like the simple changes that can be made and what needs to happen with the curriculum and also just the importance of listening to people. I think, you know, frankly, that’s something that we can all do, isn’t it? And when Yamina and I were reading the chapter, a phrase that really jumped out was, that you used that I thought is just an amazing phrase is gender euphoria. I thought, what a brilliant phrase, let’s use that more. And I just thought, I was really interested by it and you said we should look toward how we can create moments of gender euphoria. Dylan, I was wondering if you could maybe tell us a little bit about why gender euphoria is so important, what it means, and what do you think educators can do to create gender euphoria.

00:22:33:10 – 00:27:45:27
Dylan
So, gender euphoria is the idea of feeling so affirmed in who you are. You get these moments of happiness from those direct actions. So for me, like an example would be when I first came out and someone first used my name, or first used my pronouns and the, it’s just that automatic smile on my face. I’m feeling like I had been accepted and someone saw me for who I am. And I think the reason I chose to write about it was because when I would read about other trans identities, there was a strong emphasis on gender dysphoria, which is the opposite. So that feeling of not feeling like yourself in your own body, people misusing pronouns, not using your name. And I thought to myself, as hard as those times are, and they are, it’s something that doesn’t really go away. What can schools do to combat that? And I thought about those moments of gender euphoria, which is talked about a bit, but it’s not talked about much. And I want it to be talked about more because those positive moments have such an impact on a person. Like I can pinpoint most of those positive moments from secondary school, whereas the moments where I might have been called the wrong name, I know it happened, but I can’t pinpoint it. Being able to pinpoint those positive experiences gives a bit of hope. It gives that sense of everything is going to be okay. It might not be fully okay right now, but people are starting to understand and maybe soon it’ll be different because that’s what it was for me and it still is a lot of the time. I’ve nowhere near completed my journey and those moments where I’m given that bit of hope are so important to me and I know is so important to loads of trans kids, loads of gender diverse kids, that sense of social transition. So being able to have your identity seen in a social setting is a massive thing, especially right now with people who are looking to medically transition. The waiting list for the NHS is ridiculously long. Last I looked at the waiting list was, well, online it says that the waiting list is 30 to 36 months to get your first appointment. That’s what it says online. I’ve been on the waiting list since I was 15. I haven’t got a first appointment yet and I’m going to be 20 this year. A lot, because of that, a lot of people go looking into private care, but then with private care, money issues. So it’s just a big circle that’s going back and forth, which ones better, there aren’t any amazing options. Private care is quicker but it’s very expensive. NHS, you’re waiting so long and that’s just due to the fact that there’s not a lot of people trained to administer things for transitioning. For me, a lot of gender dysphoria comes from not being able to medically transition yet because of obstacles in the way, whether it be waiting lists, money issues, whatever it may be. So those moments of gender euphoria solely come from social interactions and a lot of the time those moments were within school. So I think it’s just important to highlight that because even I hadn’t really heard about gender euphoria that much. So I think getting more awareness about it and what it can do for a person is so important because again, it’s quite a simple thing to allow a student or a teacher, whoever it may be, to feel like there’s hope.

00:27:45:27 – 00:28:40:10
Yamina
I love that. I love gender euphoria. It’s so positive in the way in which it’s reframed. And you’ve done that so beautifully. So thank you, Dylan. And actually, you talked about this earlier about real representation and being able to identify it in terms of the curriculum and what really stood out to us was you essentially mentioned about the gender diversity. It’s always existed within many other cultures. And you mentioned the Hijras in South Asia. And I can’t remember, I think it was an Arundhati Roy book actually where I first encountered Hijras. We had never really heard about it before either. I was really annoyed, like why hadn’t I been taught it before. And the question we wanted to know is how important is it that school leaders ensure the curriculum really highlights that gender diversity exists across the curriculum? And how might they support middle leaders who are in charge of the curriculum, perhaps in creating that inclusive curriculum?

00:28:40:10 – 00:32:31:15
Dylan
With that, I think it’s the first, first and foremost, the senior leaders and middle leaders actually learning about it themselves because no one, no one knows about it. Like you said, I’m also from a South Asian background. I didn’t know much about Hijras either. And this kind of links back into looking at decolonising the curriculum because when I was looking at it, a lot of it comes back to the British Empire and trying to erase that from the history. And it is amazing to see that there is such a rich history of gender diversity across the world. And reading about it myself, I was amazed. I think in terms of supporting middle leaders, it would take quite, it would take someone who knows exactly what they are talking about. They need to fully know the background and history of it because say something like Hijras, they are, used to be a long time ago before the empire, very accepted in society, in South Asian society. But now it is the complete opposite because new ideas were brought in and things changed. And I think even my, say my parents, they would have that negative idea of it because that’s all they know and they don’t know the rich history of it. I would say middle leaders go into things like workshops, someone coming forward and saying, look, I want to implement this, I want you to learn about this. Really trying to give an overall kind of, what’s the word, trying to think of what overall perspective of everything that’s happened. Because I think if you just go online and if you go online and look up Hijra or Two Spirit or whatever it may be, I think the first things that tend to come up are the negative things, which goes hand in hand with the media today and the attack on trans and gender diverse people. So it’s I think is dangerous. Just to mention without any backstory, it’s dangerous to just be in a lesson and put something on the board like, oh, look at these different people for a student to then go home and Google what Hijra people are, how are they treated, and see all the negatives of it. It’s not something that should be tiptoed around or just mentioned off the bat. If it’s going to be mentioned, it’s something that needs to be properly talked about and looked at in depth and look at all the positives that came before the negative discussion around it.

00:32:32:21 – 00:33:13:19
Nick
Yeah, love that and love that clarity as well. And important, I think, for all people in schools from senior leadership down to consider genuine authentic representation to create something that’s really, really like a clear way that you’ve expanded on that example. So thank you for that. Yamina and I are really interested in your perspective on the changes that need to happen. I think you’ve told us very clearly about some of the things that have been going on in schools and the current context within education and beyond that. But in an ideal world, what changes would you like to see happen in the school system regarding the protected characteristic of gender reassignment?

00:33:14:17 – 00:38:04:00
Dylan
I mean, ideally every school should have a policy in place, specifically protecting trans and gender diverse students, which in that policy would cover things like changing for PE, their right to have somewhere to change where they feel safe and comfortable. It would have things regarding name changes, and with name changes safeguard being around that in terms of a lot of trans students aren’t going to be out to their families. It might not be safe, they might not be ready. But one thing that happened to me when my name finally got changed was a letter I got sent home that said Dylan on it, and I was like, after all that, this has happened, which is something that could have been stopped if that had been properly put in place, and a way for every teacher that that student has to know what name, what pronouns to use for them without that student having to go to every single teacher individually, because that is exhausting having to, and it might be easier if it’s a teacher your close to, yes. But if you’re in a lesson and you have to tell that teacher, even if you’re not that close to them, it can be really awkward and really hard to do. So, yeah, something where all the teachers that student wants to know are informed and then of course, just generally speaking with the curriculum, like I mentioned before, being able to implement discourse around identities without having to debate them, not making them tokenistic, like not just a one off lesson on gender, something that’s going on throughout the school year and within different subjects. And then talking about teachers who identify as trans or gender diverse that I as of yet, sooner or soon enough I will have once I’m a teacher but don’t have as much experience obviously on that front. I know a few other people have written about it in the chapter, but having that environment where staff are aware when they need to be, people are confident, feel safe talking about it, like knowing that other staff know about their identity and having something in place to protect staff if they want to keep their identity to themselves and not wanting other people to know, and I won’t talk too much about this because I can’t really say much about it. But I know there’s also been a lot of discourse around staff who identify as trans or gender diverse and how they interact with students, especially non-binary staff who might want to use different, I don’t know the word for it, but you know, when you use. Ms. Mr. It’s not pronouns, it’s something else. But people who want to use things like Mx or Mz and them having some sort of protections in place in case that that itself brings about some sort of questions from students, and staff need to know how they go about that, how they do that in a professional sense, but keep safe at the same time.

00:38:04:00 – 00:38:15:14
Yamina
Thank you so much for that. It was really broad as well, to broaden things out a little bit more we wanted to ask about in an ideal world, what changes would you like to see happen in wider society?

00:38:15:14 – 00:40:55:18
Dylan
I have to bring it back to the media again because it’s such a, it’s something at the forefront right now. Every time I go on Twitter, every time I turn on the news, I’ll see something else. Trying to put a negative light on us. And ideally, I just want people who are actually from the community, from the community that have lived experiences to be able to be in the spotlight in those discussions. It shouldn’t be people who are cisgender, arguing about what they think is right and wrong for us. Because every time I see someone who is trans speak out, any trans athlete that has tried to speak out about the situation with the sporting bans, they are just met with so much criticism, they are met with political ideas, met with people being like, you don’t know your facts. It’s not scientifically right. We’re, it just completely disrespects the whole community. It, wherever we try and stand up for ourselves and whenever we try and put ourselves in the spotlight it’s muted by so many people who are in power. And and I think we need a platform where we are just as loud as all these people are. And we can talk about our lived experiences without being attacked with scientific facts or other people’s opinions on it. So yeah, I think a lot of people are trying their best. It is such a strong community and people are fighting where they can and it is just a matter of who’s going to listen.

00:40:55:18 – 00:41:25:03
Nick
Yeah, thank you so much for speaking out yourself and to everyone who contributed in your chapter as well, because I think it is a very powerful chapter. People should read and people should listen to the conversation we’ve had today, it is incredibly vital and we are really, really grateful for you joining us this morning and speaking to us. So I just want to say a really, really big thank you for everything that you said, really, really grateful. Thank you.

00:41:25:03 – 00:41:35:07
Yamina
Thank you so much for joining us. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley. And Yamina Bibi the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:41:35:07 – 00:41:51:21
Hannah
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Educators podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think, so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.