Transvox - Embracing Authenticity: A Journey of Gender Transition with Virginia Maine

[00:00:08] Hello and welcome back to Transvox. It's a delight from time to time to be able to meet other people from our community, people with different stories, different views, different opinions, different experiences. And Jenny's reclining somewhere, luxurious this week. So I'm delighted that Virginia Maine, known as Ginny, will be joining us today. And she's going to talk about all sorts of unusual interesting things. But first of all, morning Ginny, how are you? Good morning. I'm absolutely fabulous. Yourself?

[00:00:37] Do you know what? It's a bit chilly up here. And I could do with some moaning about we need water for the gardens. I think I'd rather have the heat again. A little bit. So where in the world are you, Ginny? I'm down in South Devon, just outside Torbay. So yes, it's a lovely part of the world. We moved down here about 30 years ago. Absolutely love it. And I've got to ask the question. I hope you don't mind. Is it jam first or cream first?

[00:01:01] I tend to split the scone in half and hedge my bets and go jam on one and cream on the other. No, it's quite a joke. It is a running joke. But it all works out well in the end. You can start pairing it down to and which kind of flavour of jam is best. But let's not go there. Let's not go there. This is really hard. This is art now. Not just culture. Look, tell us a little bit about yourself and your sort of journey.

[00:01:24] Okay. So I grew up in Bath. I first realised that I was a girl when I was about 12 years old. I had a very sudden and revelation of, bizarrely, of myself, well, a girl riding my bicycle. And it never occurred to me that it wasn't me. However, my entire community, I was at an all boys school. It was 1976.

[00:01:49] My parents, I think, probably had some inkling long before I did and certainly afterwards. And they just tried to push it under. I was not the son they were looking for. Ironically, though, I've come to suspect that I may have been the daughter my mother was looking for. But there we go. I don't get the chance to ask her now. So I grew up, went to university, would probably have, in hindsight, come out at university. I was on the tipping point. And then very sadly for me and many others, unfortunately, HIV, AIDS arrived.

[00:02:19] Yeah. And anybody who lived in that time knows just how frightening that was for anybody that was perceived as gender nonconforming, particularly males. It did affect female people as well, of course. And I just ran for cover. And thereafter was never in a position to ever convince myself that I could possibly transition. Not that a day went by that I didn't imagine myself as a woman.

[00:02:45] And then a few years ago, three years ago, I had a final meltdown and went to the GP, came out to the GP, first person I'd ever told outside my family that I wanted to be a woman. He referred me to the GIC. I'm still waiting. It smiles all round. Yeah, we all know that game.

[00:03:04] But my wife and family have been incredibly supportive. And I was able to navigate my way through private health care. Fortunately, I was very fortunate that we were able to do that. And a couple of years ago or two years, a year ago, I had my gender affirming surgery in Brighton.

[00:03:23] And I have to say, as I said to someone earlier on today, in the three years since my transition, there has not been a single moment, a single day that I have ever thought I want to go back to being male. And yet every day before that, for 40 something years, there was that. I want to be a woman.

[00:03:42] So if anybody needs proof that gender identity and transgender is not a choice and is something that we have to make a decision about when we wish to transition, I would hold myself up as proof of that and that it is the right decision when you're ready to do it. And that is a personal decision that people have to arrive at on their own. I'd like to come back to that personal decision a bit, but just go back to the beginning because you've given me lots to think about and talk about.

[00:04:09] But you talked about being 12 years old and it being sudden that you'd noticed this thing. So what was that like then? Because as some people experience this over the longer term, become gradually aware. But that sudden revelation must have been quite a shock. It wasn't because, like I say, I saw myself as this girl and I know exactly where I was. I know exactly the time of day. I know where I was going on my bicycle. I have spoken to a counsellor who put it in psychological terms.

[00:04:39] And that sense of external projection, viewing yourself as an external from external point of view. Apparently it is quite common, not necessarily amongst transgender people, but as an experience in life. But like I said, I had no information, no framework to hang it from. And whilst I never questioned that the girl on the bicycle was me, I had nothing to work with. And so it was a case of, yes, so that's that.

[00:05:09] But again, you go back to 1970s, the mid-90s, well, I mean, yeah, the 1970s, certainly 1976. And the whole dialogue in social circles about anybody who was gender non-conforming. Pride had just started. Gay people were out there. Lesbian people were out there. They were being seen and heard.

[00:05:29] But still the narrative amongst anybody who was cross-dressing, which was really the only framework that most people had to hang that gender non-conformance from, was very much ridicule, fun, something to be ashamed of. And that was certainly the environment in which I lived at an all-boys school. Had I become more feminine in the way that I'm very grateful that people are able to now,

[00:05:58] even though there are huge problems still facing transgender people of all ages, the bullying would have been intense and physical. And I couldn't possibly withstand that. Yes, I went quiet. It is interesting, isn't it? But sometimes for people who are a bit younger, the idea of turning on the telly and I was odd. But if you're younger, you can look at clips of people like Dick Emery in the day.

[00:06:24] And this whole, this idea of a pantomime dame, this idea of this comedic, the two Ronnies did a lot of it as well. They did an awful lot of gender swapping. And I could never figure out in my own head whether it was being horrible or actually it was being ahead of its time. And it's hard to look back objectively now because we've got today's lens. But at the time, I thought it was quite out there in terms of public perception in a way.

[00:06:54] I think depending on the nature of the performers, you also had on the other side, you had the likes of Barry Humphries playing Dame Madden Average. You had, oh, I've lost the name, but you had people who portrayed being female very, very convincingly. Danny LaRue was the name. Oh, yes, of course. Very convincingly as what we might now really say were drag acts.

[00:07:18] They weren't making fun of being cross-dressed in the way that perhaps the two Ronnies did and other Dick Emery, as you mentioned, were very much ridiculing, I feel, and raising humour from this is ridiculous. And because they parodied women so much, they were obviously men dressed as women,

[00:07:45] whereas the likes of Danny LaRue or Dame Edna were trying to be convincing women. So I think there were some of both, for sure. Yes. And I think it's the thing about whenever you look back at anything in its time, it's very hard to be objective about it now. But you're right about Dick Emery. It was all very sexualised as well, wasn't it? And it was all decided. And actually, it played to the tropes of the time, which in America is still true. A wife is either a child giver, a housewife or some sort of slut.

[00:08:11] And I think transgender women actually have a more enlightened view of the role of women in a strange sort of way, having seen both sides of the continuum. I think to a degree, I'm going to jump the gun a little bit and say that the situation we find ourselves in currently in the UK with the reaction of the Equality and Human Rights Commission to the Supreme Court gender ruling has highlighted to many women, many of the

[00:08:41] population, but women particularly, their role in the world and how by shining a light on transgender women, it has made many women that I have spoken to and crossed paths with become very aware of how that negative light has also shone on them in the past. How, and I'm going to use, I can't speak on behalf of cisgender women. I'm not one. I never have been.

[00:09:08] But the nature of, we're going to call it the patriarchy, has viewed them and what have you. And now they see that spotlight very much focused on transgender women. And I think it is making some of them very uncomfortable and realise that they have been bathed in that light all their lives. And it's not right. No. Irrespective of whether you, what your views on transgender people as a whole are, it's

[00:09:35] not right that any group should be singled out for that level of scrutiny and control. And it is control. I think that's what I'm one of those people that read Project 2025 and I bang on about that a lot and say, if you want to see what, if you know what, if you want to know what's going on, you read that. And this is not a fight against transgenderism. It's a fight against women. And I think that's what's, there's the playbook written out and it's being followed. And it's not, it's not a surprise what's happening because it is actually part of a strategy,

[00:10:05] an overall strategy. So that's interesting. Before we get back into the political side though, I just wanted to go back into the journey. Jumping the gun is great. I don't mind leaping all over the place. And I'm going to, I'm going to suspect that you and I agree an awful lot. So I'm just going to ask you a few questions really to help other people who are in different places to help them in a way. But I'm interested in this concept that you talked about when you, you said you talked about all boys school, but I think a lot of us push under this need.

[00:10:32] We have this gender dysphoria, which some of us can deal with in a different way to others. But this idea of playing the role of a man is actually quite tricky. How did you manage it? And what were the effects on you? Very badly was how I managed it. In all fairness, I went through numerous phases in my life. I was married in 1990. We just had our 35th wedding anniversary just the other day. And my wife is still with me and she has supported me.

[00:11:00] And she knew from outset that there was a very feminine side to my personality. So what was she picking up? I make no secret of the fact that I wore women's clothes, particularly in the house. My dress sense out of the house, given the choice I would wear a buy a woman's, buy off the women's rail for jeans, for instance. Or I was still wearing jeans. Men and women wear jeans, but I would drift towards the women's rail for that.

[00:11:29] Shirts, very, I had my ears pursed earlier on and wore earrings that make these look quite modest and just generally grew my hair out. Just generally my persona, my appearance and periodically through my life. For various reasons, I have tried to force that back into the box. It's always ended badly. So how did you force it back in the box? What did you do?

[00:11:54] Literally cleared out anything and everything that I identified as being feminine. Clothes, earrings, shoes, coats, anything. I said, right, no, this is it. I cannot transition. Possibly didn't even have a word for it back then. But I was, I cannot be a woman. I would not make a good woman. I have responsibilities to my family. I have responsibilities to my work and job through which I need to keep my job.

[00:12:23] I need to keep mortgage paid. Without mortgage, the family's going to disintegrate. So there were those moments when I came perhaps too much to the fore, too much public attention was focused on me. I don't think it was ever a great secret that I was not cross-dressing. I never left the house in a dress. Not that anybody would know. No, I did, but I did it far away. Which is an interesting thing. But no, I just kept pushing it back down, pushing it back down.

[00:12:52] And slowly it would reassert itself. And then I'd push it back down again. I went through, I don't know, half a dozen phases of that. And then finally I reached a point where, actually in one of my more feminine phases, that I actually had the final complete meltdown and went, I cannot push myself back into the box. I have to go the other way. And I have to accept that I am transgender and I have to try and transition. Which was a shock to everybody, actually. It's about saying it out loud, isn't it? That's the challenge.

[00:13:21] I'm just intrigued because, as we both know, many relationships do not survive this declaration of transgenderism. Whichever way, which female, multifemale, whatever the phraseology is this week. But I'm sensing the fact that you were honest at the beginning of the relationship. That must have helped in some way. Whether you were honest in the sense of a full declaration or just being honest in the sense that you were doing the best that you could almost. That you weren't hiding it away. Yeah, no.

[00:13:48] And certainly both my wife and children were familiar with me when, for instance, at Christmas we would have a sit down Christmas meal. Well, I'd wear a frock. Probably didn't put my... I may have put a little bit of makeup on, wore my earrings or what have you, put my hair up, what have you. But I would wear high heels and an evening dress. And they were absolutely fabulous about it. And around the house, generally, it was not uncommon to see me wearing a skirt or a blouse or what have you.

[00:14:18] And my children have been absolutely fabulous about it throughout, as has my wife. And don't get me wrong, when I finally did come out, my wife was as shocked as anybody, I think. Because we'd pushed it down and pushed it back and pushed it back so many times. I don't think she ever really imagined, nor did I, that I would finally go, no, I cannot do it this time. I guess it was very difficult. And it has lots of ramifications on the partner, doesn't it?

[00:14:46] Because effectively, and I know a lot of cis women mention this fact, they'll say, I don't want to be a lesbian. I don't want to be seen as a lesbian. I want to be thought of as a lesbian because it's an anathema to me. And that's quite hard to change. But I think people who, partners who are more enlightened, realise that you're not actually losing, that you're not losing your partner. It's the, your partner's still the same. In fact, you might actually gain more of your partner because more of that person's coming to life.

[00:15:15] But there's this perception that you're going to lose a lot. And you don't realise that there's quite a lot to gain as well. I think we did. Our personal relationship had probably run its course by the time that I came out. And my wife exactly said that. I am not a lesbian. I don't want to be in a lesbian relationship. We are not in a physical lesbian relationship. We are very much like two, yeah, we have to accept this, older women who just are house sharing.

[00:15:45] And that's the way of it. But after a rocky start where I think transgender people understandably, particularly if they are, like myself, older, and they've got all this damned up behind them, and they've spent an entire lifetime imagining what their life as a woman would be, they tend to become very self-obsessed, very focused on themselves.

[00:16:10] And I, for the first six, 12 months, what have you, was in danger of sinking and losing absolutely everything in my life because of that self-obsession. And then I did realise that if I was going to carry this relationship forward, the people around me are transitioning too. They are coming to, in a sense, my wife is coming to terms with being in a lesbian relationship. I say it's not, but it's an entirely different relationship.

[00:16:39] She has been absolutely fabulous. She's helped me with my clothes, my makeup, etc. But we had to, we reached a point where we had to establish that if I was making a decision about the one I really messed up was name changes. I basically, I knew what my name was going to be for years. And then I finally said, I'm just going to do a deed poll. And of course, it didn't occur to me that in doing that, because I changed my family name as well. I stepped away from my family and I completely changed my name, which is somewhat uncommon.

[00:17:07] And my wife's reaction was, now we're landed with the family name only through having married you and the children have it. You don't have association with that family anymore. We don't have an association with that family. Where does that leave us? And that was the moment where I went, ah, I got that wrong, didn't I? And since then, we have sat down as much as possible. And whilst the decisions have ultimately been mine, I have sat down and said, I want to progress. This is what I want to do. This is where I want to go.

[00:17:38] How do you feel about it? How can I make it that you can understand that this is where I have to go? What can I do to deflect some of the focus from you? Because in a small community, I live in a village that has about two and a half thousand people in it. The rumour mill was in full swing. Absolutely full swing. And I just turned around to people and said, if you want to know, you want to ask a question, you want to know, come and ask me. Don't guess. Come and ask.

[00:18:34] Yeah. You want to know, come and ask me. Or partner stays in a slightly co-controlling relationship. She's also not very healthy for either party. And I think that's where, because actually, for lots of people, it's actually very hard to be on your own. So there's lots of relationships where people stay together for the oddest reasons. But I think that negotiated process is really interesting. But I think a lot of people are scared because of the nature of telling children.

[00:19:01] And things like, when I walk down the high street, how will I be viewed? And you make it sound very easy. But I'm guessing it's not as easy as you're making it. But you're not making it out to be easy. You're expressing it away because it's post all the terror, isn't it? You've settled in. Certainly my children were, I do tell the story. It was three, four weeks after I had said to my wife that this was the time I was going to transition. And we batted around, where does this leave us?

[00:19:29] And it was my eldest son's birthday. So the three children were here in the house. I was dressed in feminine clothes. That was no surprise to them. And we sat them around our down after we'd had our birthday dinner. And I said, this is where we're at. And for 20 minutes, they popped questions about what does this mean for the two of you? Are you going to stay together? How profound is this transition going to be?

[00:19:54] But they all know in their peer group a surprising number of transgender people. That's the nature of younger people. They are more accepting for the large part, I think. But they do through their connections through the internet, which of course we never had as children. They do know more people. And then one of my children turned around at one glorious moment. And they do have wicked sense of humour, all of them. And turned around and went, hey, this is great for us. It's Father's Day coming up. We don't have to do anything about it.

[00:20:24] And at that moment, I knew that I had them on my side. And they have been such allies ever since. They have stood up to me, to their friends. My youngest was in a conversation and somebody was absolutely tanking into transgender people, apparently. And my son bided his time and bided his time. I went, you do know my father's transgender, don't you? At which point the whole place, the tone rather changed. And I think we forget that, don't we?

[00:20:53] Our decision has such a massive effect on our kids and our partners. But this idea that somehow kids can get marked out as having someone in a family who's not in the normal sort of way of being, as it were. I can't know. That came out all wrong. I know my children did get bullied at school. Yeah, they must do. Or having a parent who didn't appear as they expected parents to be. Yeah. And yes, I know it was hard for them.

[00:21:22] And I was trying my best not to put them in that situation. Not very well, as it turns out. But because I was, like I said, I kept trying to push it down. And those were the triggers for trying to push it down. And the kids would get bullied at school, it would come out and you'd go, I have to get on. I have to hide myself for their benefit. I was just never very good at it. I was very bad at it. I'm not good at it. Very bad at it. There's no manual, is it? That's the trouble. Oh, yeah. Many manuals, because they're all individual stories. That's the trouble.

[00:21:52] So you mentioned your name, Virginia, and you said you always knew. Well, a lot of people have a lot of fun choosing names, because often we are saddled with a name that our parents thought was great. Some people love those names. And I guess you being a parent as well, you've been part of a process of thinking about names of other people. But thinking about a name for yourself is really quite, I think is wonderful, but a lot of people find it problematical. So what was your journey there? Back when I was probably about 40, I went online.

[00:22:21] My persona online was Gina. And I don't really know where that came from. Virginia, though, I knew a young lady back in my youth was Virginia. I loved the name. She was the loveliest person. And I loved the name. And when I was trying to get something, it just came to me that was an ideal name. Maine is an absolute mystery. It really is. But I do Virginia Maine. I like the sound of it. It comes.

[00:22:51] It writes well. It really, it's one of the, I just identify with it. And I don't know that there was any conscious decision in that. When I got to it, I just identified with it. So my middle name is Ruth. And there is a story. Of course, there are so many stories in my life. I don't know if you ever read the Swallows and Amazon's books. Oh, yes, I did. Nancy Blackett, who I still want to be, desperately want to be Nancy Blackett, if nobody's ever read the books.

[00:23:19] So skip through the first one and find Nancy Blackett, absolutely fabulous character. The most positive young female gender role model I think anybody could possibly hope for. Anyway, but the point is, there's a joke in the first book when they are introducing themselves. And she says, oh, I'm Nancy Blackett. And her sister turns around and goes, Nancy's not her real name's Ruth. But we're Amazon Pirates. And our Uncle Jim says that Amazon Pirates are ruthless. It's a joke.

[00:23:49] It's a joke. I didn't feel that Nancy really felt with Virginia Nancy Maine. That and Virginia Ruth Maine just. That works. It just works. It is just so me. And it's that connection to that teenage point when I was probably 10, 12 years old. In hindsight, I realised that, yes, I say 12 was when I saw myself as a girl. But in hindsight, looking back, there were definitely signals that I was giving out.

[00:24:16] Probably back to seven or eight that I now recognise. Principally through association with books. There were no girls clothes, no girls toys, no girls anything in my life. It was all boys. The freedom I had was books. And the books I read and the characters identified in those, I now come to realise were primarily books that girls would read. And the characters I identified most were the female characters. So Virginia Ruth Maine. I just love it.

[00:24:46] I saw myself Virginia Ruth. Virginia Maine, I could never make a signature out of. But Virginia Ruth, every time I write it down, it just makes me sing. What line of work were you in? Because it's always interesting seeing which... So a lot of people are going, again, going to work which pushes down femininity. Femininity. Say that word. That bit. Yeah. So without revealing any confidences, what sort of work were you doing?

[00:25:15] I am a, what might now be called a medical biotechnologist by training. All right. I did an immunology degree. Went into, co-founded a business that produced medical diagnostics, worked for that for 30 years. It was no secret, again, to my fellow directors that I had a very... And at work actually was one of...

[00:25:39] Because I worked in a lab and we had very little client contact and et cetera, I was actually quite able to express myself a bit more freely. But when I finally did turn around and say, I am going to transition, doors and windows came down. And after a year, I finally realised that my life there had finished. And I walked out the door and went, bye. Okay. Which was hard.

[00:26:04] So for the last couple of years, I have been working in the local co-op, the food shop. The people there, my colleagues there, the people who come in have been absolutely fabulous. They've been so supportive, so welcoming. They just didn't question it. They just went, okay, fair enough, Ginny's here. And that was that, which has been absolutely brilliant. Now I'm ready and I feel more settled in myself. And I am looking to spread out of that and...

[00:26:34] Shh, don't tell the co-op. No, they know. And I am looking for... To expand my contact with the world. I know that sounds crazy, but I'm working in a small shop. I've worked in a business, as I say, pretty much behind doors, never met anybody. And I want to get out there, into a job, into the world where I meet more people as myself. Good for you. And what I'm really looking at is, I know there are many people doing it.

[00:27:00] We are looking at, I am looking at, not trying to write diversity or inclusion policies for people, though I will help them. But actually saying, you've written this policy. Have you actually engaged with your staff, with your clients, with it? Have you actually... It's all very well writing a lovely policy and handing it out and saying, this is the policy. This is what you must do. Have you actually gone out and said, how is this going to work in practice?

[00:27:28] And that's what I want to do, is to actually embed, help people and businesses embed their policies into the workforce and into the clients they are serving. Your transition in three years, that is rapid. So you obviously decided to go all in and obviously went the private route, which is expensive. Do you want to give us a bit of an overview of that journey? Really? Oh, for sure.

[00:27:54] So April 2022, I'd say three years ago was when I came out to my GP and bless him, he was completely supportive. Said, do you want me to refer you to the general identity clinic? I said, yes. He said, and the key thing that he said to me that I think really helped me out was you can also refer yourself. So I did. I sat down. It's an interminable form. It's awful. But I did it. Which then triggered me after a couple of weeks, a month, or what have you, to say, I've not even heard a response.

[00:28:24] Have you received my form? Started trying to get hold of the local gender identity clinic, which is the Laurels up in Exeter. Started looking up online about them, discovered that they were snowed under, would be a polite way of putting it. They had a waiting list back then of six years. It's now nine for first appointment. And I realised, and I went back to the GP, had a discussion with the GP, who was all completely oblivious to this bottleneck in the system. And then I said to my GP, I said, look, the only option I've got really is I'm 58 years old by then.

[00:28:52] I've spent a lifetime wanting to transition. I'm not sitting here for the next 10 years waiting for the NHS. I can't do it. First appointment. And initially I thought that probably I would pursue hormones privately and do things like electrolysis and what have you. And that's what I did and got a shared care agreement with my GP. He has been very, the GP practice as a whole, the GP I deal with specifically has been very understanding. And we've had quite a lot of dialogues.

[00:29:22] And I think it's been a bit of an education to him as well as to me. And so I managed to, I got onto the books of the, as it was the London Transgender Clinic then. Yeah. After, so that was the beginning of 2023. And to a degree, I have been very fortunate because of my background in medical and hospitals. I used to work in hospitals and that medical background.

[00:29:48] I have quite an knowledge of human physiology, shall we say. I knew a lot of the buzzwords. It didn't bother me sitting down in front of papers and summaries and always, and going through it and then being able to go to the relevant medical professionals and saying, okay, this is the situation. You know it. I know it. Perhaps in some instances know it better than you do, but let's have an open conversation. And I was able to persuade them and get them on site.

[00:30:15] And I think they realized that actually I knew this wasn't an impulse thing. This wasn't, this was somebody who really did know their stuff. You're not telling me that they didn't suspect that you had a secret urge to run into women's toilets and commit terrible crimes against cisgender people. Surely that was raised because that's always what it's about, isn't it? I think that's become the narrative now, the invasion of women's safe spaces. But again, I've said this to people. I've spent my entire life believing I was a woman.

[00:30:44] No matter what people saw of me, I believed it. And I could never understand. And I've come to realize I never understood how a man's mind works. And now I certainly don't. And I see what people, men say and how they react and how they behave. And it's just a complete an anathema to me. I have no idea.

[00:31:06] And to a degree, I always felt through my life that here I was, a woman, when you use the phrase trapped in a male body. But women looked at me based on my external appearance and assumed that I was a man, assumed that, yes, all I wanted to do was assault women. And there was nothing further from my mind. I just wanted to be a woman. And so I finally transitioned. And now what I have is women.

[00:31:34] The extremist extremists looking at me going, actually, no, you're not a woman. You're still a man. And I'm going, no, I really am confused. I have really am. I spent my whole life appearing as a man, being accused of being a man. Now I appear as a woman. I'm still accused of being a man. I'm very confused. But no. And I do a lot of swimming. So I do access female changing rooms. And nobody, but nobody has ever raised an eyebrow. Not to me, anyway.

[00:32:04] They may have raised eyebrows in private, they're not. But I have stood in changing rooms with other women in our swimwear, chatting away. And minutes into conversation, one of them's turned around and gone, you could see the light bulb going on. Never would have got it. I stood chatting to a couple and one, after the conversation had broken up, was talking to one of them. She said, I'll be about eight minutes in. She said, if you hadn't said, and it was a little tiny phrase, she said, I would never have worked it out.

[00:32:34] And so I think by and large, cisgender women, women are actually very accepting of transgender women. It's just they've been given this false narrative that the mission in life is to invade their spaces and take away their... It's not only about physical, it's about eroding. I do understand this.

[00:32:57] It's about eroding what they see as the human rights that women have gained in the last 200 years. And don't get me wrong, that has been a huge progression. They see that we are men moving into their space, telling them how to be women. And that's certainly not a journey or a path or anything I hope I've ever done to anybody. I'm here to learn. And that's it.

[00:33:24] I think there have been many false steps along this journey. And I think legislation has not helped us, never mind the recent stuff. But there is a chance of a reset now, so who knows. But I do think this thought... There's two things, isn't there? The point of having equal rights assumes by some people that, therefore, some people's rights would be eroded by letting people have their rights. And that has never been the case.

[00:33:48] And the original 2010 Equalities Act, flawed as it was, still allowed for safe spaces, for gender-discreet spaces and whatever it was. And to a certain extent, they still do. They say this can be a women's space that excludes trans people but doesn't have to. And that's actually where we are now, which is just bizarre. The AHCR nonsense is just madness. But let's not get past that. But I think where we are is... I get the point you made here about the feminist argument.

[00:34:17] I understand where the turf people are coming from because they have fought a battle to get women on an equal pairing. And if you can't see trans people as being women, then you will see us as men. The falseness of the argument, though, switches the other way when they talk about trans men. Because they do call them women. Or misguided. They're just being misguided that they want to be men. That they want to be men to have all the riches and the power and all that sort of stuff.

[00:34:44] So there is a sort of paradox in the middle of their argument. But my view is quite clear on this. You have to engage with that community because we have to listen. Because in listening, you find out what the problem is. And finding out the problem is where you find out what you can do about it. And I suspect you have lived through the Irish troubles. And there were two parties far more intractable than us and Terps. And I do think I've got a lot of hope that things will smooth themselves out.

[00:35:13] And I think particularly recently with the sort of the rise of the Not In My Name campaign, which has been driven by cisgender people. And because actually I think the most demeaning thing women, either the women's movement in Scotland said, is that we speak for 34 million people in this country. And I know bunches of people who are on the fence or have been anti-iscord. You don't speak for me. And I think this has been overreaching, this idea that they speak for everybody.

[00:35:42] And of course, no one speaks for everybody. And it's so arrogant to think that you would have done that. I think you're exactly right. And I have said this before, is that we have to respect everybody's right to have an opinion. Exactly. And I will respect the extreme feminists to have their opinion.

[00:36:01] Where I fall short of that is when, as you say, they try to erode other people's rights to force their opinion on other people. Fine. If that's your opinion, that's your opinion. Like so many things in life. Don't try to force me to agree with that because I have a different opinion. And I think that's the open-mindedness that we have to approach all this with.

[00:36:29] You were telling me about an interesting initiative that you become part of, though. So maybe talk to us a bit about that. Ah, Transpilot. Transpilot.org. Particularly in the wake of the current circumstances, we have a feeling that there is a need to identify organisations, be they businesses, that are effectively closed-door businesses. They're not open to the public.

[00:36:57] But we need to look at the businesses and how they react to their own employees. We need to look at businesses and organisations that are open to the public, say, be it a leisure centre, be it a cafe, be it, you get the idea. And many of those organisations have jumped the gun based on the guidance put out by the EHRC and said, no, women's toilets are for women, men's toilets are for men.

[00:37:21] And somehow you have to prove that at birth you were assigned a woman or assigned a man to be able to use them. And we're looking at businesses and saying that it doesn't have to be that way. That is not what the guidance actually says. It says you can choose to do that if you feel that it achieves an aim that is proportional to the problem you're trying to solve, in common words. They've made it rather more intractable than that.

[00:37:45] So we're going out to businesses and saying, look, OK, can we get people to review places that they have been, particularly public places, that have welcomed particularly transgender people in? We're starting with transgender people because we feel that we are the ones who are in the spotlight. I want it and we want it to be an inclusive environment.

[00:38:11] So across the LGBT spectrum, across cisgender women, there are places where cisgender women do not feel included and welcome across cultures, across all demographics. But we're starting with transgender people because we are the ones who are being actively at this moment excluded. So we're not quite ready to launch it to the world at large yet. We've still got some technical bits in the background to fix. We're getting there. We're posting some reviews.

[00:38:41] But we want to, whilst we want people to go to a venue and say, yes, they were very welcoming. Here's a review of the venue. I'm going to give them three stars out of five or five stars out of five. Let's hope there's more five out of five. We want to take it one step further and we want to then actually go to those businesses and say, do you have inclusion policies? Do you have inclusion statements that we can share that will influence people to come to you and promote businesses that are going one step beyond?

[00:39:09] It's all very well saying, yes, we're inclusive or happy. But businesses that actually do protect and help and are mindful of the inclusion factor. Not just, of course, you can turn up and use our toilets. But actually, we have provided safe spaces, if that's what you want to term it as.

[00:39:30] I was in a lovely building the other day and they have arranged all their toilet facilities as non-gendered. But all you enter the room and corridor really, but all the toilet are completely enclosed, completely lockable. They are enclosed within themselves in the sense that they've got a basin to hand wash in. So nobody knows who's in those spaces. It can be done.

[00:39:59] It looked absolutely fabulous as well, by the way. But I used to think, actually, probably it costs very little more to do that than to have stalls with, you know. You'd say, well, yeah, but that's, nobody knows. Nobody knows who's in that stall then. You go in, you come out, you don't meet anybody else. Where's the problem? And they've been discriminatory against women anyway, because the same amount of space is given to male and female lose. But you can get more throughput through guys. And it's never been thought that way.

[00:40:29] Work environments are based around the needs of the male in the organisation. From heating to air conditioning to working heights, desk heights. It's always been the case, actually. So I think this is a really great initiative. So when do you think it'll be going live? Soon. It's there. Anybody who likes to go and look it up, like I say, it is transpilot.org. By all means, go and have a look. You can start putting reviews in. We can't promise that we will be able to process them all.

[00:40:57] The automation in the background is not quite all there yet. And then, as I say, on the back of that, we really want to then take it one step further and go to organisations and say, do you have an inclusion policy or a statement? And if you don't, we'll help you produce one. We'll help you embed it with your workforce in the sense that we will actually go out and ask your workforce for you, how they feel about it or your client base or what have you.

[00:41:22] And we'll actually get you to the point of being inclusive and that your workforce actually engages with being inclusive. It's no good having a policy that the workforce does not engage with. So that is the ultimate goal that we want for this. And that will be in time. But that's our aim for it. Excellent. See? Entrepreneurial. What can I say? Ginny, it's been an absolute joy to talk to you today. Thank you so much. Thank you for being candid.

[00:41:49] And thank you for giving, I think, hope to look at my own journey and think, actually, how much quicker you're going? I really need to get on with things. But it's been a delight to talk to you today. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for listening to this episode of Transvox. It's been a joy to have you with us. If you want to make contact with us, you can contact us at gillian at transvox.co.uk.

[00:42:17] And all of our money goes to our nominated charity. And Jen, you've chosen the charity for the next number of episodes. Which one will be chosen? Our charity is called Beyond Reflections, which is a charity that provides support and counselling to trans people, non-binary people and their friends and their families across the UK. An amazing charity doing some amazing work. Really important. So please, if you can give. Great. And if you want to go and have a look at Beyond Reflections,

[00:42:45] it's beyond-reflections.org.uk. But as I say, if you'd like to make a contribution to what we're doing, because we love to help the people who help us. Again, if you've got ideas for the show, things you'd like to ask us, questions, comments, applause, or brickbats, feel free to send it all in to gillian at transvox.co.uk. Until the next time, goodbye. Bye-bye.