TRANS EXPERIENCE

NEW RESEARCH SHOWS THAT TRANS PEOPLE OF COLOUR FACE ADDITIONAL OBSTACLES WHEN SEEKING HEALTHCARE. THE NEED FOR CHANGE IS URGENT. NIC CROSARA INVESTIGATES

I first learned the term gender fluid in Ruby Rose’s short film Break Free. In the lead-up to coming out, I watched it multiple times a day. This was long before I heard names such as Indya Moore, Travis Alabanza and Alok Vaid- Menon. Despite my Blackness, I based my entire baby-trans aesthetic on Ruby. When thinking about medically transitioning, I focused on the lack of a blueprint for those between the binary. Until recently, it didn’t occur to me that race could be another barrier. In the words of Dr Sam Hall (left), a trans man with a speciality in hormone treatment, “We’ll look back on this moment in history as a very dangerous time”. We are living amidst a trans healthcare crisis. When we add the layer of ethnicity to this, things seem unbearable.