Psychologist Dr Lori Beth Bisbey and psychotherapist DK Green join Dr Helen and Marianne to talk about the quest for sizzling sex when you are gender diverse and some of the barriers that can get in the way.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Follow DK Green and Dr Lori Beth Bisbey on Twitter: @DKLeather, @DrBisbey

DK Green Website: http://dkgreen.co.uk

Dr Lori Beth Bisbey Website: https://drloribethbisbey.com

 

We help you transition your way, on your terms. Find out more

 

The GenderGP Podcast

Sizzling Trans Sex - Dr Lori Beth Bisbey & DK Green

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

So we have Dr Lori Beth Bisbey. She's a psychologist and the sex and intimacy coach. And we have DK Green of dkgreen.com. So Lori, can I hand over to you to just tell all our listeners who you are, what you are, what you do, and also who you brought with you today?

Dr Lori Beth Bisbey:

Right. So I'm a psychologist who has 33 years experience now, working with people to help them create and maintain meaningful relationships that also contain sizzling sex. I have a specialty in, gender sex and relationship diversity and also in the treatment of trauma. And I'm here with DK green and DK, why don't you introduce you, please?

DK Green:

Uh, we'll do hi everybody. I'm DK green. I'm a psychotherapist private practice with a phenomenal number of clients. and it is solely GSRD so all of my clients are gender sex or relationship diversities. So they're either LGBTQIA+ or poly or kinky a combination thereof. I work with a vast amount of trans folk and I, myself, am a trans man.

Dr Helen Webberley:

Well brilliant really, really, lovely to have you both, that's exciting, Marianne isn’t it now? I can't wait to, uh, uh, I can't wait to get hearing a bit more about you.

Marianne Oakes:

I feel slightly intimidated. I'm not going to lie.

Dr Helen Webberley:

Yeah, we'll let them do the talking, Marianne. Okay. Well, first obvious question that Lori Beth: sizzling sex, and you need to expand on that. Come on. That's something that sounds so exciting.

Dr Lori Beth Bisbey:

So for me, sizzling sex is whatever it is that really brings you pleasure. And, a lot of the people I see have a lot of shame. So I spend a lot of my time working around helping people get rid of shame and, helping people to recognize that they all have a right to pleasure, their identified desires and then move forward. So sizzling sex is whatever gets you off.

Dr Helen Webberley:

Okay. so just, just, just a couple of the sand words, came out, uh,

New Zealand author, Caitlin Spice, joins Dr Helen and Marianne to discuss her latest book, Raven Wild, which features a transgender protagonist. Caitlin talks about how her writing helped her to escape her feelings of gender dysphoria and express herself long before she came out as trans.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Raven Wild Promised Land Tales eBook: Available on Amazon

The No Sleep Podcast: https://www.thenosleeppodcast.com: WARNING: This is a horror fiction podcast. It is intended for mature adults, not the faint of heart.

Follow Caitlin on Twitter: @catespice

Reddit No Sleep: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/

 

Find out more about our service

 

The GenderGP Podcast

The Importance of Trans Characters in Literature

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Hi everybody. Helen and Marianne here today. Our guest today is a lady called Caitlin Spice. And I'm going to hand you straight over to Caitlin to introduce herself and tell us a little bit about her and her work and well, all about you. Welcome Caitlin.

Caitlin Spice:

Hi. So yeah, I'm Caitlin. I, um, am a writer of various things of young adult fiction, horror fiction, and most recently children's fiction. Um, and I took a bunch of sort of trans activism work in New Zealand and yeah, that's me.

Dr Helen Webberley:

So tell me about your writing. What do you write? How did you get into writing young and adult horror? Is that, is that how you started?

Caitlin Spice:

I actually started out writing as a hobby when I was a teenager, probably a similar story for lots of trans people. I escaped into different worlds to cope with my situation and my writing was one of those worlds. So I spent a lot of my teens writing copious amounts of staff. I have huge followers of my writing from that time.

Dr Helen Webberley:

That's interesting. Isn't it? Um, Marianne, we often see people hiding in different ways or not hiding, or it's finding some way of expressing themselves. That's just to release that kind of that inner feeling, isn't it to be themselves?

Marianne Oakes:

I talk a lot about that. You know, some people say to me, I didn't realize was trans till later, but then when you look back at the life, what they've been doing to express themselves one way or the other. So yeah, it's not unusual to hear that, you know, expressing ourselves to, shall we say all throughout the years.

Caitlin Spice:

Definitely.

Marianne Oakes:

how, how have you found that your writing has been received by the wider commun...

Jason Masters is a Christian and an LGBT advocate. In this episode of the GenderGP podcast, he talks candidly to Dr Helen and Marianne about how his own experiences as a gay Christian led to his becoming a fierce trans ally.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Follow Jason on Twitter: @jpmasters

 

Our counsellors can talk to you about any aspect of your gender

 

The GenderGP Podcast

How Christianity can embrace diversity - Jason Masters

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Hi everybody Uh, Helen and Marianne here again. I'm really excited to have somebody from Australia joining us today. Jason is with us and he caught our eye, with a really great article that he wrote, which was published on Medium. But as usual, what I'm going to do, Jason, if, if you don't mind, is I'm going to hand over to you to let you introduce yourself to the people who might be listening, tell us who you are, where you're from, what you do anything about you that you'd like to share.

Jason Masters:

I grew up in a family that wasn't that religious. My mum was one of those who went to Sunday school because that's what you did. My father was the son of a Catholic and an Anglican parentage, which in the 1930s was not a good combination, sort of that Catholic Anglican divide. so he wasn't very involved in faith, but, you know, growing up in the sixties and seventies, you know, kids got sent off to Sunday school as I did. For a variety of reasons, I mean, I got to attend a private school, which was then Methodist school. and, that was a wonderful place a safe place for me to be. I then kind of left the church as a lot of people do in their teenage years. And then when I moved to Melbourne after university, the only thing that was familiar to me in Melbourne was the local Uniting Church. So just contextually for your listeners, the Uniting Church came around in 1977 from a merger of the Methodist Congregational and about 70% of the Presbyterian Church. So, it's a unique Australian church has been around for about 40 years. From there, I got encouraged by the minister there to get involved in Sunday school teaching, which was kind of reteaching myself my faith and helping young kids. I got involved in a youth leadership and then had a number of roles there, including a board role for a major, welfare agency down there that actually developed the first vitamins program in Australia in the late 1980s. And then we're moving to Sydney. Now again, continued my involvement with the Uniting Church, again, running a lot of youth programs. And I was on the board of the National Christian Youth Comp Convention when I moved to Sydney. And then like a lot of people, I had probably some understanding of my sexuality when I was 10 to 14, but when I sort of got discovered with a boy when I was 14, all hell broke loose at home and went deep into the closet. So like a lot of men at that age,

In this episode of the GenderGP podcast we hear from olympian, Kirsti Miller, who joins Dr Helen and Marianne to discuss the role of trans women in sport. Together they discuss the role of hormones in sport, how the rules are no longer fit for purpose and how sport can - and must - change to become all inclusive.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

We help you transition your way, on your terms. Find out more

 

The GenderGP Podcast

Being a visible transgender woman in sports - Kirsti Miller

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Hi everybody. Marianne and I are here again today, we have Kirsti Miller with us today who is a trans woman and educator within sport. So really, really excited to start that conversation going. So as usual, I'm going to pass over to Kirsti to introduce herself. Tell us all about you, who you are, why you wear this, and what is it you're so passionate about.

Kirsti Miller:

Thank you for that lovely introduction. And thank you, Helen and Marianne to have me on the, on the podcast. Two things in life I'm really, really passionate about. And number one is yes, I'm a transgender woman. So, first thing I was very passionate about from about three and a half years of age was everything that I could find out about being transgender. And the other thing that from about four and a half years of age, I've become very passionate about was sport of being an athlete from about four and a half years of age. And I represented Australia in two sports by the time I was 14 years of age in the sports of modern pentathlon and aquathlon, and I also represented my state, New South Wales in four sports in swimming, aquathlon, pentathlon and fencing, and I got to travel around the world and that the whole time growing up, I was suffering alone, Helen and Marianne. I was trapped inside what I believed at the time, a body that didn't suit what was showing me inside my brain. And I didn't have a name for it. That the main thing is I didn't have anyone to talk to about it. And I was born in 1965 and grew up in country, New South Wales. And, and I was the only boy in my family. I was actually Warren Junior. So, I had a lot of expectations placed upon my shoulders. And, and I got into the typical, you know, male sports and then played football and played Australian rules football and rugby league, and represented in pretty much every sport. And I manned up, you know, and, I tried to run away from who I really was because I was scared of being thrown out of home at all or being laughed at or being bashed or worse, you know? And so, I kept manning up the night with that on my way through school, it was still this young star athlete traveling the world and 14, 15-year-old is, 15-year-old on a train for seven months, living by myself on a train and competing in all countries. And I got married young and become a prison officer. And the was the youngest governor in New South Wales’ pe...

In this episode of the GenderGP podcast, recorded for our Trans Sex Education Special, Marianne and Dr Helen answer some questions from the community. Topics tackled include: anal sex, genital hypersensitivity, asexuality and more.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch,  please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on  Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Trans Love Stories

Queer Sex with Juno Roche

Find out more about sex and intimacy as a transgender person, in our set of special articles on trans sex here.

 

We help you transition your way, on your terms. Find out more

 

The GenderGP Podcast

Lets talk about (Trans) sex

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Hi everybody. Helen and Marianne, just the two of us today. A short and sweet podcast just talking about sex, which is everybody's favourite conversation at some stage. We're following on from the topic of sexual health and sexual pleasure that we've been doing. And talking about the idea that everybody has the right to have a fulfilling and happy sex life. So, we've been running a series of articles, and we also asked the community to come up with any questions and worries that they might have about the issue. And so, Marianne and I thought we would come and join together today and see whether we can flush out some of the answers to those questions. So, thanks for joining me, Marianne. I know it's early in the morning for both of us, so we've got some questions here. Should we just kind of run through them? This one was: so I started o my testosterone blockers and my sex drive has reduced. And I'd like to know if there's anything I can do to improve this important aspect of my transition. I feel ashamed to ask my GP or gender clinic because of the attitude towards sex and transgender women in society. This is something that we hear and see a lot. I certainly see it in the medical world and Marianne, and I guess you must see some of it in, in the therapy room. And there is that thing, isn't there, where women and men that have different hormone profiles and that certainly has an impact on sex drive and libido? And one of the things that people have to be aware of is that testosterone is a big sex drive hormone. And, you know, you see that during puberty when, when boys are going through puberty, and their testosterone levels are raging. And so is their need to procreate and further the generations. And we see the same don't we when women and men go through the menopause and that hormones drop-off? So cisgender men going through their late menopause when their testosterone levels fall off, we do see that their sexual function and their sex drive also reduces. So it's not unsurprising, is it? That when you, when a trans woman changes her hormones from testosterone to estrogen, she's going to face that same difficulty with a drop in libido and drive, which is sad, but it's part of being a woman. If you are transitioning from a male hormone profile to a female hormone profile and the medicine that you take completely b...

Holly Lorka is an ICU nurse specialising in the post operative care of transgender patients following gender confirmation surgery. She is also a writer, storyteller and standup comedian. In this episode she talks to Dr Helen and Marianne about her work in Austin, Texas and how she still can’t quite believe how everything has come together, despite all of the challenges she faced growing up gender queer.

 

Links:

Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/icu-nurse-gender-confirmation-surgery_n_5f33cae2c5b6960c066ecc88

Twitter: @hollylorka

Website: https://hollylorka.com

Pre order Handsome, Stories of an Awkward Girl, Boy, Human

 

The GenderGP Podcast

Why I love being a Nurse to gender surgery patients - Holly Lorka

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Okay, welcome everybody to another edition of our podcast. I am Dr Helen Webberley here with Marianne Oakes. And another really, really, really, really, really exciting guest with us today. This guest caught our eye back in August 2020, when she wrote a lovely account of her work as a nurse in her hospital. And I'm not gonna say anything more about it because I reckon she's going to tell us a load more and it's going to be really exciting. So really, really, really lovely to have you, Holly, Holly Lorka. I'm going to hand it over to you now just for you to say hello and who you are and what you do and fill us with lots of lovely stories.

Holly Lorka:

So, hi, I'm Holly Lorka. I live in Austin, Texas, in the US. I am a nurse in a very small hospital here in Austin, and I work in the ICU to help recover patients after their bottom surgery. The final surgery in their gender transitions, gender confirmation surgeries. So my specialty is phalloplasty, which is a bottom surgery for females to males, where we make a phallus, using either part of the arm, or part of the leg, sometimes part of the lat muscle here. So I work with them in the ICU, and they're here in the hospital for five or six days before they go home and get to get on with the rest of their lives. I fell into this. I was an open heart nurse. I worked recovering patients after open-heart surgery for 20-something years. And four years ago, this program came to my hospital. And so I was lucky enough to just be here. And I like to say it fell in my lap, as these things do. I don't know, but I've gotten to know the team really well. They're just a great group of folks who just want to help trans people to feel whole and be able to live their lives as the people that they really are. It's a gift. I feel like I fell into this. I myself am genderqueer. I don't like to label myself as non-binary, or I'd like to think hybrid is a good label for me. I probably, if this surgery was available 20 years ago, I would probably have it, but I know too much about the surgery. And I also know too much about myself. Not like I like who I am now, I've, I've grown into it. And so I had top surgery about two years ago was the best thing I ever did. I dabbled in hormones. I tried T for just a little bit, but I didn't like how it made me feel. So I'm settling here kind of in the middle, but what a gift to be able to work with these folks after me, myself, going through this and feeling alone for most of my life to get, to meet this huge population of folks with whom I have so much in common. And to get to kind of laugh and cry and tell stories while I help them recover from bottom surgery, which is difficult. It's a really difficult surgery. It's very painful. It's emotionally wrought.

In the second episode of our Young Voices podcast special, Leo shares his experiences of coming out age 11, how his family responded to the news and his experience of accessing care via the Tavistock. As he approaches his 17th birthday, Leo chats to Dr Helen and Marianne about the challenges he has faced and his excitement about the next phase of his journey.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on  Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

The GenderGP Podcast

Young Voices: Being a trans youth

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Hey, hi everybody. I've got another exciting young guest with us today. I'm with Marianne as usual, and I'm also with a young man called Leo who's very kindly agreed to come on and talk to us and tell us all about himself and life, the universe, and everything else. But pre-warning, we're not going to talk about geography because Leo and I have both admitted that that is not our strong point. So anyway, Leo, lovely, lovely, lovely to meet you and lovely to have you here today. I'm just going to do a really awful grown-up thing and say, Leo, tell us all about yourself, tell us anything you want us to know. And just go for it.

Leo:

So, my name is Leo. I'm 16, I live in Bedford, I came out as trans when I was about 11. So I've been living as myself for quite a while now, about five years, which is exciting. And I'm coming up to a year on testosterone, which is very cool. Those are the basics.

Dr Helen Webberley:

Your life, your life milestones, aren't they?

Leo:

Yeah. Pretty much.

Marianne Oakes:

I'm loving the pondering because it just, to me, it's like you ask any 16-year-old, say about, tell you about themselves and nothing seems remarkable, does it?

Leo:

It's quite hard. I was just trying to think of what is most important to me right now. And those are the things, really.

Marianne Oakes:

What, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about what kinds of things you like, what hobbies, if any?

Leo:

Well, I'm really into fitness, so I work out. Now it’s less so, now the gyms are closed, but again, a normal scene. So yeah, I work out quite a lot of biking, so my friends like to bike on a regular basis. Quite a lot of music, the acting, I like dancing, I like all the things, I should have mentioned that.

Dr Helen Webberley:

So, you say you came out at 11. What are you able to remember that? Tell us what that was like for you. What does that mean for you and your family and those around you? What, what happened?

Leo:

Yeah, I remember very well.

13 year old Arthur, and his mum, Anna, join Dr Helen and Marianne for this first episode in our Young Voices podcast special. The pair share the two sides of this transition story, from Arthur coming out at age seven, through the day-to-day trials and tribulations of any normal teenager, to his aspirations of one day becoming an Olympian. Together, Arthur and his mum demonstrate that his being trans is the least interesting part about him.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Mermaids http://mermaidsuk.org.uk/

 

The GenderGP Podcast

Young Voices. Raising a trans teen

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

This is the first of our series on young people and bringing to life some of our younger trans members of the trans community who’ve been gracious and generous enough to give us their time to tell you what it means to them to be trans and how it's affected their life in good ways or maybe some bad ways, maybe how it’s affected their families. So really, really, really excited to welcome Arthur and his mum today. So, Arthur, thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to throw you right into the deep and say tell us all about you and your mum. Hi, mum.

Arthur:

Well, I do karate. (unclear 1:11).

Anna:

How old were you when you remembered being trans? And you said, I’ve always been. And that's about right. It was so long ago, cause how old were you when you identified? It was about seven.

Arthur:

Seven, six.

Anna:

Six or seven years old when Arthur drew a picture and tried, and he didn't have the word like. Obviously, he didn't have the words. And I didn’t know the terminology either or anything. And he drew pictures. So he was about seven. So we've been in services since then. Since we came with yourselves, the stress of this beast, it's been gone, hasn't it? So you've forgotten about being trans, you’re just Arthur, aren’t you?

Arthur:

Yeah. That makes sense.

Marianne Oakes:

Can I just—what was your journey to finding GenderGP, if that’s not too big a question. It sounds like it was with the NHS before, would that be correct?

Anna:

Yes, Mermaids.

Arthur:

I got my hormone blocker through the NHS.

Anna:

It was a bit of a battle to get it, though.

Arthur:

I wanted testosterone. I needed it, I believe. But I couldn't, because of how old do you have to be for the NHS? Older.

Anna:

Fifteen,

Sofie Lasiuk chats with Dr Helen and Marianne about her transition in Canada and her positive experiences with the Canadian healthcare system, a system in which GPs manage and support the healthcare of their trans patients, with incredible results.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Blog Post - Trans healthcare in Canada

 

The GenderGP Podcast

GP-led trans healthcare in Canada

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

Hi everybody. I’m here with Marianne as usual, and we have a very exciting guest with us today who’s from quite a long way away. I’m with Sophie Lasiuk, and she’s in Toronto. I’m not going to tell you anything more about her. I’m just going to pass you over as I like to do. Sophie, introduce yourself, tell us why you’re here and give the listeners and a little taste of what we’re going to talk about.

Sophie Lasiuk:

Of course. Well, first of all, I’d like to thank you for inviting me to your podcast today. So, I’m a fifty-two-year-old woman, as you said. We live in Toronto, Ontario. And I’ve been following your posts at doctor for several years now and reading up on some of the problems that people tend to have when transitioning in the UK. And it occurred to me as I went through my own transition over the last three or four years that the systems in place in our two countries are markedly different, and I wondered why that was, and I can’t figure that out. The system in place in Canada has been so welcoming and so user-friendly, for lack of a better word. And I just wanted to reach out to you and express how the differences have been helpful to me, and perhaps start a conversation on your side of the Atlantic about how things can be improved over there.

Dr Helen Webberley:

Well, I think that would be amazing. And I want to say thank you to you for reaching out to us in the first place and for making that first contact. You sent me some brief messages, which I always love receiving. And then you wrote a blog for our website just explaining how it was for you. So, if anyone hasn’t read that yet, then there's maybe some spoiler alerts in there. And I was astounded. I was like goodness gracious me, this is what we’ve been campaigning for the last kind of five years, and you’re there already. So just outline how—you said that you are in your fifties. How did it go from the first time when you actually wanted to go and ask a doctor about this.

Sophie Lasiuk:

So, my truth is that I have identified as female since my earliest memories. I’m in my fifties now. Still three or four years of age, I had this innate understanding of my gender, and I’ve carried that with me all my life. And society certainly has had some catching up to do and over the last ten years or so, certainly including my wife and discussions, we decided it was the right time for me to mov...

In this episode of the GenderGP podcast, journalist - and latest GenderGP team member - Taryn De Vere talks about her experiences of her daughter coming out as trans and how it ignited her passion for activism and her support for the trans community. Together she and our GenderGP co-hosts discuss the importance of education and supporting your trans child.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

 

Links:

Twitter: @taryndevere

Independent article: https://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/im-a-proud-mum-to-a-transgender-child-39061549.html

Pride post: https://www.gendergp.com/how-to-celebrate-trans-pride-in-lockdown/

Taryn De Vere Jewellery: https://taryndevere.com

 

The GenderGP Podcast

What we can learn from trans kids - Taryn DeVere: The GenderGP Podcast S5 E8

 

Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.

 

Dr Helen Webberley:

We have another amazing guest today. We have Taryn De Vere with us. And Taryn has two places in my heart. She has recently joined GenderGP as our social media manager, and we needed to take on somebody bright and colourful to help with the queries and questions that were coming into social media, and also someone to kind of spread our word and spread the words of the community on behalf of GenderGP. So, welcome to the team, Taryn, and welcome to our podcast today. I shall, as I usually do, let you introduce yourself and tell everybody exactly who you are, why you might possibly be here, and all about you. Over to you.

Taryn De Vere:

Thanks. So yeah. I'm Taryn De Vere. I live in Ireland, but I'm originally from Australia. And I have a child who identifies as trans, a young child who came out to me when she was at about five. And that kind of started me on the whole journey of learning all about—perhaps I didn't have friends who were trans before, and I did understand some of the issues relating to trans people, and it was actually my knowledge that came to the fore at that time because my daughter said to me in the car do all women have vulvas, and my instinctual response was yes, and then I said, “Oh hang on a sec. No, trans women. So no, trans women don't have vulvas. And she said, "Well, what's a trans woman?” and I started talking to her explaining and then she said, “That’s me. I'm a trans girl.” and I said, “Oh okay.” so that that was the starting point for it all you know that moment and then now we're a few years on you know in our story and so I just obviously, I would have been interested in trans rights before but not as passionately as when you have a child, you suddenly just get really thrown into it. And so I've become extremely involved in the trans rights movement and particularly with trans kids.

Dr Helen Webberley:

Yeah. So I haven't really obvious question rolling off my tongue which I'm guessing other people might have too. Did you know before that time in the car?